Just a few days ago the Utah DWR released their reccommendations for changing for future hunting seasons, so the Epic Crew decided to do a full run down!
The crew discusses things they’ve seen spectating Mule Deer across the West, and tactics for successful point creep in the upcoming years.
Cache Lynn makes his Epic Podcast debut as a new consultant here at Epic Outdoors!
Logan has an interesting adventure heading down to Arizona.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
00:00:01:05 –> 00:01:18:21
Anything to do with Western Big Game. Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody. Jason Carter. Adam Bronson, the entire epic outdoors crew. Well, pretty much part of him. Bronson, maybe most of them. John, he’s not here. John tapped out, but we got everybody else kinda awesome. We’re fired up. I’ve, I mean, this is my second to third monsters of, but the second one, the second one, I didn’t drink the whole thing. These are serious cans too. They’re not your usual. Well, guess who ordered ’em? I, I don’t know me. That’s why that would explain it. 24 ounces. Adam said that he, I have his permission to order anytime I want, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 24 is better than 16. I don’t know. It’s pretty rough. No, I didn’t know I ordered these twist tops. They’re giant. They’re, they’re legit. Once in a while you get ’em 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, it’s a little different matter. Different than, than different than the desk. Oh, we’ve had a, 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.
00:01:18:21 –> 00:02:30:26
And he is not here. So here he’s Wyatt. I’m here to defend myself. Yeah. Geez. Devon too. But in their defense, they were busy and they, they, they felt it was in their best interest to stay on top of their work and, and it was good. But we needed him here today. We have a lot to cover. Yeah. Just a lot of us. Miscellaneous. There’s a lot going on. In fact, Bronson, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you this excited about a podcast. I, I, Josh. It’s true. It’s just, there’s ever, ever, it’s been how many years since I was to Iraq meeting. I don’t know actually. Well, probably three or four. Do you want to tell us how that RAC meeting went? No. 20. It was kind of an interesting story. No, 17, 18, something like that. Yeah. You were on the other, other side of the fence. I would say you’re on the gamey side according to Wyatt. I, 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. Yeah. And I think that’s gonna happen here shortly. Possibly. Yeah. So, so we’re talking about Utah for you people that know what to rack, we’re not talking about buck racks. We’re talking about regional advisory councils in Utah. That’s regional advisory councils public meeting process. Similar to a cab in Nevada. Okay.
00:02:31:01 –> 00:03:42:15
To county advisory board. What do they call ’em in Arizona? I don’t know. Colorado. I don’t think they care what people think. Arizona. Just those, 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 a acronym. A force. So, 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 gonna crush this place. Well, okay, so hold on. What’s frustrating, what’s frustrating is U 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 of be, Josh calls it Salt Lake, but there’s certain people in Salt Lake that do make some decisions, like just blaming the government in general. But there’s some people that are influential in the government. Well, or Yeah. Tell me I’m wrong. Where’s my line of thinking wrong? Well, or certain people do get these proposals ready to go to the rack 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 a normal bio regional. And I say that just ’cause we have a little internal joke. ’cause Josh was known as a coffee.
00:03:42:18 –> 00:04:58:16
You were kind of the coffee shop bio. Yeah. Yeah. You’re known as a coffee shop bio. I I am too. When you leave that field and turn your back on it. Yeah. Yeah. And you go to the private sector and now I’m a coffee shop biologist. Yeah. As far as they as, as far as the world’s concern. As far as they’re concerned. Yeah. Your input means what Jack squat. Well, but I value it. Well, thank you. You’re welcome. Appreciate it, Josh. I value what you say. Thank you. So anyway, you, you guys are more appreciative. There’s awesome than you’ve ever been in your former work environment. That’s why I’m still here. But what, 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 gonna do this. Right? Yeah. Or, or we agree with you. Yeah. And you, and you have a, 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 bucked, do ratio. Sometimes it’s actual counts, you know, of like in the case of sheep or in the case of elk, things like that. Or age objective on harvest of teeth on certain deer units or certain elk on all of our elk units.
00:04:58:18 –> 00:06:07:15
So there are, 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 measurement, coupled with maybe some social parameters and whatnot. Well, and environmental dates, drought, winter. I, 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 always make a major change. But then we do a kneejerk reaction on the It depends on the years. Yeah. It depends on what the data comes from year to year, what that change is. So explain, just, just tell us. I mean, they’re not paying your bill. Let’s tell us, what do you mean layman’s terms? Let’s, this is the first time I see Josh cut it quiet. Josh, Josh Pollock. We all pay their bills. Let’s get it that way. Oh, I just choose my words wisely try, which I usually do. I don’t. Let’s just talk. I mean, dude, these, they agree with you Josh. They know what they’re doing. They’re smart people. They’re just wanting to issue tags as many tags as they can. And so let’s, 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 cut tags too far. What happens to a state agency?
00:06:08:15 –> 00:07:13:15
Well, I don’t know. Well, I mean, let’s just talk be frank. Issue more, have to ask Wyoming issue, more conservation tax, supplemental supplement their budgets. You lose money. And we’ve already lost 20,000 deer tags in Utah, roughly from the 94 5,000 magic number. 97,000. So we’re doing everything we can to, to keep what we’ve got. Not continue to lose ground. 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 get, give deer tags, I’m gonna go golfing now. And they won’t, won’t hunt, won’t be a hunter that we’ve even had friends of ours say, every kid is entitled to tags. We should give all kids tags. And I, I guess I can’t disagree with the part of that. Yeah. Except when you go in extended drought period. We all suffer a little. There’s just not enough. Sometimes the pie, we, we talked about this pie. We’re talking about pies. Ah, I like pumpkin pie is my favorite. Well, there’s just the pie favorite, the slices of the pie. I used to pile pumpkin pie. It’s not a pie anymore. Now it’s a slide screen. It’s like, you know, you could sole paper thin, you could put it on slide and put it through a microscope and see what it is. Oh, that, that’s tight.
00:07:13:15 –> 00:08:23:16
That’s a thin, that’s slice of pie. Not, can’t even taste it. We all have, 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. 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, and so we’re gonna keep going down the road so we’re Yeah, like drought for the last four years or for example. Okay. I like, it’s hard to, hard to quantify that unless you’re out there on the landscape and you don’t see any funds at all. And your biologist saying, I don’t see any funds in there. Like, everything seems fine. We’re gonna keep going. At that point, you manage off a three year buck D ratio and that three year bucket D ratio is important. That’s what, hey, you’re still within there. So keep the tags where you’re at. I don’t care if, if the drop has not hit the ground and then brons what we saw saw for Pine Valley, they’re, they’re, you know, indicating they want to do an 1100 tag increase. Okay. Are we going?
00:08:24:02 –> 00:09:43:19
Well, well, I mean, and I’m just saying, but those parameters, they’re well within the parameters and it’s not saying to go ahead and jump up tags, but they’re doing it because they feel like fons lift. One of the biggest metrics on general season deer permit numbers used is buck do ratio over three year average. And most units in the state are managed 18 to 20, some are 15 to 17 bucks per hundred dose. Okay. Postseason. Some are, a lot of ’em 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 fa production, some of those years, and then we’re into what looks like the winner of what will always be known as the winner of 2023. Ah, I like it. Right. I mean, has there been one bigger, the winner of death and life? I like that. How’s their life? Two fawns are living like crazy. Yeah. Down here things are healthy and the southern half, it’s different. Okay. There’s different places. Yes. The winner of life. And then up north it’s the winner of this. Let’s, let’s here, here’s an example of that.
00:09:43:26 –> 00:11:07:10
So Fawns, speaking of fawns that are six months old right now. The breeder bucks the Yes. Probably more like nine probably before it happened. I’ve seen it. That’s what’s gonna happen. I told you about that bristle up phone a six mo in Colorado owning his mo. I don’t know man. He had eight of them. Just, he had eight doughs. Yeah. He had a har he was bristle up, strutting around, bust no cameras. So I can’t do a reenactment, but, but buck. But buck. Wow. Anyways, I like it. So the Pine Valley unit here in southern Utah, adult, or excuse me dear Fawn, six months old survival this year. 84%. Geez. 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, for Utah. It is not the case in northern Utah. You wanna see the desert dude? I mean, they can just keep going. Yeah. They can go to Vegas if they want. And we, 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. And there’s no place for them go. Where are they gonna go? Yeah. So, so that’s the good, the bad would be cash. 8%. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:07:24 –> 00:12:03:22
But, but cash is, they’re, they’re indicating what looks like maybe a 20% tag cut in cash. Yeah. Well, and they’re, but their buck ratio is 19. And so you, which is a biologist, which is above, they’re 50 to seven as a biologist, bro, increase is cash file shouldn’t on paper. ’cause yes, they’re, but you know, they’re getting crushed, but you know what’s happened. Yeah. And so cutting in the world and you’re, you’d be cutting tags maybe, which, which is smart more significant than what you’re saying possibly. Well, and the, you gotta keep in mind, I think the division even put on their, the division while they put a statement out with these permit recommendations that these are now, if we fill that, you know, rack and wildlife board stuff is deep and further, we reserve the right to make, make additions to change or the dead deer walking idea where Yeah, we’re gonna continue to have loss through April. So I am gonna put that out there. They have said that and, and, and we have had some big storms in parts of Utah, especially up north since these numbers came out.
00:12:03:22 –> 00:13:08:03
The frustrating part for me is when they add tags in Pine Valley is one of the most emotional emotionally charged general areas in Utah because there’s, 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 ponds or oaks or whatever. And so you, you 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 gonna read through a few of these real fast. ’cause this is down the lines 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 wanna go to some other, I don’t know if the numbers make sense. Oh, it could be deeper. We could all argue that should be tags. A lot of people are calling for closures. Yes. All right. So, okay. So that’s the problem we’re having is, but at least they’ve cut from six to 4,500. They cut 25%. Okay. Ish. We, 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 dough region or area.
00:13:08:19 –> 00:14:41:21
The, the three year average buck to doe ratio is 18.6 with not one year over 18. Oh, eclipsing 19. They’re all one year eighteens one year they’re, they’re all in the eighteens. And actually 2022 if you want get picky was the lowest. Yeah. So you are within objective. Okay. But they’re gonna increase 300 tax. Okay. Monroe, it’s also 18 to 20. Their three year average objective or, or or buck to do average 17.2. That’s below objective. Yeah. 17.2 they’re gonna add 150 tax. Okay. Mount Dutton, 18 to 20 buck per a hundred. Oh unit. Their three year average is 16.7. 16.7. Last I checked was less than 18. Okay. You’re right bro. And they’re increasing by 30, 29%. That’s hard. It’s hard. That’s, I guess our point. And they’re, they’re, and they’re looking at one year, one year, 2022. That, that is high. But, but we hear about the three year average all the time like Josh is talking about. That’s what drives it. Yeah. And then we’re still, we’re still way below 18 to 20. The average is way below and we’re adding tag so it can’t stay consistent. Stay consistent. Here’s another one. Pengu, Pengu Lake. Alright. 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.
00:14:41:23 –> 00:15:50:11
We’ve talked about that. The three year average there is it 18.9 within 18.9? Not at, not perfectly in the middle. Perfectly in the middle of the right. And so, and they had came off a giant cut last year from 41 to 1700 to 1,741. And we’re looking at one slight uptick of a year to 19.4. And they’re want to add 1100 tags to that unit that, that, and, and they, and what are we doing? What are we, what are we hunting? Two point we’re hunting a year. A fawn crop of two points. They’re banking that, that is why we can increase 1100 thousand. But they know what, 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 who’s possible. Oh, it’s probable that he was overridden. I don’t know the facts for that but, but I know what the recommendation is and so some point I would say somebody puts 1100 in there. Well, odds are in your favor. What some overriding there. Well, probably, well, and I’m just saying like, so well it’s a big tag unit, but the interesting, imagine being one of the rack board members. The rack didn’t come up with this. No, but they get to hear all the negative, you know, it’s a brutal meeting. It’s a brutal meeting.
00:15:50:12 –> 00:16:53:07
You’re gonna 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, you were always in the coffee shop. Never. I was pushing, 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 have 15. If you know a 15, be part of your average and go, we have obvious issues. We need to be proactive. It’s, 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% guess. Yeah. And then the next year you have drought come by and you have less 47%. So from, from Joe, Joe Hunter’s perspective, it just feels like they’re slow to cut tags. But quick to add tags. Yes. Yes. That’s, that’s what it feels like. We’re really slow to cut ’em when we know we need ’em.
00:16:53:12 –> 00:18:09:15
But then as soon as we think we can add ’em because of a one year we’re gonna jack and we’re adding yearling bucks and I realize these are general season units, but to take one year’s higher buck bill ratio and then estimate a higher fawn production this year to an increase tags based on the two point cohort that’s about to be available for the all mankind. That’s hard to stomach. Yeah. I’m gonna read two more because I’m not No, you’re just real quick. Love it. I just wanna show, this one illustrates inconsistency. So I’m gonna lump Southwest desert, Zion and Southwest. I’m, I’m together. And Zion, I’m a little partial too. Yeah. It’s hard to, those are both managed for 18 to 20. They’re sitting at Southwest Desert. 18.8. There’s 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 uptick desert. So they’re both seeing healthy increases. San Juan Bajo mountains. This is is the where then inconsistent comes in? Huge increases Percentage wise, I’m talking percentage wise. Okay, keep going. 18 to 20 buck to do ratio, it’s sitting at 20.9. Okay. That’s one of the few that’s over, over the actual 20 we need to smash. But we have bucks going to waste. They’re not even in doing any tags increases. And it’s at 20 point ’cause that bio caress.
00:18:09:19 –> 00:19:12:21
Well, or he’s, I don’t know who they’re just, he’s like, he’s they’re okay with a little bit extra for a minute. Or, or maybe there’s a compelling reason of something like, 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 the, this feels like up north comes the deer tag. Why do they hate us? Why does Salt Lake hate us? 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 question. And this year that’ll, they’re gonna need some deer tags ’cause they’re not gonna have some deer tags. And I know it’s Well, and I feel like a lot of how much states do the, I feel like a lot of states do this. Like we, we, we hammer, we’re hammering on Utah for a minute ’cause 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 to the north? So they cranked them up north, kill off the north. Well, and you right Devin.
00:19:12:24 –> 00:20:24:23
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. So, and maybe listeners might be thinking the same thing. So if you’re cornerstone to all these 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 post-season 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, they do postseason. So November, December transect throughout their unit and they classify deer. There’s 500 deer bucks those fawns. Yeah. You know, so they’re out there and they count bucks do and, and, and fawns. And that’s how they come with their fawn ratio and their buck to donors. But don’t they classify, tell me I’m wrong. They classify the fawns and divide by two and call that buck. Call them bucks. No, no. They don’t count ’em as a those just the kind of things I would like somebody has mentioned that. I just thought it’s just a no, but that is in my mind probably why you’re seeing some of the justification for increases this year. ’cause they’re got, oh, we’re recruiting 80 to 90 fonts per a hundred o that and half of those are gonna be bucks.
00:20:24:27 –> 00:21:20:25
But that is not in the management plan. I I think you can jump to that conclusion. Well some people are, that’s why, that’s another reason I’m bringing it up is that they’re saying there are, there are be many new bucks out there are going to be, but they didn’t get counted in the buck to door ratio. Okay. All right. You don’t have the fawns and say, Hey, we had a hundred fons per hundred. Those there’s 50 bucks per hundred. No. Or these units would be at 60 Yeah. Bucks per hundred those or whatever like that. So that’s, they do it. I just think people would wanna know and sample sample size 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 sample in the unit with 8,000 deer and Yeah. And they don’t do it on every unit. But the survival stuff comes from collars. So the Pine Valley, the Monroe two in the southern region that they have done and will continue to do to, 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 call our X amount of fawns every year in the same areas.
00:21:21:12 –> 00:22:27:13
And they follow those fawns for that timeframe for the six months. And then that’s how they gauge the, the fawn survival. And same, they do the same with adults. That happens in other states too. I mean, watching a lot of stuff in Idaho and they’re, I mean their 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, they’re, what they’re also using, I, I don’t understand it fully, but I know they’ve come up since I’ve, 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, 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 fa 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 ’em what their population will be at the end of this year. It tells ’em what the buck to dough ratio will be. And then they can adjust all it’s, all the variables can play into their decision on what they want it to be.
00:22:27:13 –> 00:23:35:19
Yeah. So they, they could use that or use that. That’s what they’ve done. The burn on pengu. That’s, I mean, there’s things that can happen. That’s what they’ve done. And so they, they have, they even have a metrics. So that says, okay, maybe we’re gonna 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 gonna be over 20 bucks per hundred dose 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 a level. And they generally, on general season units, they wanna keep it on the low end of level. So when you say 18 to 20 bucks per hundred dose keeper at 17.9. As a biologist, I always wanted to keep it at 2019 to 20. No, we want to keep it to 18. Like why have the, you mean, you mean powers to be one that you wanted 20? Yeah, yeah. Yep. In comparison, throw it out for far as just for the listeners, Henry’s, Henry’s and other, you know, trophy units. What are they keeping ’em at? What’s the goal? Roughly an age. They’re 40. It’s an age of harvested bucks, but they’re normally 45 to 55. 55 for a hundred on those. Pretty, and that’s where like the management buck tags come from.
00:23:35:25 –> 00:24:37:05
Is that, is that, but they keep the trophy tags come off of an age classification. They want X amount of bucks to be the x amount of harvested bucks to be five and a half years old. What? Yeah, so one of the, so in in summary, my frustration comes from if we have a three year, if our three year average butt to-do 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 we, it hasn’t stopped turn to snow, but it hasn’t stopped. It’s a beautiful sign. 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 point and we’re using it as a trend point. Yeah. ’cause we need to make up for some lost ground up north. And Pine Valley’s our spot. No question. And we’ve, 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 1500 deer tags out of that. And I don’t know how that’s possible. I have a heart. That’s the biggest thing. And I said it, I mean, I don’t know how it’s possible I said it like, like I just told you, like you said, man, I wonder what it’s gonna look like.
00:24:37:06 –> 00:25:39:13
Are we talking 40,000 deer tags in the state of Utah? Or 50? No, the same is not, they couldn’t do it. Oh, statistically the same for purposes 1500 under 7300, 70 3000. 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 70 3075 versus 71,600. And, and we’ve got a large part of the state that’s saying, oh my gosh, we need to shut it down. We need to shut state the deer hunting across the state down. I mean, that’s extreme. I’m not, it’s way extreme. I don’t agree with it. I’m not in that court. Of course. But, but I mean, I just can’t, I can’t accept the, the, hey, we’ve gotta make these numbers work out somehow because on paper we should probably cut a lot of taxes. We’ve gotta make up. So then will get frustrated. The problem I have is when the, when the, let’s call it Salt Lake or the division or whatever, come out with recommendations. They say, well we, we would accept this, but let’s shoot a high and then we’ll come to an agreement at the rack. We’ll come in a little bit lower public will like us, but it it causes us to get, we have to go to the meetings and check everything and get mad. And it, and it frustrates the public.
00:25:39:16 –> 00:26:42:04
And then it arms the legislature to say, well, we’ll take care of this. We can’t trust the division, so we’re gonna 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. So I don’t wanna do that. Like, I don’t wanna, I wanna 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 gonna back you. Unless, unless something is crazy and we don’t see it the way we want to trust you. And, and I feel like that’s not there because they’re playing games. But it’s a, it’s a high stakes games. I get it. They’ve got a, a big budget to work, work with. They’re budget, everything. They’re pulled a hundred directions. Just, just don’t try to make the numbers justified by whatever you want. Because they, and if you got little, you got Ta Dutton, we’re talking two 50 to three 50, a hundred total tags in the scheme of 73,000. Just stay with, 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, I think it’s tough too because we’re, we’re in the process now.
00:26:42:07 –> 00:27:47:16
I feel like we’re, 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, we even have the slash tags, then we have an increase. So now we want to hammer any progress we made. Yeah. The two points that we’re not. And I think that’s the, the progress is the two points. One good fond recruitment here. It’s not that we all of sudden have a bunch more four points. I mean we did have the two by threes that are now slightly better or whatever the thing. We do have aggressive button bucks according to arch box. But I mean, that was a Colorado. They’re not Colorado, Utah three. But I mean, they are not legit. They are not. What? That’s a little bugger. They’re not even legal, legal. Legal. The thing about it too is, is Doug, we’re not, none of us here are saying that by decreasing tags, populations are gonna increase. ’cause you don’t increase populations. Yeah. With your male numbers. You know, you need your dose to do that. I get it. But the deal, the deal is we’re missing a couple of age classes of bucks where we’ve literally had, you know, low, low, low survival. So there’s just the number of bucks.
00:27:47:27 –> 00:28:48:19
There’s last year a bunch of, because we had good survival last year too. So a bunch of yearling bucks we went through, made it through, there’re now two years old, but there’s kind of a lack of three or 4-year-old bucks out there. A lot of units we have, all we have is young bucks. Yes. Right. Now that’s the, that’s the complaint. And we cut the tag and then you guys as biologists and we’ve set out of, of, 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. There’s a, they are button bucks. All right. And we are ready to kill the crap outta ’em. There’s a, and there’s a lot of good for having older bucks in, in the, in the age. Well we’ve talked about that. And they’re tangibles and intangibles. Yeah. What bucks live. ’cause they’re also gonna say, well, a hard now after this year, I guarantee you there’s gonna be a significant amount of talk about carrying capacities and extra buck mouths on the mountain is a carrying capacity issue is a waste of space. You know, because they should be going home in the back of the truck, then on the mountain, whatever.
00:28:48:21 –> 00:29:51:18
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, it’s been pretty, pretty well proven that droughts are worse than, 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 fass die. The old, the old grandpas die. And the young f fawns die. You need a good dor number to of deer to in, in the middle three that are good, strong, healthy deer to push your populations that can breed and continue on productive. Really doesn’t even have anything to with size. All, all the funds 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, that’s I guess my thing necessarily is yeah, sure. Big, big older bucks generally get bigger, whatever. But we need a good, healthy age class of deer. 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. Like, and, and but compared to what it used to be in 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.
00:29:51:27 –> 00:30:50:01
He saw a hundred deer last night. He’s like you and he’s from Beaver. Okay. He, so let’s was 50. So it was 50 deer beaver, if he’s from Beaver, he told at least half a lie. Okay. So he somehow saw 50 deer. If he saw 50 deer, probably 45 more than he would’ve 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, if he knew the unit, if unit in, you know the unit. I know the, it’s a no name, but it has a number and a name. It does, but it’s a known name. But it’s a, it is not on the deer map south of the ditch. Nobody’s ever, I don’t even know anybody that’s on deer there. Maybe one. Well I do know one guy and he did kill a good deer there, but I’m just saying he saw deer. He’s like, man, it’s unbelievable. Like it’s, it made his whole night. Yeah. Like it’s just, you know, didn’t find a single antler. Still hasn’t found it out. But it’s hard right now. It’s probably hard when you’re driving your side by side. Okay, now let’s explain that real quick because just to break this up for a minute. ’cause we got more tags to talk about. He sends us, he sends us tech. Go ahead Bronson. Logan works here. Well, well, I mean Logan works here.
00:30:50:01 –> 00:32:01:05
He sends us a picture in the side-by-side, slid off the trailer and I guess across 75 down the highway. Yeah. Across the nav. Across the nav. Right. And that’s, which is surprising. ’cause that road is so smooth and straight. Yeah. It’s the best. You don’t feel like you’re in a sailboat at all. Catalyst dodging res dogs. It’s, anyway, rolls off the back. Rolls off the back. But the but went chilled front. Yes. No, the winch actually came loose. The 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, whatever he was going soft rubber at TV tires, flat spots. Yeah. Hey, it’s fine. The park. I thought maybe the park, the parking gear, whatever you call it, park would’ve been walled out. No, he’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 Arum roll. That thing was fine. There’s a lot of smoke falls right out. Anyway, he’s down there seeing deer like crazy. And that’s all. I think that’s a, there’s, that’s an intangible. What the paper says is there’s plenty of deer on the landscape or, or we have struggles or whatever it says. Right. But then there’s also this social, we don’t have what we want.
00:32:01:20 –> 00:33:01:29
You know, and it’s not just the trophy hunters. I mean we don’t, we’re not trying to make general units a pons spot. We’re not talking about, we don’t, we’re not talking about that. That there’s not enough big bucks down. We haven’t even said that once today. We’re talking about, I wanna say it populations, we’re talking abouts age structure bucks. And let’s let a, let’s, can we talk, can we talk about big bucks for, I think part of it is, well go ahead. You’ve got, you’ve got those numbers, but that’s a ratio of what today’s numbers are. Or last year’s numbers. That’s all you think about 10, 15 years ago, how many dare you saw? And the numbers are there. You can’t deny can’t just numbers. Just if the numbers weren’t on the paper, the what that I saw then those bios or Salt Lake fudged those numbers because I saw, 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 that times many more bucks. But the same 20 bucks per hundreds. Exactly. If you have 10, that’s the difference for if you have 10 deer and eight of ’em are do and two of them are bucks, you’re with Jen. Yes. Issued more tax. That’s what would be on that paper issue. More tax.
00:33:02:01 –> 00:34:10:16
If you had, if you had three bucks, you would issue an extra book. 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 pocket 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 caress about this. We want to know more north than Utah. We, we want to, we wanna know, we wanna fill, 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, the private land that’s up there. Winter range, lack of winter range. How would you, like, how would you like to manage when there’s 30% public and your private manages everything. Yeah. I wouldn’t even want to touch it. Yeah. Be tough. And it gets bought by by the housing developments. Yeah. It’s always, it’s encroaching on ’em all the time. Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. 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. No, no. We were scratching. I wanna 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.
00:34:10:16 –> 00:35:07:27
Because you’d go down to a farmer’s field and there’d be 700 deer in there in September, you know, and you’re having to deal and you’re having to deal with that side. And it was, was, and these guys hate on deer pretty disgust now then they hate on the DW R but now they hate on, you know, then they don’t hate on deer. And you and you now you go see those same fields and there might be 2015, something like that. I, I don’t know. The problem I have is like, and when we can, 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 wanna make sure that when we do have a hard winter, there’s not a lot being wasted. And so we’re gonna keep ’em in people’s freezers. And I hate that. Like have, well 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 there’s, but there’s so, and now, but there’s a bit of increase in increase in farm production. We’re just gonna immediately crush it. That’s problem. But the bis will say, we will never be back in, especially in Colorado, it’s from the 2003 to 2006. We will never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever see it again.
00:35:08:07 –> 00:36:15:15
And my point is, why don’t you try to let it, well, it’s okay if we have a bad wedding once in a while. Let it here and there. Let it, let it try it. Yeah. Let people have amazing world-class experiences. And it’s, I’m not saying for every unit year Yeah. Or every unit or whatever. But like last year in 44, let let a few people have that kind of experience manage for that once in a while. It’s, it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world. Well, 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, 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. Let that happen slightly. Yeah. If it gets to 23 or four increasing in tags. But what’s almost, anyway, I’m gonna call it laughable in some some ways. We got a, 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 gonna worry about how you kill bucks in certain units, you know, certain what we’re supposed to do.
00:36:16:05 –> 00:37:16:10
Well I, I guess it’s an, it’s it’s an ethical discussion and you can have that. They want us to take ’em home and put ’em in our freezer. Freezer. It’s now, it’s now potentially lawful no longer. Well that’s right. It’s gonna be lawful. But I mean, to me that’s losing focus at ati. I mean, yeah, it might bother some people that, some people hunt that way, but man, that’s like, I mean we had opportunities done other things, in my opinion to have a, have a lot bigger impact on maintaining opportunity and reducing harvest. Like whether it be scopes on muzzle odors or other things versus where did that come from in, in, 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 that 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 ’cause I didn’t get to kill that buck and they killed that buck ’cause they had a radio or, or they’re on a technology committee and they, they’re, they’re there to make some change, but they don’t want to take their scope off the muzz loader and they just, they’ve got it’s personal or whatever and they like it and they want it there.
00:37:16:20 –> 00:38:26:01
But I mean, so we’re gonna go after an ethical battle battle versus, so we’re do something else. Yeah. Something that really we’ll do something else because Crockett says that’s what our ethics should be or Popp and Young says that’s what our ethics should be. But we all, there’s a growing move. How many hundreds or thousands of bucks or bulls in Utah die because of radis And, and I use that term deliberately, hundreds or thousands versus how many hundreds of or thousands of bucks get killed by certain too long a seasons or too many tags or scoped muzzle loaders are all that. My kid shot one with a scoped muzz loader last year at 360 yards. Okay. Okay. He would he have killed that with an open site? Probably not. Absolutely not. Now he may have ended up killing that deer, stalking it differently, but Oh yeah, we would’ve been way aggressive. I mean it, there’s a decent chance we would’ve killed it. But open sight is monumentally different. Okay. It’s monumentally different. And if you had that or, or tag numbers or season length or whatever, you have the ability to literally affect hundreds or thousands of bucks or bulls. But, but people don’t want to without be told. No. Okay. And and I think, and I don’t wanna to be told regard as far as they want to use their technology.
00:38:26:03 –> 00:39:32:24
They want to use, oh yeah, they want to use extreme bows or they want to be able to, whatever. I mean people, they want to use whatever. And maybe there’s more coming next year, year. I, I don’t know. There could be there, there probably is. But I’m just saying that one came outta left field when it felt like there’s other ways to maintain. I don’t know of anybody that even thought that might come maintain. Didn’t even but Bronson. But it, but it, we people kill bucks and are lead and on stocks with radios. I’m not gonna disagree with that. No, it, it hap absolutely happens. And, and I said bucks and bulls. I mean there’s mountain goats and there’s moose and there’s sheep and there’s radios, work antelope and everything. Radio radios work. So of all those things, okay, we, we tackled that. Alright. I would love to see how much our hunting or our, our populations flourish because of that. How about rods on muzzles? If you had to use open sites, just like what New Mexico did? Yeah. Oh yeah. New Mexico was the state that built long range Muslim orders. New Mexico was where you went. First one to use long range muzz. They in Arizona, time Arizona too. But, but you got tags regularly in New Mexico. People, people, they were 500 yard guns before any other state realized they were 500 yard guns.
00:39:32:25 –> 00:40:38:11
And I contend we had, we had, 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, I mean we used to use, we used to use volume instead of weighted. Now we’re taking a scale on our hunts with us to weight, to weigh the fricking grain powder. So I’ve got a question and 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 count for those success rates? Is that why they’re getting rid of radios? Is that why because we’re getting too successful. They wanna bring the success rates down so they can allocate more tax. That’s the idea of technology addressing technology. Right? Well, I would, I would contend on the scope muzz loader. That is the, that is the, 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 the muzz loader. Is it primitive or not?
00:40:38:28 –> 00:41:44:06
I mean, but with Muzz have Hunter have a little better drawing on and, and, and quite frankly, like the best elk season we got, you know what I mean? I guess with radios, I guess how much is harvest success gonna go down because of that? Who knows how, I mean, on certain hunts perhaps that goes down. You can still use ’em to communicate guide to guide, guide to Hunter. That’s gonna, that’s gonna be my problem is trying to think about how they’re, 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. Let make sure dad stays, you know, whatever, you know, you don’t lose grandpa. Whatever you need to do. If you need, 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 called, is that, is that initiating start? Where do you draw the line? Is that initiating the stock? Every morning he starts stalking at the Maverick on as soon as the tires are on the oil stalking deer T from Todds up on top. Because I was on a deer.
00:41:44:14 –> 00:42:42:29
When does that stock start? Yeah, when you leave the truck, 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 I don’t mind ’em, I, hey, I like that they’re addressing, I, I like the idea of addressing technology and just think, what is the motive behind that one? I, I think that one, honestly, if I, I wasn’t in these meetings, I, 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, 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 a well over a year and didn’t have anything done. Probably because it’s confusing, it’s bad. All of us here have an idea of what should be legal or allowed to hunt. People don’t wanna be told no, it’s the new this generation. So to come up, up with something. But we’ve also, it’s hard. We’ve also said we we’re, we’re the biggest proponents of being, we have have to be one to give stuff. But you’re one of the, you’re one of the few. Okay.
00:42:43:05 –> 00:43:42:01
Well I, I know but I mean I also have three or four muzzle orders. ’cause I hunt different states and I have to have four amazing breaches. One of those. Yeah. And then I gotta have one for Colorado and then I gotta have a different one for Idaho, Oregon, Washington. ’cause I don’t, you know, just ’cause you have to and we adapt and we are gonna do that. Rip scopes off m loaders in New Mexico this year. No problem. We’re we’re, we’re advocates of honoring the, the rules and doing it. But I just think there’s, at certain times, what can you get the most bang for the buck of, and I, and I think they missed it from this first. And there’s a, there’s a getting, 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 sites if you believe in open sites. You’re right. You’re right. But I mean, but it’s, it’s human nature, nature. If everybody’s got it take, and I’m out there in a competitive world on a public land unit and I am trying to stock in, you know, on a box that you’re gonna want to kill all a once in a lifetime tag that are hard to obtain. You want all of the variables you can control.
00:43:42:03 –> 00:44:35:21
Well I think we saw that with the odds on limited entry, elk and deer. Both. Why you’ve hunted Henry’s a bunch. So have I over the years the muzz leader 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, one open sites, including myself, I liked them better than one power scope. I shot the bull in Southwest desert open site. But it was always, you know why 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 using, willing to use a muzzle it or apply that way. And it was a hard sale sometimes. Yeah. I was willing to do it. I was willing to do archery just even go sooner. But, but you had to sell guys on it and, and it still is a tough hunt. It was a tougher, it was a challenge to hunt now that, that’s harder to draw than the rifle tax. Yeah. Get first dibs on the buck and basically have a, a rifle in your hands. That’s right. There’s a reason for it. There’s a reason. So it’s, it, it’s effective now.
00:44:36:04 –> 00:45:39:18
I I mean there’s other instances and, and if you magnify that across general season deer hunting, you know, and I know that we may have data out there that somebody, hey, harvest hasn’t gone up and all that. Oh, okay. But, but I’m here to tell you that smoke and mirrors or whatever, because you kill more deer with scope muzz owners than you don’t do with open site muzz owners. I, I, I mean I, it feels like a little bit of a bandaid. I mean, there no doubt there just feels like it does make stocks very successful as far as the particular stalk. Do you even have to But overall success. What’s that? Yeah. You don’t even have to stalk with the scope Muslim anymore. I know, I know. That’s what I mean. I I know archery hunting too. Archery hunters are walked in by radio. I mean it’s common. Yeah. It’s just, you know, but I, it, it addresses a small, your point is, is if you’re gonna address it like this is, this is, that’s a bad is you guys have, it’s half. Let’s, and I know I’m, I, it’s easy for me as a, as an armchair coffee shop, coffee shop biologist slash hunter to, to step back. I don’t like that. It just feels like we had opportunities to really maybe do something to rein some things in.
00:45:39:28 –> 00:46:36:07
And there have been some things, there has been, you know, thermal imaging and there has been other stuff that has technology’s increases that didn’t exist five years ago, relatively from a widespread, but people, people hated the change and they hated the baiting and the baiting had to go through legislature, trail cameras and everything else. And, 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 gonna make major changes, then, 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, 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 gonna go to the rack and I’m gonna go to the rack and y’all are going to the rack. But what I ha the problem I have is we have this committee that represents us all as sportsman, 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 to blunt that with 500 opinions, just like what you were saying, Josh. And we all have opinions. We all have opinions.
00:46:36:16 –> 00:47:34:28
And so then you go and nothing gets done and everybody fights and you walk away mad and there’s, and the division split decisions, it goes, goes to the wildlife board and they end up doing what they decide they wanna 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 bandaid and a few other things. There’s some electronics on bows. Well, you know, again how that they’ve addressed in it. Yeah, but I, I’m with you. Big picture of things. I’m with you. I mean, I’m with you. I don’t think that saves a lot of why you more animals got. What do you think? What do you really think? Well, 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, you’ve been out a lot, Devin, you’ve been out a lot. Gosh. I mean you guys real world experience. I’m talking general deer still general deer and even, even whatever, whatever, whatever your thoughts are. Devin made a good point there that they just, the Deere numbers are not on the landscape right now.
00:47:35:04 –> 00:48:44:16
We’re managing into a very small, you know, very small sample size when you know there could be a lot more deer. I remember back in high school days, just driving 15 minutes from town and seeing a hundred deer, 10 minutes from town seeing hundred deer, four to 6-year-old bucks. Yeah. After the hunts. And to remind our listeners, these guys were born in the late eighties or nineties, right? Re not, yeah, late eighties getting old, but well, not quite there yet. At the time we were graduating from high school, you guys were hitting the ground old boxing box across the landscape. That’s what we’re talking about. Good instructure of bucks in the room. Button bucks or button. Hey these stupid rock. Were bucks. Heck in the world a better place. It’s just hard when you know what it has been and you’ve seen it. And like I said, we’re, we’re not even, we’re we’re in our, we’re Well you just turned 36, 5, 30, 36, 30, 34, 36. We’re not talking to our grandparents. We’re not talking to grandparents. And you’ve seen a change. Imagine the change. We even, even from 14 to 17, we, we had it in the rutt with Muslim, I mean, yeah, yeah. But even like Josh said, even 2014 to 17 ish compared to now that that is not even 10 years roughly.
00:48:44:16 –> 00:49:45:25
And I think’s fun dramatically different when there’s incredible amounts of deer and, and good weather and all of those fun things and big bucks for everybody. Everybody’s happy. Yeah. It was like 20 no contention. You mean like 2019? Well yeah, that, that remember that. Yeah. Never been better after one good year. There’s no contention. There was a lot of tags too. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s still a lot of, lot of, and there was people that were so critical of division one year and the next year they’re just saying, wow, that was amazing. I’d take this tag over at Henry’s. We heard that multiple places. And so anyway, when times are tough, we all just gotta suck it up a little bit and and we’re saying leave the tags cut. That means we’re not gonna draw as often. Bronson. No. And you don’t have to shoot a deer. Which might we, we threw this out there last time. Oh yeah. That’s a So what? Yeah. What’s epic outdoors do? Well let’s hold on one, hold on. Let’s, let’s finish the that. Let’s talk about the list that came out versus the expo tags real quick. I thought I would segue, but we’re gonna go a different direction. Talked just about general season years. I just wanna finish topics. So we haven’t even talked about limited entry. That’s what you want to do.
00:49:46:01 –> 00:50:56:29
Well and then also like how do guys know the whole reason for the change in the, the application period. And so we could get this list and then this list would tell us where there would be bonus tags versus regular draw tags and yeah, I just kinda want to talk about that. When we got this list and everybody that’s seen this, there’s a few things that 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 ’em for each, each there’s a PowerPoint presentation, but right underneath the PowerPoint link, there’s a actual PDFI believe it is of the actual list. But when we started looking at, you saw certain units, oh there didn’t get, there was the same tags as last year. Alright, no increase. But then you ended up looking at, looking at the drawing odds, which we knew there was not, which shows you the exact tags last year were issued the drawing and they’re slightly different. And so I’m like, I think the, the expo tags or something. Yeah, were are being off of these because there’s a lot of tags missing and in some cases it goes from like one non-resident, two non-resident tags to one and there’s, there’s no explanation for it. Where’d that tag go?
00:50:57:01 –> 00:52:04:11
It was supposed to be a zero something game, whatever, same thing. So we brought that up with the division. And this is pretty important movement would be just bringing up something stupid here, but there’s a lot of tags out here that you’re gonna see on this list. That units that say they’re gonna 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’ve been probably really easy and and the quickest way I guess we Well they just, it was, it wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t, no, I think they just was intentional. No, it wasn’t no oversight. I’m just saying it would’ve 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. ’cause you deducted ’em this year, not last year. That’s 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 actual expo tags deducted. So the actual numbers of tags in the draw are accurate on the hunt planner. Yep. Not on this form.
00:52:04:25 –> 00:53:02:25
If you, and, and maybe we’ll just go through a few of these that you’re gonna see. Like let, let’s go through, oh, moose is not that big a deal. You got some Wasatch tags that were taken out, but there’s gonna go from three to two non-resident tags and the zero to one like on the Morgan South Rich. But now it’s, but maybe we should hit on why the, I guess the, when there’s two tags and one gets taken away, why that’s so important. Yeah. One gets taken away like on a, on a non-resident unit when there’s two and it goes to one, you don’t have a max point tag. That would be a random only tag. Yeah, that’s a big deal. So if there’s one resident tag outta 26 moose tags on the wash tag, not, 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 gonna be two, there’s 25 in the resident pool. But you jumped to Mountain go Beaver. Beaver on paper says for 2023 there’s gonna 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, they’re gonna be one, they pulled an expo tag from the non-resident pool on Beaver.
00:53:03:00 –> 00:54:06:04
Even though it says two non-resident tags, that’s gonna be reduced to one and there’s not gonna be max point tag. Now it’s now a guy with high points can’t say I can command that tag. We like to call it four signal draw. Don don’t put, it’s, 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 gonna 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, but if you look down the page on the north slope, paan is 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 gonna be two North Slope. 21 is in 2023 west tags this year. Yeah. 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. Another one you need to want maybe look at is like the Henry Mountains Hunter’s choice tag. The first hunt. Alright. It shows that there’s gonna be two non-resident tags in this year on bison. On bison. Yep. Henry Mountains bison hunter’s choice shows there’s gonna be two. All right. There was an ex bow tag pulled from that. There’s only gonna give one. So those are things to avoid.
00:54:06:08 –> 00:55:06:19
There’s a few other on sheep just for just for instance, we don’t want necessarily go through ’em all just no. Yeah. But it’s, it’s a big deal when you’re analyzing draws and these are once in lifetime type tags, just type tags. I mean some of ’em are once in lifetime, but some elk 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 we’re, 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 gonna give. Go to the hump planner, go to the, when you say hunt planter, it’s hunt planter.com. That’s a thing on their website. It’s yeah, it’s a program under wildlife. It’s not, yeah, it’s not our epic hunt planner. It is on the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Big game hunt planner. Go search it, buy species and buy hunt. They will have these proposed tag numbers there with expo permits deducted. So you could holler at us too, if you remember if you want. Yep. So there’s a few elk hunts that are gonna be cut hard, like, you know, well a lot of ’em, there was zero last year.
00:55:06:19 –> 00:56:06:17
It’s new, there’s new mids, a lot of new mids and so there’s tags there and you kind of wanna know there’s four on the LaSalle for the mids for on, on elk. I mean there’s, there’s two on Monroe for the mid, like that means one’s gonna go to max and one’s gonna go random. So there’s just a few cool opportunities that there’s something there. Also, some of those that show too that are not, they’re gonna go to one. Those are the ones you really need to pay attention to. Yeah. You know, really like, yeah. You know. Alright, I like it. I just kind of, yeah, we wanted to talk about that a little bit. And 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 Manus earlier about that. And I think we saw, 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 gonna 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 saw, we heard, we’re gonna go to the midseason and I don’t know how everybody feels about that hunt, but what do you feel?
00:56:07:06 –> 00:57:13:15
I think it’s gonna be an underutilized hunt if you can just get past the mental blockage of You mean spike, 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, that But hey, but if you, if I was was a non-resident, I’d be all over that. I’d be all over that October. What else are you gonna wait for? October Seven’s a great hunt. It’s, it’s gonna be a good hunt. And, and let’s face it, spike hunters, do they hunt the full 12 days hard sometimes. Typically no weekends or more popular. But you know, you get into the middle of the week it’s probably pretty slow. But 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 seven. It’s definitely so to account. No they don’t. They don’t, yeah. To account for, I think hunts are gonna be underutilized this year. I I, I absolutely think that, and I do think they can be good hunts. Still gonna sh some units can have incredible bugling probably in some units that that laid archery’s pretty much. Four residents and one non-residents straight through across the board pretty much. Except I believe it was man, isn’t it? Yeah. Well down here. But anyway, kind of crazy.
00:57:13:25 –> 00:58:30:27
So there’s only one, well I’m just saying, remember when we were talking about it and we were, we’d heard, well people were throwing out numbers like 200 tags in this. I know that was, I mean you’d never know though, right? ’cause you’d lose faith at some point. That’s my, 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, where are, where are we at? Yeah, Manti did have, did have nine and one. So yeah. Anyway, still have one non-resident for anybody. It’s a lot to look at. It’s worth your time going to look at those permits. You might go quickly to the, you know, 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 wanna make sure that those two tags that you see on one recommendation are really gonna 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. ’cause they could get modified, what is it, two days after the deadline’s over or whatever May part of May. So, but, but understanding why the division moved the application period to the end of April this year.
00:58:31:18 –> 00:59:37:17
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 gonna dramatically alter a bunch of people that ought play it because they moved it here for that purpose. It better be pretty compelling. Now, general season deer, I think there’s gonna be a lot of, there’s gonna be a lot of discussion on, as we’ve talked about, well we wanna be able to have the latitude to make adjustments. Yeah. We, we do. We want, we wanna 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 gonna radically eliminate tags from just don’t play games Yeah. With people. People are wound up, you moved it. Yeah. You moved it for a reason. Let that kind of work. Unless there’s a really compelling reason to, to deviate dramatically because you’re gonna, otherwise you’re gonna have them buy it. Yeah. So Riot and he not a quiet riot either. Who remembers that? I guess that that process, just so people know, anybody can go make a comment. Residence non-residents, whatever, go on the, the Utah DWR website. The same place where they have the recommendations, these permit numbers and all that stuff.
00:59:37:17 –> 01:00:48:17
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, 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 voice, your opinion. It’s a good way I would suggest go doing that. My, my recommendation would be don’t just sit back and complain. Actually go do, do that. At the very minimum. If you feel like you need to, I like it. You know, we also were waiting, waiting for some tag numbers to come out for Wyoming Bronson. And, and a large part of that was, was because with the 90 10 split on on the big animals, you, sheep, goat, moose, bison, we were, we were interested in what that was gonna look like for random tags because there’s not very many people at that top point here for sheep and moose. And so, you know, when they came out we were like, man, are they gonna issue a random tag? ’cause on paper it looks like they may not. And they ended up giving enough tags to do that. Well justifying it. Yeah. ’cause in theory you should have 40, 40 tags on a unit sheep unit. Yep.
01:00:48:17 –> 01:01:56:07
Before you give, because 10% would be four Four and then you got a 75 25 split. That’s right. And so do you know for, for random versus preference tags. But they rounded, I guess in favor of non-residents probably to avoid a riot. I’m gonna use that word again. Okay. And unit five is the only unit proposed to have at least four non-resident permits. Which four sheep for sheep. 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 be, you should amend, like don’t, don’t walk, run, go amend. Yeah. And amend, go there. So 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-IT tags. There’s gonna 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, it’s gonna be tough, but try to guess accordingly. Now with moose, there’s only two units. Unit 25 and Unit 26 are the only two units that are proposed to have random, a random non-resident permit this year.
01:01:56:09 –> 01:02:58:17
So and so in lot in these areas, if they give three, like in a lot of states the first tag’s gonna go random. But in these are in this, these cases, the first three tags go to preference and then you’ll start in with a random tag. So it’s kind of kind of inverse of what It’s not intuitive. No. And it, yeah, most mostly ever state, Utah, Arizona, all those, you have a chance to draw everything. You don’t, you don’t. In the case of, of wine, Wyoming, even, even during deer and elk, you get low tag units. A lot of, a lot of units that we show no tag available in the random draw for 10 or 25 type units, 10 or 25 elk or deer tags. Been some pretty, you know, pretty, pretty compelling data as far as you know, antelope and deer and we’ve covered that a little bit and some of the die off and things like that. And it’s, it’s monster. It’s and it’s happening still’s. Yeah, it’s still happening. And so these tags are thrown out there. We don’t see a lot of change coming at just a guess for the big animals. But as far as your, your antelope and deer, that’s gonna be pretty fluid. Yeah, that was the date I think what 17 18th or 18 19th was the meeting commission in Wyoming.
01:02:59:12 –> 01:04:09:06
And you know, since those numbers, these numbers are out on their website under their regulations link and you can see the proposed, you know, both season dates, tag quotas, everything like that on the Wyoming Game of Fishes website, they’re pretty easy to find if you click the regulations, you know, where if you click, you click the regulations link. That’s right. But I contend that we’re gonna see, especially with antelope and certain deer, you’re gonna see even deeper cuts at the commission approved than what we’re seeing proposed because they, there’s some big cuts proposed. These, these were what, two weeks ago that they came out and they’ve been crushed, you know, with snow even after that, even into late March and April. So it’s sad. All it can be an easier to burn and it’s gotta be an inverse relationship with winter. Normally now the higher country’s got less snow than a lot of the winter range and you know, the, the lower elevation country. So it’s a, it’s a unique situation that going on. Sad, 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 there. So. Alright, well let’s talk about something positive. Yeah, we’re talking about positive because it’s, there’s a negative connotation. We gotta try to make positive. Why don’t we have a crushing me right off the bat.
01:04:09:06 –> 01:05:14:29
Well, why are we gonna do this little giveaway? Why are we gonna do this? We’re gonna do a big giveaway. Okay, but why giant? Because because it’s fun. Mules matter. Mules matter. I like it. So we’re, we threw this out last time. Devon’s like, what? I missed this part. We threw this out last time’s. Gotta look like, I don’t know what you guys are talking about. About Well we threw this out on the last podcast and, and just like, hey, I, I think I just said, hey, there’s a, there’s gotta be a way. Like if, do you remember in Utah, back, back in the dedicated hunter area as a little bit of incentive not to just smoke a two point or a little buck at the end of your year if you returned an unused tag as a dedicated hunter for every like 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 a thousand unused tags or you know, 5,000, you know that it was a slight incentive to something your mind to not just go and smash the smallest book you can find on last night just to be a hero.
01:05:15:05 –> 01:06:21:07
Okay, well that’s kind of what our philosophy was and we’re, hey, we are not talking about kids or people that wanna shoot. We’re just talking about maybe people that you don’t need to shoot a deer just to say I was successful and, and look at me. Okay, so we we threw it out last time. Hey, what, what if we had some kind of incentive in some of these places? It was, it was a lot of comments. And we would do, we’d 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 unquenched deer tags and if you wanna whole punch out your date of birth and your CID numbers, all that fine. But it better have your name better be tag address on their original tag. Send it in. We’re in the works of having something big. What, what are you shaking your head out? I just, they have this thing called the blur on a computer and send it like whole punch. No, no, it’s people original tags. The tag is gonna go in the bin. The paper tags are gonna go in the bin. We know what tags look like. You can’t, you can’t make a paper, you can’t get a Photoshop one over. Well you’re not gonna take a Colorado.
01:06:21:07 –> 01:07:25:23
You could Photoshop it in July and, and and then have it there and then punch it in November. Ah, that’s why the whole punch Okay. Needs to be the paper unused freaking tag. And yes, we believe all people are honest and chased and true benevolent and all their, 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 winter. But you got knee tag too bad. You gotta go get you, you get yourself a paper tag that’s, we’ve already, we’ve crossed the bridges. We’ve, we’ve flushed out a few things. T tags. I’m sorry. Get a paper tag. It’s the only way you can enter. But if you have a deer tag in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming and you didn’t kill a buck, the 2023, you submit it December one, we’re gonna draw, we’re gonna do a drawing and the prizes are loading as we speak. We’ve had people here’re the podcast I’m calling offer for prices. And we’re gonna throw in, well we’ve had optics companies do that. And we’re gonna throw in Bronson and we’re gonna throw a fierce rifle. We’re gonna be throw a fierce rifle, 300 rum out there. We’ll throw a, a Hoyt VTM 34 and Ku Verde. That’s right. All right. That’s right. And a huge optics package. And who knows what else.
01:07:26:01 –> 01:08:38:24
And it’s the building daily. Hey. And we’re gonna have a bombs on mom’s bucket too. If you had a dough tag that you didn’t fill are and you submit it, we’re gonna put your name in a show bucket. I love it. It might be biggest package, it might be the biggest giveaway. It’s not, you’re not cow. It’s not for cow elk. It’s only for not shoot only do not cow elk. No, we’re gonna clarify that. This is only for deer muley matter. It’s the mu matter giveaway. All right. So you may want to use some of those analyst points. I, I was looking so come on. See here’s Josh. This best system. No, this is our attempt to help point creep around the west, burn them just to send it just and send your tag in. Considered a 20 or $30 resident fee tag back in. You don’t have it to submit for a drawing that your point there is supposedly a walking human being breathing in this state of Utah with 16 pronghorn antelope dough points. Wow. Who is that? I would like a phone call. They’re hoping for an either sex hunt someday that you could use dough points. Can you and I we can submit Yes. Except for you if you work here, you cannot right now. Archibald’s thinking, who’s this guy? I need antelope meat. I need a boost. I need a booster. Poor gal.
01:08:40:01 –> 01:09:36:04
I’m just saying if you’re in that, 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 ’em 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 ’em. And it ticks me off, but it saves bucks. So I guess I’m okay. But in some states they have to have a hundred ed card and, and, and they can’t sit through a hundred education class ’cause it looks through, you know, vital shots from where you shoot stuff. They start throw dry heathing and then they stop. It’s a hundred percent correct. So it weeds ’em out. This like this, we need the paper tag. It has to be in here. But we we’re not gonna tell you how many prizes there are because that’s gonna flush itself, itself out. It might be 10 or 20 dude. And we’re gonna have the first, per the first tag drawn out, gets their choice of whatever it is. We’re gonna second choice get second all the way till out their choice. And it’s gonna, it’s, it’s who knows where this is gonna grow. Alright. But I love it. Epics 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.
01:09:36:04 –> 01:10:44:23
And we’ve got, we’ve got optics companies that have hit us. This is gonna be big. I mean, we’re not screwing around mu least matter. We’re gonna 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. Just, you don’t have to shoot about I’m so passionate about people that go and have to kill to show their man card. That’s, and they’ve got a two by one. Think about the time that, that you and went to 11 2 11. You could’ve entered this drawing afterwards. Two tags. No, we couldn’t have ’cause we work here. Yeah. Oh yeah, that’s true. But in theory. But, but you, you could have shot box too. Competing company. We would’ve entered their drawings. So I like it. And hey, we are no way telling you. Like, take your kids hunting, tell wife, family, put ’em in your freezer. 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 isn’t maybe gonna, this whole whole movement is for an incentive to maybe not shoot one when you don’t need to. And if you submit your tag and you want to keep it forevermore as a memoir, whatever, we’ll send it back. You’ve submit a self-addressed, stamped envelope with your tag and you gonna get after the drawing, we’ll send it right back to you.
01:10:45:03 –> 01:11:49:28
’cause some people like to frame tags or eat ’em or eat ’em. And I’ve, I’ve got some people eat ’em. I’ve got pounds of ’em, pounds of paper. Sometimes you need a little fiber in your diet. I, I’d have looked at some of my health ones. They’re kind of cool. What they’re making some of these tags out and I don’t think you could digest it, but No, it’s like rippable un rippable and unburnable. I don’t knowable. Well some of these hunting licenses can be printed off on regular paper. Yeah. So what’s your thoughts, Wyatt? I I like it. I think it’s good. I love it. I think that’s awesome. Well I’ve heard, I’ve heard very little of it being in the hallway office and I love it. I haven’t heard anything. I’m kind of wound up right now. I’m not gonna be in the hallway forever. You realize that. I do. We expanded earlier than we thought we were gonna 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 gonna add another prize. Well, he drank purple today. He used can by who? Who ordered the purple, the gold and the twist top? How about that? Well, somebody’s getting 500 bucks for it. ’cause I will put 500 bucks of my own money as surprise under.
01:11:50:07 –> 01:12:59:28
Come on. Whoa. I’m doing it. Write it down. Put it in the ceiling table. I’ll, he’s gonna forget. I’ll write the check right now. I I I’m not, I’m not excited about it. Write it. I absolutely will. Zach, Becky, is this gonna come from the family account? No, the Bronson Hunting Fund. It’ll be from my personal account. You have and it’ll be the first one here. I’ll bring it. I’ll get it when I get outta the podcast room. I’ll edit it. I’ll something. Alright, I’ll match. It’ll I’ll put 500 from Jason to, we’re gonna hang it. I will hang it from the podcast room and you’ll see it dangling right there for the next six. Janice’s putting in 500 of her her money too. Alright. Alright. We gotta start here. Anyway, this, we’re not, we’re, I’m so freaking excited about this. I’m more excited than the hunts we give away. I wish I could enter. Well, I wish because I eat tags, but I I eat more than Let’s gimme an incentive. Let’s do a little in inner, inner giveaway here. Oh, within the office. Speaking of Devon, we didn’t give you your, we didn’t give you your shout out the, the props you deserve the NCAA March Madness, epic office hu Give or Epic giveaway paint bucket. The Yukon Hus, the internal epic we had the internal one. He didn’t, there was a whopping what, 12 of us? 10 of us. 13.
01:12:59:28 –> 01:14:06:17
And he won it. 13. You got the Well, and mine wasn’t valid. Epic. Huh? What do you mean? Oh, I don’t do this stuff. I know, I know. But you played us in the middle of the pack. It’s kinda like Wyatt entering these masters tournament things on draftings and he win about wins. He just picks the random generator. I love it. I love it. But Devin, congratulations. You smoked everybody. And I would think it’s worth mentioning, even though he only had 13 office people in this and he smoked everybody had Devin entered that bracket into the, into the Epic Drive, which we gave that away the other day to somebody from I think what Spring Creek, Nevada. How many, how many were entered? 500 plus. Devin would’ve won that one too by a ways. Whoa. Yo, he would’ve won by 50 points. He had 1100 points. But Devin is as Devon is quietly aggressive. Well, anybody that picks, he is competitive. Anybody that picks Florida Atlantic to the elite eight, he’s competitive. All right. You’re going out on a limb right there. And he did it. He’s competitive. Never heard of him before. That’s my pick. And because they, Scott was an, they never, they’d never won a game in the NC tournament. Devon picks him to the elite. It was Devon’s special bird. So yeah, it’s his spirit animal. I, yes. I wish I could say yes.
01:14:06:28 –> 01:15:11:28
I have so much talent winning this and all this. A lot of research said Nevada tree. But the owl perched, I was gonna tell you, I thought those guys from Yukon could only play hockey. I didn’t even know they played hockey. You don’t. Come on you, you do two. You don’t get it. Canadians and hockey. Yeah, I guess. Okay. Canadians. I didn’t know they were Canadians. They’re not. I just, I was just say Connecticut. I thought, I don’t know. They’re Yukon boys there. 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, Yukon, UCO one N. Not YUKN. Good at basketball, eh? Yeah. Oh, I’m picking it up now. I was slow there. You got it there. You gone. Yeah. I get it. Yeah. But Devin, congratulations. Thank you. You got the epic cup for a year. We’re gonna 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. Are a traveling tr Well, I know within the office. I haven’t even opened it yet. It’s in a beautiful white box. It’s about that old. It’s hot. How did we get it, Denise? Let’s talk. Denise. Denise built it.
01:15:11:28 –> 01:16:16:28
Denise built that, didn’t it? It’s a T Tumblr. It’s a Tumblr with the The winter. Yeah. It’s this epic out outdoor. Took a Saturday right there. She took a Saturday and made it. It’s so awesome. With the air, that air freshener. We can’t, I’d have to figure that out. You’re supposed to spray something on it, but, well, I think you’ve sprayed smell good stuff. Whatever you want. Whatever smell you want. Dangle that you go in. Whichever bathroom. Whichever bathroom. Come on. How’s the Come on. Come on Poopie. Let’s stop. I don’t really like that. Let’s, okay. John’s is the best smelling bathroom. Hey we, except for y’all. It pretty funny. All right, Bronson, let’s throw a little shout out to Q You, by the way. Well, with that bow. Yeah. Well we appreciate it. Q You’s 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 ucon way up north and you need a lot of layers and you need, do you be protected. They, they make it for you. Their packs are great. We either use their stuff for a lot of years, we appreciate them. ku.com, KU iu.com. Great supporter of ours over the years.
01:16:16:28 –> 01:17:41:15
Like I said, we’re gonna be giving away a Ku Verde, Hoyt VTM 34 that’s gonna go into the prize, Ben, for somebody to pick the long one with the Mely Mely matters. Accurate sucker, exact bow that got Zach Bow that I’ve got. Well, I don’t have it yet, but it’s been being tuned as they speak. We also wanna 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. Les, you know, mark has got a great point. When simplicity kills, it’s always been the, 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 ’em a holler at 4, 3, 5, 7, 1 3 4 2, 4 8. And anyway, just, just awesome people. Thompson, long Range, Northern Utah up there, right in the middle of tough winter range conditions right now. Thompson long range.com. Even just calling to visit with him. Super fun to visit with Scotty. He’s a deer killing machine and know, knows his way around that country up there and younger guy that’s laying him down. He’s, he’s doing his best. He’s, he hates MUEs, he’s killing ’em all. So anyway, super good guys. And that’s what I like being affiliated with, with good people.
01:17:42:09 –> 01:18:54:03
One more shout out to the folks at Ken Trek. They’ve been sponsors of ours from the start too. Jim win, Jim and his crew. Been great friends of ours, great hunters. I think that’s very worth mentioning here in this case with Ken Trek. They’re hunters, they use their products, they, they know how to make advancements in their products and they’ve done that over the years. We appreciate them. Check ’em out [email protected]. K-E-N-E-T-R-E k.com. And for a lot of you people, you probably have still have your trek pack boots out, shoveling 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 Ken Trek snow boots away too early this year. We, we put away our snowplow so’s your who? Blower is your driveway Clean arch ball. Solid sheet of ice North facer. Put it away. Oh, I forgot. It’s a north face. Yes sir. I shoveled a little bit and you were not gonna start it even though you had stable up on the shelf. I that that tank. It’s really to winter. Raise it. Car is dry. It’s 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. Crushes a foot of snow. I clean you take it apart and clean it. Oh yeah. When it won’t start. Yeah. Yeah.
01:18:54:06 –> 01:20:05:17
Change the wheel. But yeah, not, not anymore. It’s bone dry winterized. And we’re not gonna start, we had eight inches. Eight inches in my yard. Yeah. Screw it still. It’s mad. But it is gonna hit 65 for three or four days, so it’s crazy. We’re gonna have some water. There’s a window to flying off the mountain. Yeah, well that’s another story. But hey, hopefully we’ve had fun today. Breaking down permit numbers. We encourage you to go to 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, 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 deer and antelope. You still have tell May 31st for those two. You got till what? April 17th Wyatt? Yep. Yep. For the others to get those done. Utah’s due the 27th of April. You got plenty of time to jump onto Utah Division of Wildlife website. Go to their plug and play public meetings link, check out that or just jump in the Hump Planner. If you’re looking at a few units, you wanna double check proposed permit numbers. And again, it’s kind of a weird, weird thing that we threw out. But you do gotta go see if you’re a maximum point person that whether it be a resident or non-resident.
01:20:05:18 –> 01:21:05:21
And I wanna see if that unit’s still gonna have maximum point tag jump on there and double check. So when you’re 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 Hump Planner. Okay. That might be, but you might need to do that before. ’cause 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 reval reevaluating your whole process. Jason, have you applied in Utah yet? Yes. Do you care to elaborate? I applied everywhere. No. Well it’s funny ’cause Yeah, he sat down on a Saturday. Did he did like Colorado and Nevada. Utah. Utah did, there’s, there’s like one weekend where they all line up where you can actually do ’em all. You got women and children and it just, it’s huge. Takes a whole weekend. Oh yeah. No, I sat down and cranked. Why have you applied in Utah? Have not. Dang, I thought we might get something. I’ll hot Mike outta him today. But that’s, that’s a pipe. I, I don’t, 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.
01:21:05:21 –> 01:22:14:27
Unless it says no in our tags in 2023 in both of the gray columns, you’re gonna 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, 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 high, 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 gonna notice some units, archery, elk, and some other units that went from one tag to two tags this year. It’s gonna 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 gonna have a maximum point tag for the first time, maybe ever or in a long time. And that’s, that’s hope. Hope. That’s a, that’s a general benefit of, of increase in tags. You know, for elk, there are a few deer as well that way. So there, look at those.
01:22:14:27 –> 01:23:22:22
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, no, no. Max point draws. Just double check. There’s a few of those out there. If you’re eyeing something that might catch your eye, it might still a tag the first year. So I’m so excited for this dropping Mom, I’m bombs on mom’s bucket. I’m gonna go drop, write my check right now and bring it back and we’re gonna dangle it right there. I’ll do, I’ll do mine too though. Okay. I mean, I couldn’t have you do it and not me. Well, I didn’t pressure you. I just was I know there’s pressure. No, there’s no Jason. Jason, you said Jason put, so if you just bring Janice’s checkbook, that’s all you gotta do. But anyway, I paused that that wasn’t recorded, so you’re good. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we we’re doing it, Bronson. Yeah. I, 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 under armour.com. We’d like to thank Under Armour for being our title sponsor and making this podcast happen.
01:23:22:27 –> 01:24:39:12
Visit our website epic outdoors.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 Red Rock precision.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 st. James sporting properties.com. Good looking comfortable. Camo describes KU U, the new bush pants from KU U. Keep your legs comfortable while walking through the thorns and bristles. Visit ku.com for sizing and prices. Canna Trek makes great boots for any situation. Most sheep punters in the high rocky altitudes. Use these boots to keep their ankles in. Check on the rough terrain. Visit kenna trek.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 fierce arms.com to learn more. Triple S Polaris specializes in custom setup hunting side-by-side. They deliver right to your door nationwide. Visit ss polaris.com to learn more For affordable, long range rifles and shooting schools, visit thompson long range.com. Hoyt is top of the line archery equipment.
01:24:39:19 –> 01:25:49:29
Hoyt is the official bow manufacturer of Epic Outdoors. Everyone on our staff shoots a Hoyt bow call. If you’d like to visit about their different models, or visit hoyt.com. Thank you to Phone Scope, the best camera optic adapter out there. Phone scope makes high quality phone cases and optics adapters. Visit phone scope.com to learn more. Stealth Camm has high quality, durable trail cameras that we all love to use. Check them [email protected] or call us. To order today here at Epic Optics. We are a verified dealer for Swarovski Zeiss, Leica Vortex, stealth camm, and more. Call us today to visit about the available optics we have and what would be right for you. Or visit epic optics.com for only 150 bucks a year. You get nine issues of the Epic Outdoors Magazine and unlimited access to our Hunt consultant, as well as access to our verified research website. To see all the other member benefits, visit epic outdoors.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.
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