In this episode Jason, Adam and John sit down and talk about where we’ve been for the past few months. Wrapping-up late season hunts as well as the Muleys Matter 2023 giveaway has kept us busy. We thank our Muleys Matter donors and discuss what to expect in 2024. We also discuss the renewability of Mule deer in the West and the impact this past year will have on many hunters. Additionally, show season is about to get underway, we talk about our plans for attending the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo and a few others.
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 –> 00:01:27:09
Anything to do with Western Big Games. Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast. Hey, everybody. Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, John Peterson, Logan. How y’all doing today? Doing good. Just dandy. Nah, how about ah, I like it. Hey, it’s been a while since we’ve done a podcast, Bronson, John, but Bronson’s kind of my sidekick on every podcast. So anyway, what do you think? I guess we need to put out two or three this week from what I’m, people are telling me. Yeah, we’re getting, we’re getting beat up bomb, you know, bomb bonded emails and Hey, how about you? Well, let’s do some podcasts. Kinda lazy. We’ve been a little bit lazy. Well, we haven’t been here. November was a rough long month. We were hunting and scattered all over. Then you had Thanksgiving, then we came back, then we killed a deer in New Mexico. Mexico to Mexico. How about that? So we should probably do that podcast later this week maybe. Yeah, we do podcast. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, we’ve been going hard. And then we just put out the January magazine, January, 2024. Can you already believe it? Good grief. We’re in 2024. We were supposed to be like having our own personal aircraft going to the store. Remember when we were kids? Yeah. By 2020, you’re gonna have your own personal aircraft going to in front of the store. We’re supposed to be hunting deer out of those, out of lasers and lasers.
00:01:27:09 –> 00:02:40:00
And now we’re, yeah, now we’re, well, we do have, basically there’s optics out there that you can kind of point and touch and click and they die. Yeah. Yeah. Point and click. You wait. A 200 hitcher. How about, ah, go ahead. Point click you two. Hundo. Speaking of two Hundos Bronson, how many are there in, in the world right now? Can count ’em on one hand, it seems like they’re all gone. Yeah, it just is. It’s tough right now. Tough environment. Yep. I would say that’s another podcast for the week. God. Let’s write it down. Status of mule deer. Yeah. Trophy mule deer. Write this down. John Logan. Where’s your notepad? See Gen Zs. And what are, what’s the new gen? Are you a Gen Z? Gen X Gen. I’m, I’m Gen Z. I don’t know what the door is. Is there one after that? Do you guys have notepads? I don’t know what it is. Do you ever have notepads? I always got manual sticky notes all the time. Yeah. With ink that runs, flows through a pin normally. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. Speaking our language. Yep. I’m outdated. Anyways. So what’s the next podcast? What’s your note? Say? Status of 200 inch mule deer in the United States. Okay. Kind of plus or minus. Yeah. What was the other one we’re gonna talk about? Bronsons Hunt. Bron new. We’re gonna finish up up the Whitetail Saga. Yeah.
00:02:41:27 –> 00:04:18:22
I still can’t fill my feet every time they, I think about getting cold there. Cold. And it was warm up there. All right. All right. That’ll get us started. Anyway, here, we here. Here we are. Almost Christmas coming at you. We’re gonna be doing regular podcasts, if not a couple a week just to get caught up. And, anyway, appreciate everybody. And quite frankly, this, this pod podcast is sponsored by who? Bronson. Yours. Truly epic outdoors. Epic optics. How about that, John, I guess before we get started, do you wanna spew a little bit about these new tripods? So we, we teased a while back that we were, we were in development on some tripods, and it’s been in development for over a year. We’ve been, bro and I are nauseated. Yeah. And so that’s why you bring geeks like me in here to you, Josh. Yeah. But 14,000 other people. I’m really excited about the tripods because out of all the years we’ve hunted, we’ve taken all the, the desires and everything everybody wanted, we put ’em into two tripods. Desires. Desires. Well, desires and tripods. You sound like a hunter. Hey, I’m gonna throw in passion here and, you know. No, but the number one thing we appetites we’re, geez, whatever. I’m just gonna wait. Go ahead. Go ahead. But okay. We’ve taken everything everybody wanted and the number one thing was to have that smooth panning head.
00:04:19:03 –> 00:05:32:27
So you get your try your, how come you never asked Adam and I Yeah, we did. No, we’ve had meetings and meetings. Yeah. Anyway, there was no polling going on. You, your attention span is a little much No, no, go ahead. But the, the smooth panning head every time, especially when you’re filming off of, like, you know, you put your phone scope on, on your scope and the animal moves, and you don’t want it jittery. Try to smell it. And, and most tripods are designed for photography. How about the, do we call it the anti jittery panning head? We should trademark that. Anti jittery panning head. Make an acronym outta that. But yeah, so the, the animal moves and you try to move the tripod into either jumps or it’s sticks. Sticks. And these are micro jumps. Like, it’s like, this is for a, a very particular glass. Or that you’re just wound up about every little detail. Yeah. And quite frankly, glassing is all about the details. I think there’s a number of things about this tripod. We didn’t, Bronson I, who needs this big old long stick hanging out the head? That’s like, what? Oh, oh yeah. Forever, right? A foot long or something. Yeah. Like that’s just way, and it’s cumbersome. So we, we designed a, a shorty handle that’s only six inches nine on our big one. I used to take a hacks outta mine. I did too.
00:05:33:00 –> 00:06:39:09
And so it’s kind of, a lot of these come from the, the modifications that we were making on our own. But the panhead is really difficult to Yeah. To improve on that. But you’ll, you’ll Oh, improved on it. Of it. How about that? How about that return tension? Yeah. And there’s a little bit of return tension. So if you got your spotting scope on that and, and you’ve got it a little bit loose, it’s not gonna fall over and fall down the mountain. Yeah. On the up and down every time. Who hasn’t done that? Yeah. Just raise your hand, everybody. Yep. Yep. Raise your hand if you’ve had a tripod fall over. Yeah. And on the big one, you’ve got two separate adjustments. So you can lock in the, the tilt and you can just pan back and forth. So if you, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t grid go, you know, side to side when they pan and then move down and go side to side, that’s gonna work. I don’t, there’s, there’s people do up and down too, but are there. Yeah. But, but it’s nice do, especially when you’re following an animal. Yeah. You know, when you’re, when you’re videoing ’em, you’re following ’em. They’re not always just going up and away from you. They’re, they’re going left to right. And so this gives you the ability to, to independently control both of those.
00:06:39:09 –> 00:07:48:04
And so let’s say you’re an up and down glasser, you can lock in the pan from side to side and, and just go straight up and down, and then on you loosen it a little bit. Move, go down. So the one thing we we did is this ACA Swiss plate. That’s a little bit, I’m used to the standard old square from way back in 1953. And I have one in every freaking nook and cra cranny of every truck, of every, you know what I mean? All my packs, all the little, all the little pockets have extra plates. And so the biggest problem for me is, is trading all a new, a new plate. And I need new plates. I ordered a hundred, a lot of them for you. So you can, yeah, we got more than that. You actually order 150 John? No, but a hundred of them are for you. Oh, okay. Okay. And so anyway, but Bronson, I think I, that extra surface area, yeah, it’s a little longer. I feel like it, yeah. Whereas when we have BT Xs, they’re on this little one and a half by one and a half square, you know what I mean? I feel like there’s, there’s something there for that on the, and then the stability, the adjustability on the, on that ais sw you can go f further forward, further back, whatever your optic, like if you’re trying to balance the BT X for example.
00:07:48:06 –> 00:08:53:07
Yeah. So there you have it. We went with that. And it’s kind of common. You can buy ’em anywhere. Of course we sell ’em. I’d love to sell you a bunch of plates, but I’m gonna sell myself some plates. But, but you can get ’em anywhere. Yeah. A lot of people already run ’em. One of the cool things is most of the Swarovski feet on, like their spotting scopes and things like that, they’ll fit, like let, let’s say you lose your foot or whatever you’re tucking the plate. The plate. If you lose the plate, you can put, you know, the raw plate right in that, the raw, the right tripod adapter. Yeah. Yeah. And, and some of ’em, that’s like the SLCT adapter. You don’t even have to put a foot on or a plate. You can, it can slap it in there. You can just slap it in there. You can’t do that on all aca Swiss compatible ones. We designed ours. So, so it will fit the Swarovski ones. It holds sometimes on some tripods. If you crank ’em down all the way, it’s just not quite tight enough. But ours are. Okay. So we’ve got that. How they learn more about ’em. Let’s, let’s direct ’em to wear too. Yeah. So you can go to epic optics.com and if you’re a member, make sure you log in first and then team member pricing that member store. Yep.
00:08:53:07 –> 00:10:00:12
And you just like our special deals, benefits, special pricing. They’re all in stock right now. Yep. Everything’s in stock. So you can order there or can two tripods, right? Two trip probably head. Yeah. Let’s talk about, talk about the second one. Let’s talk about that real quick. Bronson, what’s that? Two types? Well, the, the, the smaller tripod. You and I have always cut. We backpacked with what the old kids though. Yeah. These are for, these are for, if you’re gonna do an alpine pack in maybe early season deer hunt, or if you’re going into sheep country or something like that, and you really have to, you know, scrimp and save on, would it work in Eagle, Eagle Cup and wait the Eagle Cup? You bet. Yeah. Name another wilderness. I don’t know. Yeah, work West Oaks. It would work there too. Yep. Okay. What a move. Yes, it would. Frank Church you got, ah, but this is a maximum. It goes up to 50 inches. We don’t even care about that because can’t stand. Yeah. You’re, you only sit down. Now, some people would say with this, the big tripod, it’s basically a sitting tripod too. But, you know, that’s just, that’s not true though. It’s not, not true. It’s Josh uses it and he’s six four. The big one is a true standing tripod. I know. And, and if you’re, you know, it goes to 65 and a half inches tall.
00:10:00:27 –> 00:11:03:21
And then usually you’ve got an adapter on your, on your bins, got an adapter, you got the depth of the bin out, and you can bring the legs in a half inch and you got another inch up top, like, who knows? Yes. I just noticed that guy looks like me. Hey, that is Adam Bronson right there. Bald guy. Yeah. Wow. So if you wanna see what we’re talking about, go to the website. Look at the product photos. Did, yeah. Did you have my permission to use my express? Yeah, your image. Image likeness. Black, black and white ad right there, boss. You do not know who, who that is. That is a shadow. Yeah. So do we have to, do we have to pay somebody to use their shadow? No. If you, I drew that. All right. You did. Yeah. John, you’re amazing. Freehand. What else have you done? John’s amazing. Anyway, so you should see the artwork at John’s house. If you use an angled scope, you’re be seven foot tall and still stand up and use it. I like it. I mean, yeah. Anyway, so don’t even, that’s kind of the range foot. How’s got two tripods and head combinations. Check ’em out. What of we call the epic light, which is the backpacker, if you wanna call it that. The other one is just the, the Epic ultra tripod, which is called that the all around. That’s what we then they both hold.
00:11:03:21 –> 00:12:07:17
They’re both basically rated for a nine pound, they hold nine pounds worth of optic on there. And that’s the head that the legs are 17 or 22 pounds. Yeah, that’s right. So, you know, some people, like, they’ve got the, the, the Ultra has a hook on the bottom. So if you liked a little bit more weight, like you can put 20 some odd pounds underneath it as well to give it some more. I’d never used that stability. Important to know. It’s not just, it’s not the same head on both tripods either. We have a separate head that we developed for the light version and the Ultra. That’s right. So check ’em out on Epic Outdoors, epic stock. So weight wise, the really cool thing, they’re carbon, carbon fiber, really lightweight. We stayed under four pounds. We’re like 3.8 pounds on, that’s with the head on the big tripod with the head. So we have guys calling in that are, that are normally running even the lighter weight tripods that were a pound 14 ounces under. I have a really good friend here in town, he’s like, I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. And of course you can see where we shave the, the weight once you get it in your hands. But anyway, we’ll be at the Hunt expo too. Hopefully there’ll be a pallet there of each kind. Who knows if they, if they’re sold out, they’re sold out.
00:12:07:27 –> 00:13:18:29
We got hundreds more coming. Hundreds and hundreds. So anything else? Oh, just, I mean, a couple of the other things, it’s, it’s got a pretty cool design as far as if for fitting in your pack. The large one is only 18 and a half inches tall and five inches kind of wide. Okay. So you put that in a pocket usually. And that’s, you can invert ’em or you can do it normal way that with the head on it, that’s with the head on it. So, yeah. Yeah, they’re good. They’re awesome. Good work. All right, everybody, you know it, you’ve heard it here. And we also sell optics. Of course. We wanna sell you optics. So we’re the best price out there. No question about it. Give us a holler if you need something. We’ve got a lot of things in stock. The prices go up January one. I want you to, I wanna, I wanna say that again. Prices go up January one. It’s not us, it’s the factory. That’s just kind of common. And so for here, forever more, just know January one is if you’re gonna buy something in January, buy it in December and you know, whatever, pay your card off in full the next month. You won’t pay any interest anyway. But just, you know, think about that. It, it saves several hundred dollars on some of these different products. Prices go up January one.
00:13:19:04 –> 00:14:29:10
We have a lot of stuff in stock. Give us a holler prior to January one and we’ll get you taken care of. So anyway, besides the fact that we’re the best pricing, can’t advertise it necessarily individual prices, but just call us and figure it out. All right, Bronson, I’m gonna let you head off. Head up the rest of it. Of what? I don’t know. Let’s talk about matter. What I really wanna do is, let’s preface this Meales matter. We just finished this sucker, right? Yeah. It was awesome. We have so many responses. Got a few of ’em here on the table. Not sure we weren’t, we’re gonna read ’em at this moment, but we’ve also had a lot of people reach out to you and I direct as well as John and everybody else in the office. And, and what a cool little bit of a movement it is. Just brings awareness to how sensitive mul you are. It used to be that we felt like if you killed a great buck, there’s another one standing there next year. Like you just didn’t, it didn’t feel like, you know, there. Little bit of a renewal. Yeah. Renewable resource. Yeah. Right now there don’t feel that way. No. It feels like when you shoot, when you’ve shot the last one, you shot the breeder buck. You know what I mean? Doesn’t it? Yeah. And so, and you actually feel bad.
00:14:29:17 –> 00:15:38:13
I mean, there’s a little bit of, you know, you smashed a great one in, in New Mexico, and, and not that we felt bad, try to make people feel bad. We did. No, we did a smash and grab and we smashed it, ran it, ran up to it and grabbed it. Yeah. And would do it again in a heartbeat. But it’s just one of those things is have you heard about another one? You know what I mean? And it, it just, it shows you how tough it is out there. That’ll be a tee up the next podcast, like we talked about. But yeah. But this was an awesome, awesome event. What was the total number of tags? I wanna say 60 11. Total number of tags we got in-house. 11 something? Yeah, just about 1100. I think it was 10 95. And then you said there was more like 1600 or so registered or 1700 registered, but a lot of those guys’ hunts hadn’t started yet. Right. So they didn’t understand the full program. Then they go out, they kill a buck. Yeah. And then they’re not really eligible. Right? Right. So they didn’t send a tag in to complete the whole science process. Yeah. Or or they just, yeah, they didn’t get around to sending the actual tag in whatever. But 1100 something tags came in. We had three different barrels. An atler list, barrel, general season tags for what? Arizona? Yeah, Wyoming. Like Arizona, Wyoming residents.
00:15:38:26 –> 00:16:52:29
Idaho. Idaho, yeah. Yeah. And then we had the limited entry stuff. So it was awesome. Really appreciate one. And we’re just gonna take a time, take some time now and go through every, I think these sponsors one at a time as you maybe just read the winners, this was probably only as popular as, as it was because of what we had for the great response in terms of donors and stuff like that. I mean, if we’d had five prizes on there, we wouldn’t had 1100 tags. What I, what I think is awesome too is we had guys and I, and I kind of wanted to list, I kind of wanted to list, but it, but you run into a little bit of privacy stuff, but you almost wanna list everybody that participated in sent their tagging. We have guys good friends of ours, they don’t need any of these prizes necessarily. Right. But they wanted to participate in it and just show their approval and support. And, and it’s not that they, they’ll, they’ll happily take a land hunter, they’ll happily take a, a bronze or something like that, but, or, or cash or whatever, right? But it, it was more or less is, I, I love this. I I wanna support you guys and, and whatnot. And so there was just, we had a lot of support from, feels like all four corners of the earth, you know, because because it was just natural.
00:16:53:03 –> 00:17:58:16
It didn’t cost anything. You had to a little bit of elbow grease, get on the computer and register and send your tag in so you got a 50 cents stamp or whatever. But it wasn’t, you know, there was no real entry fee or anything like that. Anybody and everybody could, could apply or throw their name in the hat. We had very high up people, maybe even near the top Bronson here in Utah, of people in the Utah DWR submit their texts. Really, you know, and even other states, I believe we’ve heard, we’ve heard from, so yeah. And commissions we’re great game and fish commissions. And so it’s just, all it’s saying is, is, hey, if you, it basically we wanted you to go hunt, everybody, go hunt. Like, that’s, that’s the idea of it. Nobody should stay home necessarily. Unless you had a do tech, then stay home, don’t kill a dough. I’m fine with that. But, but as far as hunting bucks, go out and hunt and just don’t kill one on, on the last day or any day just, just to make it die. It makes, if it’s something you want, make you, you really want the meat, fine. It’s your tag. Do with what you want with it. It was just a little encouragement to not just kill one, to kill one. If, if, if, if it’s something you want, great. Absolutely want you to have it.
00:17:58:26 –> 00:19:08:28
You’ve got the tag you’ve earned, you’ve earned the right to harvest that buck that’s standing in front of you. But if it’s the last day and it’s just, just to fill a tag and to test your gun and ballistics and all that at the cost of an animal, maybe think twice. That’s all. That’s all this was about. So. Well, and it was such a success, such a, we had such an overwhelming response as we’re already making big plans for next year. This is not something is a one and done. We’ve, we’ve got other things in the works. We’ll announce those, you know, soon to some extent. But we’ve gotta make some, I guess we’ll call it improvements. Improvements in the donation side of things, which we’ll be able to announce in the near future as well. So yeah, we just appreciate everybody, both those that sent tags in that, that thought this was worthy enough of a cause to send in a tag, an un punch tag in towards. And like I’ve said, all those that donated prizes, hunts money, whatever it is, over 50 something thousand dollars in stuff, you know, we didn’t have any, like, you know, we started with nothing. So it was pretty awesome. Well, we started with some $500 donations from us. Yeah. And a, and a fierce rifle and a bow and a thought and a dream. Yeah, that’s right.
00:19:09:01 –> 00:20:17:17
Few trail cameras, that’s like, it was more or less just, we thought it would just be small and it would be, we were okay with just something, whatever, what could we do something? And then, you know, as it started rolling, then it’s, then it rolls and we let it roll. And now, you know, we, we’ll be moving forward with a 5 0 1 C3 and, and just kind of growing it a little bit and let it grow naturally as, as the support comes in. And so anyway, we’re excited about it. Again, like Adam said, we really appreciate the, the donors and that’s, you know, it just, it, it, it’s just awesome to watch our industry come together a little bit. And I think there’s one thing we can all agree on, whether you agree with trophy hunting or not, whether you agree with general tags or not. Whether you agree with ma game management or not, at the end of the day, you know, just harvest what you wanna harvest. But don’t just harvest just to harvest because it’s like we talked about with that. Yeah. With that renewable resource. Technically it should be a renewable resource. Just everything is against them. Whether it be drought, predators, us game and fish. Everybody seems like they’re against mule areas. There’s great big rabbit out there and everybody wants to eat it. You know, it’s the way it goes. So. All right, Bronson, everyone, do you wanna move through these?
00:20:17:20 –> 00:21:30:11
Yeah, I think we should. I think we should talk about it just a little bit. We’ve got a few of ’em. It’s, it might be slightly boring. Maybe we throw us something in the middle a little. I don’t, I don’t know. I mean, we might need to even dive into this trailblaze box, the black backpack logistics.com. Of course, we had our buddy buddy, Dustin Whit Whitworth hit us with this and POD podcast, treat box. Bronson’s named it the podcast Treat box. So in here, let’s see. Do you want this Honey stinger? You can have that. Those are good. I don’t know this look, this looked a little French, John. Yeah, that’s, what is it? These are actually my favorite. Now that makes sense. Yep. What are they? Bro looked down it, he goes, that’s something that would be made in France. Yeah. Lara Bar. And it’s just, what is it? Is few ingredients. Is that possible? The thing, so fruit, I’m gluten-free because I’m allergic to it. Well, I’m actually, anyway, we won’t go into it, but yeah, anything in North America that’s grain. I can’t eat it anything. But if it’s in France, it’s fine. If it’s Europe, anywhere else, if it’s imported, I can totally eat it. And I don’t get sick. So anyway, take what you want. So weird. But these don’t have any, any wheat in it from, here’s a Mountain S bar, they’re awesome. 20 grams of protein, frosted cinnamon swirl.
00:21:30:11 –> 00:22:41:17
How about that, Bronson, what do you got? Oh, this is about 400 calories or something. Dense. Dense. Pro meal bar. What I like, Bronson, is like, you and I are constantly having this kind of food for about three months. And you, you, but I buy the same stuff every time. Go, every time I buy. Because you know it works. Well, I know what it but this, some of this looks have, I have those freaking Nature Valley bars, the green package that are drier and crap. You need a whole bottle of water. An entire monster to wash it down. How about a Bobo hippie bar? I’m not interested in it, but I kind of want it right now. I mean, it’s a brownie. I’ll try it once anyway. Let’s give this to, let’s give this to Logan. It’s the, it’s the granola breakfast. You gotta add some water and you’ve got a breakfast in the morning. Nice. Have something down to the intern. Well, I, I think you’re not just the intern boss, but you are a single college kid. So there’s your breakfast for tomorrow. Thank you. I appreciate it. You’re welcome. And we got some amino whatever, mountain ops, amino trail pack weight, protein meal replacement. Not gonna replace it meal yet. Maybe dip chocolate oat bar. Nut butter. Nut butter. Here’s some dark chocolate. You look like a dark chocolate guy. What does that mean? I mean this, I don’t, what does that mean?
00:22:41:22 –> 00:23:45:10
Discriminating? I look like a dark chocolate guy. What does that mean? Dark. Like you would like it. I don’t like dark chocolate. They say it’s good for you. I know, actually, that’s why all these bars have dark stuff. So there’s some podcast treats for everybody. Appreciate you, Dustin. Anyway, if you’re interested, backpack logistics.com. He’s got little surprise trail boxes. And he’ll also custom package meals for you. Whether you’re in the truck, you’re out in the field, you’re backpacking, you’re doing whatever, maybe even guided trips. Maybe you buy a whole bunch for you and your guided clients or whatever. He’ll cut you a commercial deal. Who knows? He’s kind of seems like a deal maker. Guy Wheeling deal. All right. Yeah. So let’s crank through some of these real quick. Can we, we need to read through the winners. They’re listed on our podcast. They’re listed or on our website. Should we just Yeah, go through the donors? Yeah, yeah. Let’s just, I’m with, let’s give another shout out to these. We wanna verbalize ’em. I know it takes time for everybody to go out there, but just if you know some of these people, you know, some of these donors, you know, you know, give ’em a shout out or you know, yeah. Support their business or whatever like that. And if you wanna donate, I think we should do something like this.
00:23:45:14 –> 00:24:59:17
If you wanna donate for 2024, of course reach out to Adam or I or John. Okay, that’s fine. Reach out to us. Let us know. But I think if you donate early, you get a little more publicity. ’cause it ends up on our website. You do earlier, right? So maybe you’re on the website the whole year and we have, and we have more opportunities to post about you on our Instagram. Well, if you add it late next year, November 1st, it’s a little tougher. It’s, you’re not gonna get as much supporter and those who support the industry, us hunters, we should be supporting them. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And so why not? Why wouldn’t you support people that are, that are putting down, you know, good products for, for this kind of cause that mean so much to us. So, okay. Anyway, anybody wants to donate for 2024? Let us know anybody and everybody is welcome to donate and we’ll, we’ll throw you shout outs throughout the year. We’re gonna keep talking about this. Alright, bros. Maybe I’ll run through 10 or so and then part of you take, take the mic, right? We had a couple of five day lion Hunts donated. First off was from Mecu Outfitters here in southern Utah. Awesome outfit. Appreciate them. Another one was from Unbranded Outfitters over in Nevada. We also had a fierce twisted rage rival donated by Epic Outdoors.
00:24:59:27 –> 00:26:24:04
We had a mini bronze, a replica donated by trigger finger replicas. We had a three day guided line hunt from Deep Creek Outfitters outta Nevada. We had a Vortex package. Vortex Optics. Paul Kendall, a rep here for Vortex in Utah. Appreciate them. Browning and I, you know, a lot of these were unsolicited, we wanna make that known. A lot of these, you know, they just heard about our stuff and they just called us up. So we appreciate these companies in doing that. Browning, they don an expo, pro 300 PRC. Then we had a puppy winner’s choice of a golden doodle or a wine rhymer, I guess. Guess that’s how you say it. But that was from Mike Ostrom. Appreciate Mike doing that. We had Lift and Level Utah with a $1,500 concrete lifting job in Utah County. Appreciate them. starlink and Pelican Case that was donated by Jared Tyndall out of Texas. Appreciate that. Jared. And another donation from us here at Epic Outdoors. We donated a Hoyt VTM 34. So it’s awesome. Yeah, yeah. Just a, again, shout out to those guys. It’s fantastic. The outfitters just awesome. You know, some of the products we sell The Fierce and the Hoyt, we threw it in there. Great products. We sell those more along the lines of the rifles. We do a few bows and then of course the replicas and things like that. Just, just awesome.
00:26:24:08 –> 00:27:50:05
Again, just like Bronson said, you know, Browning reached out to us. Just awesome lifting level. Awesome. Jared Tyndall. That’s just one of us. A hunter like us. If any hunters out there wanna donate, keep us in mind. We also had donations from Thomson Long Range, dealt with them for many years. We got, you know, a one day long range shooting course, two winners. Nobody walks away from that course without learning about shooting and how to improve. Incredible guys there. We also have a, a donation of a San Juan River guided fly fishing trip for Two Mojo fly fishing. Really appreciate them. Awesome. Ryan Iverson. Thank you. Another just one of us, a hunter out there that said, what do you think I should do? Hey, whatever you think. He’s like, well I was thinking about a Stone Glacier gift card. So it wasn’t necessarily Stone Glacier. It was, it was Ryan that reached out to them and got a, got a, a gift certificate. We really appreciate that. And anyway, we’ve got a, a Coba backpack bundle. Awesome. Just an, just an awesome gift. Really appreciate that. As well as a Mossberg Patriot rifle. And that seven M-M-P-R-C, that Backpack Bundle was donated by Ask Alaska Guide Creations. Right? Oh, was okay. Alaska Guide Creations. That was cut off on my sheet here. Yeah. Thank you John. I think that’s just the co kovac is the name of Of the bundle. The bundle. Right on.
00:27:50:07 –> 00:29:16:21
Anyway, product from them. Perfect. I like it. And Steadmans Jewelry known them for many years. Fine jewelry. Really seems like they don’t, they do wedding, they do all kinds of jewelry, but it feels like they’re definitely in the hunting industry side of things. And so if you want any custom jewelry, definitely reach out to them. Steadmans, they donated as well. And then, then we had some cash we donated from myself, John Adam as well as Travis Hobbes. He’s a Mulder fanatic, killed Great Bucks. You’ve heard him on our podcast and on other podcasts and just out, out and about in social media. Really appreciate him as well as another member. Jake Jovanovich wanted to reach out and do something and, and send in the cash. So really appreciate everybody on that as well. Browning also stepped up and donated just a gear package with Pack Knives, headlamp a bunch of stuff. Appreciate them donating that. In addition to the gun that we mentioned already earlier, we had another member, Marty Meisner, and I don’t, this was a great idea. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this, but he got creative. Yeah. He, he, he called in and, and bought a $500 ticket membership for Epic Outdoors and donated to winner. So anyway, that was, that was good. So you winner that got a $500 package for this winter membership drive that we got going right now.
00:29:17:00 –> 00:30:39:22
I believe that’s, that’s is that 30 30 chances to win? Yeah. And it gives him a knife or a headlamp. Yeah. As well as bonus. A bonus bonus. Bonus ticket bonus. I mean, yeah, we’re, we’re talking about 80,000 plus, you know, stone sheet, stone cheap and all that. So, well he could put those tickets to whatever he wants and it’s just awesome. What a, what a great idea. That’s idea. Yep. So, so yeah. Appreciate that Marty. We had an anonymous donor donate a loophole RX 1600 I range finder. Appreciate anonymous. How about out? Yeah, we know who it is, but we appreciate that. Pretty cool. They just have to remain anonymous. We had a couple, well a few Muled their shoulder mounts, one by sessions taxidermy, one by trophy room taxidermy, and one by bond taxidermy. We really appreciate those. Those are obviously popular. I the winners of these are gonna have to use them towards bucks that they harvest next year. ’cause they obviously didn’t harvest one this year. ’cause they sent their tags in unused, right? Well, yeah, maybe they shot one. Got a credit toward a shoulder mount. That’s right. Appreciate them. We had a mully maniacs donated a cnat tripod. Appreciate them donating that. And we had another anonymous donor donate a whiskey barrel stand for a shoulder mount, like a pedestal mount. It’s really cool. That’s really cool. Barney Wood, you know, whiskey Barrel to do a pedestal of some kind.
00:30:40:00 –> 00:31:53:09
So it was really, really cool. So, okay, I like it. We also had, well John, do you wanna jump in? Yeah. Alright. Yeah, we had, we had, Adam and I are going horse over here. Yeah, I I’m only gonna last a little while. Got a little bit of scratchy throat, but You do, we had, we had Are you sick? Oh, I’ve been sick for three weeks. Come on. No, what do you got? I just, it’s the old school. It’s like I had Covid and Covid was nice because all I got was tired. Do you know, like hits everybody different. That’s it. Like I could taste everything just tired now it’s old school cold throwing up, coughing your guts out. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Geez. But I mean, it’s been, it’s been long. Well you guys opened the door turn on anyway, a fan, so I think now I think I’ve just cough. You’re past so much. My throat’s just scratched, you know, and so that’s all I’ve got. But anyway, I’ve had some chewable vitamin Z Zs and like some chems and all kinds of edibles. No, not all kinds. No, all keep going. So then we got a tattoo. How about that? From, I think it’s Veco tattoo. Awesome. And the guy who won that was super excited. It was awesome. Did he wanna do the Epic logo? Maybe? I don’t know. The Epic logo is pretty awesome.
00:31:53:09 –> 00:33:16:22
Yeah, there’s been a few guys gals do it. Yeah, we’ve got one in our office. It has a pretty awesome one on it. Oh, and that’s pretty incredible. Yep. Let’s see. Oh, so this is pretty cool. 20 pound packages, five of ’em of of beef jerky. Five of them from mahogany smoked meats. A hundred pounds, a hundred pounds of meat. And it feels like jerky is like an ounce for a big old stick. You know what I mean? Yeah. It’s just like, what does a hundred pounds of dried out meat look like? It’s gonna be big time. And we’ve tasted it. It’s awesome. If you’re looking for jerky, go get on there. We’ve know b Brandon Maha the owner, we’ve known him for years. He’s a hardcore hunter. Loves mule deer. He would support anything positive surrounding mule deer. Everybody out there should support his business as well. All these businesses that we’re talking about. But anyway, just, just awesome and appreciate that Jerky’s awesome too. We’ve had it for years too. Yeah, it’s amazing. And then Sheep feet orthotics did, you know, 10 pairs of sheep feet, so that’s awesome. Then we’ve got, oh, mountain Physio Eval. Eval has a training and rehab program that, that they gave away. 250 in cash from Rock Slide. Good guys over there to Rock Slide. Also have a podcast. We’ve had Rob y our podcast multiple times and he’s a mule deer fanatic.
00:33:16:22 –> 00:34:31:29
We don’t always agree on management styles necessarily, but that’s all right. Yeah. He supports what we’ve got going on here and, and we sure appreciate that. Thank you. Then we threw in another Avery, Avery. Oh, go ahead. Yep. Avery and the rock side guys. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. And then we threw in another trail camera package and then traditional bow package from Cell Way archery. So very cool. He I thought we were gonna need that here in Utah. Yeah, yeah. The guy was ex he’s excited the guy, he’s like, Jason, I can totally hook you up. And I’m asking him, Hey, you know, give me what’s, what’s best out there. I’m a imm, a die hard stick stringer traditional bow, you know, single string stick stringer string. And thankfully, I’m gonna put that off for a minute. And we had a beef package from Flying O Beef that got drawn and frame metal print of the king. And that also has, is gonna get a custom barnwood frame put on that by Matt Messer Messer. Yeah. And he did our podcast table here. This guy knows what he’s doing. It’s awesome. And Jeremy Houston did the print and Matt Messel, he’s gonna do the frame. So kind of a collaborative, unbeatable. Appreciate those guys putting that together. It’s awesome looking. Thanks for those guys. Yep. All right. We got some stocking shoes by, how do you pronounce that? Ancient. Ancient. How about A-N-X-Y-N-T.
00:34:32:03 –> 00:36:03:03
Anyway, everybody go out there and check out their stocking shoes. And anyway, it’s pretty awesome. We appreciate that. Just, just incredible. We also have a large print, metal print of a Longhorn Bull donated by PSC outdoor photography. We have Edge Eyewear Bundle two winners there. Appreciate them. We have phone Scope five winners. Chein your company. We appreciate phone scope for supporting us. Of course. They’ve sponsored everything we’re doing here for many years. We appreciate them. Winner’s. Choice of a Custom Holster by JC Custom. Appreciate them. That’s awesome. Mike Duplan, we’ve had him on podcasts. Just another, another milder fanatic and believes in what’s going on and a little bit sensitive to, to what’s to, to the scarcity of Big Deer right now. He’s, he’s one of those diehards that just loves Big Deer. And so anyway, appreciate him his support with a entire box of, of his book as well as a milder canvas print. We’ve got a universal writer, rider industries, they’ve kind of got those great big, you know, gun, let’s call it a rifle scabbard that goes in your truck right alongside the driver there on the passenger side that tucks in tight. We’ve all got guns in the truck and you need a Coyote rifle handy and he makes it possible. So got a five day meal backpack, meal kit by Backpack Logistics. We’ve, again, given what we’re enough, enough press, we don’t need to keep talking about him.
00:36:03:03 –> 00:37:16:25
Do we appreciate it. I actually love giving him a hard time. You gotta start first on him, otherwise you get behind. So if you’ve noticed, anytime we start a podcast with him, we just, we just crush right out, right out the gate with him. But anyway, we appreciate him. He’s fun to give a hard time too. Backpack Logistics. Appreciate ya. McGuire ballistics a free box of bullets. How about that? Wall-mounted antler hanger, awesome. Mule Deer Junkie Essentials Cap and, and Mule Air freshener. Pretty cool. We actually had some here in the office, and then again, 20 copies of Mike DUP plan’s Book the Edge. And so that was a lot quite extensive list there. It was, it was long. It was very diverse. It was exciting to hear from some of the winners after I heard of him or heard from him. We had, you know, there’s some young, young hunters. I don’t know if you’ve got these in your stack of letters. I don’t want to steal your thunder if you got ’em. No, I, I just remember that. No, no thunder. I remember one of these was like a young, young, I’m gonna call teenager age, and he passed some bucks and his dad said he was really hard to maybe not shoot him, but when he, when he found out he won, he won the bow, I believe the ho hoy bow, didn’t he?
00:37:17:00 –> 00:38:25:00
And he was so ecstatic that he passed the deer that he passed and it didn’t kill a deer, but that he won the bow. He just, the kid was ecstatic. So kind of a cool story. Well, it’s just interesting we’re, there’s a mindset, you know, it starts when they’re young, is that, you know, these deer aren’t just, every time I see a dead deer, it’s kind of like your heart goes out to ’em a little bit. Like every dough matters. You know what I mean? Yeah. Right now. And so, you know, again, we’ve got some of these, we know some of our highways right here, even locally, we could use some overpasses bros and maybe some fencing. I mean, some of these projects, maybe a landowner tag system where, where, you know, some of these ranchers are, are maybe compensated or able to sell their tags, not just, not just use ’em, you know what I mean, to pay for some of the damage and whatnot. I mean, there’s, there’s things we can be doing as well as everybody screams habitat, but we’ve got here locally in know our state, we’ve had so many habitat projects, we gotta fill the habitat. Yeah. That’s not our limiting factor right now. Mean you do have encroachment on cities and all of that. Those are different. But we’re talking summer range parts, the state where Yeah. Whether it’s summer range and, and winter range.
00:38:25:00 –> 00:39:30:18
That’s not our limiting factor in, in most areas of, of Utah right now. And, and we’re just eliminating northern Utah because we know the challenges that that faces with. It’s not gonna change a couple million people. It’s only gonna get worse. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. Anyway, so anyway, yeah, there’s definitely, definitely some things there as well as some of these, like these needless killing of those, like on depredation and things like that. Like we’ve got a landowner that complains our, our DWR jumps and I’ve got a, I’ve got a relative that’s a landowner and he’s got a bunch of deer on his property and he can’t, the tags aren’t transferable and in general status areas, tags are not transferrable other than to like blood relatives of some sort. There’s caveats to it. You can’t sell ’em. And he’s like, you know, I’ve got all these deer on here, like, I need him moved. You know what I mean? And, and DWR just, he says, I’m gonna kill him, but he’s, and I don’t think he would kill him. And they said, just let us know when it’s gonna happen and let us know so we’re we’re ready for it. And they’re fine with it, you know? Yeah. And I just don’t think that’s, if you kill a deer outta season, you don’t have a tag for it. You’re in trouble. That’s a problem.
00:39:30:25 –> 00:40:44:13
I don’t care if, you know, I I personally don’t think it’s, I don’t think they should have the right to be able to kill ’em like that. Having said that, we should develop a system where they want ’em, you know what I’m saying? Not just the pons agon where they can sell tax, not just San Juan, where they can sell tax. We should, we should develop a system where all deer matter and, and that all landowners matter and they’re able to receive compensation from the private sector to a degree. I mean, do you have any thoughts on that, Bronson? Well, yeah, it, that, that’s a statute in, in that allows them to do that. And that was passed, you know, even back 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 20 to 30, whatever it was since Yeah, I, I’ve been gone. That allows, you know, landlord to be able to notify the division of kill intent on cultivated crop land. And, you know, those, those are bad enough. But there’s also some of these issues that are happening out on range land. I mean, we ran into it this year. We’re out there, you know, scouting for deer, guiding for sheep, and we got people a mile, a half a mile off of private land hunting dough, deer hunt, hunt with a half a mile buffer off of rangeland out hunting dough, deer on the grass field hunting cedar trees and safe place.
00:40:44:16 –> 00:41:48:15
And they’re migrants, they’re, they’re, yeah, migrating deer. Nobody’s, nobody’s farming right now. No. You know, this was October and they were hunting, they had a half a mile buffer o outside of their private, which I understand sometimes the deer don’t come in in till dark and all that. But like, it just seemed like it really, you need one dough tag to shoot a dough half a mile off your place. And now you’re out there, you know, just hunting, you know, BLM land. It just seemed, felt wrong. I, I mean, I understand if, and this was in October, November, growing season’s over with, I just have a problem, problem with those types of things. Well, we have a fraction of the deer that we had it. Nobody, when your, when your family had that same piece of property. Sixties, nobody cared when deer, when we had billions though, when, when they were inable a true renewable resource. Nobody, nobody cared. When we have lots of deer, we have lots of depredation division goes out at times or whatever, and they smash a lot of deer and, and, and, and everybody still has good hunts because there’s a lot of deer to go around right now. It’s super sensitive. And so then you start every deer matter right now.
00:41:48:15 –> 00:43:06:04
So then you start looking at ways that maybe some of these guys that have a little bit of time and a little power and, and a little money that are fighting some other battles. Maybe, maybe some of these battles wouldn’t be bad to take on, you know, and, and have an adjustment in some of these things. So anyway, it’s awesome. Just causes an awareness. We did have some things sent in. I love to hunt with my dad. Little drawing. A little drawing. Pretty cool. I don’t know, there’s a lady that sent in a letter from about, you know, her husband. I, I don’t know, I kind of want to read it, but I don’t wanna embarrass anybody. It’s just awesome. Just this, the support for the hunting component and handwritten. Yeah. How much of a hunting is a positive in their life, their family’s life and how, you know, this, this wife loves, loves seeing her kids going hunting with her husband, if I remember right. That was the gist of it. And how much that means to them and their family and neely’s matter movement and just whatever was important to them, it was really, really awesome. So super supportive of her husband. That’s awesome. Well, yeah, if you’ve, if you take your kids hunting, it’s a great way to get brownies points. There’s no better way. I mean, there’s not, no, okay, well, what else? There’s some guys talking about bomb’s on moms.
00:43:06:18 –> 00:44:23:04
It’s probably not podcast material on that one, but a good, good time, good chuckle. Thank you for doing this for our mulder. Some people don’t think it will do anything, but I, I don’t see them doing anything to help. Let’s keep this going and do more big things to help the deer out because heaven knows they need it. So we had a, we had another, another note, we had another note sent in, you know, for, from, from a, a guy within the department of Game and Fish, one of the game and fish agencies. Of course everybody’s looking at this because I I, we’ve got guys on the Nevada Commission that love it or, or even Colorado, New Mexico we’ve heard from. And so anyway, it’s pretty awesome. This was kind of a cool one. You know, I love that you guys are sharing your ideas and encourage folks to participate. You know, not everybody agrees a hundred percent with some of the ideas about quality versus opportunity, and that’s okay. We don’t have to agree on every single thing. We do agree that we want big, healthy deer populations and great, you know, good buck hunting. That is a given. And I love that you’re using some ideas and percentage to incentives to persuade folks and thanks for being passionate and doing this work to protect and promote something you love. And he really respects that and we, we respect him as well.
00:44:23:07 –> 00:45:31:21
Just awesome, appreciate reaching out, you know, takes a lot for guys to reach out. If you, if there’s something negative out there, you’re gonna hear about it ever almost every time. If there’s something positive, you know, guys, guys are busy and people are busy and, and you hear, you hear a fraction of what people really think. But we appreciate all the support on mule’s matter and we’ll keep that, we’ll keep that cranking. You never know where it’s gonna lead. We’ve got some pretty big ideas, but who knows, there’s only so much you guy can do in a day Hung guys, you know. Yeah. So anyway, let’s brown some, maybe let’s just talk about some of the shows that we’ll be at. We’ve got a few of the things that we’ve got. We just cover covered a few things in the magazine. Maybe we’ll just kind of give a quick rundown of our schedule of events here coming up. Yeah. Just after the first of the year, we’re gonna have at least a couple of us will be down to Dallas Safari Club. That’s a new show that we’re gonna be attending there. New for us. Yeah, new for us. Gonna have a couple guys there with the Epic Outdoors Booth and Epic Outdoors Optics. So if you’re gonna be at that show, definitely stop by. You’re gonna wanna check our pricing out there, visit some of the guys.
00:45:31:22 –> 00:46:42:18
We’ll also the next week I believe will be in Sheep Show. Have a couple guys there and maybe the rest of the crew, a couple of the other guys will show up maybe Friday night, Saturday. It depends on if we get the next February magazine out in time. John John’s like cracking the whip. Oh yeah. I mean, I wanna say he’s a, I can’t say it out loud, but he’s a can’t driver can’t out loud. A Czar. A czar, okay. I like that. Nobody would care, right? No. A czar, yeah, the Czar’s got like assassinated, right. So yeah, nobody caress. Well, I mean, yeah, you’re a dictator. What? Whatever you wanna call yourself, you’re mean. I’m mean you’re the king. You’re king around here. But anyway, no, it’s, we just got one magazine to the printer. The other one’s gonna be due there in mid, mid-January. And if it all comes off like we think it will, we should have a day or two to go to the the Sheep Show. We’ll have a couple guys there, we’ll have a booth there. Jason and I may show up for Friday night or Saturday. And then as always, we will be the full week, the full team at the Western Hunting Conservation Expo in mid-February in Salt Lake City. It’s a big show for us. You know, we’re gonna bring our full, full optics trailer, we’re gonna have everything there.
00:46:43:06 –> 00:47:55:05
So if you’re needing something, wanna check out the tripods or check out the new glass. It’s great place to do it, you know, we’re gonna come heavy, stocked heavy to that show. So pretty awesome. You know, along with the tripods, we came out with a kind of a gun clamp, you know, slaps on the tripods as well. And a few things that’ll hold your phone while you’re taking phone photos of, of you and your trophy or whatever you’re doing. You get family photos, you’re just being in the field, whatever. Got some of those little knick-knacks. Got a window mount. Window mount is bad, eh? Whoa, what else John? Bad apples. John’s so, so passionate about this stuff. What else did you help create? Yeah, that we’ve got on our website. I, I think just, you can’t come to the show. Try ’em out. They’re phenomenal. You’ll be impressed. Yeah, you really put a lot of time into development on it. Alright, so then we’ve just put out the January publication. I actually have a little private link. We’ll let live here shortly. It covers a this week John maybe? Yeah. Yeah. Huh? John asked today, I was like, give us a break, give us a couple of days. Bronson, what do you think? Well, I don’t know now. Now we’re in charge. We can tell John when we want the Emag glass. How about, how about that John?
00:47:55:15 –> 00:49:09:17
He told us when he wanted the magazine to him so he could get the printer. Now we tell him, tell him him a couple of things and then say please after. So anyway, January magazine covers Arizona, elk and Antelope as well as Wyoming Sheep, goat, moose, spice and Elk or Yeah, we covered that, right? Yeah. Any other species I missed? No. And Bronson kind of the this interesting, what do you think the odds are gonna do with the Special Elk price Going up to upwards of over $1,950. Yeah, that’s gonna be the biggest question of the year. Yeah. I mean there’s gonna be a lot of people that aren’t willing to pay that frankly. It used to be what, 1200 and something bucks? Yeah. Jumping right to almost two grand. That’s gonna be, I don’t know. I think there’s gonna be the, the regular odds are gonna get worse in, in most every unit. There may be some individual units where you have, let’s say low tag numbers and you only have one or two tags and the regular or special pull, it may not make a difference there. Yeah. But if you have a hundreds of total tags and so you have handfuls of non-resident tags there, it’s gonna be interesting. You also could, could look at it from this perspective though. You might have some non-residents who are like, I’m biting the bullet.
00:49:09:18 –> 00:50:14:25
I’ll pay two GSS and be done with this state if I can just get drawn. Right. I think so. A bit of that can happen. Yeah, I think that’s kind of the smaller, do you think that way? Maybe? Yeah. Well I just think I might 1900, they were smart, they didn’t hit two. Okay. So 19 just hits a little different. Not as bad as two. And that’s kind of the smaller portion of the whole experience. You’ve got your guide fees are up over 10 K for most outfitters they’re doing in Wyoming. Yeah. Well, prices, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of money. And so then you’re looking at, well, 1900 and I can be done with this thing. So I think, I just don’t know what the arts arts are gonna do. That’s, it does feel a little soft. I just wanna say the economy. I don’t know if it’s the economy, if it’s, it was the, the people were amped up with all the weather. I, I, I don’t know. It just, there’s, there’s just, I’m not gonna say it’s blah. We’re doing a lot of consulting. We consult all day every day. But it’s just to maybe a slight different feel for 2024. What’s your thought? I agree. It doesn’t feel like people are raging into 2024. Give me every tag they can get.
00:50:15:02 –> 00:51:28:11
Do you think they feel like we do and we got our butts whooped on all these deer hunts and we’re just sick of it. Yeah. Think, think some people are tempered a little bit slowly. Their enthusiasm was tempered because it was a, it was a humbling year in a lot of places. Especially if you hunted deer in a lot of places. Yeah. Even, even elk. We’ve talked a lot about the archery elk rut in a lot of the western states. Colorado, Utah, you know, Arizona. It was a stop and start stall. Rutt it. It was not an incredible year to hunt out. It wasn’t. And there was not really a rational reason for it either. It was just unforeseen almost. There were units in Arizona that had incredible rutting during the archery and there was other units that were kind of dead. Yeah. It was just like what you’re saying, a stop start. It was spotty. Yeah. You know, and then, and then you go to other, other. Anyway, just there was a lot of that. Interesting. What was your, we’re gonna be talking about Utah here in the February issue, even though it’s not due till later. But you know, we’ve only got so much space, but potentially February. But how did you feel like the five day early rifle hunts versus the mid rifles, the new October seven hunt, things like that.
00:51:28:12 –> 00:52:43:24
Like, just to kind of bring that up as a topic, because that was a big topic last year. Definitely don’t feel too many giant bulls got killed on that five day early rifle hunt this year. No, we didn’t think it would be. Well, and, and that comes and goes pretty fast. The impacts of the spy hunters was, I would say under, what do you call it, the impact? It was, it was, it was on the mid-season hunt you’re talking about. Yeah. The spy hunters were just out in force. It just felt like it was, it changed. It changed. We warned people. We were like, we warned like beware this is going on during the spike hunt, but nothing could prepare you for it. No, no. That’s right. So the muzz loader hunt, which we all said it probably would be the best hunt. It was a 12 day rut hunt. It probably was the best dates and all that gave you enough days to pass bulls into it. There was some really good bulls on the early rifle, but five days is daunting. Yeah. You get two, three days in and guys are getting punchy and just shooting bulls. Yeah. And that happened a lot. So it’s gonna be interesting moving forward now Utah, you know, now went back retro actively, I guess you want pre 20 16, 20 15. Yep. Somewhere in there. No more magnified scopes on muzzle loaders for 2024 and beyond.
00:52:43:25 –> 00:53:57:13
It’s gotta be a one power magnified, non magnified scope or one power red dot or open sites peep site, whatever you want to use. So it’s gonna impact some people’s eagerness to go all in and, and do the muzzle loader elk hunt versus 30 rifle. So there’s a lot of moving parts. Muzzle loader was a no-brainer last year. When you can use hunt for 12 days with a scope that seemed like a no-brainer versus five days with a rifle right before that. But now maybe it’s not that appealing as appealing to some people. Now you got people, they’re talking about doing turd one power scopes and we knew it would happen like we call it, you know, and that’s, that’s fine dude. But looking through a one power scope seems like you’re going negative power backwards. Yeah. It feels like a negative 0.7. I’d rather use, ’cause my open side, I can see peep, I’d rather see shoot with a peep a peep. And, and now, and then there’s turd peeps, you know, where you can twist them up, twist ’em down. So, so anyway, it’ll be interesting I think though there’ll be some new products coming out to, to address that. But I will tell you, New Mexico went back to Ironsides last year was the first year. The residents, I’ve had many, many people say how, how they, they hate it, but watch out. But do That’s because they couldn’t kill ’em. That’s right.
00:53:57:13 –> 00:55:08:00
Watch out. It’s the watch out in the next few years. New Mexico, new New Mexico, New Mexico, I wanna say invented long range muzz orders. I mean the, they were shooting long range before any of us because they could Yeah. Them in Arizona kind of was the two’s that always did. That’s, and then Utah joined the fray back in 2016 or whatever it was. And then everybody got good at 15, 16 and then, and then some of the muzz company. It just felt like there was more, it was more the ability to shoot long range was definitely there by most people at a somewhat of affordable rate, you know, with, with some of the out of the box guns. So as well as custom guns, you know. But anyway, kind of interesting the New Mexico, they, when they went to straight iron site and they didn’t do a one power scope and, and you, I there’s gonna be some incredible bulls and five day hunts. Yeah. So you not only have like Utah’s five day early rifle, they have five day, they have units that don’t even have rifle hunts. All firearm hunts, whether it be muzzle or rifle. Yeah. Like 13, 17, 15. Have no rifle hunting. That’s they only have archery. Archery, muzzle and muzzle. And with a muzzle, an open sight five day hunt, like you’re just not gonna kill. I’m telling you, you’re gonna see some, you’re gonna see an adjustment in quality.
00:55:08:05 –> 00:56:19:25
It’s gonna be off the charts. I bet in two or three years you’re gonna see it with rain. You’re gonna have to add rain down there. If you get dry years, you just don’t have quality. Here’s a pretty good year. There’s a lot of bulls in New Mexico taking this last year. It was, yeah. And a lot of big bulls lived. And a lot of bucks are living. I mean I’ve, I’m hearing back from muzzled or deer hunters and so you are too pretty awesome. Okay. We’re trying to talk about everything in the west Don’t in one podcast, but we’re excited to be back in the, and John. Yeah, we’re excited. We got so many fun topics coming up and we don’t like to involve John on these podcasts. You know why? ’cause he always loves to say this one line and I hate it. He says, so you’re trying to make people less successful. And I hate that line. I hate that line. But yes, we are. No, we aren’t, we aren’t. I think generally speaking, when, when quality seems to have taken a dive, whether it be drought long-term, drought management, whatever, on any species, whatever it is that we’re hypersensitive to advantages. Yeah. Whether it be baiting or what, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. You know, weapon types and styles. We’ve seen all of these.
00:56:20:01 –> 00:57:22:27
If you look at, at the, at where we’re at as a society and an industry, things have changed so much and it’s all geared toward being more effective and killing at will then, you know, it’s fine if it’s renewable resource. Like Bronson’s talking about like, if, when, when the resource feels like it’s renewable and no big deal and you shoot this one, there’s another big one and what did he, we now we’re killing bucks. And it’s like they’re just not there. It’s like catching stripers outta Lake Powell. You can’t ever do enough to damage. You can’t do enough. That’s not build there. I mean, you throw how many minute Shelbys in there, it don’t matter. You cannot damage Lake Powell striper. No. Well, and I think, I think a lot of times I’m, you know, joking around and playing devil’s advocate, but there’s definitely, I don’t know, I believe every time to talk about it. No, I think there’s definitely a time and a place that, you know, some of the regulations are, are warranted and whatnot. I mean Yeah, we saw that in, in the, I think you’re in Nevada. We had a great moisture year. Yeah. Typically we would see, you know, that, that come and affect things directly, immediately.
00:57:23:10 –> 00:58:36:19
And I, I just don’t know if it did this year we saw some, there was some great bucks killed out of we just, what we realized, we just don’t have the numbers of deer. Yeah. And the numbers of old deer. I agree. So you had moisture, but they’re still gotta be four, five plus year old bucks to grow big antlers. Yeah. And that’s what I think we’re realizing. It’s, it’s rare to see an 8-year-old, you know what I mean? A seven or eight, A true monarch, you know, that lived his life. I mean it’s just feels rare. And when you do, we Bronson, we’re into Mexico, we’re driving down the road and there’s 180 inch looking deer’s, probably 1 78, very boxy, good looking thin horn deer. Right. And we all stopped to look at this deer. Yeah, okay. Pretty buck. We all stopped. Pretty buck. Yeah. Other states, we wouldn’t have given him two glances five years ago. You know what I mean? On a 2016 year in Nevada, we’d be like, get out of the way. What you do if you breed that dough, I’m gonna be disappointed. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because your eye guards aren’t six inches tall and you don’t have pop can mass. So you haven’t earned the right to breed that dough, you know? And now we’re just like, please breed that dough. It’s a majestic beauty. He’s got a, he’s got batching fours with die guards.
00:58:37:10 –> 00:59:56:09
That’s web. That’s right. That’s the way I felt in, in Colorado. Hey. You know, and a lot of it is ’cause they’ve had aggressive killing, aggressive tag numbers, trying to combat the, in their minds combat CWD and different things amongst, you know, just rifle rutt hunting and allowing, you know, not making sure they, when we do have a winter kill that we’ve cleaned off the landscape enough and these bucks are in freezers and, and, and there’s some merit to some of that, but not, I don’t know. It just, when you don’t see any mature bucks at all, it struggles a little bit with it. Disheartening. We’ve got a lot to talk about on the next podcast. We keep teasing it. Are we done? All right. Well, anyway, it’s been good. We want to just once again, appreciate everybody’s participation in Meals Matter program. It was fun. We hope the winners had fun, had a little bit of excitement at the end of it all. We appreciate the donors. Once again, it’s not gonna go away. We may make annual tweaks, we may add things, delete things as we see fit, just to kind of fit the, the vibe and feel of, you know, what we’re, what we feel a movement like this would needs to try to help accomplish in any given year. This, this year coming off some of the bad drought years and then some of the big heavy winter loss that we had.
00:59:56:09 –> 01:00:59:21
Another places we kind of, that was what brought it to a head. And we can adjust that. It could be, you know, every year we could tweak it a little bit on states we wanna include or how we wanna do it, but we appreciate the support of it. It was fun doing, took a lot of work. Appreciate Logan your efforts in doing that. Logan, we’re welcome to have you back. Welcome back to the workforce here at Epic Outdoors. And not mules matter really. Yeah. Yes. It feels good. Yeah. I worked on some magazine stuff today and it was really nice. I like it, John. Make sure he does a lot of epic outdoors work. He’s got a lot of catching up to do about about 30 hours a week. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. 30 hours a week. Unpaid overtime, huh? At least four or five months, wasn’t it? Yeah. Anyway, it was good work, Logan. Bigger than we thought it was gonna be. Thank you. Logan did a lot of the, you did a lot of the organization of it and you know, of course, John, you did a lot of that stuff too. And, and web design and all these kind of things. Designing of the ads. We’re gonna have more stuff coming out in the publications just to keep you posted on it. It won’t take away from statistics and drawing information and stories and things like that. Trust us, we get it.
01:00:59:26 –> 01:02:12:28
We, we know the importance there, but we do wanna, you know, keep the momentum going. Let me give a one shout out to, to our membership drive. It’s going right now. So if you love the podcast and you’re not a member, it’s a great time to join. You join and you’ll get a free entry into our giveaway. So like I mentioned before, I mean, you, you want to hunt a stone, stone sheep, and 80 grand is kind of outta your budget. Well, we’re gonna give you a free ticket to be entered into that drawing. And then there’s seven other hunts that are all, you know, 20 to 30 grand. So type of dream hunts that you could win. So join, we even did some, we’d even did some hunts. John, we talked about a cous deer and a wolf where we did a winner and their choice of partner to go with them. Yeah. And, and it’s, and the expenses paid for both. And I was talking to Bronson, we should pull two names maybe next time, who knows, right? Yeah. But for now, the winner. There’s gonna be one winner pulled and you’re gonna take a friend. Yeah. Yep. So anyway, pretty awesome. Great lineup of hunts. You can also buy tickets to get in, go to epic outdoors.com. Should be able to get on our website, check it out. And we are giving away your choice of a knife or a headlamp.
01:02:13:15 –> 01:03:29:01
And if you buy a $200 ticket package or a $500 ticket package, if you do the 500, of course you’ll get into the bonus draw, which is 10 k, $10,000. And, and we write the check to the outfit or your choice for the hunt of your choice. So that’s real and, and it happens. Of course, this is a membership drive. We want you to tell your buddies about us. All right, John, you got any other shout outs? Over and out? We’d like to thank all of our sponsors here at Epic Outdoors, 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 kuku.com for sizing and prices. Kenna Trek makes great boots for any situation. Most sheet punters in the high rocky altitudes. Use these boots to keep their ankles in. Check on the rough terrain. Visit ken 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.
01:03:29:01 –> 01:04:49:18
Call us if you would like help deciding which options are right for you. Fierce, long, 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 in shooting schools, visit thompson long-range dot com. Hoyt is top of the line archery equipment. 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 Cam 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 cam 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.
01:04:49:21 –> 01:05:04:15
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