EP 274: Mule Deer Across the West, Everything You Need To Know About the Utah DWR Recommendations and Expert Advice on the Point Creep

Anything to do with Western big game.

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Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, the entire Epic Outdoors crew, well pretty much part of them, Bronson, maybe most of them. John, he's not here. John tapped out, but we got everybody else. Kind of awesome, we're fired up. I mean, this is my second to third Monster, but the second one, I didn't drink the whole thing. These are serious cans too, they're not your usual. Guess who ordered them? I don't know. Me. That's why, that would explain it. 24 ounces. Adam said that I have his permission to order any time I want. Huh? Yeah, absolutely. 24 is better than 16. I don't know, it's pretty rough. I didn't know I ordered these twist tops, they're giant, they're legit. Once in a while you get them when you have to really travel, but I don't know, it's been kind of crazy here in the office. Hey Cash, how are you? Good, how are you? Good. First time in the podcast room?

Yeah, it's a little different. Different than the desk. We've had a hard sprint to the Colorado finish line. Yeah. That was a couple days ago, so got a little breathing room, and I mean, Wyatt tapped out last couple times, he learned how that goes when he taps out and he's not here. So here he is. Wyatt, how are you? I'm here to defend myself. Yeah. Geez. Devin too, but in their defense, they were busy, and they felt it was in their best interest to stay on top of their work, and it was good. But we needed them here today, and we have a lot to cover. Yeah. Just a lot of miscellaneous things. There's a lot going on. In fact, Bronson, I don't know if I've ever seen you this excited about a podcast. Josh? It's true.

Ever. Ever. It's been how many years since I was to a RAC meeting? I don't know, actually. Well, probably three or four. Do you want to tell us how that RAC meeting went? No. It was kind of an interesting story. Yeah. 17, 18, something like that? Yeah. You were on the other side of the fence. I would say you're on the gamey side, according to Wyatt. I've submitted comments before, so I will clarify that, my position there. But I mean... But as far as actually attending in person. And grabbing a hot mic. And I think that's going to happen here shortly. Possibly, yeah. So... So, we're talking about Utah for you people that know what a RAC. We're not talking about Buck RACs. We're talking about regional advisory councils in Utah. Regional advisory councils. Public meeting process. Similar to a cab in Nevada. Okay. It's a county advisory board. What do they call them in Arizona? I don't know.

I don't think they care what people think. Arizona just... That commission's brutal. They just do what they want. I think they're a task force in Wyoming, right? Wyoming's a task force. Yeah, every state's got an acronym or a force. So, anyway, we got some Utah tag numbers. The preliminary numbers came out, as promised, first week in April. Actually came out a day early, April 4th. We're going to crush this place. Okay, so hold on. What's frustrating... What's frustrating is Utah DWR comes out with proposals. And it's not necessarily the area biologists. A lot of times, they're even overridden by the powers that be. Josh calls it Salt Lake. But there's certain people in Salt Lake that do make some decisions. It's like just blaming the government in general. But there's some people that are influential in the government. Well, or... Tell me I'm wrong. Where's my line of thinking?

Well, or certain people do get these proposals ready to go to the rat packets. That's right. And that is usually not on the biologist level. No, and on the biologist level, which it could be a... Let's call it a coffee shop bio or whatever. You know, a low... A normal bio, regional. And I say that just because we have a little internal joke. Because Josh was known as a coffee... You were kind of the coffee shop bio. Yeah. You're known as a coffee shop bio. I am, too. When you leave that field and turn your back on it. Yeah. And you go to the private sector. And now I'm a coffee shop biologist. Yeah. As far as the world's concerned. As far as their concern, your input means what? Jack squat. Okay. Well, but I value it. Thank you. You're welcome. Appreciate it. Josh, I value what you say. Thank you.

So, anyway, you guys are more appreciative than you've ever been in your former work environment. That's why I'm still here. But for all intents and purposes, and you guys could take over, basically your jobs were to submit recommendations. And that goes to your superiors. And then they can say, no, we're going to do this. Right? Yeah. Or we agree with you. Yeah. Or whatever. And you have a unit-wide plan and, in some cases, statewide management plans for each species that dictate your recommendations. You know, each unit's managed differently. Sometimes it's buck-to-doe ratio. Sometimes it's actual counts. You know, like in the case of sheep or in the case of elk, things like that. Or age objective on harvested teeth on certain deer units or certain elk, all of our elk units. So, there are metrics that you use that you just can't say, I think there should be X.

You have to come within line of what's in the management plan. Coupled with maybe some social parameters and whatnot. Well, and environmental, drought, winter. I thought that was interesting, the conversation we were having earlier. How many years it takes for them to make a change when you're seeing something alarming? So, like what we were talking about, like a three years to actually make a major change, but then we do a knee-jerk reaction on this side. It depends on the years. It depends on what the data comes from year to year, what that change is. So, explain. Just tell us. I mean, they're not paying your bill. Tell us. What do you mean? Layman's terms. Let's down it. This is the first time I've seen Josh cut it quiet. Josh Pollock. We all pay their bills. Let's do it that way. I just chewed my words wisely. I try. Which I usually do. Let's just talk.

I mean, dude, they agree with you, Josh. They know what they're doing. They're smart people. They just want to issue tags. As many tags as they can. And so, that's out on the table. Now that that's out, let's talk about it. Yeah, I mean, here's the goal. And the goal, you cut tags too far. What happens to a state agency? Well, I don't know. Well, I mean, let's just talk. Be frank. Issue more. Have to ask Wyoming. Issue more conservation tags. Supplemental. You lose money. And we've already lost 20,000 deer tags in Utah, roughly, from the 94,000 or 5,000 magic number, 97,000. So, we're doing everything we can to keep what we've got. To not slip that any further. Yes. And they worry about a lot of things. Not just that. It's hunter recruitment in general. You know, if you, they hear a lot of complaints about if I don't get my kids deer tags

or if I don't give deer tags, I'm going to go golfing now. And they won't hunt. And they won't be a hunter. We've even had friends of ours say, every kid is entitled to tags. We should give all kids tags. And I guess I can't disagree with the part of that. Yeah. Except when you go in an extended drought period, we all suffer a little. There's just not enough. Sometimes the pie, we talk about this pie. We're talking about pies. Ah, pumpkin pie is my favorite. Well, there's just the pie. Absolutely. The slices of the pie get so small. I used to have an entire pumpkin pie. It's not a pie anymore. Now it's a slide screen. It's like, you know, you could sew paper thin. You could put it on slide and put it through a microscope and see what it is. That's tight. That's a thin slice of pie. Not, can't even taste it.

We all have our opinion on how wildlife should be managed or units, species, whatever, should be managed, including everyone in the division. And so there's data that comes to you in different forms one way or another. And so if that data favors your decision, you run with it. Absolutely. If the data does not favor your decision. Then you come up with new, weird, interesting reasons to. Or it's inconclusive and we can't jump to any conclusions yet. And so we're going to keep going down the road. Yeah. Like drought for the last four years. Or, for example, okay, I like that. It's hard to quantify that unless you're out there on the landscape and you don't see any fawns at all. And your biologist is saying, I don't see any fawns. And they're like, everything seems fine. We're going to keep going. At that point, you manage off a three-year buck to deal ratio.

And that three-year buck to deal ratio is important. Hey, you're still within there, so keep the tags where you're at. I don't care if the drop has not hit the ground there in three years. And then, Bronson, what we saw for Pine Valley, they're indicating they want to do an 1,100 tag increase. Okay. Are we going there? Well, I mean, and I'm just saying, but those parameters, they're well within the parameters. It's not saying to go ahead and jump up tags, but they're doing it because they feel like fawns live. One of the biggest metrics on general season deer permit numbers used is buck to doe ratio over a three-year average. And most units in the state are managed 18 to 20. Some are 15 to 17 bucks per hunter does postseason. A lot of them are 18 to 20. So that's the target range. And if you're within that range, you're doing pretty good.

If you're below that, you better start trimming tags. If you're above that, there shows room for, quote, excess bucks, and you can increase tags. But the problem I have with some of these numbers is coming off of the drought that we've been in for three or four years and extremely low fawn production some of those years, and then we're into what looks like the winter of what will always be known as the winter of 2023. I like it. Right? I mean, has there been one bigger? The winter of death and life. I like that. How's there life? The fawns are living like crazy. Down here, things are healthy. In the southern half. Okay. There's different places. Yes. The winter of life. And then up north, it's the winter of this. Here's an example of that. So fawns. Speaking of fawns that are six months old right now. The breeder bucks. Yes. Probably more like nine. Probably more like half. I've seen it.

That's what's going to happen? I told you about that bristled up fawn in Colorado. Owning his moe? I don't know. I don't know. He had eight of them. He had eight does. Yeah. He had a harem. He was bristled up, strutting around.

There's no cameras, so I can't do a reenactment. But button buck. Button buck. Wow. Anyways. I like it.

So the Pine Valley unit here in southern Utah. Adult, or excuse me, deer fawn, six months old. Survival this year, 84%. Great. It's high. And we talk about those metrics for southern Utah quite commonly. It is not impossible, but it's very hard to have significant winter kill in the extreme southern units for Utah. It is not the case in northern Utah. You want to see. Without the Tule Desert, dude. I mean, they can just keep going. Yeah. They can go to Vegas if they want. And we melt in between storms a lot more in southern Utah. They bear off in between. We're up north. It just piles, piles, piles, piles, piles, piles, piles. And there's no place for them to go. There's no place for them to go. Yeah. So that's the good. The bad would be cash, 8%. Yeah. Yeah. But cash is, they're indicating what? Looks like maybe a 20% tag cut in cash. Yeah. Well, but their buck to do ratio is 19.

And so you as a biologist. Which is above their 15 to 7. And so you as a biologist. You should increase the cash bio. Based on paper. Because, yes. But you know they're getting crushed. But you know what's happened. Yeah. And so in the world. And you'd be cutting tags. Which is smart. But maybe more significant than what you're saying. Possibly. Well, and you've got to keep in mind. I think the division even put on their, the division of wildlife put a statement out with these permit recommendations that these are now, if we feel that, you know, RAC and wildlife board stuff is deepened further, we reserve the right to make additions. Or the dead deer walking idea where we're going to continue to have loss through April. So I am going to put that out there. They have said that. And we have had some big storms in parts of Utah, especially up north, since these numbers came out.

The frustrating part for me is when they add tags. And Pine Valley is one of the most emotional, emotionally charged general areas in Utah. Because it's got giant potential. And people, for all intents and purposes, have used it as a, as a trophy general area that can be drawn more regular than the Ponce or Oaks or whatever. And so you've got a lot of emotion down here. And to throw on a huge increase after we just barely, for one year, did a huge decrease. Okay. Well, I'm going to read through a few of these real fast. Because this is down the line you're going. The cash, we talked about, it's over objective, well over objective, but they're cutting tags because they know what's going on there. That makes complete sense. I want to go to some other units. I don't know if the numbers make sense. Oh, it could be deeper. We could all argue that should be no deer tags.

A lot of people are calling for closures. Yes. All right. So. Okay. So that's the problem we're having. But at least they've cut. From six to 4,500. They cut 25%. Okay. We could argue how deep, it's not deep enough, and maybe they'll go deeper. But let's go to some of these other Southern Utah units. Fillmore. It's an 18 to 20 buck per hundred doe area. The three-year average buck to doe ratio is 18.6. With not one year over 18. Eclipsing 19. They're all in the 18s. Not one year. They're all in the 18s, and actually 2022, if you want to get picky, was the lowest. Yeah. So you're within objective. Okay. But they're going to increase 300 tags. Okay. Monroe. It's also 18 to 20. Their three-year average objective, or buck to doe average, 17.2. That's below objective. Yeah. 17.2. They're going to add 150 tags. Okay. Mount Dutton. 18 to 20 buck per hundred doe unit.

Their three-year average is 16.7. 16.7. Last I checked was less than 18. Okay. You're right. And they're increasing by 29%. That's hard. It's hard. That's, I guess, our point. And they're looking at one year, 2022, that is high. But we hear about the three-year average all the time, like Josh is talking about. That's what drives it. And then we're still way below 18 to 20. The average is way below. And we're adding tags. So it can't. Consistent. Stay consistent. Here's another one. Panguitch. Panguitch Lake. All right. It's at 17.1. Okay. 17.1 is below 18. All right. Status quo. They're not increasing. Okay. That's what it should be. But remember, that's higher than Mount Dutton. Mount Dutton is 16.7. They're increasing tags. And here, at 17.1, they're staying the same. Pine Valley. We've talked about that. The three-year average there is at 18.9. 18.9. Perfectly in the middle.

Perfectly in the middle of the. And so, and they came off a giant cut last year. From 41 to 1700. To 1700. And we're looking at one slight uptick of a year to 19.4. And they're going to add the 1100 tags to that year. And that, and they know. And what are we doing? What are we hunting? Two point. We're hunting a fawn crop of two points. They're banking that that is why we can increase 1100 tags. But they know what the problem, I guess, I have. I just feel like they know what they're doing. These are smart guys. I also feel like the local biologist is possible. Oh. It's probable. That he was overridden. I don't know the facts for that. But I know what the recommendation is. And so, at some point, somebody put the 1100. Odds are in your favor. Of what? Some overriding there. Oh, probably. Well, and I'm just saying, like. Well, it's a big tag unit. But the interesting.

Imagine being one of the RAC board members. The RAC didn't come up with this. No. But they get to hear all the negative. You know what? It's a brutal meeting. It's a brutal meeting. You're going to have some emotionally charged people. And you're up there going.

And what they have now. So, as I was on my way into the coffee shop. Out of the university. You were always in the coffee shop. You were never in that way. I was pushing hard. That I was getting sick of the three-year average. Trying to say, maybe we don't need to put so much weight on that at times. Because when you're on your way down. That three-year average can catch up to you quickly. So, if you have. You don't want it to be an average. You don't want to have 15. If you know. A 15 be part of your average. And go, we have obvious issues. We need to be proactive. Even though we're still within. It's the opposite of what's happening now. Instead of 90% survival for fawns. You have a big fire come through and burn. And you have 37%. And then the next year. You have drought come by. And you have less than 47%. So, from Joe Hunter's perspective. It just feels like they're slow to cut tags.

But quick to add tags. Yes. Yes. That's what it feels like. We're really slow to cut them when we know we need them. But then as soon as we think we can add them. Because of a one year. We're going to jack them. And we're adding yearling bucks. And I realize these are general season units. But to take one year's higher buck-dow ratio. And then estimate a higher fawn production this year. And increase tags based on the two-point cohort. That's about to be available for all mankind. That's hard to stomach. I'm going to read two more. Because I'm not. You're not. Just real quick. I love it. I just want to show. This one illustrates inconsistency. So, I'm going to lump Southwest Desert and Zion. Southwest, I'm pretty partial. I'm a little partial to it. Yeah. It's hard to. Those are both managed for 18 to 20. They're sitting at Southwest Desert. 18.8 is a three-year average. Zion is 19.1.

You'd argue those are dead on right in the middle of where they should be. They had an uptick this year, though. Well, one. Southwest Desert. So, they're both seeing healthy increases. San Juan of Bajo Mountains. This is where the inconsistency comes in. Huge increases. Huge increases. Percentage-wise. I'm talking percentage-wise. Yeah. Okay. Keep going. 18 to 20 buck-to-dow ratio. It's sitting at 20.9. Okay. That's one of the few that's over the actual 20. We need to smash. But we have bucks going to waste. They're not even doing any tags increases. Because that bio cares. Or he's. I don't know. I don't know. Or they're just. They're okay with a little bit extra for a minute. Or maybe there's a compelling reason of something. Like Josh alluded. Whether it been longer-term effects of a drought that's maybe not fully manifest. Or I don't know. But like. It's just not the southern region.

Not the southern region. Yeah. The southern region is where this feels like up north. Why do they hate us? Why does Salt Lake hate us? Why do they come for the deer tags in southern region? Because we have public land dominant units that everybody can come down and. And it's popular. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. We said it. Don't be wrong. And this year. They're going to need some deer tags. Because they're not going to have some deer tags. And I know it's. Well. And I feel like a lot of states do this. I feel like a lot of states do this. Like we hammer. We're hammering on Utah for a minute. Because that's what everybody's talking about. But you know. Colorado. Use CWD to go ahead and issue a bunch of extra tags. I mean there's. Things that. Nevada has done it. Nevada did it. Well. They're down in the south. So what happened in the north? So they cranked them up north. Kill off the north. Well.

Right. Devin. And then now what's the winner doing to the north? Devin. You've witnessed. I've witnessed it. But I have a question with this. Yeah. So. And maybe listeners might be thinking the same thing. So if your cornerstone to all this decisions is in the three year average. How do they collect the data? How do we know that is like I would like to know that. It's a postseason count. And they have. It's repetitive every year. You have a biologist and maybe a team of conservation officers. It's not public. It's usually the same individuals unless you have turnover and personnel. But they do postseason. So November, December transects throughout their unit. And they classify deer. There's 500 deer. Bucks, does, fawns. You know. So they're out there. And they count bucks, does, and fawns. And that's how they come up with their fawn ratio and their buck to doe ratio.

But don't they classify. Tell me I'm wrong. They classify the fawns and divide by two and call them bucks. No. No. They don't count them as a buck. Those are the kind of things I would like to know. Somebody has mentioned that. I just thought it was just a fawn. No. But that is, in my mind, probably why you're seeing some of the justification for increases this year. Because you're going to go, oh, we're recruiting 80 to 90 fawns per 100 does. And half of those are going to be bucks. But that is not in the management plan. I think you can jump to that conclusion. Well, some people are. But that's another reason I'm bringing it up. They're saying there are this many new bucks out of landscape. There are going to be. But they didn't get counted in the buck to doe ratio. You don't half the fawns and say, hey, we had 100 fawns per 100 does. There's 50 bucks per 100 does. No.

Or these units would be at 60 bucks per 100 does or whatever like that. So that's how they do it. I just think people would want to know how that data is gathered because that is the cornerstone to all these decisions. And the sample size has to be big enough. You can't take a hundred bucks or a hundred deer sampled in a unit with 8,000 deer. And they don't do it on every unit. But the survival stuff comes from collars. So the Pine Valley, the Monroe, or two in the southern region that they have done and will continue to do. They're separate enough units. One's desert. One's more mountainous. That kind of thing. So they kind of say, all right, the units in the southern part of the state use the survival for the Pine Valley. They go collar X amount of fawns every year in the same areas. And they follow those fawns for that time frame for the six months.

And then that's how they gauge the fawn survival. And they do the same with adults. That happens in the United States too. I mean, watching a lot of stuff in Idaho. And they're, I mean, the lion predation is huge in certain parts of the state. It just, it's good. And that's good data. That's good data. And it's good. You know, what they're also using, I don't understand it fully, but I know they've come up since I left. They have come up with some other models, I guess you could say, similar to what they used to run with the elk. But I feel like it sounds like it's more accurate where they are now, they're projecting things. So they'll take last year's buck harvest as well, that kind of stuff, and throw it into this model. So they'll say, okay, here's our population estimate. And here's our fawn survival. Here's our adult survival. Here was harvest of bucks in this population.

So they have this whole big metrics that kind of goes into it. They hit enter. It spits it out. And it'll tell them what their population will be at the end of this year. It tells them what the buck to doe ratio will be. And then they can adjust whether it's – All of these variables can play into their decision on what they want it to be. Yeah. They could use this or use that. That's what they've done. The burn on penguins. I mean, there's things that can happen. That's what they've done. And so they even have a metric. So it says, okay, maybe we're going to have high harvest, you know, average harvest or low harvest. They can adjust that. So they can say, all right, even with high harvest, we're actually going to be over 20 bucks per 100 does this year. They want to try and keep things – they want to try and keep things level. With wildlife management, you can't.

You can never keep it level. And they generally on general season units, they want to keep it on the low end of level. So when you say 18 to 20 bucks per 100 does – As a biologist, I always wanted to keep it at 20. 19 to 20. And no, we want to keep it to 18. Why have the range? You mean the powers to be? Yes. You wanted 20. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

In comparison, throw it out as far as just for the listeners, Henry's and other, you know, trophy units, what are they keeping them at? What's the goal? It's an age. It's an age of harvested bucks, but they're normally 45 to 55 per 100 on those premium units. And that's where, like, the management buck tags come from is that. But they keep the trophy tags come off of an age classification. They want X amount of bucks to be – X amount of harvested bucks to be five and a half years old. Yeah. So one of the – so in summary, my frustration comes from if we have a three-year – if our three-year average buck-to-dough ratio is what we've been pounded down our throats as the metric that we use. Okay. Three years. But then one – it started raining last July, and it hasn't stopped. It turned to snow, but it hasn't stopped. It's a beautiful sight.

And now we're raising tags, and one year does not make a trend. I want to – that's my problem. One year doesn't make a trend. And we're using it as a trend because we need to make up for some lost ground up north. No question. The Valley's our spot. No question. And we've been down to 73,000 tags in the state, and after the worst winter we've ever lived through in our lives statewide, we've only cut 1,500 deer tags out of that. And I don't know how that's possible. I have a hard – that's the biggest thing, and I said it – I mean – I don't know how it's possible. I said it. Like I just told you – like you said, man, I wonder what it's going to look like. Are we talking 40,000 deer tags in the state of Utah or 50? No, the same as last year. They couldn't do it. Statistically the same. This is 1,500 under 7,300 – 73,000. Right. You know what I mean? Roughly.

And I know that the south has to make up for the deficiencies in the north. We're talking 73,075 versus 71,600. Yeah. And we've got a large part of the state that's saying we need to shut it down. We need to shut state – the deer hunting across the state down. I mean – That's extreme. It's way extreme. I don't agree with it. I'm not in that court, of course. But, I mean, I just can't – I can't accept the – hey, we've got to make these numbers work out somehow because on paper we should probably cut a lot of tags. So then people get frustrated. The problem I have is when – let's call it Salt Lake or the division or whatever – come out with recommendations. They say, well, we would accept this, but let's shoot a high, and then we'll come to an agreement at the RAC. We'll come in a little bit lower. The public will like us.

But it causes us to get angry and have to go to the meetings and check everything and get mad. And it frustrates the public. And then it arms the legislature to say, well, we can't trust the division, so we're going to take care of things around – and do it around everybody else. And we've seen that more and more the last couple years in Utah. That's the problem I have with it. I don't want to do that. I want to say, Josh, you're our bio here. Adam, you're our bio here. Whatever. Whoever the guy is. Jason, you're our bio here. We trust you. You come up with the numbers. We're going to back you unless something is crazy and we don't see it the way – we want to trust you. And I feel like that's not there because they're playing games. But it's a high-stakes game. I get it. They've got a big budget to work with. Revenue and budget. Everything. They're pulled 100 directions.

Just don't try to make the numbers justified by whatever you want because they – and if you've got little – you've got Dutton. We're talking 250 to 350. 100 total tags in the scheme of 73,000. Just stay in the lane. Just stay in the lane. Do what's right for Dutton in and of itself even though it's a small herd. I think it's tough too because we're in the process now. I feel like things have shifted and we're now in the process of growing deer and we will for the next couple years. And it's just hard to think that we're going that way and then – We've raised tags before we've even had this. We've slashed tags. Then we have an increase. So now we want to hammer any progress we made. The two points. Yeah. We're not – I think that's the hard – The progress is the two points. One good, fonder crew. It's not that we all of a sudden have a bunch more four points.

I mean we did have the two-by-threes that are now slightly better or whatever. We do have aggressive button bucks according to Archibald. But I mean they are not – He was the size of Utah three by four. But I mean they are not – He was legit. They are not what people – They're not even legal. Legal. The thing about it too is we're not – None of us here are saying that by decreasing tags populations are going to increase because you don't increase populations with your male numbers. You need your does to do that. I get it. But the deal is we're missing a couple of age classes of bucks where we've literally had low, low, low survival. So there's just the number of bucks. There's last year a bunch of – because we had good survival last year too. So a bunch of yearling bucks went through, made it through. They're now two years old.

But there's kind of a lack of three- or four-year-old bucks out there on a lot of units. All we have is young bucks. Yes. That's the complaint. And we've cut the tags and we've set out of hunters from not having tags. More people have set out than ever before in Utah of the general job not getting tags. And now the first back-to-back, if you can call it, fawn recruitment hasn't even happened yet. No. There's still nine-month-old fawns, these things. They are button bucks. All right. And we are ready to kill the crap out of them. And there's a lot of good for having older bucks in the age. And we've talked about that. And they're tangibles and intangibles. Yeah. What bucks live? Because they're also going to say, well, now after this year, I guarantee you there's going to be a significant amount of talk about carrying capacities.

And extra buck mouths on the mountain is a carrying capacity issue. It's a waste of space, you know. Because they should be going home in the back of the truck than on the mountain, whatever. So – but the problem is when you miss a couple age classes, let's say we have a hard winter. I think down here, it's been pretty well proven that droughts are worse than winters for us down here. But what deer – you need a bunch of deer somewhere in the middle that can survive. The old grandmas die and the young fawns die. The old grandpas die and the young fawns die. You need a good, diverse number of deer in the middle that are good, strong, healthy deer to push your populations that can breed and continue on. That are productive. Really doesn't even have anything to do with size of bucks. All the fawns hit the ground at the same time, less predation. You know what I mean?

There's all these intangibles that we've talked about. So that's, I guess, my thing necessarily is, yeah, sure, big older bucks generally get bigger, whatever. But we need a good, healthy age class of deer. And when you're missing some of those, I feel like it's an issue. People are frustrated they don't even see deer anymore. And I think, yeah, we can go out here and see a deer. But compared to what it used to be, like a case in point – so our buddy Paul, he's down in Arizona and they're shed hunting. And in unit, a no-name deer unit, no-name deer unit, he saw 100 deer last night. He's like – and he's from Beaver, okay? So let's say there was 50 deer. So it was 50 deer. If he's from Beaver, he told at least half a lie. Okay. So he saw 50 deer. Probably 45 more than he would have saw at home. Yeah. Yeah. Okay? And we're a deer factory known for it and they're not.

I mean, he is in – if you knew the unit – If you knew the unit, you know the unit. I know you. Like – it's a no-name, but it has a number and a name. It does, but it's a no-name. But it's a – it is not on the deer match. It's south of the ditch. I don't even know anybody that's hunted deer there. Maybe one – I do know one guy and he did kill a good deer there. But I'm just saying, he saw a deer. He's like, man, it's unbelievable. Like, it made his whole night. Yeah. Like, it's just – you know, didn't find a single antler. Still hasn't found an antler. But – It's probably hard when you're driving right now. It's probably hard when you're driving to your side-by-cycle. Okay. Now, let's explain that real quick. Just to break this up for a minute because we've got more tags to talk about. He sends us a tag. Go ahead. Brownson – Logan works here. Well, I mean, Logan works here.

He sends us a picture in the cyber site, slid off the trailer. Going 75 down the highway. Across the nav. Across the nav. Right. And that's a – Which is surprising because that road is so smooth and straight. Yeah. You don't feel like you're in a sailboat at all.

Dodging res dogs.

Anyway. It rolls off the back. It rolls off the back. But the – The winch held. Yes. No, the winch actually came loose. The straps. The straps. Two straps held that bike up on the trailer except for the back end. And the back end was dragging a 60-mile-an-hour show or whatever he was going. Soft rubbered ATV tires. Flat spots. Yeah. Hey, it's fine. The park. I thought maybe the parking gear or whatever you call it. Park would have been wallowed out. No, it's fine. I mean, that's 60-mile-an-hour pulled over. Thought it was a tranny problem. No, hopped it back up on. I'm like, dude, let out some air and roll. That thing was fine. There had to be a lot of smoke before all that. Anyway, he's down there seeing deer like crazy. And that's all – I think that's an intangible. What the paper says is there's plenty of deer on the landscape or we have struggles or whatever it says.

But then there's also this social, we don't have what we want. And it's not just the trophy hunters. I mean, we're not trying to make general units upon spot. We're not talking about that. We don't. We are not talking about that, that there's not enough big bucks down. We haven't even said that once today. We're talking about populations. We're talking about age structure of bucks. And let's – Can we talk about big bucks? Part of it is – Go ahead. You've got those numbers, but that's a ratio of what today's numbers are or last year's numbers. You think about 10, 15 years ago, how many deer you saw. The numbers of them. You can't deny. You can't just have numbers. And if the numbers weren't on the paper that I saw, then those bios or Salt Lake fudged those numbers because I saw them. Well, the ratio could be what it is, but that's the sample size you have.

If you have two to three to five times that many deer, there's two to three to five times many more bucks. But the same 20 bucks per hundred bucks. Exactly. That's the difference for me. If you have 10 deer and eight of them are does and two of them are bucks, you're within – Yes. Hey, issue more tax. And that's what would be on that paper. Issue more tax. If you had three bucks, you would issue an extra – try to kill that one buck because he needs to be in a freezer. Right? I mean, come on. Tell me. Where's the total population numbers per unit is my thing. I just – And that's what you're talking about, carrying capacity, and that's been a large part of the argument down there at the rack. But honestly, that – Who cares about this? We want to know. More north of Utah. We want to know. We want to fill this ground with deer. Yeah. And we have the room.

And up north, it makes – it's so different. Completely different. It's completely different. All the private land that's up there. The winter range. Lack of winter range. It's so different. How would you like to manage when there's 30% public? Your private manages everything. Yeah. I wouldn't even want to touch it. Yeah. Be tough. It gets bought by the housing developments. Yeah. It's always – it's encroaching on them all the time. Yep. Yeah. 100%. So, yeah, it's kind of – Even just the amount of deer. The problem is we remember just six years ago. I mean, 2011 to 2017. Not in our parents' lifetime. Yeah. We were scratching – I want to say it was 400,000 deer in the state back then. And I remember as a biologist, I almost started to dislike deer in a lot of ways because you'd go down to a farmer's field and there would be 700 deer in there in September.

And you're having to deal with the depredation problems. And we're having to deal with that side. And it was – These guys hate on deer. They're disgusting. Then they hate on the DWR, but now they hate on – you know, then they don't hate on deer. And you – now you go see those same fields and there might be 20, 15, something like that. I don't know. The problem I have is like – and we can lump Colorado into this, but they're so scared to have a winter loss and have those deer be wasted, quote, wasted. So, we want to make sure that when we do have a hard winter, there's not a lot being wasted. And so, we're going to keep them in people's freezers. And I hate that. Like we have – Especially when we're coming off as many years of drought as we have. We've been just losing ground, losing ground, losing ground, losing ground. But they're so scared.

Now, a little bit of increase in farm production, we're just going to immediately crush it. But the Biles will say we will never be back, especially in Colorado, from the 2003 to 2006. We will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever see it again. And my point is why don't you try to let it – well, it's okay if we have a bad winter once in a while. Let it here and there. Let it try. Let people have amazing world-class experiences. I'm not saying for every year. Yeah, or every unit or whatever. But like last year in 44, let a few people have that kind of experience. Manage for that once in a while. It's okay. It's not the other world. Especially like let's just call it Gunnison because they have special working groups and very passionate sportsmen that are local. I don't know. Just – it's okay to have some deer that die naturally and don't go home in freezers. It's okay. I think that's okay.

I do too. And I think our talk here has been mainly about growing deer numbers, growing, you know, increasing number of bucks, you know, to some extent and let that happen slightly. Yeah, if it gets to 23 or 24, increase some tags. But what's almost – anyway, I want to call it laughable in some ways. We've got a committee that now thinks that two-way radios is more important. We need to do away with those instead of fixing deer populations on a larger scale. We're going to worry about how you kill bucks in certain units, you know, in certain ways. That's what we're supposed to do. Well, I guess it's an ethical discussion. They want us to take them home and put them in our freezer. It's now potentially lawful, no longer ethical. That's right. It's going to be lawful. But, I mean, to me, that's losing focus at a time – I mean, yeah, it might bother some people. Some people hunt that way.

But, man, that's like – I mean, we had opportunities done other things, in my opinion, to have a lot bigger impact on maintaining opportunity and reducing harvest, like whether it be scopes on muzzleloaders or other things, versus – Where did that come from in a time that we're trying to just grow deer? I can tell you. Can I answer that? Because some guy saw a YouTube video with a guy who had a radio on his pocket, and they killed a big bull or a big buck, and he said, well, that's how they killed that buck, and that's not fair because I didn't get to kill that buck, and they killed that buck because they had a radio. Or they're on a technology committee, and they're there to make some change, but they don't want to take their scope off the muzzleloader, and they just – it's personal or whatever, and they like it, and they want it there. But, I mean –

So we're going to go after an ethical battle versus something that really – Because Good and Crockett says that's what our ethics should be, or Pope and Young says that's what our ethics should be, but we all – there's a growing – How many hundreds or thousands of bucks or bulls in Utah have died because of radials? And I use that term deliberately, hundreds or thousands, versus how many hundreds or thousands of bucks get killed by two longest seasons or two many tags or scope muzzleloaders or all that? My kid shot one with a scope muzzleloader last year at 360 yards. Okay. Okay. Would he have killed that with an open sight? Probably not. Absolutely not. Now, he may have ended up killing that deer. Stalking it differently. Oh, yeah. We would have been way aggressive. I mean, there's a decent chance we'd have killed it, but open sights is monumentally different. Okay.

It's monumentally different. And if you had that or tag numbers or season length or whatever, you have the ability to literally affect hundreds or thousands of bucks or bulls. But people don't want to be told no. Okay. And I think – Don't want to be told no in what regard. As far as they want to use their technology. Oh, yeah. They want to use extreme bows or they want to be able to whatever. I mean, they want to use whatever. And maybe there's more coming next year. I don't know. There could be. There probably is. But I'm just saying that one came out of left field when it felt like there's other ways to maintain. I don't know anybody that even thought that might come. I didn't even hear it talk about. But Bronson, but we – people kill bucks and are led in on stocks with radios. Well, I'm not going to disagree with that. No, it absolutely happens. And I said bucks and bulls.

I mean, there's mountain goats and there's moose and there's sheep and there's antelope and everything. Radios work. So of all those things. Okay. We tackled that. All right. I would love to see how much our hunting or our populations flourish because of that. How about draw odds on muzzles if you had to use open sights? Just like what New Mexico did. New Mexico was the state that built long-range muzzlers. New Mexico was where you went to use long-range muzzlers. And Arizona. Arizona, too. But you got tags regularly in New Mexico. People – they were 500-yard guns before any other state realized they were 500-yard guns. And I contend. We had one-power scopes here for many years. You know what I mean? Versus turrets and multiple-power scopes. And amazing new advances in barrels and technology and tactics and reloading and all these things. Right? We know what we're doing now.

Just seems like that. I mean, we used to use volume instead of weighted. Now we're taking a scale on our hunts with us to weigh the freaking – Grain. Powder. So I've got a question. I'm kind of – I don't know if – it's an idea and a question. I don't know if it'll make sense for sure. But I've heard it talked about a lot in the past and whatnot. Success rates. With these tag allocations, how much do they take in to account for those success rates? Is that why they're getting rid of radios? Is that why – because we're getting too successful, they want to bring the success rates down so they can allocate more tax? That's why they're getting too successful. That's why they're getting too successful. That's why they're getting too successful. Well, I would contend on the scope muzzleloader that is the rationale. Right. We can keep the opportunity out there. Make it – keep it primitive.

But make it a little bit less effective. But the hunter still gets to go hunt deer with a muzzleloader. Or is it primitive or not? I mean – But with – Let a muzzleloader hunter have a little better drawing on – and quite frankly, it's like the best elk season we've got. You know what I mean? I guess with radios, I guess, how much is harvest success going to go down because of that? Who knows? How – I mean, on certain hunts perhaps that goes on. You can still use them to communicate, guide to guide, guide to hunter, stuff like that. That's going to be my problem is trying to think about how to enforce that because they're saying you can still use radios. So please bring them. Please bring them to hunt with. Maintain your safety. And let your dad stay, you know, whatever. You know, you don't lose grandpa. Whatever you need to do if you need it. You know, just that kind of stuff.

For safety reasons, whatever, you can use radio, cell phone, in reach, whatever, to do whatever. But at the point where you decide to go start to stalk an animal, that's where communication has to stop. Maybe stalking means you got in your truck and got closer to me because I was on a deer. Is that the call? Is that the initiating a stalk? Wyatt starts stalking at the Maverick. Is that initiating a stalk? Every morning, he starts stalking at the Maverick. As soon as the tires are on the oil, he's stalking deer. Wyatt came from Todd's up on top because I was on a deer. When does that stalk start? Yeah. When you leave the truck or when you wake up out of bed, it says, hey, get up here. I got a buck. Where does it start? I don't know. But anyway. It's just hard. I don't mind. Hey, I like that they're addressing.

I like the idea of addressing technology and just think, what is the motive behind it? I think they missed that one. I think that one, honestly, I wasn't in these meetings. It just feels like that is not in a, this, I mean, they may say this has gotten rampant and we're killing too many because of it. But I honestly think it's more like what Josh portrayed. Just a personal burr of a few people that don't like that that is tolerated or legal. And there were some things that they did. I think a lot of it, there was pressure that they met for well over a year and didn't have anything done. And probably because it's confusing and it's bad. All of us here have an idea of what should be legal or allowed to hunt. People don't want to be told no. It's the new, this generation. So to come up with something is hard.

We've also said we're the biggest proponents of being, have to be one to give stuff. But you're one of the few. Okay. Well, I know. But I mean, I also have three or four muzzleloaders because I hunt different states. And I have to have exposed breeches. One of those. Yeah. And then I got to have one for Colorado. And then I got to have a different form for Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Because I don't, you know, just because you have to. And we adapt. And we are going to do that. Rip scopes off muzzleloaders in New Mexico this year. No problem. We're advocates of honoring the rules and doing it. But I just think there's certain times. What can you get the most bang for the buck of? And I think they missed it on this. And there's a. Getting more. There's an idea out there that you get to choose if you want to use a scope, Adam. We're not telling you you have to use a scope.

You could use open sights if you believe in open sights. You're right. But I mean. But it's human nature. You're not telling me you have to take it to. To take it to. And I'm out there in a competitive world on a public land unit. And I'm trying to stock in, you know, on a buck that you're going to want to kill it. On a once in a lifetime tag that are hard to obtain. You want all of the variables you can control. Well, I think we saw that with the odds on limited entry elk and deer both. Wyatt, you've hunted Henry's a bunch. So have I over the years. The muzzleloader was always easier to draw than the rifle hunt when you had to use open sight. It was always. Yes. It was always guys that couldn't quite catch up. Or one power scopes or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. But for most, some people, open sights, including myself, I liked them better than one power scope.

I shot the bull in the Southwest Desert open sight. But it was always, you know, Wyatt, you probably had this discussion with hunters. It was like, you might wait four or five more years to draw that, but you get to go first if you're willing to use a muzzleloader, apply that way. And it was a hard sell sometimes. Yeah. I was willing to do it. I was willing to do archery. It used to even go sooner. But you had to sell guys on it. And it still was a tough hunt. It was a tougher. It was a challenge to hunt. Now, that's harder to draw than the rifle tags. Yeah. Get first dibs on the buck and basically have a rifle in your hands. That's right. There's a reason for it. There's a reason. So it's effective. Now, I mean, there's other instances. And if you magnify that across general season deer hunting, you know, and I know that we

may have data out there that some people, hey, harvest hasn't gone up and all that. Oh, okay. But I'm here to tell you, that's smoke and mirrors or whatever, because you kill more deer with scope muzzleloaders than you don't do with open sight muzzleloaders. I mean. It feels like a little bit of a Band-Aid. I mean, no doubt. It does make stocks very successful as far as the particular stock. Do you even have to stock? But overall success. What's that? Yeah. You don't even have to stock with a scope muzzleloader anymore. I know. That's what I mean. I know. Archery hunting, too. Archery hunters are walked in by radio. I mean, it's common. It's just, you know. But it addresses a small, your point is, is if you're going to address it like I'm going to address it. This is a Band-Aid. You guys had a year and a half. And I know. It's easy for me as an armchair coffee shop biologist slash hunter.

I like that. It just feels like we had opportunities to really maybe do something, to rein some things in. And there have been some things. There has been, you know, thermal imaging. And there has been other stuff that, as technologies increase, that didn't exist five years ago, relatively from a widespread hunting thing. They reined it in. But people hated the change. And they hated the baiting. And the baiting had to go through legislature. Trail cameras and everything else. And so there's been. Trail cameras and all that had to go through legislature. And it just, I think that's where all this comes from. If you're not going to make major changes, then the legislature takes over. And they end up making major changes. And then people get ticked because. We didn't have a say. And it didn't go through the public process and all that.

But if it goes through, let's say it goes through the public process. Everybody's saying, voice your opinion. If you don't like it, Bronson, you get to voice your opinion. And you're getting ramped up. And you're going to go to the rack. And I'm going to go to the rack. And y'all are going to the rack. But what I have. The problem I have is we have this committee that represents us all as sportsmen. Make good change. So we don't have to go to the rack and all fight. And guess what? When we go to the rack, there's like 500 people with 500 opinions. Just like what you were saying, Josh. And we all have opinions. We all have opinions. And so then you go and nothing gets done. And everybody fights. And you walk away mad. And there's. Split decisions. It goes to the walleye board. And they end up doing what they decide they want to do anyway. Right there. And that's what their role is.

And they can do that. But I'm just saying, man, we had an opportunity maybe to do more than we did. And we picked radios as the band-aid. And a few other things. There's some electronics on bows. Well, again. And how. That they've addressed. Yeah. But I'm with you. Big picture of things. I'm with you. I'm with you. I don't think that. Wyatt, you've got more. What do you think? What do you really think? I don't really have much to say about that. I think you guys covered basically what needs to be said as far as the technology committee. Definitely. What do you think on the tags and stuff? You've been out a lot. Devin, you've been out a lot. Gosh. I mean, you guys, real world experience. We're talking general deer still. General deer and even whatever. Whatever your thoughts are. Devin made a good point there. The deer numbers are not on the landscape right now.

We're managing to a very small sample size when there could be a lot more deer. I remember back in high school days, just driving 15 minutes from town and seeing 100 deer. 10 minutes from town and seeing 100 deer. And four to six-year-old bucks. Yeah. After the hunts. To remind our listeners, these guys were born in the late 80s or 90s, right? They're not old. Yeah, late 80s. Late 80s. Getting old, but not quite there yet. At the time we were graduating from high school, you guys were hitting the ground. Old bucks and young bucks. Across the landscape. That's what we're talking about. Good instructor of bucks in the room. Button bucks or rutting. Hey. These two have been rocking since they were five bucks.

Heck in the world of better plays. It's just hard when you know what it has been and you've seen it. Like I said, we're not even. We're in our. Well, you just turned 35. 36. 34, 36. We're not talking to our grandparents. We're not talking to our grandparents. And you've seen a change. Imagine the change. Even from 14 to 17. We hunted in the rut with muzzleloaders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But even like Josh said, even 2014 to 17-ish compared to now. That is not even 10 years. And what I think is fun. It was dramatically different. When there's incredible amounts of deer and good weather and all of those fun things and big bucks for everybody. Everybody's happy. Yeah. It was. There's no contention. You mean like 2019? Well. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. There's just never been better after one good year. No contention. There was a lot of tags, too. Yeah. Yeah. And there's still a lot of.

And there was people that were so critical of Division I year and the next year they're just saying, wow, it was amazing. I'd take this tag over at Henry's. We heard that multiple places. Yeah. And so, anyway, when times are tough, we all just got to suck it up a little bit. And we're saying leave the tags cut. That means we're not going to draw as often, Bronson. No. And you don't have to shoot a deer. We threw this out there last time. Yeah. That's. So, what. Yeah. What's epic outdoors going to do? Hold on. Hold on. Let's finish. Let's talk about the list that came out versus the expo tags real quick. I thought I would segue, but we're going to go a different direction. We talked all about general season deer. I just want to finish topics. So, we haven't even talked about limited entry. That's what you want to do. Well, and then also, like, how do guys know?

Well, the whole reason for the change in the application period is so we could get this list, and then this list would tell us where there would be bonus tags versus regular draw tags. And I just kind of want to talk about that. When we got this list, and everybody that's seen this, there's a few things that we noticed when we started looking at these permit numbers, which the division put on their website, that had 2022 permit numbers and 2023 permit numbers, which they're on the website, Utah, wildlife.utah.gov now. You can look at them for each. There's a PowerPoint presentation, but right underneath the PowerPoint link, there's an actual PDF, I believe it is, of the actual list. But when we started looking at that, you saw certain units. Oh, there didn't get. There was the same tags as last year. All right. No increase.

But then you ended up looking at the drawing odds, which we knew there was not. Which shows you the exact tags last year that were issued. And they're slightly different. And so I'm like, I think the expo tags or something were being minused off of these because there's a lot of tags missing. And in some cases, it goes from like two non-resident tags to one, and there's no explanation for it. Where did that tag go? It was supposed to be a zero-sum game or whatever. Same thing. So we brought that up with the division, and this is pretty important. And we would be just bringing up something stupid here. But there's a lot of tags out here that you're going to see on this list that are units that say they're going to have two non-resident tags or maybe three or four, five or six or 10 or 15 resident tags that is actually lower than it says because the expo tags all get taken out

of what you see proposed. I don't know really why they didn't just say, here's the draw tag proposals. That would have been probably really easy. And the quickest way, I guess, we just – It wasn't intentional. It wasn't. I think they just – No, it wasn't intentional. It was an oversight. I'm just saying it would have been good to know here's the draw tags, but the problem is 2022 they didn't do it that way. So if they did it new for 23, it would show permit cuts when there wasn't cuts because you deducted them this year and not last year. The bottom line is if you go to the Utah Hunt Planner, they actually have these proposed numbers for each hunt unit loaded in there with the expo tags deducted. So the actual numbers of tags in the draw are accurate on the hunt planner. Yep. Not on this form. If you – and maybe we'll just go through a few of these that you're going to see.

Like let's go through – oh, moose is not that big a deal. You've got some wash ash tags that were taken out, but there's going to go from three to two non-resident tags. And the zero to one like on the Morgan South Ridge. Maybe we should hit on why the – I guess when there's two tags and one gets taken away, why that's so important. Yeah. One gets taken away like on a non-resident unit. When there's two and it goes to one, you don't have a max point tag anymore. That would be a random only tag. Yeah. That's a big deal. So if there's one resident tag out of 26 moose tags on the wash tag, not a big deal. But there were two expo moose tags for the Wasatch. One was pulled from the non-resident pool. So now there's only going to be two. There's 25 in the resident pool. But you jump to Mountain Goat. Beaver, on paper, says for 2023 there's going to be seven resident tags

and two non-resident tags. There were two last year on the Beaver, and therefore there was a non-resident max point tag. Well, this year they pulled an expo tag from the non-resident pool on Beaver. Even though it says two non-resident tags, that's going to be reduced to one, and there's not going to be a max point tag. And now a guy with high points can't say, I can command that tag. We like to call it forcing the draw. Don't put it in for Beaver. It's nice for a high point guy to say, I'm going. Yeah, you're not. I'm going. No, you're not. You're going to be random. That's right. And that could be a zero point guy. It could be a five point guy. It could be whatever. But if you look down the page on the North Slope, Hyunas, West, same exact tag numbers proposed as last year, 14 resident and two, but there was expo tags last year there.

This year there was only one expo tag, and it came out of the resident. There's going to be two North Slope, Hyunas, West tags this year. And last year there wasn't one. There was one non-resident. And one got taken for the, yeah, exactly. That's a big deal. Now, another one you need to maybe look at is like the Henry Mountains Hunter's Choice tag, the first hunt. All right? It shows that there's going to be two non-resident tags this year. On bison. On bison. Yep. Henry Mountains Bison Hunter's Choice. Shows there's going to be two. All right? There was an expo tag pulled from that. There's only going to give one. So those are things to avoid. There's a few other on sheep. Just for instance, we don't want to necessarily go through them all. No. Yeah, but it's a big deal. So when you're analyzing draws and these are once in a lifetime type tags, just type tags.

I mean, some of them are once in a lifetime. But elk and deer, they're not easy to draw. And like Wyatt's saying, it's a big deal from one to two to three or whatever. Well, and on elk, there were some big ones. Maybe we'll just point out the big ones only. But what we're just trying to tell you is don't take those permits in the 2023 column to the absolute bank that that's what they're going to give. Go to the hunt planner. Or when you say hunt planner, it's huntplanner.com. That's a thing on their website. Yeah, it's under wildlife. Well, it's not our epic hunt planner. It is on the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Big Game Hunt Planner. Go search it by species and by hunt. They will have these proposed tag numbers there with expo permits deducted. You could holler at us, too, if you're a member. If you want. Yeah.

So there's a few elk hunts that are going to be cut hard, like, you know. Well, a lot of them, there was zero last year. It's new. There's new mids, a lot of new mids. And so there's tags there. And you kind of want to know. There's four on the LaSalle's for the mids, on elk. I mean, there's two on Monroe for the mid. Like, that means one's going to go to max and one's going to go random. So there's just a few cool opportunities that mean something. There's also some of those that show two that are not going to go to one. And those are the ones you really need to pay attention to, you know, really. Like, yeah. You know. All right. I like it. I just kind of, yeah, we wanted to talk about that a little bit. Let's talk in general, though, about the, like, the mids, what we saw about the elk permits. We talked about, had a podcast with Dex, Mangus, earlier about that.

And I think we saw what we talked about pretty much happen. You know, we talked about the early season rifle hunts being cut way down. Most of those in the state are going to have, like, one non-resident tag only on the early September. There's a few exceptions, like Manti and Wasatch and some of those. But a lot of the tags, as we heard, we're going to go to the midseason. And I don't know how everybody feels about that hunt. But... What do you feel? I think it's going to be an underutilized hunt. If you can just get past the mental blockage of... You mean everybody hunting without one break between the archery muzzle, early rifle muzzle, and then you get there on top of the spike? Go ahead. Keep going. Yeah. Stop. But, hey, but if I was a non-resident, I'd be all over it. I'd be all over that. October 7th is so bad. What else are you going to wait for? October 7th is a great hunt.

It is. It's going to be a good hunt. And let's face it, spike hunters, do they hunt the full 12 days hard? Sometimes. Typically, no. Weekends are more popular, but, you know, you get in the middle of the week, it's probably pretty slow. There's been a lot of guys that base their, you know, family reunions around stuff like that. So, anyway. Yeah, but they still don't go on 7 to 10 day. No, they don't. They don't. Yeah. I think those hunts are going to be underutilized this year. I absolutely think that. And I do think they can be good hunts. Still going to... Some units are going to have incredible bugling, probably, in some units. That laid archery. That laid archery. Pretty much four residents and one non-resident straight through. Pretty much, except, I believe it was Manti, isn't it? Yeah. We don't get on here. But, anyway, kind of crazy. So, there's only one... Well, I'm just saying.

Remember when we were talking about it and we'd heard, well, people were throwing out numbers like 200 times? I mean, you'd never know, though, right? Because you'd lose faith at some point. That's my point about some of this stuff with the division. You just... You never know, Bronson. Where you're going. You never know. You never know. I don't know. Anyway, where... Yeah. Where are we at? Yeah. Manti did have nine and one. Anyway, still have one non-resident for anybody. A lot to look at. It's worth your time going to look at those permits. You might go quickly to the public Rack and Wildlife Board page to see the list. But, can't emphasize enough, if you're in the maximum point striking distance, we'll just clarify that comment. For a hunt. And you want to make sure that those two tags that you see on one recommendation are really going to be there.

You should go double-check in the hunt planner. And, of course, all of this is contingent on the Wildlife Board ratifying these proposals as presented. Because they could get modified, what is it, two days after the deadline's over or whatever? May, first part of May. So, but understanding why the division moved the application period to the end of April this year, I don't see the Wildlife Board, in the case of limited entry, you know, once-in-a-lifetime limited entry, making dramatic stuff that's going to dramatically alter a bunch of people that ought to pull it. Because they moved it here for that purpose. It better be pretty compelling. Now, general season deer, I think there's going to be a lot of discussion on, as we've talked about. Well, we want to be able to have the latitude to make adjustments. We do.

We want to go through the month of April and, like, not be all wound up if they need to make adjustments, and they do. Yeah. I think it's okay. They need to be able to have the freedom to do that. It's just... If you're going to radically eliminate tags from... Just don't play games with people. People are wound up. You moved it. Yeah, you moved it for a reason. And let that kind of work unless there's a really compelling reason to deviate dramatically. Because you're going to... Otherwise, you're going to have a riot. You know? Riot. Indeed. Not a quiet riot, either. Who remembers that? I guess that process, just so people know, anybody can go make a comment. Residents, non-residents, whatever. Go on the Utah DWR website. The same place where they have the recommendations, these permit numbers and all that stuff.

You'll see a section there where you can make a recommendation to a specific region in there. Or you can make a comment to the Wildlife Board. There's also options there to get emails, to email those individuals on the racks or the board individually. Or physically go to a rack meeting if there's one in your area. And that's a way that you can stand up and voice your opinion. And it's a good way. I would suggest go doing that. My recommendation would be don't just sit back and complain. Actually go do that at the very minimum if you feel like you need to. I like it. You know, we also were waiting for some tag numbers to come out for Wyoming, Bronson. And a large part of that was because with the 90-10 split on the big animals, sheep, goat, moose, bison.

Listen, we were interested in what that was going to look like for random tags because there's not very many people at that top point tier for sheep and moose. And so, you know, when they came out, we were like, man, are they going to issue a random tag? Because on paper, it looks like they may not. And they ended up giving enough tags to do that. Well, justifying it. Because in theory, you should have 40 tags on a unit, sheep unit, before you give. Because 10% would be four. And then you got a 75-25 split. That's right. And so, you know, for random versus preference tags. But they rounded, I guess, in favor of non-residents probably to avoid a riot. I'm going to use that word again. Okay. And unit five is the only unit proposed to have at least four non-resident permits. Four sheep. And one would go randomly. So three will go to the max, one randomly.

So if you're in the no man's land point pool, apply for unit five or don't even apply. Or go amend your application. You can go amend. If you went and applied for unit two and you have 10 points, you should amend. Like, don't walk, run. Go amend. Yeah. And amend. Go there. Amend to unit five. If you're up in the 24-5 plus point range, you're in a totally different discussion. All those permit numbers are out there now. It tells you how many proposed non-resent tags there are going to be. Most of them have one. Some units have two. A couple of them have three going to maximum point non-residents. So it's going to be tough. But try to guess according to you. Now with Moose, there's only two units. Unit 25 and unit 26 are the only two units that are proposed to have a random non-resident permit this year.

And so in these areas, if they give three, like in a lot of states, the first tag is going to go random. But in these cases, the first three tags go to preference. And then you'll start in with a random tag. And so it's kind of inverse. It's not intuitive. No. Yeah. Most of the other states, Utah, Arizona, all those, you have a chance to draw everything. You don't in the case of Wyoming. Even deer and elk, you get low-tag units. A lot of units that we show, no tag available in the random draw for 10 or 25 type units of 10 or 25 elk or deer tags. Been some pretty compelling data as far as antelope and deer. And we've covered that a little bit and some of the die-off and things like that. And it's monsters. And it's happening still. Yeah. It's still happening. And so these tags are thrown out there. We don't see a lot of change coming, just to guess, for the big animals.

But as far as your antelope and deer, that's going to be pretty fluid. Yeah. That was the date. I think it was 17, 18th or 18, 19th was the meeting commission in Wyoming. And since these numbers are out on their website under their regulations link, you can see the proposed both season dates, tag quotas, everything like that on Wyoming Game Fish's website. They're pretty easy to find if you click the regulations link. That's right. But I contend that we're going to see, especially with antelope and certain deer, you're going to see even deeper cuts that the commission approved than what we're seeing proposed. Because there's some big cuts proposed. These were, what, two weeks ago that they came out. And they've been crushed with snow after that, even into late March and April. It's sad. And it's got an inverse relationship with winter.

Normally now the higher country's got less snow than a lot of the winter range, you know, the lower elevation country. So it's a unique situation that's going on. Sad to watch. Sad to hear about. I mean, we're not watching it. It's really sad to hear about and see some of the photos come out of there. So, all right. Well, let's talk about something positive. Yeah, we're talking about positive because there's a negative connotation. We've got to try to make positive out of it. You're crushing me right out the back. Well, why are we going to do this little giveaway? Why are we going to do this? We're going to do a big giveaway. Okay, but why? Because? Because it's fun. Muleys matter. Muleys matter. I like it. So, we threw this out last time. Devin's like, what? I missed this part. We threw this out last time on the podcast.

The button buck's going to look like I don't know what you guys are talking about. Well, we threw this out on the last podcast. And just like, hey, I think I just said, hey, there's got to be a way. Do you remember in Utah, back in the dedicated hunter era, as a little bit of incentive not to just smoke a two-point or a little buck at the end of your year. Remember, if you returned an unused tag as a dedicated hunter, for every 250 tags they got back, they gave a limited entry deer tag and an elk tag, and they would draw those. Just at the end of the year, you didn't kill a deer. Send your tag in, and they would draw an elk and a deer tag for every 250. So, if they've got 1,000 unused tags or 5,000. It was a slight incentive to not just go and smash the smallest buck you can find on last night. Just to be a hero. Okay? Well, that's kind of what our philosophy was.

And, hey, we are not talking about kids or people that want to shoot. We're just talking about maybe people that you don't need to shoot a deer just to say, I was successful, and lucky me. Okay? Okay. So, we threw it out last time. Hey, what if we had some kind of incentive in some of these places? There was a lot of comments. And we would offer prizes and incentive in some of these states. We threw out, like, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah. We haven't refined it yet. Maybe we can even talk about Idaho. I don't know. But, anyway, that if we have people send in their unused, unpunched deer tags. And if you want to hole punch out your date of birth and your CID numbers, all that, fine. But it better have your name and your address on there. Original tag. Send it in. We're in the works of having something big. What? What are you shaking your head up?

I just, they have this thing called a blur on a computer. It's like a hole punch? No. No. What about the original tags? The tag is going to go in the bin. The paper tags are going to go in the bin. We know what tags look like. You can't make a paper. You ain't going to Photoshop one over. You're not going to take a Colorado. You can Photoshop it in July and then have it there and then punch it in November. Ah, that's why the hole punch. Okay, I'm following you. It needs to be the paper unused freaking tag. And, yes, we believe all people are honest and chaste and true and benevolent and all their foolish things. But, hey, this just keeps everybody on the same pill. And, hey, we also thought it would be colorful in the bin to have blues and pinks and greens and all spinning as we spun the winners. If you got an E-tag, too bad. You got to go get yourself a paper tag.

We've already crossed the bridges. We've fleshed out a few things. E-tags. I'm sorry. Get a paper tag. It's the only way you can enter. If you have a deer tag in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming and you didn't kill a buck in 2023, you submit it December 1. We're going to draw. We're going to do a drawing. And the prizes are loading as we speak. We've had people here in the podcast calling off for prizes. And we're going to throw in. Well, we've had optics companies do that. And we're going to throw in Bronson. We're going to throw a fierce rifle. We're going to throw a fierce rifle. 300 rum out there. We'll throw a Hoyt VTM 34 and Cuyo Verde. That's right. All right. That's right. And a huge optics package. And who knows what else. And it's building daily. And we're going to have a bombs on moms bucket, too. If you had a doe tag that you didn't fill and you submit it, we're going to put your

name in a bucket. I love it. It might be the biggest package. It might be the biggest giveaway. It's not for cow elk. You're not supposed to shoot does, dude. It's not for cow elk. It's only for does. Do not shoot does. Only does. Not cow elk. No. We're going to clarify that. This is only for deer. Muleys matter. It's the Muleys matter giveaway. So you may want to use some of those antlerless points. I was looking. There isn't some of you who's in L.A. See, here's Josh. I'm trying to beat the system. This is our attempt to help point creep around the West. Burn them. Just send your tag in. Consider it a $20 or $30 resident tag fee. If you turn that tag back in, you don't have it to submit for our drawing. That's not your point. There is supposedly a walking human being breathing in this state of Utah with 16 pronghorn antelope dough points. Who is that? I would like phone call.

They're hoping for an either sex hunt someday that you can use dough points. You and I, we can submit. Yes. Yes. Except for if you work here, you cannot. Right now, Archibald's thinking, who's this guy? I need antelope meat. I need a booster. Poor gal. I'm just saying, if your ball's in that court with dough points, let's do us all a favor. Get your dough tag. Don't even go hunt it. Burn them. And just send us the tag for a chance to win. That's what the antis do with some of our trophy tags. They do. They get the trophy tags and eat them. It ticks me off. But it saves bucks, so I guess I'm okay. But in some states, they have to have a hunter ed card, and they can't sit through a hunter education class because it looks through vital shots and where you shoot stuff. They start dry heaving, and then they stop. That's 100% correct. So it weeds them out. Like this, we need the paper tag.

It has to be in here. But we're not going to tell you how many prizes they are because that's going to flesh itself out. It might be 10 or 20, dude. And we're going to have the first tag drawn out gets their choice of whatever it is. Second tag gets their choice. All the way to our choice. All the way. Who knows where this is going to grow? All right. I love it. Epic's throwing in a bow and a rifle and maybe some optics. Trail cameras for sure. Just to start it off. Just to start it off. And we've got optics companies that have hit us. This is going to be big. I mean. We're not screwing around. Go. Muleys matter. We're going to do our part. That's right. I don't know. It's fun. It's fun. And it raises awareness. Good grief. Yeah. It just does. You don't have to shoot them. What do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean?

I'm so passionate about people that go and have to kill to show their man card. That's right. And they've got a two by one. Think about the time that you and Wyatt went to 11 to 11. You could have entered this drawing afterwards. Two tags. No, we couldn't because we work here. Yeah. Well, yeah. That's true. But you could have shot box too. But a competing company, we would have entered their drawing. So I like it. And hey, we are in no way telling you, like, take your kids hunting. Tell your wife, family. Take them hunting. Kill them. Put them in your freezer. Eat them. But if you're one of those people that don't need to shoot a deer and you don't see what you're after, this whole movement is for an incentive to maybe not shoot one when you don't need to shoot one. And if you submit your tag and you want to keep it forevermore as a memoir or whatever, Oh, we'll send it back.

You submit a self-addressed stamped envelope with your tag and you're going to get it back. After the drawing, we'll send it right back to you. Because some people like to frame tags or eat them. Or eat them. Some people eat them. I've got pounds of them. Pounds of paper. Sometimes you need a little fiber in your diet. I have looked at some of my old ones. They're kind of cool. What they're making some of these tags at it all, I don't think you can digest it. I don't know. It's like unrippable and unburnable. I don't know. Unwattable. Some of these hunting licenses can be printed off on regular paper.

What's your thoughts, Wyatt? I like it. I think it's good. I love it. I think that's awesome. I've heard very little of it being in the hallway office, and I love it. You haven't heard anything. I'm kind of wound up. You're not going to be in the hallway forever. You realize that. I do. We expanded earlier than we thought we were going to expand. And you are going to get your own office very soon. Hey, I'm not complaining. I like where I'm at. I'm just happy to be here. I may have drank too much Monster today, but here, I'm going to add another prize. Well, he drank purple today. Hey, who ordered the purple, the gold, and the twist tops? Well, somebody's getting $500 for it, because I will put $500 of my own money as a prize on it. Come on. Whoa. I'm doing it. Write it down. Put it in the center of the table. I will. I'll write the check right now. I'm not excited about it. Write it.

I absolutely will. Is this going to come from the family account? Nope. The Bronson hunting fund? It'll be from my personal account. And it'll be the first one here. I'll get it when I get out of the podcast room. All right. I'll put it somewhere. I'll match it. It'll put $500 from Jason. We're going to hang it. I will hang it from the podcast room, and you'll see it dangling right there for the next six months. Jana's putting in $500 of her money, too.

All right. All right. We got to start here. Anyway, we're not kidding. I'm so freaking excited about this. I'm more excited than the Huntsman giveaway. I wish I could enter. I wish. Because I eat tags, but I eat more than I eat. Let's do a little inner giveaway here within the office. Speaking of, Devin, we didn't give you your shout-out. The props you deserve. NCAA March Madness Epic Office giveaway. Bait bucket. The Yukon Huskies. The internal epic. We had the internal one. There was a whopping, what, 12 of us? 10 of us? 13, and he won it. And you got the epic cup. Well, and mine wasn't valid. What do you mean? I don't do this stuff. I know, but you play this in the middle of the pack. It's kind of like Wyatt entering these Masters tournament things. Draft Kings, and he about wins. He just picks the random generator. I love it. I love it. But, Devin, congratulations.

You smoked everybody. And I think it's worth mentioning, even though we only had 13 office people in this, and he smoked everybody. Had Devin entered that bracket into the epic drive, which we gave that away the other day to somebody from, I think, what, Spring Creek, Nevada? How many were entered? 500 plus. Devin would have won that one, too. By a ways. No, he would have won by 50 points. He had 1,100 points. But Devin is quietly aggressive. He is competitive. Anybody that picks Florida Atlantic to the Elite Eight? He is competitive. All right, you're going out on a limb right there. And he is competitive. Never heard of him before. That's why I picked him. And because their mascot was an owl. They'd never won a game in the NCAA tournament. Devin picks him to the Elite Eight. It was Devin's special bird. Yeah, it's his spirit animal.

I wish I could say, yes, I have so much talent winning this. I took a lot of research. It's the Nevada tree, but the owl perched. I was going to tell you, I thought those guys from UConn could only play hockey. I didn't even know they played hockey. You don't get it. Come on, you do too. You don't get it. Canadians in hockey? Yeah, I guess. Oh, okay, Canadians. I didn't know they were Canadians. They're not. I was just kidding. I was going to say Connecticut, I thought. I don't know. Them UConn boys, they're. They did well. I did have one of my – I don't remember who was in my house over there. They thought that there was a – I didn't know Canadian teams who play in here. And I'm like, it's – UConn. U-C-O-N-N. It's not Y-U-K-O-N. I know. Good at basketball, eh? Yeah, yeah. I'm picking it up now. I was slow, but UConn, I get it. But, Devin, congratulations. Thank you.

You got the Epic Cup for a year. We're going to treat it like the Stanley Cup. You get it for a year, you drink out of it, and then it better be dang clean when you bring it back next March. And you could retain it, though. Is this a traveling – Well, I haven't even opened it yet. It's in a beautiful white box. It's about that tall. How did we get it? Denise. Let's talk – Denise built it. Denise built that. She made it. It's a tumbler. It's a tumbler with the – For the winter? Yeah. It's this Epic Outdoors banner. She took a Saturday and made it. It's so awesome. With that air freshener. We can't – I didn't figure that out. You're supposed to spray something on it, but – Well, I think you – Smell good stuff. Whatever you want. Whatever smell you want. Dangle that. You can go in whichever bathroom. Whichever bathroom has the – Come on. Come on. Poopery. Poopery. Let's stop.

I don't really like that. Okay. John's the best smelling bathroom. Hey, we – Except for y'all, crush it. Pretty funny. All right. Bronson, let's throw a little shout out to QU, by the way. With that bow. Yeah. Well, we appreciate it. QU has been a long time sponsors of us. They make incredible gear, incredible packs for whatever you're after. Whether it be hot weather, early season gear, whether you need layering systems, or whether you're going to the real Yukon, way up north, and you need a lot of layers, and you need – you be protected. They make it for you. Their packs are great. We've used their stuff for a lot of years. We appreciate them. QU.com, K-U-I-U.com, great support of ours over the years. Like I said, we're going to be giving away a QU Verde Hoyt VTM 34. That's going to go into the prize bin for somebody to pick with the Muley Matters. Accurate sucker. Like Zactbo.

Zactbo that I've got – well, I don't have it yet, but it's being tuned as I speak. We also want to throw a shout-out to Thompson Long Range. Super good guys up there. Scotty Thompson, Mark Thompson. Y'all are the best. They've been with us from the beginning. Super good people. Anyway, very simple long-range system using the Weatherby rifles, reticles. You know, Mark has got a great point. When simplicity kills, it's always been their motto up there. Very inexpensive, so to speak, in this day and age for a long-range setup. They speak, in layman's terms, very easy to understand what they've got going on up there. Give them a holler at 435-713-4248. And anyway, just awesome people. Thompson Long Range, northern Utah, up there right in the middle of tough winter range. Conditions right now, ThompsonLongRange.com. Even just calling to visit with them. Super fun to visit with.

Scotty, he's a deer-killing machine and knows his way around that country up there. And younger guy that's laying them down. He's doing his best. He hates muleys. He's killing them all. So anyway, super good guys, and that's what I like, being affiliated with good people. One more shout-out to the folks at Kennetrek. They've been sponsors of ours from the start, too. Jim Wendham and his crew have been great friends of ours, great hunters. I think that's very worth mentioning here in this case with Kennetrek. They're hunters. They use their products. They know how to make advancements in their products, and they've done that over the years. We appreciate them. Check them out online at Kennetrek.com. K-E-N-E-T-R-E-K.com. And for a lot of you people, you probably still have your Kennetrek pack boots out. Shovelin' snow. Sorry.

Some people have winterized their snowplows and snowblowers about a month ago and found out that that was way too early to do that, just like putting away their Kennetrek snow boots away. Too early this year. We put away our snowplow. Who did the snowblower? Was your driveway clean, Archibald? Solid sheet of ice. North facer. Oh, I forgot it's a North facer. I shoveled a little bit. And you were not going to start it, even though you had stable up on the shelf. That tank carb is dry. It is not. Oh, you dry it. You don't even put stable in it. I cleaned that carb once and I ain't doing it again. Then it crushes the foot of snow. Do you take it apart and clean it? Oh, yeah. When it won't start. No. Yeah. Change the oil, but yeah, not anymore. It's bone dry, winterized. And we're not going to start. We had eight inches. Eight inches in my yard, yeah. Screw it. Still.

It's bad. But it is going to hit 65 for three or four days, so. It's crazy. We're going to have some water. There's a window to flying off the mountain. Yeah. But, well, that's another story. But, hey, hopefully we've had fun today. Breaking down permit numbers. We encourage you to go to the Wyoming Game and Fish website. Check. Click on the hunting and the regulation link there to look at the new permit proposals as far as deer, elk, antelope. Well, elk, everything. Sheep, moose, goat. Everything's out. Of course, the deadline to apply for moose, sheep, and goat, and bison up there is different than it is for deer and antelope. You still have until May 31st for those two. We've got until, what, April 17th, Wyatt? Yep. Yep. For the others to get those done. Utah's due the 27th of April. Got plenty of time to jump onto Utah Division of Wildlife website. Plug and play.

Go to their public meetings link. Check out that. Or just jump in the hunt planner. If you're looking at a few units, you want to double-check proposed permit numbers. And again, it's kind of a weird thing that we threw out. But you do got to go see if you're a maximum point person, whether it be a resident or non-resident. And I want to see if that unit's still going to have maximum point tag. Jump on there and double-check. So, worth doing. When you're applying on there, I noticed it'll say hump boundary. You click that button in the application, it'll pull up the hunt planner. Okay, that might be it. But you might need to do that before because if you're in the heat of moment and then find out, oh, that unit's not it. Then you're like, cancel, and you're just reevaluating your whole process. Jason, have you applied in Utah yet? Yes. Do you care to elaborate? No.

Well, that's funny because, yeah, he sat down on a Saturday. And you did like Colorado and Nevada, Utah. There's like one weekend where they all line up where you can actually do them all. You've got women and children, and it just, it's huge. It takes a whole weekend. Oh, yeah. Well, no. I sat down and cranked. Wyatt, have you applied in Utah? I have not. Dang. I thought we might get something on the hot mic out of him today, but that's a pipe. I just think we shouldn't make, if you don't want to go to the hunt planner, if you have a very modest point level. Ignore what we said. You can go into our publication and look at everything. Unless it says no in our tags in 2023 in both of the gray columns, you're going to be issued, non-residents will be issued a tag randomly. Yeah. So, if you just, if you have 10 points for elk or whatever it is. Ignore everything we said. Don't sweat that.

Like, just go in, look at our publication, and off you go. It's only if you're in a max point striking distance. If you're in a high point level, and you know who you are, this is where it makes a difference. So, anyway, you can go to our publication and, you know, be well educated on most everything. It's just those very high, discriminating point level people. Probably ought to just give us a holler, look at a few things before you actually apply. And I will say, if you do a little bit of digging on there, you're going to notice some units, archery elk and some other units that went from one tag to two tags this year, it's going to be pretty significant for you to pay attention to that. If you are a 20, say, 20 plus point holder, 20 to 25, there's now units that are going to have a maximum point tag for the first time, maybe ever, or in a long time.

And that's a general benefit of increasing tags, you know, for elk. There are a few deer as well that way. So, look at those. It's well worth your time. If you look at our magazine, we didn't have proposed permit numbers when we went to print with this. Those just came out two days ago in April. So, we published last year's. If you see no tag available, no max point draw odds, just double check. There's a few of those out there if you're eyeing something that might catch your eye, it might still attack the first year. I'm so excited for this drop of bombs on mom's bucket. I'm going to go write my check right now and bring it back, and we're going to dangle it right there. I'll do mine too then. Okay. I mean, I couldn't have you do it and not me. Well, I didn't pressure you. I just was. I know. But there's pressure. No. Jason? Jason? You said Jason. So, you just bring Jenna's checkbook.

That's all you've got to do. But anyway. I paused that. That wasn't important, so you're good. Yeah.

But yeah, we're doing it, Bronson. Yeah. I like it. I like it. I'm so excited about it. I can't stand it. Yep. So. All right, everybody. We'd like to thank all of our sponsors here at Epic Outdoors. For top of the line hunting, clothing, and apparel in every environment, visit UnderArmor.com. We'd like to thank Under Armour for being our title sponsor and making this podcast happen. Visit our website, EpicOutdoors.com, for discount codes to Under Armour Hunting Apparel. Handcrafted, quality precision rifles from start to finish. Red Rock Precision is one of our sponsors, and many of our staff uses Red Rock rifles. Visit RedRockPrecision.com to find out more. If you're in the market for a hunting property, our sponsor at St. James Sporting Properties specialize in premier hunting properties throughout the West. Check out available hunting properties at StJamesSportingProperties.com.

Good looking, comfortable camo describes Kuyu. The new bush pants from Kuyu keep your legs comfortable while walking through the thorns and bristles. Visit Kuyu.com for sizing and prices. Kennetrek makes great boots for any situation. Most sheep hunters in the high, rocky altitudes use these boots to keep their ankles in check on the rough terrain. Visit Kennetrek.com to learn more. We at Epic Outdoors are a fierce firearms dealer and have many popular models in stock and ready to ship. Call us if you would like help deciding which options are right for you. Fierce Long Range Rifles are a great rifle, and many of our employees here use them. Visit FierceArms.com to learn more. Triple S Polaris specializes in custom setup hunting side-by-sides. They deliver right to your door nationwide. Visit SSSPolaris.com to learn more.

For affordable, long-range rifles and shooting schools, visit ThompsonLongRange.com. Thank you to Phonescope, the best camera optic adapter out there. Phonescope makes high-quality phone cases and optics adapters. Visit Phonescope.com to learn more. StealthCam has high-quality, durable trail cameras that we all love to use. Check them out at www.stealthcam.com or call us to order today. Here at Epic Optics, we are a verified dealer for Swarovski, Zeiss, Leica, Vortex, StealthCam, and more. Call us today to visit about the available optics we have and what would be right for you. Or visit EpicOptics.com.

For only $150 a year, you get nine issues of the Epic Outdoors magazine and unlimited access to our hunt consultants, as well as access to our verified research website. To see all the other member benefits, visit EpicOutdoors.com. If you hunt multiple states, our services are essential. The Epic Outdoors License Application Service is for you. If you ever miss deadlines or would like help developing your long, medium, and short-term license application goals, give us a call today at 435-263-0777 to learn more.