In this episode we call our good friend Kyle Lopez, who was able to harvest a 306” Mule deer as a teenager. The crew also discusses the outlook of hunting in the western states and what factors affect big game the most.
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
00:00:00:27 –> 00:01:24:22
You are listening to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, check us [email protected]. No, I I you just think about, I dunno, every state has a different system and, and I really do like Utah’s. I like the random factor of it, and I like a max point, so you feel like you’re always in at something, you know, so maybe makes it easier to spend that extra 15 points for an elk application. You’ve already spent X amount of money, so 15 more points gets a in on elk and maybe, you know, it’s a chance, it’s a small chance, but you get one. The skews thing as a, when I was a biologist, I kinda liked that it helped to scatter guys out. I don’t think it ever helped with point creep per se. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell, but I know I, you know, when you start a cactus buck hunt, that’s just some random weird hunt on the pond. Special interest group. Yep. Because I like little weird fuzzy little weird things. Yeah. I think it has pulled a, it does, it pulled a good amount of, and, and it caught ’em out of the trophy pool. Like, it’s like you look at the multi-season, deer, not deer, but, but well, deer or elk, a couple of them. Elk or elk. And there’s a surprising number of people put in for those and they’re going for like a one one tag in a unit.
00:01:24:22 –> 00:02:31:29
It’s kinda like Antelope Island. Like yeah. Wow. I, but I’ve done that because I’ve had plans in other states. I’m like, well, I’m gonna go for the gold occasionally, but, but it’s a skew and you’re not competing against those. I’m not multi-season guys when you go for an archery tag. That’s right. But, but, but that helps residents a lot more because back to the non-resident, you make a cactus butt hunt. If they draw one non-resident tag that didn’t avoid, that didn’t help point creep. Three point guy could draw it or a 20 point guy randomly could have drawn it. But, but, but it, it does help, it does spread out resonance and, and you, you know, residents do you know, even in a four tag unit, two of ’em are gonna the high point guys and they’re, they’re now gone. So it does help it Yes. Spread them out. It’s late moles and stuff. It’s, that’s right. I I also think about a few things, and I don’t know where this is going, but just a thought that I’ve had when you have significant changes, and I can think of a few changes in, in Utah specifically, and we talk a lot about youth, but think about the years, think about what it’s done when the minimum age to draw went from 16 to 14. From 14 to 12. You know, that’s what it did. It shot me, me and Bronson were dealing with that. Yeah.
00:02:32:05 –> 00:03:27:05
Well, yes, and I’m, it actually happened when I was 15. I gotta hunt one ity. It was 16 and they lowered it to 14 when I was 15. And I gotta go a y Yeah. I had to wait till I was 14 and all of a sudden I think my little brother gotta hunt when he was 12. And it was kind of like this R of passage, like, you’re gonna shoot some ducks. First kid, you gotta shoot some ducks. First you shoot with two older brothers, you and Trevor po a cottontail. You might, you know, hit a hummingbird with a blow dart. I don’t know. Yeah. You need to, to pound some ducks first before you have the right to come hunt a deer with me. That’s right. Like, I’ve had to wait. But you think about that and then there was also a time in Utah where they wouldn’t allow like 12 year olds to apply for once in a lifetime. Yeah. It went for a, it went for a couple years. They said, okay, we’re gonna lower it to 12, we’re gonna lower it to 12. But we’re then, you know, but you can’t do once in a lifetime until you’re 14 or something to try and do that. And then, then all of a sudden it’s like, ugh, let’s just do 12. Just go for it so you don’t flood.
00:03:27:05 –> 00:04:24:03
So there’s, and then you get an influx of people and that’s just, it’s the John principle. Well there’s just, at some point we, we really need to address the age issue. There’s flooding, flooding of people to where if you all of a sudden up and decide to change a significant pool of people after 10 years of this now Yes. And you, so, and you have deer points scattered out in all different options because there is all these skews and then all of a sudden you want to say, let’s throw ’em all into one. It could be a significant, there’s real world scenarios significant if we, and if we need to address some of this stuff, I contend we could do away with turnbacks, just straight up. You draw, you burn ’em and get, get, you know what I mean? And don’t let people carry. Well that’s the frustrating part here in Utah with, with general season, we’ve found that they don’t, they don’t kick those back. No, they won’t kick. They don’t won. So they won’t do the, they won’t kick those, they don’t call you on it general. Sometimes people are kicking back. The others though, just ’cause they don’t, doesn’t feel right or didn’t weather’s a bigger, it’s a bigger hunt.
00:04:24:03 –> 00:05:24:01
And so there’s rooms, there’s room there to put some few more guys through if they, I mean, I know what’s significant amount of time, but if you did do a turn back or something, you could push more guys through or whatever. I dunno, there’s all kinds of change and all kinds of things. And it’s easier said than done to just say, this is what we’re gonna do. Make up your mind, pick your species or pick your one hunt and do it and get over it. There’s, that’s rolls off the tongue for some people a little easier than the real world applications are gonna be, let’s take for instance, deer in Utah. It’s a little bit confusing to some people that we got two point systems. One for the general, which went general. How about three point systems? Well if you count dedicated, yes you do. So it, it’s a little bit confusing. You can do both. Some people wish that you would just have one to simplify, but move it to a whatever other state scenario. Like say Colorado, Wyoming, where, you know, it’s like Wyoming’s really not because the residents buy their generals over the counter. So it’s not really the same. But, but make one deer point system. Well the, the the, there’s some problems, but there’s some inherent problems.
00:05:24:01 –> 00:06:28:04
You’ve been buying in to one system for so long and maybe, maybe you’re applying for a general deer while you’re building 26 points for elk that you haven’t drawn yet. And now all of a sudden you’re gonna be forced to choose between deer and elk. Because as a resident from a, and to add on to what you’re talking about is we have to choose. Okay. So, but we don’t have to choose on general deer. Everyone can do general deer in addition to then we’re to deer elk, limited entry deer, let’s call it trophy deer and limited entry deer, limited entry elk, limited entry antelope. So you get one of those and then everybody can do the general deer. And so it’s kind of pacified the elk hunters. I’m applying for pavan elk or whatever it is, southwest desert. And in the meantime, I’m going to still be able to hunt deer once in a while with my family. Yeah. Or you know, whatever. And, and 25, 30 years, that’s kind of way it’s been, it’s kind of the way it’s been. It’s elk. We’re on the rise too. And, and, and we had, yeah, we’ve had guys, you know, get frustrated with Wyoming sheet points and things like that saying well they’re, they’re looking, you know, they changed the non-resident quotas and I’ve been buying in for so many long and I want my money back for the last 40 years and all of these things.
00:06:28:07 –> 00:07:38:12
And so, and their point is, is you knew the rules when we you applied and it doesn’t mean we can’t ever have change. And, and, and I get that. My contention is so there could be change. There could be change. My contention is why do we need change? Like why, why are we talking about this stuff today? Change that a problem, change what, what’s the problem? Let’s look at the problem and then say, or perceived problem. Or perceived problem. It may be a perceived problem. Let’s look at whatever data there is to, to look at the perceived problem. Whether it is, I mean I think the problem feels like people are saying general deer tags are too hard to draw like that maybe they are feels like that. But I think that’s where it’s coming from. From maybe they like, but I think it, it was on the heels of saying our general deer are in the toilet and, and because of the long term drought. Oh, you’re right. Yeah. And whatnot. And then we didn’t have, you know, adaptive tag strategies for long enough. We see a slight increase. We wanna slam slam it with tags. People get frustrated. We have a 80% dial up north, but yet tag, you know, don’t really follow that necessary. The tag don’t follow that percentage wise and reflect the, the absence in the population.
00:07:38:24 –> 00:08:44:11
And so I think generally speaking then everybody gets frustrated and then we develop, we have a committee which we address it every five years or whatever it is. And, but what are we addressing? I just wanna know what we’re addressing. Are we addressing, are we address, who cares if there’s a multiple point system? Who cares if there’s a general and a dedicated and a and a limited entry. What? And if and if you think general, general tags are hard to get now, wait till you add ’em all together. Yeah. But careful what you wish for. Yeah. You’re gonna, you’re gonna end up with a lot. There’ll be a lot more people choose to go general than to go limited. There’s only a thousand or 15 limited deer tags in the state. So I would contend that majority of people out there in the state of Utah, if you make ’em pick, they’re gonna do a general unit versus limited. If I have 12 to 14 points or 15 points Bronson, and you’re telling me that I have to choose and, and I can’t really get anything great anyway. I can’t get a Henry’s rifle, archery, muzzle oaks, ponds, whatever it is. You’re gonna go hunting, I’m gonna go more people four in my mind I’m thinking I could draw every four or five years or every three to five years depending on weapon type on pine valley you’re only given or something else most points away.
00:08:44:11 –> 00:09:46:03
The first year you do it and then, then you’re in the draw every year for general. And now I’m gonna go hunting regularly, which you’re not because you, your drawing odds are gonna change when you have that influx of people coming over and again, what is the problem we’re addressing? What, what is it you’re gonna have, Josh, I wanna know, you might have some elk hunters that say, oh, I’d rather hunt general deer than apply for my five points for elk. Yeah. So there’s the, another inherent problem is now with for residents, we’re talking to residents, but hey, non-residents, listen, that’s fine. You know, if I’m applying for the limited entry elk, now I’ve got one deer point system and I truly have to choose one or the other. And I don’t get my general deer option as an elk applicant. Now I’m now I’ve got real world props. How best do I really like elk? Our elk, I’ve gone hell any down here, I’ve only got eight points anyway for elk. I’m, I’m in no man’s land. I’m gonna hunt deer every year, my family or every two to three years with my family. And I’m gonna go that way. And by looking at last year’s odds, I’m gonna avoid oaks, Henry’s ponds, whatever. And I’m gonna go ahead and do general again hurting the general guy. Yeah. I just don’t know. I think you gotta be careful. I don’t know that the system’s broken.
00:09:46:07 –> 00:10:51:06
Well and then I hear some people say, well maybe we can do that and one other species that you just do points only for, well if the whole mentality of streamlining a point system is to help point creep or help people that just one hunt in general get tags more often. And now you’re also gonna add, add another option. It, let’s say you add, you can let people do a second species, but that second species has to be points only. What are you doing? It’s just like what’s going on with non-resident? We already talked about what happened with non-residents with antelope and other species. They’re building these points in the background and at some point what’s that gonna do? It’s going to hurt the point hurt, the point creep in whatever category they’re gonna start building there. So there’s not a perfect, they’re be careful what what tinkering with something really might create. But why tinker? I think we’re in that time of history. Is it so broken When we’re tinkering every year, why do we have, we’re tinkering with this, we’re tinkering with that because we feel like we need to tinker because we don’t like what’s happening. Well there’s, when I go out in the hills, I don’t see four points. So let’s deal with the point system. Well I I don’t, I just wanna address what’s the problem.
00:10:51:09 –> 00:12:02:12
Well, yeah, and you got 20 something thousand fewer general seasoned deer tags now than we had, I dunno, five, 10 years ago, whatever that number years ago. And that is the, is is a big driving factor. Why we even talking about any of this because 97,000 or whatever that number was, okay, it’s a lot different than it’s 72,000 or whatever. But those, but those problems, but that, those are drought and winter related things that if we can keep doing the right thing and mother nature cooperates, we’ll start, we, we’ll hopefully those problems can fix it, work themselves out, fix themselves. But I, if our deer are down, then we’ve gotta take care of it. We do. If our deer are up tags for everyone, multiple point systems, who cares. Right? And so anyway, I just, I wanna sometimes, and Deon, Deon made a point and, and I think there’s a lot of validity to it. We develop committees and, and as on being on a committee, you wanna make things better. You’re charged with making something better, making change so that people are happier. That the, the majority of the public is happier. I don’t know that because there’s a committee that means there has to be change. It could be we flesh it out, we look at it and we realize we’re actually doing pretty good.
00:12:02:22 –> 00:12:59:27
We just need some good wet years and we need maybe the division’s recommendations to be a little more adaptive. Maybe the general public doesn’t see eye to eye with the division and, and, and so there’s a, there’s a butting of heads and the division in the past has, has not changed their recommendation. They don’t, they don’t, they’re not listening or whatever. And then yes, the board ratifies it at the end of the day, public get disenfranchised, lose faith, blah, blah blah. And now we need a committee and now we need to change everything ’cause the division won’t listen. Yeah. And you get leg legislators, you know, threatened to do certain things. I mean all of those types things come up. And that luckily tempered itself a little bit. Yeah. Not saying they haven’t done some good things here and there, but just saying, and it seems like we’re talking a lot about Utah, but I mean there’s other committees and other happening. Colorado’s, Colorado’s got stuff going on. Their next five year season structure and draw process processes in general are all kind of on the table right now too. And and I would be, and OTC tags are not for elk. Exactly.
00:13:00:00 –> 00:14:09:25
Like, and that’s a, it’s easy to say stuff until you see the staggering numbers of what, what that would could mean to Colorado parks of my life’s budget and what they would lose in terms of non-resident license sales O being OTC for rifle and or archery. Well what that would mean cont make them general, make the honey be, and I contend, was OTC elk ever intended to be an amazing no solitary. I, I drew, I have this OTC elk tag and I don’t wanna see other hunters in the field. No, that’s And non, all I see is non-resident license plates. And so we need to limit the non-resident on the OTC. Their populations are, I, I mean they can warrant OTC. Yeah. Continue with it. It’s okay. You was never designed to be a, a premium experience. The elk populations are not hurting. They may be in five to 10 years, 15 and the wolves get strongholded. But right now they’re in most places in Colorado that is Oh, our elk cannot handle that. They’re not, they’re not doing it because the elk can’t handle it. That’s, they’re doing it because of the resident pressure of I want a better OTC experience. Yes, that’s right. Well go on the first or fourth as a resident. You can draw it every 1, 2, 3 years, whatever, depending on the unit, maybe every year. Yeah. And so there’s, there’s options for ’em.
00:14:09:25 –> 00:15:18:01
But there’s, there’s other, there’s a perception of limiting non-residents. Yeah. Well, and there’s, there’s the other, other factors on the table too of like, you know, and, and I guess I would say I don’t think any state should be, and in the case of Colorado for deer, elk antelope is a true preference system. A hundred percent Right Now it’s nice to have a random shot like John’s talking about. You should have some, I mean, you, you and the hybrid draw was supposed to do that. And it doesn’t do for non-resident. No, it doesn’t. Non-resident quotas are, you know, super prior to that, we, we, we, we dominate the high points, glean our 20% or whatever on the unit meet the quotas. So any hybrid tag or two that’s right. Is given to a resident. So if I was king with the, except if I was the king of any state, I would have at least one tag. And anything you draw would go, would go to in the random draw. Just, just to have, okay. So they’re addressing that. And it may happen, you know, they’re address and, and the percentages can be very, they vary in each state from 20 to 75% on what we’ll go to it. But, and that’s not for me to be involved in Colorado. I just, I think that’s, that’s good. But there’s, there’s change on the table for Wyoming too.
00:15:18:01 –> 00:16:29:24
There’s constant conversation on, on the non-resident quotas and things like that. I’m not saying the change is imminent or you know, just saying, I’m just saying these questions are being raised across the board in all states and, and Utah’s on our mind at the moment, you know, the committees are getting excited and, and I just, I guess I just go back to, you know what, what’s the problem? Is it, has it been drought? Has it been a harsh winter? And, and I I see the problem is permit recommendations are offensive when they don’t address the current state of affairs immediately. Yeah. Immediately. Especially immediate harsh drought. Year two feels like there’s not enough given to that or to a big winner year. Well, they wanna establish a trend of a negative year population year and one year is not a trend, which is part of our arguments in some of the past with permit increases immediately when you have a good FA production in one year, but not the same amount of, but we’ll wait cuts on, we’ll wait three or four years and make sure our populations are down, make sure they’re really going down. But the minute they have a 70 or 80, you know, fawns per hundred dough fa production survival rate. Yeah. Our two point crop. So then it just, it raises people, gets their people come outta the woodwork. That’s right.
00:16:29:28 –> 00:17:44:15
And then all of a sudden there needs to be change and now we’re address addressing stuff. That’s not even, not even the issue issue. Not even the real problem. The problem is, is drought, Josh, drought chime in. What are we missing? The problem is drought, fa numbers, fawn recruitment and deer numbers and winter loss up north. Yeah, that’s right. So what are we missing, Josh? We just have the, there’s not enough tags for everybody and everybody wants a tag. And, and people think that there has to be some significant change to get those tags back to the point that it awoken some grizzly bears that have been d for years. Well, I like the analogy. They, and they, they used to let the old man in, but the old man’s not getting in anymore. I’m young and I want tax. Yeah, exactly. So I, I’ve been rejuvenated. Are you an I ain’t letting the old man in you an old boar I coming out of the desk? No, I’m 30 once and I’m 30 now. Okay. I will draw the line at shirtless selfies. I’ll cut you me down. I’ve not, I won’t be, I won’t be, I won’t hosting the only thing I’m having, having conversations with fake people, I won’t be doing that. The only thing that’s just it, you know, we’ve increased, we’ve increased hunters. I think I’ve said it on here before.
00:17:44:21 –> 00:18:57:09
I was a hunter ed teacher for quite a while and I purposely failed 50% of the students just for John’s case. You know, just like need another year son. Just because I knew we needed tags too. But no, there’s just, there’s a sign amount. I like to, I like to tease Josh, everybody right in email. Josh. [email protected]. I love to tease Josh about the game or his people. Josh, tell your people I hear it all the time. So we get it from, well he’s the most recent, what do we call, call inductee? He’s the, he’s the only division. He’s the epic. And he is the only gamey, like only the game. I saw the gamey, the word gamey on somebody’s Instagram story. It’s so funny. Yeah. So game. So tell us from the gamey side, Josh, what are the problems? You just, the thing is, is you’re in charge of wanting to provide opportunity and hunts for people. Yeah. And so you just want to do what you can to provide as much opportunity. There is issue tags. Yeah. And that’s generate revenue and that’s what it is. And, and these committees that come up usually, I think it’s five years I’ve been out as a Utah biologist for long enough. I, I don’t, it used to be five year deer elk plants, statewide plants. Maybe they’re longer than that.
00:18:57:18 –> 00:20:04:24
So maybe it’s, I know we do three years, maybe it’s 10, but I don’t think they’re 10. I think it’s more like five. They’re talking about setting up three year season structures now. Yeah. Yeah. But we’ve been on, we, we’ve been through eras. I, as I was a biologist and after that were cranking deer, were cranking wet, they were doing awesome. The five years comes up, time to talk about the Utah Deer plan that year and, and, and, and update it. Now’s the time for change and nothing got changed. Yeah. Why? ’cause things were, everybody was happy, things were great, everybody was happy. Things were great at that curve moment. There’s no no change. Neither the next five years could have had four landed on a drought. Terrible. Or four years of it. Four years of drought and decreasing tags, 20 thousands tags left. And now either everything’s on the table, guys, either you guys are changing or you’re gonna lose your jobs. That’s are mad. Right. People are mad. That’s exactly right. Yeah. And so you got, we gotta pump the brake slightly and decide what is really, really broken or, or if it is anything you’ve broken. And I think we’ve learned a lot about weather and, and things like that. But I’m not, I’m not saying fond recruitment, I’m, I’m not letting anybody off the hook. I feel like we should be addressing that with tag numbers, tags for everyone when it’s good.
00:20:05:06 –> 00:21:07:25
Less tags when it’s not good. It is what it is. The resource is the resource. We’re learning a lot more standard. We’re extremely, we’re lucky here in Utah with the amount of research that they’re doing. Yeah. That’s one thing. Like the division they’ve teamed up with BYU some of the other universities and stuff. The amount of research that happens in Utah is significantly higher. They’re talking than anywhere else. What’s frustrating though is they’re talking about healthy bucked door ratios being in the single to single dig digits. Yeah. And that’s, they’re talking about putting biologically hooves up in the back of a truck at two and three and four year olds. Yeah. They don’t even care about the, a healthy age structure within a population. Because when you look at a lot of stuff scientifically, that’s all you need biologically. Yeah. That’s all you need to get the nose spread. Like your, your cow herd. You got a hundred cows, how many bulls do you think you need for your hundred cows? Don’t, don’t waste time and money feeding more bulls out in your pasture than you need to cover all your cows. There is that side of it. Okay. Not very many states manage to truly to that extent. Right. But, but, but you do hear it crop up sometimes if these seven to eight bucks, while dose is good enough, once in it happens. Monroe was an example or whatever.
00:21:07:25 –> 00:22:03:29
Once in a while when it happens, people are angry. Oh. You see it with your real eyes in that it’s not acceptable. I, I don’t know anybody. Everybody says, Hey, that’s all you need. We can give more opportunity. I saw 30 dos today and I didn’t see a Josh. We’ve talked about those times. Like you can talked about when you were first couple years hunting with your dad, 14 years old, I don’t know what years those were. So talk about that. It was like 94, 90, 19 94 in that range. And I, when I was a biologist, I went back and looked because I was curious ’cause I remember I had a tag. You could go down to the hardware store and buy one at the time. And I remember doing that and I, I would get mad when my dad would stop to glass deer because there was not a buck with them. And I was a 14-year-old kid that just wanted to shoot a two point. Like I just, but the BDO ratios were in the single digits back then. We did have a lot of deer. Yeah. But, but it was when, it was when Utah transitioned to, alright, we can’t give the OTCs, we went to draw 92, 3, 4, all those areas right there went to five regions and after another 10 or 15 years went unit by unit.
00:22:04:13 –> 00:23:05:24
And so for some people that are here today saying, well, back in the nineties, it was incredible. It it wasn’t always you had peaks and valleys in the nineties. Yeah. And until you start going way back to the fifties, sixties we’re ta in seventies, maybe eighties. We’re dealing with up and downs that really we’ve seen before in these last 30 years. We’ve see, well when I, there’s always a battle when you’re working for a state agency, there’s always a battle you’re fighting one way or another. There’s always some sort of a battle. When I was, when I was a biologist, tag numbers were increasing going through the roof. Dear dear, numbers we’re increasing, going through the roof. Number of buck to dough ratios. You couldn’t catch ’em. Deer were, they were doing so good. Doing well. You couldn’t catch the buck dough ratios every year. Stream 18 plenty bunch of years together because maybe one down year, but it wasn’t enough to stop the trend. Yeah. And, and most, most hunters were satisfied. Everything was great. There was plenty of deer, plenty of bucks and a lot of good bucks. But, you know, there was a significant battle. We were on deer muzz leader and the rut, you know what I mean? Over the counter. Yeah. I know there was a I but we also, there’s a limitation to the muzz, right? Yeah.
00:23:05:24 –> 00:24:22:29
Like we didn’t, meaning, meaning the technology wasn’t there and equipment and everything else. Yeah. So there’s a lot of intangibles. And you’d go to like a rack meeting and you’d have zero sportsmen show up like you wished sportsmen would come to rack meetings all when it’s good. They tell y’all to show up now, but they’re praying for a, a small attendance. I remember truckloads of flatbed trucks rolling up I 15 coming from the Bundy insurgency up I 15 Exactly. To show up in Beaver at the rack meeting. And you had 300 cowboys that are sick of deer eating their alfalfa. Yeah. Because there are too many right now. Got sick of elk eating all the grass on the hill and no sportsman there because it was a, it was a time of milk and honey. Yes. Because the amount of deer and elk and whatever it’s saw the DW yard smash. So the thing is like, it’s just, there’s always a battle and you can’t take a snapshot always. And of where, where it is currently. Well, you’re dealing 17. I thought things could, and I feel like, and I would dare say that wasn’t that long ago, things could not be better in this state for hunters in general. Every we heard it, we heard it all draw everybody zero points. One point. Yeah. We had sportsman’s groups touting we, we, you know, fixed, fixed fine. Utah is the Seren. Garrett Serengeti of the west.
00:24:23:24 –> 00:25:28:21
It had been fixed. It was, it was that attitude. But a lot of it was environmental in seven, eight years. It, it was environmental. No, I I I I’m saying a hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, good management and plans and all that worked. But man, mother nature can make everybody biologists look awesome. Hundreds are doing the right thing. Sportsmen are caring about the resource. And mother of nature can also take all that away. Right Now, if the biologists in Nevada, the sheep biologist in Nevada were judged on where the state of the nation address of desert sheep in Nevada, they’d all be fired. That’s right. And it has nothing to do with them. It’s disease and drought. Drought. And so now it’s the opposite. There’s not a single rancher that shows up because there, there’s the deer low. No problem. Oh, they’re, there’s no deer in it. They’re no who’s there. The same ranchers are out the hills. All those grizzlies that have been awoken outta hunter that can’t, sports its never been worse in my lifetime. It’s exactly right. And this is also’s never been worse in my lifetime. And now this is, I’ll, I’ll just tell you, this is why there’s committees. That’s right. Hundred percent. This is why there’s committees because it can’t all be taken care of in Iraq. Meeting RAC meetings already last six and six hours a night and the committee’s gotta do something.
00:25:28:21 –> 00:26:39:21
And so now they try and because there’s a committee, they try and fix it, try to put out fires at the committee level first to only bring some things. Yeah. Whatever. And, and you could, you could extrapolate a lot of the same thing to be community on city councils or you whatever county commissioner. Just because you get, I’m a huge fan of that either. Okay. Well I’m just talking. Sometimes things are going good, just keep it going Good. And we’re sicking don’t something. Or sometimes things aren’t going good. But if you can realize and have the perception of what those problems are and that you’re not in control. Yeah. You’re not, you’re not, you, you not in control of the weather. You’re not in control of a long-term drought. Unprecedented. Not in control of the California’s flooding Southern Utah. Yeah. Well, we can control that. Let’s cut ’em out. I mean, there’s just some things that are going to happen with or without. You know, we should p their phones and as soon as they hit the port of entry, no one mile an hour over, give ’em a ticket, flattens all four tires on, on, on whatever it takes. Get ’em to where they’re like, I had a terrible experience. I’m going to Colorado. I’m gonna drive around Utah to get to Colorado. All of a sudden their cell phone doesn’t work. We can cut service for those people.
00:26:40:24 –> 00:27:43:01
Could you imagine, just based on your aerial code, could you, could you imagine a Californian with no cell service? We like some in 10 minutes, they’re done and we like some in 10 minutes. 10 minutes. They’re headed to the motel to get wifi. We like our California hunters. We do tease, hear from ’em all. And when they call tease here, what do they usually say? I’m sorry, I’m that Republic of California, but I am a hunter. I’m sorry. And I live in the north half. That’s right. That’s right. I in California, don’t hold it against me. We have some really good friends even around San Diego. So it just, it’s all injust. We feel bad for you. And they a gorgeous bad state. I wanna go vacation there. Jenna loves it. We love it. The kids love it. I’m a Lakers and Dodgers fan. I’m not a fan that I can’t carry a pistol across state lines and go to their state. Can’t bring your mountain line back. Can’t Yeah. Even a dead one. Are you stupid from Wyoming? It’s dead. It’s not gonna hurt you from Wyoming. Frozen in a ball, in a whatever, whatever. Deal with your Yeah. You know, bears in, in town, whatever, whatever. Deal with all that. The thing is, everybody just so wound up with everything in life. We’re sick of gas prices, we’re sick of interest rates, we’re sick of ho I mean, we’re sick of everything. Angry.
00:27:43:06 –> 00:28:47:22
We’re so sick of our lives. I don’t know. But we need change. Said it’s never been better. And he’s worried that the, you know, that the the opposite side is gonna change everything. Yeah. For the worse. And we all, everybody wants to change. Everyone change. And it’s just, ugh, sometimes just gotta plow through times. Sometimes you gotta get through these tough times and you gotta let mother nature really, she is the, she’s in charge when, especially with deer elk, you remove lead poisoning in the form of 180 grain nozzle ants. They live. Yeah. And absence of grizzlies and wolves, they live, that’s how they die in Utah is lead poisoning. Okay. I’ve heard it and I’ve heard deer is a totally different story. Everything’s well, they’re a big rabbit. We sheet, we teach sheep. No, they’re out looking for a place to die. Deer are right behind them. They are, they’re a big rabbit. You put one on everything. Wants to eat ’em. You put a deer on dogs, it’ll lay there. It’ll lay there and die on a watch. A deer. A deer lays on its side. It, it’s, it’ll die. That’s right. I’m not kidding you. I don’t know how many times we make fun of sheep and they are fragile, more fragile than deer. You lay deer right behind them. It’s you lay one on its side. It will lay there until it gets eaten by a Coe. I’m not even kidding.
00:28:47:27 –> 00:29:44:27
I I remember we’d go do these captures and stuff. You’d sit there, you’d obviously ’em on their side undoing the hobbles. I don’t know how many times Is it the guts they would lay there? Is it the gut? Are you talking about the guts and the chambers? Whatcha are talking about? I’m, they’re weak. Oh, they just, they, oh, this feels to live this good. This feels good. They have no will to live. They would lay there, you undo the hobbles. They’d sit there and they’re just like one eye on you. ’cause you’re standing right there and they’re just looking at you like I do I make the D for it yet? Or do I pretend I’m dead? Just do it. Just do it. Because if it’s Get up, it’s a Kyle, all you’d have to do, it’s not a Kyle Kyle pups roll it up onto its brisket and it take off, it has life again. But on its side, it’s like, just do it just, it’s like a turtle on its back. Yes. They have no will to live. Well, whatever. We gotta realize some of these things. There’s truth to some of this joking and slight mindedness we’re doing to in certain things in life. And in this case the hunting world and trends are just that sometimes they are, they are trends. They’re downward. But maybe there’s hope.
00:29:45:12 –> 00:30:45:27
We all know in the west, the last couple years have been completely different in terms of moisture. It’s a little bit too much in places up north. Yeah. Wyoming, Idaho, Northern Utah. But this year. But, but from a precipitation standpoint, phenomenal lakes and reservoirs, forged conditions of the deer that actually lived in those places. Can’t be better. All right. Less competition. But it’s gonna take a while for ’em to come back. You get into the southwestern states completely different story. We can actually grow forage, maybe grow some fawns. You strung two or three, four years together. That’s what we’re talking about. We get into those trends now. Like yeah. And then watch, one little tweak will be made something here. And that and mother nature will do good for four years. And they’ll say, see, I told you that’s what we should have done. Well that’s, that’s what’s gonna, we should have went to four point or better 40 years ago. Yeah. And that’s what’s happening now. There’s a lot of change because, and and it’s a weather pattern that changed it. That’s right’s not the four pointer better. That’s right. That’s, it’s not the single strand boat. Yeah. It’s not the straight walled cartridge. You know what I’m saying? Not putting smooth barb on every western rangeland fence on the bottom, on the smooth wire to keep Fs alive better. It’s not that.
00:30:46:04 –> 00:31:57:07
And I, and I’m just saying if we’re, if we should, we should. If, if our populations are struggling like they are in certain areas, pine Valley, we should protect every dough we can. Yes. Not let a single rancher kill a single animal without a citation. End of story. I do not care. I do not care. And and this highway 56 should be fenced. There should be, we have, there’s dead deer all the time on it. All the time. And it’s in the main stretch from, well, it’s town here for 10 miles that stretch similar to 89 on the pots. Yeah. They don’t, it’s that much of a migration or activity. It’s not even that much of a migration there. It’s just activity crossing. Yeah. You know, and so we should take care of every dough that we can and, and do what we can. And I guess that’s our point about tag numbers and the, we should do what we can and be and be as proactive, reactive, whatever you want to call it as we can. And, and that’s all you can do. You. But, but over prescribing or over managing is a thing, in my opinion, in in wildlife manage. You can try to over manage something to death and try to fix every little thing, quote, fix every little thing. Some things have to just work themselves out through time and through trends.
00:31:57:08 –> 00:33:11:21
And I feel a little bit bad for the biologists dealing with this kind of stuff because nowadays with social media and whatnot, everybody has a voice and it gets pretty loud and then they feel vulnerable. And at times it’s not necessarily their fault at times. They haven’t helped themselves out by, by not listening to the public. That’s my opinion. But, but whatever they, they are trying and, and many of which are really good dudes. Well, and and to their defense too, like, like over the course of 10, 20 years, people come, go, relationships come and go. Biologists come and go. There’s a lot of over turnover in in that, in that profession over time. You, you know, and a lot of people, you sit, you know, in a normal career, a lot of people sit in that same career maybe for 20, 30 years in the same spot. But there don’t, there’s advancements, people move. You’re always moving different perspective, different way of doing things. Different tolerances from like Josh said, landowners or certain government, county commissioners or local government special interest groups or just sportsmen in general. That that stuff comes out. I mean, the friends of the gon was born when, when I was a biologist there because of some severe drought periods. It was born then that was when the tags were slashed in half.
00:33:12:03 –> 00:34:25:21
And they’ve pretty much stayed that same point since, you know, that 2003, four era and you know, it’s been, what, what’s that been 20 years, you know what I mean? So that’s crazy time. And then it’s kind of faded a little bit of time because I think that maybe we realized all right, over overdoing it, I mean slightly if you want a certain result and that case it’s a premium limit entry unit. But I’m just saying there’s a season for certain things. There’s other times that yeah, you don’t need to fix, try to fix every little thing in the, in in the toolbox and over, over. I mean, I, I do think in, in Utah there is a, there is a tendency to try to overdo everything, whether it be, whether it be, you know, all the skews are good to a, to an extent. But, and, and they can distribute punish people. People wanna get rid of lifetime license holders. There’s not that many of ’em. They don’t give ’em out anymore like other states do necessarily. But other states aren’t giving a get. They haven’t for 30 years. But not only that, people are dying left and right. It’s, it’s gonna run its course. And quite frankly, I’m a lifetime holder. When, when was the last general deer I killed? Me too. I I’ll bet it’s been 2010. Okay. Yeah. Mine might have been how many, how many lifetime? 14 years.
00:34:25:22 –> 00:35:28:06
How many lifetime license holders are even? Oh, probably three. Ou I mean there’s only was like four, four. But talk, talk about this. I chosen, you know what King John would do. I don’t because I’m not a life I’m holder. Well cut his channel. Yeah. Cut his channel. So no, but no, I do want to hear actually what you have to say. There’s hard data on this. There’s how many there are. I’ve also, how many, many times do you think I’ve been dedicated Hunter and I’ve, I buy my hours. Okay. I’m funding the state left and right. I haven’t killed a deer. I don’t know how long. Yeah, I don’t, I know the last Jerry killed was 2010. It was Brutus prior to that. 29 2, 2009. Nine and 10 were good boys. Nine and 10 and forevermore because of nine and 10. I will forevermore fund the state and probably not take another animal. And I’m just saying, I think there’s a lot of that going on with lifetime license holders. I don’t think that’s a problem. Well, most of them all think because other people aren’t lifetime license holders. They want it to be fair and they think that that’s a problem and there’s no problem. What a, what are we talking about? And they’ve even done, you know, I’ve heard it data analysis. I mean there, there’s a couple units maybe that, that seem to get a higher percentage.
00:35:28:06 –> 00:36:30:16
But I’d, I’d like to see it. I mean there’s, let’s let’s call it three or 3,500 of them that are actively alive and particip picking you. That’s less year to year. I think it might be less than that. And then c All right. It’s less than where are they taking ’em? A lot of people I would contend and Lindy’s run the report and we heard it. I just don’t have the numbers on the top of our head. I head either, but I mean, I guess yeah, if I’m a biologist, okay, I better really like the west because I could go to Ohio. Okay. And I can’t, I’m telling people they need to shoot six D per buck or whatever. Right. We’re issuing tags like it’s our job. Yeah, exactly. You know what I’m saying? And, and, and so we have EHD or we have whatever. And and that’s out of our control. We’re sorry things aren’t good, but I mean, what could we do? You know what I mean? And there’s just tags for everyone. And so what a biologist do back there. I wanna know, Josh, what do probably have, what do the game do? Habitat related? Probably habitat on private. I mean, what are we doing? We or stayed or shortened seasons or I dunno, wait until the next year and all the shortened seasons. When was two years? I mean, two years over on again, Iowa and Kansas.
00:36:30:17 –> 00:37:40:00
When was there ever change on seasons? I mean, I, I’d just like to know a few things. I mean, I would say the grass is way greener back there. Well, s way greener that goes back to the fragility of freaking mule deer. I mean, it just does. That’s the simple facts. And she, or anything else, I was on committees, western mule deer working groups when I was a biologist. Josh might have been on when he, they’re still doing them. And they should do because things change. Populations are changing. They should do. But at times you can evaluate and say, we’re doing the best we can. Well, yeah, that’s right. And, and overall, you, you ident I mean, as technology changes, you know, like Josh alluded, whether it be callers or GPS callers, migration studies, fa, survival, do fa survival is, is off the charts now compared to what you’re learning a lot of good information from that. And, and not just why fawns are dying that fawns are dying, but what’s killing them. A lot of prescriptive things that you can actually make real, real world decisions with. But anyway, how long are we gonna, we’re done podcast. Done. We’re done. I’m sick of it. I actually, I’m, I wanna go back to talking about Colorado and giving people options. That’s what I want. Really? I wanna go back to my desk. No, what time is it?
00:37:40:06 –> 00:38:48:15
It is, can we talk till five o’clock today on a Friday? Can we just talk till five? We can talk. I’ve got some things we should do a we should do a members only podcast and see how we really fell. Yeah. If you guys don’t listen Only back. If we only knew how far. If you guys only knew how far the bit was back in my jaws right now, and I was being pulled back, I lost molars. You know, I gotta I gotta have my teeth floated here. Let’s talk. So lets talk something else. Let’s talk about Q. You Logan. You’re, you’re up, bud. You haven’t said a word and because we haven’t allowed it. He’s scared want because he’s the, he is one of those 22 or three year olds at John’s and John’s demographic under third. His own boss doesn’t want, want him to hunt. He is not. How do you feel, John? How do you feel? Logan? Logan agreed with me. He’s got the cross hairs pointed on me. I agreed with him so much that he said he was gonna do points only. And we said, Logan, you’re an idiot. You don’t do points. Only don’t listen to John. Get your name in the hat for crime. Logan. Do not let this guy brow beat you. I won’t you and don’t on, don’t let the old man in Logan from now on the random draw. ’cause the old men get cantankerous.
00:38:48:24 –> 00:40:08:04
All right, go ahead Logan, take it away. Wanted to give a shout out to q you, we were talking about a couple of podcasts ago when they were doing Wyatts archery, Henry Mountains Hunt. How they wish they had just a hood to throw up over their ears and keep the sun from beating down on ’em. The q you just released a new Gila Pro Ls hoodie that solves that problem. Gila Pro. That’s awesome. Lightweight hoodie that keep the sun off your ears and Gila keep you from getting Tela. I knew that was gonna trigger something, but I like the word Gila. Keep going. Anyway, keep going. So yeah, head over to q.com and check out that new Gila Pro Ls hoodie. All right. Gila pro q.com. We appreciate those guys. Awesome people there, friends of ours actually. And we appreciate their partnership. Also, wanna throw a shout out, John? Yeah, let’s take it away with St. James. Yeah. Let’s St. James, if you’re looking for sporting properties. So these Blaine has decided to specialize not just real estate, but real estate that’s got potential for, for wildlife hunting, fish recreation, hunting, fishing, recreation. Right? And so we’d like to highlight just the Lost Creek Ranch. And we’re, we’re in Summit County, Utah. So is that where you’re going back to? I’m from Morgan County, but if I go back to my roots for crop sakes, where are we going? Where are these roots?
00:40:08:10 –> 00:41:19:01
The aisles of Britain? Where are we going to Aisles of Britain? No, no, no. Go back to we talking the roots of this 1800. This is not the, the, the loss, the Lost Creek Ranch. Okay. This is the Lost C Creek Ranch Crick. Oh yeah. That’s how you pronounce it. Gotcha. But yeah, I moved away from the hometown, so, okay. Anyway, but anyway, I like it. To your point. Yeah. Bla and his crew John. Yeah. So if you’re in, if you’re in the market, go on to his website, st james sporting properties.com. You can search whatever your budget is, wherever you, you know, your state, all that. And you can see what, what options are available or for people. For example, the Lost Creek Ranch is 6.25 mil smaller acreage there in Summit County, Utah, but incredible prime property. Anyway, you can go see all the details. Look, look on there. Of course you can click to contact a little bit of everything has the address up there and whatnot. And so anyway, just, that’s just a, an example. He’s got tons of properties. He does it of them for a living. Most of ’em have trail cam photos of Yeah, he’s like that. What’s on there? He’s a pretty lucky guy. My dirt. He gets to my dirt. Somebody said that one. Yeah, somebody did say that. Okay. All right. My dirt.
00:41:19:01 –> 00:42:26:28
But also, hey, if you’re actually a family or an individual that has property to sell that’s in this, give, give Blaine a call to help represent. They work in, most western states have agents, Blaine’s based in Colorado. But man, he’s a Abbott hunter. He is hunted all the western states and has a crew and all the western states to be able to help navigate buying and selling. Emphasize that sometimes you got property that inherit that you’re never gonna run a cow on the rest of your life. Wanna liquidate it, move somewhere else. People are buying this. Give him for investment reasons. They’re also buying it as, as a hunting property, having opportunities to hunt, secluded, and then also be an investment. So in the back of their mind, they’re justifying it. Josh, you haven’t said a ton. We, we, every time we ask you to talk, we just crush it. Yeah, run over you. He has such good ideas. As soon as they come out of his mouth, I like him. So if I just jump on top of his ideas. Me too. Me too. And I wanna apologize, Joshua, sorry. You’re bigger than me. You’re stronger than me. And bye Don. You’re just, you’re just a good guy. You’re good. What I wanna, I want to hear in the middle of this, we never said you never, I want you to take a stance. What should be changed?
00:42:27:27 –> 00:43:36:14
What should be changed with what Your opinion, with what and where and who and how. Here Utah committee, what should the Utah Committee look at? Utah Deer. Yep. Deer committee. What should they change? Nothing really that what you think. That’s your real honest opinion. You’re not jaded by your friends. No, honestly, I’m, I Do you like the multiple point system for Deere? Yes. Why? Yeah, because there’s a difference between limited entry and general season to begin with. Like they don’t need to be. They were never set up to be, they’re not managed to be the same. Anything. Like they’re so different in general. I just don’t see a reason how, by, by putting all in in one point category or trying to, you’re not gonna help anything. I, I feel like a lot of reasonings for some of this stuff is just people being selfish or not fair. I could, I don’t have a lifetime license and I could care less that you do. It doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t affect me. The number, the number of tags are so small. It doesn’t affect the tags I draw. It doesn’t affect the amount of bucks out on the unit. It doesn’t affect the amount of doughs that are on the unit. It does zero. So trying to go after you and, and your lifetime license.
00:43:36:27 –> 00:44:43:01
But do you feel like you and your family have had many general hunting opportunities as well as you’ve had some limited draw opportunities? There’s, there’s, and I feel like there’s so much in Utah. It’s, it’s, I’ve got kids, I’ve got young kids and they don’t draw deer tags every year. But I’ve managed to find a way to just about get ’em to kill a deer every year. One way or another. My wife and mentor ’em, I mentor, we talk about dedicated hunter program. Like generally one of us will or mentor one something do thing. I mean, good grief, you can take ’em Spike hunting you, I mean there’s so much like, yeah, I don’t know. OTC spike. Yes. Yeah. I mean over the counter there’s so much opportunity. Like that’s one of the things, everybody’s just like, every kid needs a killing a deer. Yeah, they do. But I’ve taken my kids to Colorado for Oh yeah, not much. You know? And I like find opportunity or get opportunity or get ’em an elk or go hunt small game or whatever. My kids are constantly, they got a bird dog. Ducks. Ducks and geezer. Yeah. Constantly. And that’s where I feel like my love of hunting went back to. I remember carrying a BB gun. BB gun. My dad was, we were hunting birds. Like, I don’t know, I just, it drives me nuts.
00:44:43:01 –> 00:45:37:13
People are pretty passionate about stuff is we all are, but we just wanna change everything. But I honestly, I seriously, so the argument of they need to change, the kids don’t have opportunity to hunt, falls on deaf ears with you. They’re, I look at the opportunities I had when I was 14. I could, I could walk into the hardware store for only a year or two, then we had to wait in line at the high school. Yeah. And then all that. And then it went to a draw finally. So I was on the cusp of all that change. But I look at the opportunity that I had when I was 14. I had one option. I mean, I really did. And I would go with my grandpa in hopes that he’d let me shoot his deer. But do you think he was ever gonna, heck no. Like, you know, I thought we about had him on something and get a game. This is, I just, I just look all opportunities we have have in this state. And, and I like the fact that I can be like, well I can apply my kid for this and hopefully in X amount of years they’ll get a, an extra shot. It’s an extra shot at a deer tag, at an elk tag or whatever. And we have to choose.
00:45:37:19 –> 00:46:48:05
I just, I don’t know, I just see so much and so many people wanting to cut the head off of every single snake that comes by. But there’s always gonna be another snake. I don’t like snakes. And they think that they think that that’s gonna fix it. You, you lost Miss Snake and, and there’s, there’s, there’s always gonna be snakes. Just, I don’t know. I just, I really don’t know what to say other than I, we’ve been into drought. Look at the entire west. The entire West Nevada look. Is there any state that’s amazing for Mulda right now? Nevada’s had 90% tech cuts in some units and 90% cut. Cut from like 300 and something tags to 30. But don’t, it’s not fun for them to do that Terrible on a state that that’s that small. And also, what did they, what did we figure the math was last year? 12. 12 or 14,000 deer tag. I even 14,000 in the whole state. Not counting. We’re we’re down to like 70, 60, 70,000. We think we got it bad. I mean, you know, we’re not even scratching the surface. But you could say, well, you could argue the population and 14,000 other variables. Well, I don’t know. You start adding basis How many, how many that Josh is taking a stand. I like how many, how many states are trying, are changing things right now?
00:46:49:22 –> 00:47:48:21
I mean, they’re looking or on the heels of change, how much has it helped? I look at so much stuff that has changed and all these other states residents not, they gotta kick the resident all I just look at all these changes lot. It’s social change. It’s exactly, and that’s what I mean. It’s more social. Cantankerous social. Yes. There’s so much change. Nobody’s drawing tags any faster. Deer herds aren’t growing. That’s what I contend. If you merge a point system, it’s not gonna happen. It might have the worst. That’s what I say. And you might have a theory. Honestly, I used to think that back 10 years ago. I was like, man, everything’s a draw. Like what’s the difference? This and that. But the odds were different back then. I was gonna say, because it could have been at that point it may have made a difference. It may have made sense. We’re so deep now’s like, yeah, we’re so deep. And at least people can look forward to a three to five year tag. Yes. You know, you, if you, you combine ’em, you’re not gonna see that. You’re not gonna see it. Don’t think it better go. My kid could go draw Any kid could draw any dedicated a hundred tag in the entire state right now. Yeah. You’re gonna have to take zero point dedicated. Like, and we could talk about that.
00:47:48:21 –> 00:48:52:10
Like, I mean honestly the dedicated hunter program has done a lot of good over the years. A lot of project, a lot of money. I know, I know from being on the inside Ock u too, that that program brings a lot of money into the state in terms of matching funds because you get matching funds for donated hours on wildlife conservation project. You can, you can tap into that. Yeah. So there’s a reason why I don’t think it’s hurting that much, honestly. No, but some people think, you know, maybe breeze over that. But, but, but Target, you know, I don’t know, 3000 lifetime license holders when dedicated hunters, you can take, you can crush 20% of a unit’s quota can go to dedicated hunters. And many of these southern units down here during the drought years have to the point they cannot even draw any dedicated and they had to change that rule. So, okay. We better draw at least one tag because Yeah, we had a bunch of people apply for it. You have a skew that didn’t have a tag. Yeah. That so it’s bad to all the people that you took to 10 or $15 application fee. But I mean, you might, I don’t even think that system’s broken, but you could contend if you’re gonna address lifetimes, you have to address this. Yeah. But yeah, I don’t know. Broken, I don’t even know the total number of dedicated hunters.
00:48:52:14 –> 00:50:05:13
I’m, I’m just speaking you. If you’re gonna pick one, one segment of a, a special interest group, I love that. Three, 3000 out of 75,000 deer tags, you know, whatever that number is for dedicated a hundred. And they get to hunt all seasons. Yes. They can only kill two gear deer in three years. But I mean, there’s, there’s another system skews. You got youth dedicated, regular, dedicated, then the re then the, then the regular draw can happen. Yeah. Maybe some units are getting, you know, 40% of the tags taken off the top right outta the gate by youth. I don’t think the youth are doing meeting 20%, but I could be wrong. Maybe some units they are, they get a 20% cap too, if I’m not mistaken. Yeah. And then dedicated hunters can have up to 20% on a unit. So you could be left with 60% of original quota to go to, you know, I guess maybe even few lifetimes on top of maybe even less, maybe 50. I mean there’s, I mean yeah, but I mean there are some units that maybe are just, but there wasn’t a problem when we had deer numbers. Nope. There wasn’t a problem. We’re not hearing this. Nobody gave two craps about dedicated. Dedicated or lifetime or anything in 2017 or portrayal cameras or musk on m loaders. Any, any of them care? I’m not, I’m not, I’m not saying all those are good, bad or otherwise.
00:50:05:15 –> 00:51:13:15
I’m just saying. You’re just saying microscope times were good times were good. The microscope was not out. And basically you could have been entitled to Deer 365 and nobody would’ve really cared. Just kill it when you want. We got deer everywhere. Oh, you hit another one on the 56 with your car, whatever. That dumb broad. That was a selective. She was stupid. Now we’re glad her brain cells aren’t being Yeah, the dumb ones die duplicated and smart ones that know how to dodge cars. They live and they breed. It’s natural. We’re gonna only have the smart ones that live around 56. There’s really no change. Just, just, you just have to be proactive. Just be proactive, you know, like I was saying with the science and everything that’s there, you can’t just all follow science. You can’t just all follow the social. Yeah. Yep. You have to find a balance. Be proactive. The science says kill him at, kill him at a forked horn hooves up in the back of trucks. Yep. And, and, and I contend that that was happening in the heyday just in 20 17, 18, whatever. We were doing that. And I think that probably was a cause to as soon as the drought started. Yes. And, and tags were higher. Management wasn’t proactive enough over freaking constructions. We were a little bit lagged behind.
00:51:13:15 –> 00:52:19:23
They wanted to make sure the populations were down and we hammered it hard as well as mother nature was hammering hard and everything else and weren’t proactive enough. So as long as you don’t need big major change, just manage how we’re doing it. Be on your toes and manage it and be smart. Well, and I think just listen to the public, the public’s out in the hill saying what they’re seeing. And if you’re just going to, you’re just going to throw out a, a potential tag objective and stick with it because you wanna be right. Yeah. Okay. Remember, you know, the sportsman’s your customer and so anyway, it’s okay to give a little on both sides. You don’t have to take this one to the end. Alright, go. Yes. How many guns do you need in your life? Do you need ’em all? What do you mean? But actually I’m kind of feeling, I’m feeling in fact, we were supposed to guilty. I’ve got, I can’t say no to bros. Like, you need this. And I’ll be like, yes I do. You’re that. You’re still there. I have another fear. Show up. You just admitted that you feel guilty. Don’t say that ever. This before. Jan Harris. I Logan Mar. Write it down. Do I? Last year Red Rock showed up. I got that. I love it. I got that fear slash year, that 300 drum and I’m like, okay, I’m, I’m pretty well sad.
00:52:19:25 –> 00:53:20:19
I’ve got everybody in the family has a gun. If we, if we ever needed whatever, we all have a gun. And then I have a big gun now I’m like, I’m set. I’m good. Kind of need a mid gun and don’t another and a small gun. And then all of a sudden here, three guns come showing up in here. And they’re pretty fancy. Yeah. And they’re pretty affordable considering guns. Yeah. And so now I’m back. Little bit of a different niche. Oh you are. I didn’t even know this. You’re really thinking. Well yeah. At any second I could walk in that room and pull one out. Start Well, the way I don’t yourself. They’re an investment. Yeah, they’re an investment. I mean, if that’s the’s why I’m telling you guys mean what’s your life worth? You gonna protect your life. Those, we have some mountain reapers that showed up. I don’t have a mountain reaper. You need one. Yeah. And so I’m just telling you guys, would you please, if you hear, if you just see me sneak back into the room back in there, those might be, there’s laws and ordinances if I need to sign some paperwork. But you hear boxes open If you, if I hear an action started ran, I, my favorite is get, I’m gonna get my FFL logbook and I’m gonna say, show me the money. Let’s do a deal. Yeah.
00:53:20:24 –> 00:54:26:21
That what I love is there isn’t a bolt in the place that Devin hasn’t run. Oh no. When it comes in, as soon as he does it, I have to walk in his office. It’s kinda like, it’s the, I’m like, I’m in a trance. I have to walk in the, I want to be the first guy to run my bolt. No, I don’t want used gun. Nevermind. Hey, no, Devin. Devin brought you your gun the other day. But now on the after he had run the action on it. Oh no. It had already been open. And he goes, I didn’t open it. And I said, the box is open. I look, the box is open. It didn’t come open. I love it. I, we’ve got, Evan is our expert though. He, he is, he’s, I I actually want him to run my bolt. I all the time I am. Oh yeah. Guarantee I’m blessed picky. Less whatever than Devon is about. If it passes his inspection, oh, you that thing. Never let it outta your family’s position. That’s that’s an heirloom. Don’t even get buried with that gun. Hand it down to someone that can use it. It’s gonna be a good one. I like it. But yeah, that’s, that’s why I ended up with that 300. I was advised by Devin that this gun should not leave this office’s true other than one. And it’s true. And it is unbelievable.
00:54:26:25 –> 00:55:32:24
He told me about one of my, one of mine on based on an action and it, and it didn’t leave. It makes me wanna go shoot right now carbonated. It’s get warm enough. We can actually get some daylight after work. We can actually get, get it in if it’s not silk. I wind. So when you, on the heels of your question, how many guns is enough? Ask. Oh, and do you have too many? That’s just not a could you ever have too many? That’s just not a question. I just wanna know, when was the last gun that you wore out broke? Never. Or whatever. I still have my original first single shot gun. I was gun. It was wazo. No. Well, my wazo big game rifle. The wazo. When you’re, when you’re a man spending real money. Yeah, I got it. I won’t get rid of it. And it’s 24 years old and I can’t wear it out. So I can’t justify getting rid of it. Well there it is. You got boys and now your biggest question. And a daughter. Actually I don’t wanna leave out Ashley. Oh geez. But who? She’s no joke. Who’s that? You’re gonna have to do a drawing before you in your will and testament. Show me the money. That’s the way you do it and teach ’em life. Oh, hey. Okay. Show me the money. Well, you can’t give them everything Bronson. Well, some just teasing.
00:55:33:09 –> 00:56:41:29
Somebody gonna get it. I give, I, I give, I’m a giver dude. I don’t want ’em to go through it. We all did when we were young. But, but no case in point. Can’t, can’t have enough guns. I’ve gotten rid of a couple. I wish I didn’t have just guns that I, but there are some guns you win or something that are guns I would not have bought with my own money. Let’s keep going. And I’ve got one for sale right now. This is south. Going south. I get into the classified section of the podcast. I mean this gun was the perfect gonna do that. Weren perfect wolf killing, Idaho thermal. Amazing. Let’s kill some predators. There’s two reasons I bought that gun and we built it. There’s two reasons I got that gun. Two, one of them well is they both start with a J. One of ’em is Jason’s. The other one’s Josh. That’s the reason I love it. I got talked into that thing so fast and I was in a a whatever, a flush feeling moment maybe I had, when you an investment and people are reminding you they’re an investment, it’s really easy to make the purchase. Yeah. So I’ve since employed at least a minimum of a 15 minute rule on all decisions of buying sporting goods related things or applying for any bucks. Okay. So we sell fierce. Give them a shout out. They’re phenomenal rifles.
00:56:42:06 –> 00:57:52:15
You’re everyone listening needs one. I like it. If not three, that’s good enough for them. Awesome. They are. We great shooting. Everybody’s heard the 900 yard Kyle story from my kids. Go to fierce arms.com. Call us if you need one. Good enough. I like it. Bronson, throw a little shout. Shout out to Hoy. Actually. Freaking awesome bows. We’ve talked about it. I don’t know how many times. Oh yeah. Well they’re awesome. They got the RX eight now. Anyway, if you wanna become a better bow hunter, better shooter, your equipment largely is gonna depend on that. I’m one of those guys. I mean Jason too. We, we grew up shooting bows our whole line. But the advances in the archery technology, just like rifles anything else are, has been no joke over the last several decade. Decades. And Hoy, archery’s always been at the forefront of that. Trying to improve upon what they already have. They don’t rest on their laurels. Great products, great bows. I’ve got a couple of them. One aluminum, one carbon set up. Identical. Figure it Jason, figure out, man, just imagine that maybe some obscure state only allows for aluminum bows. Yeah, possibly. Or kind like our muzz selection that you have at your house when I don’t care that the carbon doesn’t change temperatures in my hands because I don’t need that. I just want, because my hands got cold.
00:57:52:20 –> 00:58:50:27
So, but if it’s a warm day, I’m gonna take my aluminum bone. I actually did take ’em both last year. I mean, you’re gonna have a cam. I love it. You’re gonna back over one on your side by side and have a bow 10 hours away. No, you’re gonna take two bows outta state when you hunt at all times. That’s what I did. That was part of my rationale. You never have any mishaps in the field. I’ve never had it happen. But if it happens once, you’re I’ve never locked myself out out of a truck. Yeah, that’s right. And a snowstorm. But anyway. But you have in Colorado, did I Stuff happens. Yeah. You inspire it. Not me. You just, my point is you never know when stuff happens. That’s right. But anyway, great to have a backup bow. Great to have a regular bow, but they, they’re awesome. Check ’em out at Hoyt archery or hoyt.com. They got all the new lines out there. It’s not too soon. By the time you get a bow, obviously everybody’s got their own preferences in terms of stabilizer sites, releases, rest, all that. A lot to go with an outfit in a new bow. But give hoit a consideration. If you’ve never done it, you’re not gonna regret it. I promise you, we may or may not have a few good deals on a hoy bow. If you’re not, we could.
00:58:50:27 –> 01:00:20:28
And in your future actually, I would say in the next five days. All right. So I love it when you said it’s not too soon. What’s, not too soon anyway. Let’s saying too soon. No, it’s never too soon. All right. Well this has been fun, fun times. Lots coming up. Don’t forget a few deadline. We’re actually a pretty positive mood. It it, it was a heavier podcast, but it actually pretty, it’s not really heavy. It’s just whatever, you know, whatever happens, happens. Opinions are opinions everybody’s got, everybody got em. Everybody’s got ’em along with other things. Everybody’s got opinions and you know what they say about opinions. And so anyway, your opinion doesn’t matter. Logan, when you’re 35, come talk to us. Sounds good. I’ll keep that in mind. So, all right kids grow up. May everybody get tags this year and let it rain. If you hunt in multiple states or want to expand your hunting portfolio, the Epic outdoor license and application services for you, we have dedicated hunt consultants and a team of application specialists to help you develop and achieve your short, medium, and long-term hunting goals. We do the work, you draw the tags. Epic Outdoors license app 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. Handcrafted quality. Precision rifles from start to finish is Red Rock Precision Rifles. Many of our staff use Red Rock rifles and we are excited to announce the new Red Rock, epic Mountain Rifle 2.0. Visit red rock precision.com to learn more.
01:00:21:03 –> 01:01:38:18
If you are in the market for a hunting property, look no further than St. James. St. James Sporting properties specialize in premier hunting properties throughout the west. Check out available hunting properties at st james sporting properties.com. Here at Epic Optics, we are a verified dealer for Swarovski Zeiss, Leica Vortex, pulsar, stealth cam and more. Call us today to visit about available optics we have and what would be right for you. Or visit epic optics.com. Good looking comfortable. Camo describes QU. Check out the new encounter camo line for some of the best early to midseason gear out there. Check out ku.com to learn more. Kenna Trek makes great boots for any situation. Most sheep hunters in the high rocky altitudes use these boots to keep their ankles in. Check in 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 today 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. Thompson’s out of the box. Thousand yard Acura rifles can’t be beat for affordable, long range rifles and shooting schools. Visit thompson long range.com for only 150 bucks a year.
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You get nine issues of the Epic Outdoors Magazine and unlimited access to our hunt consultants as well as to our verified research website and member experience program. To see all other member benefits, visit epic outdoors.com. Hoyt means 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.
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