John Bair and Hunt Expo 2022. In this episode we talk with John Bair and talk about the upcoming Hunt Expo in Salt Lake City, UT. This is the first year back since the expo was cancelled last year and we couldnt be more excited. John tells us about some of the new things coming for 2022. and what we have to look forward to. Epic Outdoors will have a booth as well in our usaul location. this year we wil have multiple 250″ bucks in the booth so come check it out!
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00:00:02:08 –> 00:01:13:15
And people have just gotta come. I mean, they’ve gotta come to the expo. You know, you’ve been on both sides of this. Tell us a little bit about the conservation side of it. Yeah. When John says, sold in a room, it’s over. Anything to do with Western Big Games? Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody. Jason Carter, Adam Bronson. Chris coming at you from Southern Utah. Chris is always at the keyboard. Makes me feel comfortable when you’re there. Chris, if you’re not ever gonna be here, let us know. And we’d probably just quit the podcast altogether. You know what I mean? Well, we wouldn’t even start one. I mean, that’s comfortable. It’s an understatement. We wouldn’t even be doing one. We didn’t even be doing one. So, hey Bronson, look around this little room here. What’s different, Chris? Chris has got Wild Kingdom in here. You he’s, he’s bought a new place, so he sold his old place and in limbo all of his dead stuffs showed up in here. He’s got a lot of awesome, a lot of different species in here. I’d like it. Most of which are ly mules. Mules. And actually have a bedroom in the new house that’s got elk and a few deer in there. But yeah, all the stuff that I was like wanted to put up and elk doesn’t fit in here, so be careful.
00:01:13:18 –> 00:02:18:16
You know, j Jason’s wife, Joanna, I mean, he started surrounding himself with all his deer and all that. And she made him take some home because I think the statement was, if they’re all around you, your heart’s gonna be there and not a home. Yeah, she, well, for the most part, where your animals are is where your heart is. And your heart should be home. Right? So be careful, Chris McKenzie could see that, Hey, here’s, you’re surrounded by all these loving, awesome mul deer. That’s, that’s where your heart is. She might want ’em home. I still got a few at the house there. Okay, well these are the big ones though. I’m just saying. I, I know your collection. These are your best. That’s a good looking bear, by the way, Bronson, do you remember that? Yeah, we were there. Yeah. Ten four. Freaking smashed it in Montana. Dark chocolate. That isn’t a milk chocolate bear. That’s a dark chocolate. I don’t know. Well, what do you call it, Chris? Dark, dark, dark chocolate. Yeah. What do you, what would you call it? I don’t know. It’s got a little red tint. I’ve just always called it chocolate. I don’t think. Maybe a little cinnamon chocolate. Do you like dark chocolate? They say it’s actually healthy for you. Heck no. It’s grown on me. Is it? No. I used to hate it when I was a kid, but it means you’re becoming an adult boss. Guess so.
00:02:18:16 –> 00:03:32:07
There’s a reason. It’s the last one in the, in the bag. Those all get left and they’re all like 15 little candy bars of all dark chocolate at the end. Yeah, those ones. I don’t like Milky Way. I’m not a fan. Oh, I think, anyway, whatever done with that, whatever. Well, what are we, how can talk about today here we are, mid-January having, well, we’re having a little bit of snow today, but it’s been a long time since we’ve had some, we sure need more, but big flakes here and there. Yeah. So big flakes. Well anyway, so yeah. Well I guess it’s just that application timeframe. And we’ve got the hunt expo coming up. Those are $5 tags, Brons, and you put in five bucks for anything and everything that you, you want to apply for. And it’s a separate draw basically here in the state of Utah. It doesn’t take into your points in, into account your points or anything else. It’s above and beyond. Yeah, that’s right. And they do that before the regular draw deadline will come out for you or be deadline due for Utah. That’s right. That was a mouthful. So in other words, if you drew a hunt expo tag, boom, you could pull your application in Utah and amend it and go about your merry way. Go hunt one of them. And then you don’t do points for that species in the regular draw, but they are change it.
00:03:32:07 –> 00:04:39:21
Last year you remember the expo got canceled, so they waived the in-person validation. This year you’ve gotta apply online. Not gonna be any paper applications anymore. When you get there, that probably took too much time. And hey, it is the 21st century, for heaven’s sakes, filling out a freaking legal paper. Hopefully there’s some kiosks there. Yeah. So you gotta do it online and you do have to validate in person, or they will not be entered in the draw. So if you’re applying online, if you remember doing it last year and you’re doing it this year, you, you gotta come to Salt Lake and validate your application in person or they’re not gonna be entered in person. Do you remember us checking the draw results? We’ve talked about this before. Bubble jet printers. Oh yeah. On the division windows. The kiosks outside ’em. Yes. Not even kiosks. So that was way before kiosk. But you know, on the window we’d, everybody would be standing in a group wondering who drew. Alright. Well anyway, that’s what they’re doing in person forcing you to come be together at the expo, which is good. We’re gonna be there, gonna have a giant booth. And we got the best of the best for the last couple years, Bron. ’cause of Covid. People haven’t been able to showcase these trophies. We got multiple 250 inch plus there. It, it’s disgusting. It’s be Yep.
00:04:39:21 –> 00:05:48:22
That, and for the first time, ourselves gonna be having a pile stacks upon stacks of optics there. So plan on stopping, buying cnu, making a great deal with you. Take some optics home with you to prepare for this year’s hunt. So Kyles Yep, you bet. So. All right. Well anyway, let’s, you know, speaking of the expo, we got old John Bear. He’s pretty famous here in Utah. He’s one of the, he’s the auctioneer. You guys hear his voice anywhere and everywhere when it has to do with hunting, auctioning, things like that. And I don’t know, he doesn’t run the place, but it kind of feels like he does, doesn’t it? Well, he likes to think he runs the place. Of course he does. When you, when you have a mic, you could say what you want. There’s a mantle of authority that you feel like you, you’re in charge. He’s fun to visit with. Let’s give him a holler and just see if he’s ready to rock and roll here. February 10th. Hello. Hey, well, how are you? You got your voice warmed up, boss or what? Oh man, I’m telling you, it’s, it. Don’t need to warm it up this month. If you doesn’t get, have time to get cold. If you smoked, if you smoked, I wonder how deep you could go. Yeah. Low. Could you go?
00:05:49:18 –> 00:07:04:18
Well, you know, when you live in casinos for a month during January doing all the shows, you don’t have to smoke. Everybody smokes around you. So, well, I guess that’s your therapy that keeps your voice in shape. Both. I thought they’d be made, but I thought they’d be made. I don’t think, yeah, I don’t think it’s a positive. I mean, it’s, you know, I didn’t, I kind of forgot smoking was a thing until, you know, you walk into the casino and Yep. There’s some guys smoking. So then your clothes are like that for the whole trip. Whether they’re clean or dirty, they’re already dirty. Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s, yeah, you gotta come home and haul everything to the cleaner. So. Well, we, we were trying to tell people that you’re pretty famous, but nobody’s believing us up there at the Hunt Expo. Yeah, well, no, there’s, there’s no fame here. I’m just the nerd that gets beat up in the hallway at shot show by the Epic crew. Oh, that did happen. That did happen. Hey, it did Tell us about some of these tag prices. Of course. You’re, you, I was in Reno and I was watching you in action. Carefully avoided eye contact in the auction. So I don’t, I don’t get called out. Learned my lesson. You call him out. No, I don’t. But because you, I don’t have a mic. I can’t fight back. You’re helpless. He’s got the mic.
00:07:04:26 –> 00:08:11:06
He’s got 1500, 2000 people. You know, he’s got their attentions. You’re just down there. You’re just down there trying to eat a cream boule or whatever. They’ve got you for dessert, you know. Well, there’s only so many people you can make fun of and know that they’re gonna take it. Right. Bronson, you can, you can jab him a little. Yeah, Bronson can take it. I’m here to tell you though, not everybody can, you know, some people used mention it. Have they lit you up? And they, they don’t like, oh yeah, they don’t like it. Yeah. You know, some feel offended if you don’t mention them. And some feel offended if you do. So you just kinda gotta ride the metal. Hey John, I’m just telling you I’m secure enough in myself as well as our relationship as hunters and gatherers in this industry. You don’t need to make me feel good on a mic. You don’t. I’m just telling you, you don’t need to call me out anymore. I’m, I’m good. I’m not really known. You me, for making people feel good on the microphone. That’s what I mean. But you don’t need to give me a shout out to think, I gotta make sure Adam knows I I like him and I noticed him in the room. Don’t, you don’t need to do that. Just go about your business. But hey, how about the freaking rocky tags in Reno? My gosh. Holy strange.
00:08:11:06 –> 00:09:26:16
Well, Reno for years it was, you know, if a tag sold high, you knew somebody had seen something and they were watching a, a deer and elk or sheep. And I think this year there were some guys that just decided they wanted to go hunting and they didn’t care how much it cost them. And I don’t know that all those had to do with a big animal. I think, you know, I think the Wyoming tag, I mean, you know, 3 0 5, 3 0 5 when it’s normal. Yeah. One or 1 25 or one 30 even high years, you know. But yeah, you’re right. Pinned up. We didn’t get to see in person, didn’t get a sit down and people didn’t get a drinking person and show how big a men and boys and women they were. And in front of a John bear. So they were ready to do it. They were some pend up bidding excitement. You know, we had that room in Reno stuffed with 2000 people and you couldn’t take their money fast enough. I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, I’ve been part of some pretty big auctions, but that one, that was pretty wild. That one was impressive. Were you able to retire off that one, John? No. You know, people always see up there, you know, you wear a tux, you’re selling tags for, you know, over a quarter million dollars and they think you’re getting rich off of it.
00:09:26:16 –> 00:10:29:12
No, they pay me a couple hundred bucks to do the auction. So I did not retire on it a couple hundred bucks. Well, and all it does for us guys sitting down there is, I guess we’ll call us normal blokes. We’re sitting in the audience is you get your wife looking at and say, what are you doing wrong? Yeah. Right. I mean, you’re not supposed to take your wife to those, how come you can’t buy me this? What are we, what are we, what’s going wrong? Yeah. What’s going on in our, I’m like, I thought I made a good choice. Did you make Yeah, I thought I made a good choice. Do you got a house? Do you like your house? Do you like your car? Okay, that’s enough. We’re talking, you know. Well, you know, we, you get, I don’t know, it’s not, you know, that that’s a whole nother topic. But you see guys that have worked hard their whole life, they’ve been successful in business and they love to hunt. They, they don’t care how much it costs ’em. And you know, there’s a lot of people that don’t like that jealousy’s an ugly thing. And yet people wear it so proudly. And the first thing I hear when I get home is, you know, how do you deal with all those rich jerks and that, well actually a lot of ’em are pretty good guys.
00:10:29:24 –> 00:11:38:19
And you know, most, most of ’em worked their guts out to get to this point in their life. And it’s, I’d much rather ’em spend their money on hunting than anti-hunting or something else. ’cause there’s a lot of people that make those donations to the anti-hunting groups. And I love to see the money in the industry. I love to see people spending it on conservation. And I’ll never be able to buy one of those tags. I mean, I felt pretty important the day I dropped 1500 bucks for a Parker Antelope tag. I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I knew you bought an antelope tag. So you, you, you did qualify your statement. Good. I did. You know, I did. And I, you know, and now those tags that I felt, you know, I felt like I spent big on at 1500 bucks are like way more than that. So, but I’m, you know, well, hey, if, if hunting is worth, if those animals are worth something, people are gonna find a way to protect them and grow more of them. So it’s good thing. So speaking of which, you know, you’ve been on both sides of this. Tell us a little bit about the conservation side of it. You’ve seen how good the money’s used and whatnot, different projects and, and, and things. And so kind of helps you rally behind it a little bit too. Oh yeah. Yeah.
00:11:38:21 –> 00:12:44:11
You know, and every time, you know, you can get on Facebook, Instagram, whatever, anytime the Division of Wildlife makes a decision that somebody doesn’t like, they’ll say, oh, it’s all about the money. They just want more money. So if somebody gets on their, you know, gets on the computer and looks and sees that the divisions cut a hundred tags off their favorite unit and they’re not gonna draw, they’ll say, oh, it’s all about the money. Well, they just cut tags. They just cut money, which cost them money. So it’s not all about the money. You know, on my, on my days in the wildlife board, a long time ago in the rack, never at any time did we make a tag decision on whether to cut or add permits on money. It just, you know. Right. It just, that’s not how it works. But when we sell these conservation permits, you know, I’ve had people say, well, why do we let people call in? Why do we have, you know, programs set up at some of the big ones where people can bid online that, you know, that doesn’t seem fair. You should have to go to the event and bid in person. And I think, well, I guess I can kind of see why they would want you there at the event. It makes the event be better.
00:12:44:20 –> 00:13:46:28
But if we’re gonna sacrifice a few of these tags to the money gods, I think we owe it to everybody involved to get maximum to make money For sure. Maximum dollars. What they’re for to make money for the absolutely. Species or not, they’re Yep. And yeah, we’ve all seen what some of these internet the last couple years. I mean, you could make an argument. You don’t even need to have a banquet. And we want banquets. ’cause we like to sit around and see each other. If it was only about the tag, you don’t necessarily need the banquet. Yeah. The last couple years kind of taught us some of that. Some of that. There’s something about being in there and having high bidders looking at each other. Yeah. For certain tags. I will, I will say that the big sheep tag, no question. Yeah. You know, when you got the Montana tag and you got, half the time, the guys that are bidding on it are sitting in the room and they don’t want their buddy to know they’re bidding on it. So they’re they’re bidding online. Yeah. They’ll sit there with their hand down and they got their phone under the table and they’re bidding online and they don’t want their buddy three tables over to know that he’s surrounded a we’ve biding there. So Yeah. So not, not us personally, but clients. Yeah.
00:13:47:04 –> 00:15:06:06
You know, but it’s, you know, you think about it, how much money has those have those permits raised? It’s huge. And that’s why Utah, and I’ll just pick on our home state here a little bit here in Utah, we do more habitat work, more acres than the rest of the world combined. And it’s because we sell more tags than the rest of the world. And that’s how we fund it. You know, I was talking to, we had dinner the other night, some nice folks from, I think it was South Dakota, and they said, one of the Dakotas and they said, you know, our governor wouldn’t, wouldn’t sign the budget until they got a million dollars for habitat work because we just can’t function without it. Like a million dollars for habitat work. And it was a huge thing. Now a million dollars is a lot of money, but here in Utah we have raised many, many millions of dollars every year. Yeah. For habitat work. And if we go to the governor and say, listen, we got a pro, you know, we need, we need conservation help. You know, we’ve raised all this money, well we’ve raised so much money, we can leverage that now and say, look, we’re, we have the expo, we have all this kind of stuff. We’re doing all this economic development for the state of Utah through hunting, fishing, in the outdoors. You gotta help us out.
00:15:06:07 –> 00:16:18:19
Well, you can do that, you know. Well, and then the agencies, BLM, which stands for the Bureau of Land Management and, and the, and the Forest Service leverage their money too. They’ll, you know, you can make 4 million stretch to 10 or 12 million when you start getting agency money involved. Absolutely. With PR funds and or agency funds. So yeah. Great. Nice to be able to do some things. It is, absolutely. You know, and if you have, if you have, you know, that, that money in your coffers, we raise it, you know, if the expo raise it through conservation permits, you can get a lot of things done. You can sit at the table with the big players like the Bureau Land Management, the Forest Service, the us, fish and Wildlife, all these, and you can get a lot of things done. And it, I mean, if you go sit down at the table and start making demands and they say, well, what are you gonna bring to the table? Well, I got six bucks. Hell, you’re not gonna get very far. Right. You know? That’s right. Right. But it’s, you know, is it a rich man’s game? No. Does it take some rich men willing to play the game for the rest of us to benefit? Yeah, it does. And I’m glad there’s a lot of them that are willing. It does not hurt. I don’t that, I don’t think it hurts.
00:16:18:26 –> 00:17:33:17
Hey, I’m applying for these $5 tags. You know what I mean? Yeah. There’s another pool of money too that get this drips now dump in. So, you know, and I’ll, and I’ll tell you this, you know, and, and for years there’s always haters that, you know, get on their little soapbox. We don’t know where the money goes. We don’t know where the money goes. Look about that is the biggest, that is the biggest crock on the planet. Conservation permit money and the expo permit money and people mix those up all the time. There’s the 200 expo permits and then there’s, you know, a couple hundred, however many, I’m, I don’t know how many there are this year. Conservation permits. They’re very separate. Okay. They’re totally separate. But that money is the most audited money on the planet every year. You go through, it goes through committees on how you can spend it. It has to be kept in a separate account. I mean, it’s, it is the most looked at money on the planet. It is. Well, I remember, and when I was president of Utah and Oz, there’s a very, there’s a lot of checks and balances in there. I would have to sign, you know, a Habitat project, transplant project as well as a DWR representative, usually the director’s office. Somebody in there. Yep.
00:17:33:17 –> 00:18:40:06
It was, and then, you know, you go through, I’ve sat through a meeting after meeting where all the conservation groups, all the DWR inhabit Habitat people in there, and they allocate those funds and, and then there’s stuff that comes throughout the year. But there’s nothing that I could ever write a check for unless it was from the 10% that our organization got to keep for marketing it. But the 90% is all, there’s such a, so, so many statutes and rules of how to, how it’s spent checks and balances there. Yeah. It’s, there’s a lot of people that I guess just maybe not informed if they’re making the statement, they don’t know where the money well’s. Lots, there’s reports out there ad nauseum. You can read about how, however dollar’s spent, you know, on that. Well, and let’s be honest, some people don’t wanna be informed because you can’t get on Facebook and throw rocks if you really know what’s going on. You knows. I like that. Let’s talk about something positive. Let’s do, let’s talk about something positive. I like, how did you like Shot show Jason? Shot show was good. The positive thing. There was less people there. The negative thing is a lot of those people that weren’t there had covid, well, hey, it was not, you know, you what was what we got to see?
00:18:40:06 –> 00:19:57:27
We got to go into Booth and talk to people that otherwise would be slam busy with a line of people waiting for ’em. Just, just, you know, rows and rows and rows of technology. Oh yeah. You know, are we going just technology, are we talking about Utah technology or we going down that road? Oh, it’s a shot show. What do mean? Every kind of technology is a shock show. And then you walk across the street and there’s, you know, we had SCI there, we, I gotta go to both of them. And it’s just, yeah. It’s, it’s awesome. But it is, there’s a lot stuff. There’s a lot of stuff out there and a lot of change and a lot of, a lot of smart dudes making cool products. And it is, it’s awesome. Yeah. We’re staying, there’s a lot of good, a lot of good Second Amendment supporting red-blooded, hardworking Americans that are very smart and have a lot of ingenuity. And you know, when it comes to the tactical stuff, it’s amazing what they’re, I can’t how many gun manufacturers there are hundreds. Like, and how many that you don’t even have ever heard of? Yeah. And they’re selling legit high numbers. Oh, okay. They got, yeah. It’s, it’s impressive. It’s, but you know, so yeah, we’ve got Dallas Farry Club was pretty good. I don’t get to see as much of that one ’cause I just fly down there, do the Weatherby auction.
00:19:58:08 –> 00:21:03:22
We didn’t run around, see a few friends and take off. So we didn’t make it to that when I heard it was off, you know, at as far as attendance, I, I, yeah, I thought where we were coming off of a, a quiet year that it would be slammed. But it, it was, I mean, no question. It was off up. I heard some of my buddies down there say it was great. And some say it was a little slow, but I, and then Reno sheath week was, I mean, the auctions and that were insane. The attendance might’ve been off just a little bit ’cause of Covid. But all my buddies that were outfitters out there said they did good business. Were real happy. Yeah. Safari Club I felt like was pretty good. Shot show was obviously the attendance was down a little bit, but still a lot of fun. What do you think the expo is gonna be like moving to that one? What’s new or what do we think we expect there? Here, here’s my, here’s my prediction for the expo. I like it. I like it. I like it. It’s, we’re, we’re gonna just say it once John, I think, I think we’re gonna blow the doors off with the Do you, I really do. We’re gonna blow it. You feel the just the missing out and everybody’s coming to play and the fear of missing out. You can only tolerate that so long.
00:21:04:00 –> 00:22:23:03
And people have just gotta come. I mean, they’ve gotta come to the expo. I just talked to the guys and make sure I had the right number of vendors. Right now we are set up on the floor for 468 vendors and they’re all sold out with a long waiting list, so, wow. You know, and how’s that compare to, you know, do you have an idea if that’s up? Yeah, I think it’s up. I think it, it’s up every, you know, they find ways every year to move things around and building’s only so big, but yeah. That, that other wing keeps growing. Well, we’re gonna have to talk to Spencer and tell him we need a bigger building. So where you gonna do that at? Where’s that? I don’t know. I mean, where do we build it? Cedar City? I don’t know. Yes, bring it. If they build it, they will come. And so expo’s gonna be awesome. We got, I’m, I’m here to tell you, I have never been more excited about the expo and it all boils down to one thing. What I get to be the mc Wednesday night and introduce the legendary diehard cowboy in. Love it. Me kidding you. I’m, I’m more excited about that than anything else. So yeah, we, I think we’re excited. We didn’t we talk about that a few weeks ago, Chris and everybody know like a week and a half. Chris has been keeping it quiet.
00:22:23:11 –> 00:23:32:00
Well, it was a while back. He, he got the gig, we’ll call it that. The, is that the, is that the official welcome back party that is the official welcome party for everybody now. You know, and then we have, there’s a couple other concerts going on. Lanco is the big one on Saturday night. And I told him, I says, you know the, I only have so much sway at the expo. I’m just the monkey on the microphone when it all comes down to it. But I told him, you gotta swap those concerts. I want Chris Saturday night. That’s right. Yeah. Lanco can open up for us. I want Chris Saturday night and well, we’re still working on it. So this the first Chris, you gotta stay flexible. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll we’ll stay flexible for sure. Well, well other than that, because that is a highlight and it’s new for us and we know Chris, hey, we can get his autograph any day at work, but other people now we’re gonna get that chance. I’m thinking I want it right now. Chris, come here. Yeah. Oh geez. I want one side my hat, side my hat. He’s good. Oh, Chris is awesome. I’m so excited to, you know, to have him and his band there to play Wednesday night. Then Thursday night we’re doing something a little different.
00:23:32:12 –> 00:24:58:03
Instead of having the welcome back party like we usually did, then we’re having more of a banquet type thing where people can come. We’ve got a bunch of games, we’ve got some stuff like that that people can buy tickets to. Just kind of a, you know, like a chapter style banquet. But I don’t believe we’re gonna have an auction there. Just a bunch of games. Kinda have a fun night, have a good dinner Friday night. Well Friday during the day we have a pretty big auction. Yeah. And sell a bunch of tags. Sell a bunch of cool stuff there. My buddy Barry’s gonna come up and help me out with that auction. And then Friday night he gets pretty serious. Friday night, Saturday, yeah. Friday night is when things start to get pretty serious. I think we got about 50 big tags we’re gonna sell in the auction Friday night. I expect you guys to be there with your hand in the air, Adam. Oh, be there boss. Yeah, I’ll leave out. You better find me. Find me and find me often I’ll, I’ll, you know, and, and then we have Marcus Latrell loan survivor’s gonna be our keynote there Friday night. Friday night. And yeah, then we’re gonna have the big auctions. So Saturday nights, the auction’s not quite as big. Maybe 30 items and 30 tags. And then we’re having a Lanco concert after that. So. So you got a speaker that night.
00:24:58:03 –> 00:26:15:10
Sometimes that’s like a TBA almost a last minute. That’s a under the radar quiet. Yeah. I don’t think if there’s a speaker Saturday night. I don’t. I don’t think so. And the governor’s gonna be there Friday night for a few minutes too, just to welcome him there to make sure he knows he’s appreciated. Hey, I got a picture of him last year in our booth before he was governor, so it’s kind of fun. Yeah, yeah. You know, he went to North San Pete High School just up the road from where I went to high school in Manti. Yeah. And that’s our rival high school. So me and him always throw a little shade back and forth. He’s a north San Pete Hawk, you know Hawk huh? Versus a temp versus a Templar versus is the Templar, Samantha Templars, you know, and then just down the road you got the Gunnison Bulldogs. Bull Doggies. There’s a, yeah, there’s a prison in Gunnison now, right? Oh yeah. The Gunnison prison. I says, you know, they, they build the prison in Gunnison, the warden and all the guards live in Manti and North San Pete, make sure there’s plenty of inmates. So yeah, you laugh, but that’s true. If you’d finish, so whatever, we’ll leave it at that. But Turf wars, I love it. Yeah. And then also Saturday during the day we’re doing the Sheep camp drawing. Used to be the full Curl Society.
00:26:15:10 –> 00:27:24:15
We’ve renamed that, rebranded it Sheep camp and we got, geez, we got more tags than we’ve ever given away. People can come in oh tags by drawing tickets and we’re going to send like, I don’t know, 9, 10, 11 people. I’m not sure how many. 15, I don’t know. 13. Yeah. I don’t know what it is. Gonna send a bunch of ’em, sheep put and get ’em addicted. Yeah. Refuel the addiction they already have. We’ll see. I know. So yeah, it’s gonna pretty, pretty awesome. That gonna be a similar format. You guys sometimes usually still do an auction and a little bit of a program there. It’s, yeah. You know, I thinks this year, didn’t they like, well I bought my tickets a month or two ago to that. ’cause you had to like pre-buy ’em and I don’t, and there was a set number or something like 1250 or 1500. I know it was, I, you know, I, they were gonna, and I don’t know if that was just a, you know, I think what they’ve done also is, I think they have done away with the awards and stuff. So it’s come in, get your tickets, throw ’em in the bucket, sit down. Yeah. Get sometimes you all the names try to shorten it up a little bit. Yeah. Because it’s kind of that deal. When we first started it, there was like two or 300 people in a room. Oh yeah.
00:27:24:15 –> 00:28:32:18
And now, you know, the fire marshal’s giving us the side eye, like how many people you think you’re gonna stuff in there, you know? And I think that’s why they did the ticket sale thing. But it that’s good too. Yeah. We’re there for one thing at that point and it’s drum yell and scream or be mad at your buddy that won and then go back to the exhibit hall and that’s Yeah. Go back show and hang out in the expo booth. You know the Epic booth? That’s Yes. The Epic booth. Well, we’ll have to have you come by the booth while we’re up there and maybe with a hot mic or two ourselves Sure. Bring you by there. So we can definitely do that. But no, it’s, I’m telling you the, the expo last year, you know, we did the online auctions. It goes okay, you know, things still sell pretty good, but you can only act excited looking at a computer screen for so long. Oh yeah. I watched y’all last year and you weren’t having fun on any of the auctions all spring. But I mean, because yeah, you’re, you’re looking at you, you and Troy and, and you think you sell it and Nope, then the thing clicks and so then you’re like, oops, sorry. Nope. I didn’t sell it. I that came in late. It’s like, it took a, it took a minute for everybody to get used to that. John. What?
00:28:32:18 –> 00:29:35:03
I think John is not really in charge when he has to do one of those because the computer’s in charge. Yeah. Bug you not be charged. You got a computer program or controlling your life and it’s, yeah. And when John says more technology, you know, when John says John sold in a room, it’s over. Right? Yeah. But when a computer, everybody can see it. There’s no question as to, you know, who it’s at, who it is and all that. And I mean, let’s be honest, we’re we’re social creatures. We like to get together. It’s fun, it’s fun to watch guys be excited bid. It’s fun to watch somebody come out of nowhere off in the back corner that nobody knew was gonna bid and just stir things up with a big bid. It’s just, you know, it’s a lot of fun. And I like to do that to John every once in a while. Well I know, I know you always once you’re always the once and then just, you already let, let me, you gotta tell your spotter, Hey, I’m gonna, I, when you, when he says going twice, I want you to bid. I’ve done that once. You know what? Let, just, let me just give you a little help here, Adam. You’re setting yourself up for heartache when you do that. I’ve never lost a tag yet.
00:29:35:07 –> 00:30:37:22
So that way, doing it that way, see now that you’ve told me that, lemme just tell you if you wanna, you wanna know how to get the tag for the best deal possible. You gotta get in early. And the second you see the other guy’s hand in the air, your hand’s gotta be half second behind you. You chop him off. Yeah. You crush, crush him. You come over the top of him, you hammer him. You make him feel like, it doesn’t matter what I do, Adam is gonna get this tag. Especi he’ll quit. Especially if he’s one of those guys that jumps at like, you’re asking for 2,500 or five grand more and a guy jumps and jumps at 20 k and then you hit him, boom right after that. And he’s like, all right. Right. I can’t please. Yeah. He’s like, there’s nothing I can do. Well he jumped it to his max right then. Yeah. That’s what you’s what they usually that’s what they do. Yeah, they do. They jump it their max to the max and then it goes quiet for a minute and then they’re upped and then that’s it. All I’m really doing by talking about this with you, John, is you’re in your mind thinking all right, ah, I might have to light out, cut out ’em up, but, but I’m really trying to reverse psychology.
00:30:37:24 –> 00:31:27:22
This thing when I do have a tag is you’re in the mood now to not linger these on. ’cause Adam thinks he can jump in late and so does everybody else. I’m gonna sell some of these quicker. Well one of these times I’m gonna have you sell it quicker to me and I’m gonna, I’m gonna win. ’cause sometimes I’ve lost them. When you, you and you let trying to be good hearted guy in the back room with a phone to his ear. You know, we give him 14 hours to decide and I’ve lost some. Yeah, you can only, you know, once in a while somebody gets one yanked out from under him. But you know, at some point you gotta move on. You’re good, you’re, you’re good at what you do. We like it. Fun to watch. Appreciate it. It’s Jason. It’s a lot of fun, fun. Jason’s got, Jans is bringing his Brinks truck up there. So he, he wants, he’s I’m ready. He’s doing that. I’m ready. I got the black card. Can you pay with, can you buy tags with Bitcoin these days? I don’t know. Is that, is that, you know, we’re probably gonna have to move that direction one of these days. Yeah, you are.
00:31:28:06 –> 00:32:36:23
But the value of bitcoin goes up and down so fast by the time you buy the tag and by the time the, you know, the clerk gets over there to settle up with you, you may not have enough money in your account. Yeah. You might need to more. I know. My kid’s telling me I’m missing out, so. I know. I know. It’s crazy. But you, alright, well we’re looking forward to it. February 10th to the 13th we’ll be there up there in the Yeah we got, like I said, we got, you know, 400 and Jesus’s gonna, it may well be 500 vendors. They’ll probably find a way to fit them in there. You know, we got stuff for kids, we got stuff for the, everybody in the family. The taxidermy’s second to none. We got great entertainment. The 200 permits, I mean it and we haven’t done it for a couple years. It’s time to party boys, you gotta, let’s do it. You gotta be there. You just gotta be there. Well I see if they can get speaking of party, see if they can get some really awesome, you’re a, you were a late eighties, early nineties high school dude, right? I’m guessing your age basically. But late eighties, early nineties. That when you, mid eighties. How freaking old do you guys think? I’m, come on, I think you’re like my age. I think you’re like, how old are you? A little older. 90.
00:32:36:25 –> 00:33:49:16
You tell me and I’ll tell you, did you graduate in like 90 to 92? I graduated in 1991. Yeah, you’re a year older than me. See, all right, very good. So why don’t you from you, you know, like yes, I’m a proud Manem. Yes. I went to a Mormon high school with a Catholic mascot. Yes. Hey, well I’m a Monticello buckaroo so how about that? That’s, oh there you go. I told my wife that’s just a more sophisticated cowboy ’cause she was a canna cowboy. So I try to have that argument with her. But anyway, why don’t, you know, like the great relief pitchers in baseball when they’re getting called from the bullpen out, they have their song Inner Sandman or whatever we need, you need one of those when you take the shelf from our era era, pick one, pick one of your favorites. We’ll probably know it and we’ll sing along. But when you walk out to the mic, you need a walkup song. You need like, it’s time. He’s taken the stage. Let’s have it, let’s do that. The one that you choose. Yeah. Yours. Yeah. Don’t but don not Miles. Are we talking Miles, guns and Roses? Some poisons, some, you know. Yeah, I like that. I don’t want you to pick something like hauling oats or something like that. But you know, pick pictures. No Oreo speed wagon, nothing like that. Okay. No, no, but let’s, let’s have it man.
00:33:49:16 –> 00:34:47:05
It’s like the relief pitchers coming out there, you know, on the bottom of the ninth Yankee stadium. I mean they, it’s it’s time to rock. It gets a crowd into it. I think it would be a nice touch. Just think about it might bring some more cash at the table. Well, yeah, I don’t, I dunno. Hey, how, I dunno how big a thing are you up there? I mean, you’ve, you run the show, make it. I’d just say make it happen. Said I’m just the nerd that gets beat up in the hallway by the epic crew. That’s all. No, you’re not, you’re, you’re, you’re underselling yourself I think could be a good touch. And I think it’d get, get things in a frenzy up there. So anyway, you know Janna did tell me though, she goes, you gotta be careful like what you say to those guys, this is what she says the first thing you do, like Jason bumps you a little bit in the hallway and you turn around and look at him and say you’re gonna need more guys. And she goes, you gotta be careful that that reminds me of a story. But I dunno if we got time for it, but my wife’s first, my wife and i’s first real date when we got married, it was a group date. I can’t remember what we were doing. It was a big group, five or six couples we got.
00:34:47:13 –> 00:35:45:28
Were you at least 16 out? Oh yeah, I was freaking, I don’t know. Hopefully you at least 16. Yeah, I was, I didn’t know her till I was 21 or two, whatever I was. So anyway, so it was your first date? Yeah, it was my first date outside of Monticello. So I was scared. Okay, okay. But she didn’t know that two of the guys in the group, I already knew him. She didn’t know that though. She thought I’m a stranger, we’re stranger. Everybody’s strangers to me. But I had, I’d been on a mission with with one of them and his brother, I knew him well too. I don’t know if you know the Yardleys from Beaver, Ronald Richard, but I do. I know who they are. Yeah. Damn. It was them. And they are like, they’re like John bear, like they, you can needle ’em. You can never needle ’em enough because they’re always gonna get you back. And so we were playing flag football on a date out in the park in our, and we started kind of trash talking and pushing and shoving and my wife didn’t know. We knew ’em. And it reminded me of what you said about Jana, you gotta be careful talking trash to these boys out in the hall. But that was my wife. She was petrified.
00:35:45:28 –> 00:36:43:12
She’s looking at her friends like my date’s getting in a fight with these two dudes on the football field that he doesn’t know. And I, I was friends with them, she didn’t know that. But it was, it was a classic. So kind of reminded me, you’re talking, you can’t start talking trash to Jason, the shot show ’cause somebody walks by and they think that John Bear’s calling some guy out over there and pretty soon it’s any kind of one. He’s got like six guys with him. You know he is got Josh standing in the back there. Oh yeah. Josh is big enough to hunt grizzly bears with a booy knife. So you gotta be careful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well three times point takes. She’s just, she’s very cautious. She wants you to be, you’re, you’re being seen and watched and all that and if you start trash talking you got, you know, lady walking by there and seeing what you’re talking And we gotta clarify, it’s Janet Waller and I’ve got a Janeta Jana Carter. Yeah, well yeah, that’s right. My point is he’s keeping you in check. He’s, she’s just making sure that John, you know, keep up the persona. Big man’s the black cat and, but I don’t wanna see you on the floor, don’t wanna see you, you know, rumbling in the jungle.
00:36:43:27 –> 00:37:47:15
I, you know, I don’t blame her but if, you know for worrying about me, but you know, if there’s five or six of you guys and I got, you know, Jana with me, you’re in trouble. Right. I’ll just say that right now you’re in trouble so. Oh yeah. Well she’s a sweetheart but she can deal with whatever she needs to deal with. Pull out that big bear hunting pistol. That’s right. She’ll pull out that desert eagle and go to work. All right guy. Anything else we need to talk about? You know, I don’t think so. Just, it’s good to talk to you boys again. It’s always good to see you. Look forward to hanging out with you at the show and it’s gonna be awesome and you know, it’s, it’s time, it’s time to get out and have a good show and just move on. So one last thing. Are you still out, are you still out hunting coyotes much in the winter or are you too busy this time of year? Do that much? No, I still try. I don’t, you know, once in a while, this time of year I get out and do a little night hunting during the week or something. But yeah, it’s still, that’s still my favorite thing. Gotcha. Just seems, I maybe see a little bit less of it, but it’s probably because maybe you’re just tired of social media.
00:37:47:15 –> 00:38:50:18
How many 10, how many dead cut pictures can you post? I mean, you know, there’s only, you know, have you ever posted two or three pictures of the same dead dog a week apart? No. Anything like that? No. No. Does that happens? No, that’s, it happens all the time. No, we’re not doing that one. The things on coyotes is they all look the same per per se. You can’t do that with the deer, even though some people do. No, you can’t do that with the deer. I mean you gotta, without the coyote I guess if you need people to think you’re that cool, that bad, then yeah, go ahead. You better. You better do it. Yeah, but no, well we’re gonna end on a positive note. But anyway, you’re still out hunting. Hunting and killing. That’s awesome. It’s good man. You know, and that’s one thing that hasn’t changed through the pandemic is there’s lots of free clean air that doesn’t require a mask while you’re out on the mountains. So I think we’re gonna have to wear a mask up there at the expo. That’s another question. I mean, most of these shows, you wear ’em for five minutes and then as long as you have a drink in your hand, you’re good. Well in Reno when you’re out in the casino, they’d ask you to wear a mask.
00:38:50:19 –> 00:40:03:07
But once you walked into the show hall or into the banquet hall, we rented that space. That was our space. We didn’t have to, I never, I never, and I think it’ll probably be maybe something similar to that. Maybe like where you apply for the permits, the city and the county might want us to, depending on which direction things are headed. But I think once you get in the show hall, that’s our space, we’re gonna be fine. Alright. Okay. Well everybody, I like it. February 10th to the 13th SA Palace up there in Salt Lake City. Go to hunt expo.com you can get on there, register for the $5 tickets, anything else that you wanna do, you can see the list of items on there to auction and we’ll see you up there. We’re gonna have a big 20 by 50 booth with some of the best critters in there and the legendary John Bby walking around. Don’t forget the Chris Peterson concert Wednesday night people, it’s worth a trip. It’s, it’s worth the trip. So guys, you guys do a fabulous job. I love getting on talking to your great friends. I appreciate you always reaching out and when I have questions about stuff, you guys are always there. So great job, keep it up and I love what you’re doing. Thanks John. We appreciate you as well. Okay? Okay buddy. Looking forward to it. We’ll talk to you guys later. You bet.
00:40:03:08 –> 00:40:04:16
See, talk to you later. Bye.
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