In this episode we sit down with three Nevada Department of Wildlife Biologists, Shawn Espinosa, Joe Bennett and Scott Roberts, to talk Nevada Big Game. We focus especially on what hunters can expect to see this year and how Nevada manages their wildlife in such extreme conditions. If you live in, or ever plan to hunt Nevada, this podcast is for you!
Disclaimer: this text was produced through an automated transcription service and likely contains errors. Please listen to the original audio for exact content.
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You are listening to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, brought to you by Fierce Firearms, epic Outdoors choice for custom hunting rifles.
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Hey everybody. Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Devin Archibald. Of course. We got Logan here. He’s he’s at the keyboard. Making sure everything sounds good. Appreciate it. Logan, how you doing? I’m doing good. Good. How about you, Devin? You doing good? Doing good. You getting any sleep, Devin? Little
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Bit. Yeah.
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Devon’s got a new little baby. And of course, being the best dad in the whole wide world. Have you got that trophy yet, or when does that come?
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Probably premature to call that.
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I don’t know. Adam and I are pretty
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Impressed. I feel like I deserve it. I,
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I, we we’re calling. You deserve
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It. I appreciate it. Yeah,
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You deserve it. I mean, you’ve had it, what? You’ve had it
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22 days,
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Defecate all over you. Oh, that’s part of being a good dad, right?
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Yeah. Trying to get to work and cleaning yourself up.
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Yeah. Good. It’s just being, anyway. Being a good productive awesome Dad. Thanks anyway. Hopefully. Are you taking sleeping pills? So like No. Have
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Three minutes. No, you wouldn’t see me. I’d be a no call, no-show or whatever. Heck
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Call no show. All right. Well anyway, Bronson, how you doing?
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Excellent.
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We’re doing awesome. This is like spring.
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I thought I thought you were gonna wear shorts today. I was a little disappointed.
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Well, I just warned everybody, you know, we’re, we’re transitioning to that phase of weather. Wow. And, and I just warned everybody, somebody’s gonna break the ice. It could be me. Just don’t be, don’t let it jar you.
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I saw you in shorts the other day. Devin, me? Weren’t your your house. Yeah.
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Yeah. Oh yeah. That was Yard
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Work’s different.
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That’s you were chilling out. Lounging
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Yard work’s different.
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Anyway. It’s good weather. And here we are approaching May basically, and coming to the end of the application season, we got a few states left that we’re excited about. We’re cranking extremely hard at the end of April here. Also got one publication that we’re working on, you know, got Idaho and, and California be coming out here. The June issue. Yeah.
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And EAD will be on within the week. So this week, probably by the end of the week.
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Pretty fun. Bronson and I are cranking that out, so here we go. It’s kind of, kind of fun. A lot of results coming out here too shortly. Of course, we’ve had some results already. We’re excited for everybody and helping everybody obtain hunts and tags and get basic plans in line for this year. 2025. Can’t believe it. 2025. Today’s kind of a special day. We’ve got some guests coming on. We’ve got Sean Espinosa, Scott Roberts, and Joe Bennett of Nevada Endow. Super good dudes. Just want to kind of go over Nevada with them and crank through some things. Break it out. Look at some new quotas and kind of the state of the nation address for the state of Nevada. So, state
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Of the silver state. Yeah,
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The silver state. So anyway, I’m a gold statement, so
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I kinda like gold.
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The price of gold.
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What? Yeah, we did copper last week. This is silver. Where’s the gold state? Alaska. What, what have we got? Does anybody claim
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That? That would little fitting. Fitting. It
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Would be California maybe would be fitting. We’re the honeybee state or something? Can’t be California, aren’t we?
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Well, Elk’s, our state animal. State enamel ee
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It is,
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Yeah. Segels the state bird, doesn’t it? Segel Lilly’s the state flowers.
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Segels. Well, that reminds me it’s
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Hard turn
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And everything. I had a single come. Oh, I was a little kid. I had, I was a little kid and I’m going down there in Disneyland or whatever, and it just wipe me out. California. Oh, it’s no joke. Three pounds maybe. It was wild. All right, well, enough of the light stuff. Let’s, Logan, let’s get these guys on and, and talk about Nevada a bit and, and work ’em over a little bit about, about their state and the good things that are happening there. Three pounds. It’s crazy. I, I’m just here to tell you. I
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Mean it out. It was a traumatic event. You were a little kid, huh?
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It happened to my sister too, and that was great when that happened
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Off of the games.
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Anyway, there we go. You guys hear us okay? Okay. Turn ’em up a little bit, Logan, if you got the ability to do that. All right. Have we got Sean there?
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Hey
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Guys. Hey, there you are. Is this Sean? Sean Espinoza?
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Yes,
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Sir. All right. Yeah, we’ve got you. We got you loud and clear. Joe, you on? I think I can see you. Yeah, right here. Oh, I like it. Yeah. Welcome. And, and then what do we got? We got Scott Roberts as well. Can you hear us okay?
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Yeah. Hey
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Guys. There you go. Perfect. Alright, well we appreciate you guys coming on and visiting about Nevada with us. One of a, a state that we’re, you know, exceptionally fam familiar with, but we also, we love Nevada for a number of reasons. Yeah. Fond is the right word. That’s what I was looking for. Brons. Anyway, pretty fun. You guys got a lot going on there. I love it. I was out there this last weekend. One of the, my favorite things just to kind of break the ice here, but one of my favorite things is when you’re out there, you, you’re by yourself. Even though you’re not by yourself, you’re by yourself. You know what I mean? Which
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Can be a bad thing too, if you have truck
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Problems. Yeah, it can be. But you know, if you keep up on your tires, right Devin? Yeah. You, you’ve had a few tire issues out there. I’ve
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Been, yeah, it happens.
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But if you keep up on things and your maintenance and drive something half decent while you fit, feels pretty good out there. So anyway, love Nevada for a lot of reasons. We’re gonna get into that. Maybe as we get started, I don’t know, we could start with Sean Scott or Joe, whatever, and just kind of introduce yourselves maybe a little bit of your history with Endow and, and and what your title is and what you oversee there at Inel. Let’s start with Sean maybe.
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Sure, thanks Jason. My name is Sean Espinoza. I’m the game division administrator for the department. This is my 29th year with the department. Previous to that I was the upland game staff specialist for 20 years. So spent a lot of time working on sage grouse conservation issues in particular. And then a whole host of other upland game species, which are pretty popular here in the state of Nevada, like Chucker and Hungarian Parkridge. And then prior to that I had some habitat positions. And then I actually started my career in law enforcement down south back in 1996. I was a warden down there for four years.
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Oh, okay.
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In Boulder City South the Searchlight. So
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Oh wow.
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There’s a desolate stretch of highway.
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There’s nothing to poach down there.
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Couple desert sheep,
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Roadrunner maybe, I don’t know. Probably a lot more in that country than a guy would think.
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Yeah, actually on one particular day I did see three of the biggest mule deer I ever saw in my li life crossing El Dorado Valley, which wow,
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Geez.
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A thought. Wow.
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No kidding. Back in
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The nineties
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They had basal points and I guards How was he built? Yeah, how was he built? Typical genetic. How
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Was before it was built up with solar panels and transmission lines and all that kind of stuff.
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Yeah. That has changed
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Hard. Even, even fathom, you know, I’ve spent a lot of time in that valley. I can’t even really fathom that now.
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Yeah. I mean, yeah, there’s a lot going on down there
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Though. It’s almost 30 years ago.
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Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, you were down in the middle of nowhere and of course back then it just seems like, and maybe you can correct me, some of the division trucks, the Indo trucks would have 150 plus thousand hard miles and a guy like you’s out there in the middle of nowhere, 120 or 30 degrees.
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Yeah. And well, we hit just a transition from the old Dodge Ram, which is one of the roughest riding pit I’ve ever been in my entire life.
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So
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Usually the caravan camper, after about a hundred thousand miles would just about rattle off and be cracked in about 15 different places on the bed of the pickup. Yeah. So
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We go, yeah. That’s wild. Yeah, you probably had some fused vertebraes from that. Geez. Well good. That’s awesome. And so, spent a lot of time doing a lot of different things. And then what are, did you say it already? Maybe you did, but what do, what are you currently doing
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Game?
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It’s, it’s the administrator for the game division.
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And what, what, what does that guy do? What do you do?
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Well, I’d like to do a lot less, but uhs. So we have small game program, of course our big game program, our aerial operations division, wildlife Health BER Management, and migratory game bird. So a lot of that’s kind of coordinating with different aspects between all of those different realms within our division and setting up our, our federal aid grants on an annual basis, making sure that our budgets are adequate to fulfill our needs across future fiscal years. And a whole host of other issues that we could spend an inordinate amount of time talking about. So. Wow. Okay. Not the fun stuff. Alright,
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Well let’s talk about fun stuff.
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Let’s talk about fun stuff. Yeah, we’re, but you’ve gotta do it that that has to be done. That’s
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Behind the scenes. Yes. Heavy lifting stuff.
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Heavy lifting stuff.
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But the fun stuff doesn’t happen if that doesn’t happen.
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That’s right.
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So,
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Alright, so let’s see. Scott, do you want to introduce yourself?
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Yeah, sure. Scott Roberts, I’m the Eastern region game supervisor based outta Elco. So supervising the biologist from areas six through 15 for the most part. And I started with the department in 2004 as a fishery seasonal and moved through the guzzler program, comp tag program was the area 12 area biologist. Moved into the area 10 biologist position for a number of years and then last summer took the leap into the supervisor position. So.
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Awesome. You’ve seen a lot. You’ve seen a lot. And of course you’re up there in the high deer densities and
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Probably saw Devin’s truck
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A little bit of, yeah, Devin. Devin, you gotta watch this guy. Just, we put a tracker on him even I love that country. Yeah. But yeah, Devin loves that country. And then you just got a lot of your, you know, high deer densities and, and of course a lot of, there’s a lot of emotion up there with, you know, tag tags, tag increases, decreases, you know, it affects a lot of people obviously. And the quality versus quantity. We’ll get into all of that. But it’s a, it’s a lot of fun. A wild country and, and actually a lot of game.
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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and just crazy variety. Also, you know, the bios in the region have desert, big horns, Rocky Mountain, big horns, California, big horns, all the states. Mountain goats, moose. Biggest steer herds, biggest elk, kds. It’s pretty awesome. Biggest antelope herds these days. Gee.
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Yeah. Great quality of all. Yeah. See that’s a place everybody should be applying. Huh? Devin? I, I
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Himan snow cars
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Don’t even go there. I dunno what to say. Devin, he tries to sandbag that country a little bit. Tells us all in the office how terrible it is. And then, then pretty soon I’m out there all the time. He’s out up there by himself all the time.
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He just wants us to know that it’s like 2000 miles to drive up there. That’s what it was.
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Yeah. I feel that way. And he needs the entire Yeah, he buys every tire plug. Walmart sells all the way up there. So anyway. Good stuff. Yeah, we’ll dive into that. Of course. We’ve got the new quotas here handy. You guys got a commission meeting coming up and that’ll be fun. It’s always, it’s always interesting and we like it. We like to watch all that and stay in, stay in tune with that stuff and, and so anyway, we appreciate you coming on Joe, I, I know you a little bit better just because we’ve dealt with each other over the years and you’re down here a little bit closer to me in some of this desert stuff, but why don’t you introduce yourself a little bit? Yeah, everybody’s listening. Good. A
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Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for having us. Joe Ben, I’m the, I’m the new Predator staff specialist. I’ve been with the department about 10 years. I started as the tone ofaw game biologist for about five years, then was the southern region game supervisor and then just transitioned into this new role a couple months ago now that Scott’s done showing off. We’re talking about variety and densities and everything. We can maybe tell the two sides of the state as we go through this storyline here since we haven’t got much moisture or anything where they’re actually hauling water as we speak, unfortunately in the Meadow Valley. So, we’ll I’m sure we’ll delve into that here in a little bit.
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Wow. Yeah, Joe Joe’s seen a lot, of course he’s in some of that desert stuff that’s very arid or you know, knows a lot about it and, and dealing with mule deer, which is, you know, I’m hitting him up asking him about mul deer and a few things that I really care about. And then, yeah, you’re dealing with a lot of not so fun things as far as desert sheep and, and watching the ebbs and flows there. Yeah. And dealing with some of that So challenging at best. Well, where should we start off? Let, we’d like, I guess we just wanna stay to the nation
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The matter. Yeah. We’ve got some broader stuff and then maybe some regional stuff that you guys wanna highlight. I’m sure you have some things you wanna talk about. Of course. The application period’s open right now for Nevada that’s on a lot of people’s minds. We fill, filled a lot of calls every day about Nevada right now with of course the deadline on May 7th coming up. So yeah, I don’t know who wants to grab the mic first between you, whether we start big and, and focus in or whether you want to focus in on a region, whatever, we’ll let you guys, one of you take off and we’ll, we’ll steer it somehow.
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Well maybe I’ll just start off from a statewide perspective and kind of give a broad overview and then you guys can ask more specific questions. I’ve kind of highlighted a few bullets from what we’re recommending anyway and kind of where some of our big game ungulate populations are at. But I guess, you know, first and foremost is that there’s, there’s quite a few of our populations that are actually increasing and there’s some good news there, you know, after the winter of 2022 and a winter before that at 2018 our, our mule deer herd was looking pretty bleak overall. Some pretty low population estimates. But we, we’ve seen a level of recovery at this point. We’ve had two good years in a row of on recruitment and during that period we’re also seeing an elevated buck ratio on the landscape overall. And those two things together for many of our larger units are kinda leading to elevated tag quota numbers.
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We had recommendations last year that weren’t too different. We’re recommending about 20% more deer tags this year than we, than we did last year. Last year. Our commission cut those tag numbers and approved a number that was quite a bit less than, than we recommended. So if you just look at it from a approved standpoint last year to a recommended standpoint this year it’s a difference of about 49%. So it’s quite a bit more gear tags but like, like I mentioned, we have a pretty high buck ratio. Our post-season buck ratio across the state was 34 bucks per 100 dose. So it’s, it’s pretty high for a post-season ratio. And then we’ve got several units that are well in excess of that figure. So that’s, that’s leading to some of the T increases that I’m sure you guys have already looked at.
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Yeah, we have looked at ’em. Just to stop you for a quick sec, like do you know off the top of your head what those ratios look like roughly and in what regions or areas that you’re looking at that
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I didn’t go through? Region by region. Okay. By unit, by unit we certainly have those figures.
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Yeah. Like I’m showing, I’m showing increases in like area 13 for for example, but, but you know that one, that one had like a 90% cut, you know, and it’s very susceptible to drought and things like that. And so we noticed that. And then obviously you guys are showing, you had great surveys. I mean you’ve got great counts and so you’re, you know, recommending quite a bit of an increased percentage wise. Not overall numbers not gonna make a huge difference on the bottom line statewide. But for the area you can tell that that’s definitely on your radars having an uptick.
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Yep, yep. And I can let Scott speak to area 13, but I think our buck ratio in area 13 was like 39 bucks per a hundred dose per
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Season postseason. And so that’s the one thing Adam and I, and, and of course Devin we’re, we’re all very fond again of, of Nevada, but managing for high buck todo ratios, which is maybe it’s not even really that high, but we feel like it’s, it’s, it’s awesome considering what we’re dealing with over here being 30 to 35 bucks per hundred dose generally speaking depending on the units that you guys are are talking about. And so we’re appreciative of that When you go to Nevada, you have a special experience because of that. You’re gonna see good numbers of bucks in comparison to the hunters on the landscape and, and so managing that way you, the commission politics, everything involved makes it to where you’re managing fairly tight considering the resource that you have. Wouldn’t you say Adam? Yeah. It’s kind of what your take is.
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Well, yeah, I mean just to com draw parallel with Utah, you know, most of our units we manage for 15 to 20, you know, 15 to 17 or 18 to 20. Yeah. General season. We do have some premium limited entry and limited entries that they manage for 25 to 30 and 30 to 40 whatever it is. Yeah. But, but in Nevada they average the majority of those, I mean I know they probably have different breakdowns like some of the alternative management Yeah. Alternatives and things like that alternative at 35. But the others I think are like 25 or 30 plus or whatever. Is that right Sean? I like,
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Yeah, I, I guess just to back up a bit, we do have our, our standard units, alternative units and non-standard units. The alternative units are kind of the more trophy units if you will. Like area 13, the standard units we manage for between 25 to 35 bucks for 100 dose and kind of trying to get to that middle objective of 30 bucks for 100 dose per season. The alternative hunt units were, you know, right around 35 with, you know, a better harvest success rate, better percentage of four point or better. And the non-standard units, they don’t get surveyed. But we look at those harvest metrics, we look at overall four point or better quality and try and manage for it’s 45% under success or better generally. And so most of those units we try and reflect that as best we can. Some of them achieve that or better.
00:20:09:16 –> 00:20:50:05
And we even have some standard units at this point in time that are treated more like alternative units oh five one for example, in the north central part of the state, I think we have a postseason buck ratio of 46 and we have outstanding metrics in terms of success and four point or better. So, you know, it, it’s getting to the point now where we might have to modify our hunt guidance and ask the commission if there’s alternative strategies that they’d like to see employed. Otherwise we’re not gonna be able to sustain some of the buck ratios that were our initial harvest objectives.
00:20:50:20 –> 00:21:07:00
So you’re just saying at the, I mean in layman’s terms, we’re talking about loading tags into some of these places potentially, if you’re gonna really manage that. ’cause you’re, you’re dealing with a great, you know, a great set of of numbers postseason you’re just dealing with, you’re obviously problem to Yeah, it’s a good problem. Yeah,
00:21:07:06 –> 00:21:12:28
It’s a good problem to have, but it can be socially awkward at times.
00:21:12:28 –> 00:21:13:06
Yeah,
00:21:14:12 –> 00:22:02:24
Yeah. You guys have, you gotta deal with that. That’s, that’s right. Your job is to bring forward the numbers and then the commission gets to balance those numbers off of science and then dealing with the politics on it and, and what the, the social pressures hunters want. Yeah. And so anyway, that’s fun. It’s nice that we can smile about it, right? A few years ago we weren’t so, so happy right now we’re you’re saying, Hey, here’s the numbers. I’m gonna go out and give you that data and then what y’all decides what you decide, of course you guys are passionate about your numbers and you’re not out there wanting to just be out there and not, and your numbers not mean anything. And, and sometimes it does fall on deaf ears when people, you know, when we don’t want high numbers, we want high quality, you know, and so there’s that fine balance, but, but it is fun to watch the recovery, it’s fun to watch the numbers increase fun to have good weather patterns that are conducive to that.
00:22:03:02 –> 00:22:39:10
And and we’re seeing that down here in the southern part of the state too. I’m sure Joe and will chime in on some of his stuff in a minute, but maybe now that we’ve hydrated your conversation a little bit, we could talk about these same numbers deer wise ’cause we, and we stop ya deer ’cause we’re so excited about ’em. But maybe what Scott, you’re seeing on six or six, seven, some of these others, there’s, there’s obvious a, a trend upwards in tag recommendations. But, but where did those tag recommendations come from? What did you really see on the landscape? What did the Hunters report and, and the overall outlook for that?
00:22:41:09 –> 00:23:39:12
Yeah, so regionally, you know, really echoing what the conversation’s been about, we are regionally running a buck ratio of 34 observed postseason last year. We had our highest recruitment rates since 1998. Last year’s recruitment was fantastic. So we’ve had the best two years in a row since 98, 99. You know, we definitely got hit a lot harder in 18, 19 and 22, 23 than most of the state. We lost thousands of deer and we lost, you know, thousands of tags worth of opportunity too. You know, you spoke area 13 showing a high percentage, but that’s coming off historically low quotas. Yeah. You know, across the board last year.
00:23:39:18 –> 00:23:40:03
That’s right.
00:23:40:11 –> 00:24:56:24
And you know, it, it looks percentage wise, like a huge increase, but we’re also in area 13 going for a postseason buck ratio of 45 with those quotas. And so we understand the sensitivity, we understand, you know, that it is front loaded with a lot of young bucks, but we’re just starting to chip away at some of those incredible buck ratios that we do have regionally. And so through those bigger units that you spoke to, six, seven, and 10, we’re seeing some pretty sizable increases. But again, historically low quotas, we’re not even getting back up to average quotas with these jumps. And so we’re chipping away looking at anywhere from 32 to 40 as opposed season ratio moving into next year. And so yeah, it’s, it’s a good problem to have, like we said, but it’s just a catastrophic event and then really good news afterwards. It’s hard to balance those two. So
00:24:56:24 –> 00:25:38:21
People are very sensitive to the thousands of deer lost and the heavy winners and the effects of that. And we’ve seen that in other states too, you know, Wyoming and, and Colorado at times in the past and when they see it be brought to its knees, so cripplingly fast, they may be just reluctant to see it, give it up, give any growth back up. And that’s, that’s probably human nature. It’s kinda like hoarding your goods because you’re, you wanna almost, you wanna make sure, sure you’ve got enough to to last the next one even though yes, the next one might not be for eight or 10 years. So, and they’re trying to say, Hey, well we’ve got ’em now we need to start, we can start taking some Yes. Get the opportunity back up. Let some hunters hunt. Yeah.
00:25:38:24 –> 00:26:35:06
Love that. Let some hunters hunt. Yeah, there, there is, there’s some validity to all of that. And, and two, luckily for you guys, I don’t think you see a winter loss that often. I mean it’s, it’s Nevada, you know, although you guys are in a little unique spot up there dealing with, you know, there’s been winter range loss in habitat and things like that. And then when you do have a rough winter, it’s just hard overall. But maybe you can speak to that a little bit and then also maybe speak to the quality that you’re seeing. It’s one thing to have this ratio, but does that made up primarily of these young bucks that have been recruited in, you know, where do you feel like the quality sits in comparison to what it has done, maybe in an average or, or at a high or whatever? I mean you, you feel like by raising the quotas, we’re looking at taking out some, you know, two and a half, three and a half year olds or, or do you feel like you’re actually seeing, starting to see some real quality on the landscape? Maybe speak to that a little bit.
00:26:37:05 –> 00:27:46:00
I would say both are accurate. You know, harvest is always focused on young bucks just across the board, you know, outside of except exceptional circumstances with, you know, the Henry’s or Area 24, something along those lines. But sure in general, harvest is always on those yearlings, 2-year-old, 3-year-old bucks. And so we’re definitely seeing that. That’s definitely, you know, the higher percentage of bucks on the landscape, there were a surprising number of nice bucks taken last year and it should only get better, you know, getting further away. But like you said, 22, 23 definitely took out a lot of older age class bucks. Took out a lot of young, you know, took out most of the fawns and that’s coming right on the heels of 1819, which was terrible around here. We had, you know, fawn loss 50, 60, 70% and adult dough loss in the 20 to 40%.
00:27:46:23 –> 00:29:00:23
And so there’s, there’s been some major events and they’ve just really been stacked right on top of each other because 1516 and 1617, if we hadn’t had these two, we’d still be talking about those two winters. Also heavy snow loads. We had major flooding in Elco one of those years and then the other year we were Sub-Zero for six weeks straight. And so there’s just been a lot crammed into the last 10 years, which is definitely abnormal to have so many events in such a short timeframe. Like I said, we’ve definitely responded with tags in those times. Hopefully we hit the bottom last year and we’re, I mean we’re seeing meaningful growth in these herds and hopefully we’ll start chipping away with, you know, some of those tag increases while not sacrificing everything in the future. And I think by going to postseason objectives of 40, 37, you know, depending on which unit you’re in, I, I don’t think we’re gonna lose that quality. I don’t think we’re mortgaging the future by starting to chip away now and allowing some people to get out in the field.
00:29:01:13 –> 00:29:02:20
Okay, that makes sense.
00:29:03:08 –> 00:29:18:21
And I think most people maybe a little surprised at what they’re, they’re hearing about some of these big winners in Nevada. ’cause it is the driest state in the nation. Most people think of Nevada as a desert and, and but from north to south it’s completely different. Different, I mean, and you’re, it’s like,
00:29:18:21 –> 00:29:21:13
It’s like northern California versus southern California. There’s that,
00:29:21:22 –> 00:30:15:15
That China. Exactly. Yeah. And so that northern part, you know, call it, you know, from unit 10 north or you know, and definitely everything north of I 70, it just definitely gets a different weather pattern and that that cold like a northern Utah, southern Idaho cold, those, you know, Wyoming winters and too that hit that, and a lot of people may be listening to this, don’t understand that they have a real long cold prolonged wi winter period up there with deep snow at times. And then in down south you got places that guzzler are drying, they’re hauling water, you know, the same year, just all, all at the same time trying to keep deer alive, sheep alive. And, and, and it’s a complete 180 degree difference. They’ve lost sheep populations and deer population due to drought and, and lack of water. And there’s been peaks and valleys, but I mean, dealing in an area is so vastly different. So I think that’s, you know, maybe as we transition to Joe and where he’s hung out, that’s Yeah. You know, he’s like, Hey, I challenge a winner. I challenge a winner to kill one of my deers. So,
00:30:16:03 –> 00:30:22:25
Well it’s, I and I would add up there, it’s, it’s the winners and then it’s the fires too. Some of that winter range got torched.
00:30:23:01 –> 00:30:23:19
Sage brush just,
00:30:24:04 –> 00:30:27:18
You got, it’s just, yeah, it’s kind of a double whammy there. But,
00:30:28:19 –> 00:30:34:06
So Scott, before we, I’m kind of fill in the direction we should go with this. I don’t know, I’ve just seen what you guys, what do you think
00:30:34:06 –> 00:30:35:00
You mean deer wise, Jason?
00:30:35:08 –> 00:31:16:10
Well let’s just stay on deer for the entire podcast. No, no, I think, I think let’s flesh out some of the other plate. Let Scott flesh that out a little bit more on some of the other stuff that he’s seeing and, and, and hearing in, in area 12 and 16 and 14 and 15 or any, any of those surrounding areas. And then let’s transition to Joe talk about that Joe’s over predators, but I mean he’s passionate about the big game and has dealt with that. Just barely left that extensively, barely left that role. Yeah. And so deal with that. And then let’s visit with Sean about some other things and then let Sean take us to the next species and talk about antelope. I’d like to really dive into that really well. There’s, so they, they come back quick. Two and three year olds, they’re, they’re impressive.
00:31:16:13 –> 00:32:20:17
And so flesh that out a little bit and then of course we’ll keep going. Okay. Down, down the chain. And so does that sound good with you guys? Scott, can we keep going for a minute? I know. Oh six five back in the day, I’m just talking way back in the day was under alternative management, still is, but challenges with fire and things like that and just maybe speak to that and then surrounding areas and what are you seeing Area 10 there’s been, and I’d hate to talk Boone and Crockett and I know you guys do too, but like two 50 buck and the late archery and things like that. Like I know what the potential is there. Maybe just speak to that, the quality you’re seeing. ’cause we as hunters get excited, we all smile when there’s something special on the landscape or you’re seeing an overall age increase, which is quality increase. But maybe just speak to that and the enthusiasm that we’re all feeling. We’re all feeling a little bit of enthusiasm for where Nevada’s headed and I want to keep down that path of what you’re seeing on the positive side. And you can talk negative if there is any. I just feel like everything feels slightly positive and maybe flesh out some of the other units that you’re right in the middle of.
00:32:23:04 –> 00:32:25:05
Okay. There was a lot there. So remind me
00:32:25:09 –> 00:32:41:19
Of question. So let’s talk any other, like we did with oh, sixes and oh sevens. Yep. Give, give us the, give us the, the, the rundown on what you’re seeing as in the other areas as well that you’re affiliated with.
00:32:42:28 –> 00:32:46:06
So breaking them up 11, 12, 13.
00:32:46:10 –> 00:32:46:26
Yes. Yep.
00:32:47:15 –> 00:34:30:18
So they, they definitely have been hit hard in the last, you know, decade with hard winners with horrible drought in between. And so we were seeing very depressed production rates as well as hard winners on top of it. And so there was just very few fawns, backfilling those deer for a number of years. And so we had huge population decreases, huge tag decreases the last couple years we have seen that bounce. I looked the other day, Eastern Nevada is sitting right close to a hundred percent for this year after starting out pretty horribly this winter. So Miracle March really saved that country’s bacon, which was nice to see. And so we’re, we bounced off the bottom there and starting to see quality coming back and all of those units to some degree starting to see a lot more deer. Our surveys have been a lot more productive the last couple years and so a lot of room for hope there. Moving over to area 14 and 15, I would say they were negatively affected by those drought years, but they definitely weren’t hit nearly as hard in those winter years. And so they were really able to take advantage of those good water years. Didn’t have the over winter fawn loss. And so those ones are kind of a year ahead of everything else. Hmm. And so we’ve been, they’ve really been doing well for the last three years.
00:34:33:01 –> 00:35:06:06
Just a lot of people talking about seeing a lot of deer, a lot more deer than they’d seen in, you know, the recent past. And so there’s a lot of room for optimism in those two units for sure. And both those units, we got a lot closer to our objectives last year with our tag recommendations and those that were approved by the commission. And so you’ll see, you know, some minor increases there, but it’s not nearly as shocking as the other unit groups. Okay.
00:35:06:09 –> 00:35:06:16
So
00:35:07:06 –> 00:35:07:21
Awesome.
00:35:07:27 –> 00:35:08:29
Awesome. Alright,
00:35:09:03 –> 00:36:02:07
That oh six five. I would hate to leave oh six five because I, I was a biologist for quite a while there and oh six five got hammered by winners and then there’s a proposed mine and there’s a incredible amount of exploration activity right in the heart of Yeah. The summer range there. And so the potential for oh six five is just for the number of deer is not what it once was. Yeah. And yeah, the, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs but quality wise definitely seeing a bounce back. Those tags have been really depressed for a number of years and it’s starting to be reflected in success. You know, four points, number of days hunted, everything is pointing towards, it’s a lot better experience than it than it was a couple years ago.
00:36:02:18 –> 00:36:40:11
Okay. An area 14 and 15, so the one forties and one fifties back in the day you guys had a Missouri, you know, areas. And so when we talk about that, just for the general public to know, you know, area six would be all the, oh, sixes, area seven, all the oh sevens. But, but anyway for 1415 feels like it was this quantity over quality. It might be a genetic, it might be a number of reasons why, but actually we’re hearing a, a bit of an uptick in quality, like you said, maybe it’s a year ahead or whatever, but there’s some optimism there that I haven’t really heard much before, especially maybe in 14, but have you seen the same thing?
00:36:41:22 –> 00:37:44:24
Definitely. And I think both of those units are just a lot more prone to drought issues and you know, there’s between the two there’s 10,000 ish horses and so there’s a lot of competition on a really pretty limited landscape. And so those drought issues definitely come out and you can see it. You’ll, I mean even with older age class bucks, we had a huge collaring study in there in the early 2000 tens and one year you’d have this pretty exciting big buck and then the next year he would come back as just a nothing, nothing to get excited about type of a buck. And so I think a lot of that is playing out in real time right now. And so there’s, you know, with being a hundred to 130% and all these water basins, it should be another good year.
00:37:45:16 –> 00:37:50:14
Okay. Before we leave Scott, Devin, I know you have some specific questions.
00:37:51:23 –> 00:37:52:05
I’m good. We,
00:37:52:06 –> 00:37:57:10
We’ve talked about some of the coloring and the migrations and just the really interesting things
00:37:57:10 –> 00:38:09:04
That Yeah I just, I mean we, I saw doe on the Torontos that we called on and she summered like north of WildHorse, like what’s some of the farthest migration you’ve seen in that country?
00:38:10:29 –> 00:38:33:14
There’s been a number that have been on that east side of area six going down to the south peak ops. When I was there, 10 biologists had a dough go from around Robinson Lake on the north end of 1 0 2. She ended up 30 something miles south of highway 50 in area 13. Holy
00:38:34:01 –> 00:38:34:08
Cow.
00:38:34:17 –> 00:38:35:06
Fair miles.
00:38:35:25 –> 00:38:36:18
It’s so crazy.
00:38:37:13 –> 00:39:02:13
Yeah, it was like 140 straight line air miles and knowing that she crossed the range multiple times, if you actually tracked it out it’d be closer to 200 area six. We see, you know, numerous 70 plus mile movements but seven in 10 definitely have the longest deer ones that we’ve mapped so far.
00:39:02:24 –> 00:39:15:07
Yeah, super cool. The highway crossings, I mean all that’s helped a ton. I, I remember back in the day driving that and it was scary. Yeah. Before that, you know, but that’s have to, I would, I would assume that’s helped a ton. Yeah,
00:39:16:09 –> 00:39:44:15
Yeah. And I mean in working with Ndot prior to those being installed, we were averaging 250, 250 deer that they were picking up each year. That’s not accounting for ones that were out in the brush, ones that limped off and died. So yeah, you play that out over a number of years. It’s a pretty incredible amount of deal. Big deal that are being saved now. Yeah.
00:39:45:03 –> 00:40:58:03
Pretty crazy. Well, let’s see, let’s, Sean, I I, I wanna, before we dive into Joe and Joe, we can’t have all the area biologists on at the same time, so it’s a little bit hard. So we’ll talk to Joe A. Little bit about some of that country down south that we like. Of course it’s closer to us. Devin’s not as fond of it, but actually he is. I just like giving Devin a hard time. But, but Sean maybe can you maybe speak a little bit to, you know, we’ve heard that it’d be, it’s tougher to go through the drought era than having a harsh winter, you know, tougher to recover from drought and of course and, and, and I don’t know, maybe you can speak a little bit to that and then also maybe speak to the northeast corner. Back in the day the Sheldon was the dear producing mecca of Nevada and all of that country and that has just totally changed. That was back in, you know, Tony Diebold and some of those old outfitters that just loved that country and whatnot back when, you know, we actually worked with them and I mean that dates us a little bit too, but that’s changed all of that’s changed the horses, the fires and, and 14 other, you know, issues but maybe speak to that area of the state and then drought versus winter and just in, in general terms of what you see.
00:41:00:00 –> 00:41:53:24
Yeah and that’s where, I mean probably I’ve spent the majority of my time throughout my lifetime outdoors is in the northwestern portion of the state and certainly it’s, it’s, it’s changed a lot in terms of the dynamics there. But I guess the good news is, is we still have, you know, most of our sagebrush canopy available in the northwestern section of the state. When you get into oh three two, you start to, it starts to fade when you get into Humboldt County quite a bit and it turns into more of a cheatgrass monoculture and lower elevations anyway. But for that northwestern section of the state we’re, we’re seeing a bit of recovery in places like the Sheldon and Hunt unit oh one one. But it certainly hasn’t been what I would’ve hoped for over these last few years.
00:41:56:03 –> 00:42:45:11
I would say that over the last 20 years, except for the Mojave Desert, that that’s been one of the driest places in the state. I don’t think anybody can really appreciate the level of drought that has undergone in that portion of the state. 2018, the summer of 2018 was probably the driest I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Bar none. You just walk by a sagebrush and most of the leaves would fall off and it would just break apart. Yeah. And you can see how that has manifested itself over the years with at least the last few years where you have half to 75% dead sagebrush plants with maybe a quarter to half of it still alive. So that obviously has an effect.
00:42:48:09 –> 00:43:48:10
The other portion of it too is, is is there’s portions of Road and Washoe co county get that get raised by livestock very heavily. The season of use is from April 1st through almost the end of October. Plants don’t get a chance to really recover out there. And I think that that’s sort of manifesting itself over the years when we have all these dry periods and you get maybe two wet years in a decade. It’s not enough. It’s not enough to sustain animals out there. We’re starting to see that manifest itself in sagegrass populations as well. They’re just not quite as productive. And we went through an exercise a couple years ago where we took our, our sage grouse wing bee data, which kind of gives us an idea of recruitment over the, over the past 30 years. And we looked at that as opposed to our, our bonds per 100 adults in the springtime.
00:43:48:21 –> 00:44:59:01
And those trend lines are right on top of each other, highly cordial. So I think when you see these sagebrush obligate out on the landscape and they’re just not being pretty productive, very productive and you see two speed, two different species doing the same thing, it kind of is pretty telling about what’s going on in that, that landscape in general. I would have thought with the removal of most all of the horses on the Sheldon say for you know maybe 20 to 50 horses that are still out there, that we would’ve seen a positive response. I think we’re kind of seeing that with wrong horn. We’re kind of seeing that with mul deer. The quality is not quite there yet. It’s kinda of looking like it’s coming back. But you know, we faced a couple situations over that the last two decades where pronghorn just left the Sheldon completely and they had to because it was virtually waterless out there and so they had to go into Oregon to seek out water. Wow. And I, I, I think a lot of those animals did not return and so it’s just now starting to build itself back up again. But it’s taken a long, long time.
00:45:00:04 –> 00:45:01:29
Wow, that’s crazy.
00:45:02:08 –> 00:45:56:10
Well and that’s, you know, what he is talking about with those prolonged periods of drought is probably what you affect these vegetative communities so harshly and then you superimpose livestock grazing, you know, big game needing it, wild horses if you have that and you can set that back for decades versus a winner one hard winner, you, you may wipe out 80 to 90, a hundred percent of your fawns and a higher than normal percentage of your adults and and maybe 40% plus, but then what’s left with a big snow load, your habitat now gets a slight break ’cause they’re less animals to eat it. Yeah. And it’s just got all the water it needs so it can actually rebound and get these, what we’re seeing now in a year or two boom, two big fong crops in a row versus rebound period versus versus the drought. Like it, you can’t just, you can’t just, it can’t ever get back on track again. You know, so
00:45:57:05 –> 00:45:59:29
Guess Sean you would echo that, that’s what you’re seeing?
00:46:02:12 –> 00:47:28:24
Yeah, well yeah absolutely and and one of the things we’ve seen over the years too is that with that pressure over time, whether it’s horses or livestock and you graze it for that long, you start to lose your perennial grasses and you replace it with more short term annual species on the landscape or short term perennials like San Bernard bluegrass that just doesn’t have the value for or native wildlife species like perennials do. And say you get an event small fire or even a large fire and you don’t have those perennials on the landscape, your susceptibility to turn into that cheap grass monoculture just exponentially increases when you don’t have that on the landscape. The other thing we see too is that with that pressure is without those perennial grasses, animals start to shift domestic or otherwise and they’ll browse and we’ll see that browse start to be affected particularly in the form of bitterbrush browse. So you’ll go out there and you’ll see bitterbrush that looks more like bonsai trees than they do bitterbrush bushes and that’s because they’ve been selected for so heavily because that’s what’s left to eat. And of course that’s what our mule deer in many cases need to thrive on at certain times of year. So you start affecting those communities and one thing leads to another and you know, I think that’s why we’re in the boat. We are with mule deer in
00:47:28:24 –> 00:47:29:19
Western Nevada.
00:47:30:08 –> 00:48:27:28
Okay, alright. Yeah I appreciate that, that that helps us a lot for that general region there. Maybe Joe, do you wanna, you know, don’t want you to feel left out over there, down there in that south south portion there, talk about the state of mule deer in general in some of that country and then you can dive into some of the antelope as well and, and we’ll go to that point and then, and keep cranking, got some other things to talk about. Of course we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about desert sheep and all the challenges there, but then also some interesting t quotas so we’ll get to that as well. But maybe address, maybe address some of the, the deer and antelope and what you’re seeing in general and your involvement has been, you know, you guys all, you guys are all intertwined, you probably know each other’s regions very well. Also just a good group of individuals that care about the entire state and so anyway, maybe you can address that Joe, some of that country.
00:48:29:08 –> 00:49:43:04
Yeah. So Jason, I guess I’ll kind of circle back before we start getting into the drought conditions and everything else that I’ve been dealing with. So you guys mentioned that you field hundreds of calls about Nevada every day. Yeah. And I’m assuming what you’re going to tell them is with our application strategy the way everything is, you at least have a chance and when you draw a tag you have a great experience. Yeah, and that’s what I’m gonna attest to as I go and embark on maybe some reduced quotas that Scott was talking about. So I did help with a lot of the aerial surveys in Lincoln County and Central Nevada. There’s, we’re still seeing plenty of quality on the landscape. Obviously with the FA recruitment being in the low to mid forties for your spring FA recruitment, you’re seeing a lot of uptick in those younger age class deer, but you’re still seeing a lot of quality out in the landscape. For instance, you’ll see the 23 or 2 31 quota where it’s going from 45 to 95. Well we tried to uptake it to about 65 last year and then those tags were shifted to juniors. I just wanna put it for reference, that’s for a postseason buck ratio 45 to put it just in as a reference point. You know
00:49:43:08 –> 00:49:48:28
Joe, Scott, Joe, I just wanna know how many of those 40 fives are two Huns. That’s what I wanna know. I that that’s the
00:49:48:28 –> 00:49:50:27
Conversation you and I have every time
00:49:50:28 –> 00:49:52:29
Jason. Like I know, I know I ask you
00:49:52:29 –> 00:49:55:16
What unit to apply for in Utah. I know
00:49:55:16 –> 00:49:57:27
And you’re like, and I want you to have a quality experience.
00:49:58:18 –> 00:50:04:15
It doesn’t have that two 20 experience is always your answer and I’m just like, what about the guy that’ll kill that 180 5?
00:50:04:22 –> 00:50:06:06
I know, but what I do that
00:50:06:06 –> 00:50:06:27
Is me. But
00:50:06:27 –> 00:50:56:19
What I, and so I know, I know and there, but what I do like is what I do like, and, and I want you to finish, I want you to totally finish out every thought you have on some of this stuff, all of you. But what I do like is Adam and I have talked about those surprises when you have a reduction in quota and then it comes up to this point where we should increase, but then the commission doesn’t want to because of the public pressure. And so you can’t, you stack a few of those bucks and they get just a little older and a little older and then right before you unleash the tags that you have, you no choice, that’s you want 50 bucks per hundred, that’s when you wanna draw. Then you wanna draw the year before you unleash the tags and you have this most premium experience that would take another decade or two for all those variables to get into it. That’s just for an extreme trophy hunter that I, that I’m talking about. I’m not saying that’s proper management, I’m just saying that’s just Jason talking for a second. So
00:50:57:00 –> 00:50:59:27
I know that’s why I had to bring that up is more just playing around.
00:51:00:08 –> 00:51:23:24
But I did notice that in 23 and 23, just from a, a general sportsman’s perspective is it feels like it hasn’t produced the, the big deer that it’s known to have produced. But one of these years Adam and I talk about it, when is this surprise year of wow 23 really produced a bunch of big deer and it feels like it’s coming. Yeah. But but anyway Joe, you, you there are tag increases for 23 proposed.
00:51:24:12 –> 00:52:28:24
Yeah. And then you’ll, we mentioned some of the coloring efforts like in the northern part of the state, but we actually colored 43 mul deer la or a couple years ago in area 22 or a year and a half ago now. And that, that data is showing movements you wouldn’t believe and a proportion of those deer aren’t available during the hunting season. You’ll see that reflected in quotas as well. Okay. That’s another alternative unit. So it’s kind of that predicament, you know, do you base it off of harvest metrics since you’re trying to figure out when to survey those deer? Different things? Heck, we had some of those deer near the west range just across from PO end up in area 12 and the 11 and couple in Utah. Like it’s just this data’s been real informative and how we tackle, it’s kind of the next, yeah, next step of the equation because you know, do you manage some of these populations as a whole and then take a proportion out say for 22 and 23, like that’s something we’re still exploring of how we manage that most effectively.
00:52:28:26 –> 00:53:22:12
But then you also mentioned area 16, 17, some of those units where you’re seeing some sizable increases that’s truly has to do with buck ratios. I mean like the 16 buck ratio gets you down to about 37 postseason. Yeah, so it’s the same thing that we’re talking about with the northern units. It’s kind of the tail of two sides of the state where you got, it seems like south of Lincoln County south of like taw extreme drought conditions and then everywhere north you’re seeing decent recruitment. You know, you’re seeing some mild winters in these areas. So everything or quite a few have a chance to survive. So we’ll get into the, the probably the more intensive drought conversation I think once we get to sheep here. But it’ll things for deer, they’re not looking bad.
00:53:23:03 –> 00:54:03:03
No, they’re actually looking pretty decent. We did, and Adam, tell me what you think too, but we did have this long a, a heavy drought this winter, this fallen winter, but then all of a sudden we’re having this timely moisture. Thankfully we needed it, you know, this, this February, I guess late February, March, April. Things just feel good. I don’t think that the, there’s still gonna be dried up springs like overall water table recessed, things like that. But as far as the vegetation, it just feels timely. It feels timely to me. You know, being March and April and May coming in with some moisture.
00:54:03:03 –> 00:54:48:01
Yeah, it was looking pretty bleak leading up to that with one of the driest winters we’d seen over here, which our wi our winters here in Cedar City mirror a lot of Lincoln County and 2 31 and you know, the lower 2 23, 2 forties, you know, as far as flow and what what they get. Yeah. If it wasn’t for the last 45, 50 days or whatever we’re on now, I would have a whole, at least I think there’s some hope we’re artificially greening things up, which is just to impact deer at the right time of year. Whether they’re fawns or doughs about ready to fawn here in a couple months or boxes are growing out. There’s right now, yeah, we’re not filling reservoirs everywhere by any means, but we’re, we might eek out growing some big bucks and, and and have some good ground cover for fonts when, when mamas start having them,
00:54:48:06 –> 00:54:50:10
How are, what’s your take on that, Joe?
00:54:53:01 –> 00:55:13:10
Yeah, it’s moisture needs to coincide when greenup occurs and kind of as it continues, hopefully it does continue over the next month or two and it prolongs those Forbes and brow species and grasses to stay green longer and kind of keep things going into early mid-summer.
00:55:14:22 –> 00:55:49:04
Okay. So should we dive in maybe Joe, continue with this conversation on antelope, what you’re seeing in some of that country. I know area 25 somewhat popular. 13, 16, 17, 18. I mean there’s a, there’s good bucks on the landscape. Some of the, you know, heavy, you know, very southern, you know, 25 you I know is super drought sensitive and, and all of ’em are really, but they recover antelopes seem to recover a bit quicker. But maybe talk about that we’ve, we’ve seen a good quality, good quality bucks coming on. Like there’s a, there’s an excitement about it. Just maybe talk about that a little bit.
00:55:49:21 –> 00:56:12:28
Yeah, it might be a little biased Standal, low punting is probably my favorite because it allows me to just go look at a bunch of animals without exerting the, maybe the same amount of effort as I would on a deer or an elk cu. But I had a 2 51 antelope tag a couple years ago, harvested a real nice 81 inch antelope just in the middle of stone Camp Valley opening day, just driving down the road. I mean it can, that’s life.
00:56:12:29 –> 00:56:15:03
It can happen. That’s living right there, drinking a Pepsi.
00:56:15:06 –> 00:57:13:22
Yeah, I’ll tell you once we get to Elk, I’ll tell you more of the horror stories, but it’ll, no, and Scott can attest to this when he speaks to a lot of his units, antelope are doing well. Seems like, you know, as you know with antelope biology, once you get to about three, four years of age, you’re reaching your max potential. So a lot of the units that I oversee, you know, exhibited terrible drought conditions 2020 through 2022. But now you’re seeing the ramifications of a couple good years and you should, as we start to go into the next couple years, continue to see that uptick and see some pretty good quality on the landscape. And some of that’s reflected in the harvest where, but some of it’s not like unit 25 might be 12 to 15%, 15 inch or better, but I know they’re out there and you just, if you spend some time, I, I like to say any Nevada antelope unit, you’ve got a chance at an 80 inch buck.
00:57:13:28 –> 00:57:26:24
Any, any single one of ’em. That’s what it does. Phil, like Yeah. Maybe Scott, chime in on what you’re seeing up there in your country. You know, quality wise, numbers wise feels good. What are you seeing up there?
00:57:28:15 –> 00:59:18:02
Yeah, numbers wise, it’s just off the charts. It’s, we surveyed 3000 more pronghorn than we ever had as a region. Had over 3000 in that 14, 15 unit group. And that was with not going to a number of valleys just due to access and muddy and snowy conditions. Yeah. So, yeah, it’s pretty unprecedented for Eastern region pronghorn where all time highs and pretty much all the unit groups set all time high survey samples and had the best, best phone ratio ever. Best buck ratio, more or less ever there. It was lower than one in the 1970s where they saw like 500 antelope in the region. So I think we can say it’s the best ever. And yeah, just everything’s pointing up right now and we’ve been throwing, you know, hundreds of dough tags at ’em and we’re not slowing anything down for the most part. And yeah, good things are happening. And there were a number of really nice bucks taken in the region last year. Saw a couple that were in that, you know, re really top end type bucks, 85 to 87 North Elco, which doesn’t happen that often. And with the mild winter that we’ve had and just green nice conditions that were seemingly going into summer with, should be primed for Pretty awesome, pretty awesome antelope ping this
00:59:18:02 –> 00:59:33:29
Year. You can hardly hold back your smile. I know, I, I mean, how, how awesome is that? It’s, it’s a nice change to hear that, and I mean, from what you’re saying, never been better on all fronts. Is that, I mean, is that what you’re saying in all aspects of survey? That’s
00:59:35:08 –> 00:59:39:11
Totally accurate, yeah. Yeah. I mean, those drought years,
00:59:39:16 –> 00:59:42:05
I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to go right now? Like it’s fire
00:59:42:14 –> 00:59:47:17
Back. Are you back in, are you off your waiting period? I am. I’m back in. All right. My three years is up.
00:59:47:21 –> 00:59:55:11
I mean, it’s fun, it’s nice to have something to smile about. I just, it’s, I mean, it’s just, geez, thousands. Did you hear that? Did thousands.
00:59:56:12 –> 00:59:58:24
I, I’ve seen it. I, I,
00:59:59:00 –> 01:00:03:16
I know how much, why haven’t you been telling us about it? I told Devin, why have you not been telling us promise? I’ve
01:00:03:16 –> 01:00:07:00
Seen antelope at 9,000 feet. Man. That’s like, the place is loaded.
01:00:08:15 –> 01:00:20:13
So is there just is, speak to the habitat. You got the habitat for it. Are we good? I mean, do we have to throw these do tags? You wanna kind of curtail it a little, I’m sure. But what about, can the habitat sustain at all?
01:00:21:28 –> 01:01:44:17
You know, a lot of the reason that they’re doing so well is, you know, historical burns and a lot of the issues that are facing mule deer or benefiting pronghorn. Yeah. In these situations, weed. So all that part of it where we have overlapping winter ranges between, you know, thousands of antelope and thousands of deer, we’re choosing to keep those relatively stable. Other areas where we don’t have that overlap or that potential competition, we’re letting them go. But like I said, the 1415 unit group we’re killing over 500 antelope a year out of there and not slowing anything down. Wow. So that’s, wow. And then, I mean, just circling back to those drought years, the south and the eastern region, so 11, 12, 13 parts of 14 and 16 there, during those drought years we were running fawn ratios in the single digits. So we’re seeing, you know, tenfold increase in fawn ratios. And so we, we had major population contractions during those years and now we’re bouncing back into, you know, record surveys. Record estimates. So
01:01:44:27 –> 01:01:54:11
Is there a, is there a bad unit? I mean, can you sit, can you definitively say, you know, do not fly here, it feels like, or what Joe’s saying you can go anywhere.
01:01:55:07 –> 01:01:59:11
No, there, there’s definitely Brock hit bucks in every uni group. Wow.
01:01:59:15 –> 01:01:59:27
For sure.
01:02:00:05 –> 01:02:00:25
Yeah. Just
01:02:00:25 –> 01:02:08:00
How far do you wanna drive? I, Devin? Hey, I’m driving. I got good gas mileage in my little diesel. That little diesel’s. No joke. I’ll come
01:02:08:00 –> 01:02:08:12
With you.
01:02:09:14 –> 01:02:10:17
You gonna pay off your gas
01:02:11:22 –> 01:02:12:11
For antelope?
01:02:13:19 –> 01:02:30:24
Pretty awesome. Pretty awesome. I like hearing that. That’s great. Maybe Sean, you can, you, you have anything to add? I’m sure as you’ve been listening to some of this on, on Antelope as the, as the overall game division administrator, anything you’ve got got to add that you would like thrown out there?
01:02:31:26 –> 01:02:59:27
Yeah, well our statewide population estimate for antelope is 36,500 animals, which is higher than we’ve ever, at least that I know. Recorded. Yes. In our 1983 Longhorn Antelope Species Management plan, they identified an objective in 2000 of 24,500 antelope. So we’ve blown past that by almost 12,000 animals. So,
01:03:00:15 –> 01:03:00:23
Geez,
01:03:01:08 –> 01:03:35:11
Antelope have responded to, you know, changes in weather patterns, changes in the landscape, like Scott mentioned, especially in places where you get, you know, a more desirable response after fires get these cheat grass monocultures with pansy mustard, you know, that’s not really good for anything. But where you get these more mixed perennial grass landscapes with different annual, annual Forbes in it, sometimes that has a pretty good benefit for, for pronghorn. So we’re, we’re living that right now,
01:03:35:27 –> 01:03:46:24
Even in and in your corner of the world, some, and, you know, northwest stuff, I call it northeast sometimes ’cause I’m an idiot. But Northwest stuff, you’re, you’re seeing some of that over there as well.
01:03:48:14 –> 01:03:53:10
It, it’s not as pronounced as what we’re seeing in Central Nevada or Northeastern Nevada.
01:03:53:12 –> 01:03:53:21
Okay.
01:03:53:21 –> 01:04:40:11
Yeah, there’s a unit group oh four three through oh four six that, that spans from basically just south of Winnemucca from I 80 near Rip patch re reservoir over to kind of Battle Mountain. And that, that pronghorn herd is almost exponentially increasing. Yeah. Along with area 15. And so yeah, whatever’s going on there is really benefiting antelope to a high degree. Yeah. So, and you know, I think we’re gonna start to see some, some more mature bucks, some higher quality bucks come out of there. But what’s happening in Northeastern Nevada in terms of quality, it’s really replaced Northwestern Nevada in terms of the go-to spot for antelope. There you
01:04:40:11 –> 01:04:40:14
Go.
01:04:41:19 –> 01:04:43:15
That’s closer Look closer drive. Yeah.
01:04:43:19 –> 01:04:47:23
For few. Hey, we’d drive anywhere for an antelope, right? Bronson? It’s better to
01:04:47:23 –> 01:04:53:21
Drive to the Idaho, Nevada border than the California Nevada border. It’s pretty fun if you live where we live. But yeah, it’s exciting,
01:04:53:21 –> 01:05:26:06
Pretty fun. Maybe Shauna is, since you’re up and you’re speaking already, you wanna maybe set the, set the stage for elk? We’ll dive into elk a little bit and, and I know Joe’s just chomping, we’re gonna let him chomp on these desert sheep for a minute ’cause we’re gonna He’s good. We’re gonna end on that. I’m gonna tease him a bit and we’ll, we’ll talk about all that. And it’s fun. We’re excited about it actually with some of the different tag quotas that just ’cause there’s some things that have to happen, right? And so anyway, we’ll dive into that, but may maybe set the stage for, for elk in, in Nevada.
01:05:27:21 –> 01:06:18:29
Sure, yeah. Elk are doing well throughout most of the state. No real big changes from, from a bull quota standpoint, I think we’re up about 6%. We’re recommending, you know, maybe 12% more cow tags. Some of it’s in line with where we wanna be. But from a quality standpoint, I was looking through some of these metrics the other day and we had 747 bulls harvested last year. 272 of them had 50 inch or main 50 inch main beam greater. So we’re, we’re 36% of our bulls are 50 inch main Beamer greater, which is suppressive. And we’re actually,
01:06:20:07 –> 01:06:21:25
That’s why you wanna hunt in Nevada for Yeah,
01:06:21:25 –> 01:06:29:25
That’s exactly right. You want to, it’s just, it’s hard to get a, but when you get one, you got something get in line. Yep. So keep going. You got any, what else you got?
01:06:30:02 –> 01:06:35:18
And 72% of the bulls that were harvested were six point or greater. So Wow.
01:06:36:03 –> 01:06:41:13
This is up the average general public that gets a tag. Not everybody’s a trophy hunter, you know, kinda like the Jon
01:06:41:25 –> 01:06:45:00
And it’s across all units. Like any Nevada elk tag is a trophy outcome
01:06:45:04 –> 01:06:47:10
Any in every single one.
01:06:49:05 –> 01:07:09:03
Yeah. And we’re seeing some, some recovery in northeastern portion of our, of the state in terms of quality as well. So, you know, it, it’s definitely the only thing that we’re dealing with that’s been an issue for us in northeastern party state is managing numbers, managing numbers to objective. And you know,
01:07:09:06 –> 01:07:32:25
It does seem like, it does seem like you guys are careful with that just because you maybe limited habitat and whatnot, just dealing with Nevada and also, you know, proper, under proper game management, also dealing with elk that traveled to Idaho and you know, and trying to deal with what that, what that looks like and how that, how do you manage, you know, that somewhat tough.
01:07:33:14 –> 01:08:14:24
It’s super difficult between some of our, our hunt unit groups, we’ve got, we’ve got state issues where we have animals that move between different states quite a bit more than one might think. And then the ones that move between hunt unit groups and then we’ve got, you know, an incentive tag program where you’ve got folks that may be managing more for elk than they have in the past, which changes the dynamic too, the movement of animals. And so definitely a lot of dynamics and intricacies that, but overall a good success story, right? It’s just, it can be, from a management standpoint, it can be a lot of time and tender loving care
01:08:14:27 –> 01:08:16:11
To deal with elk for sure.
01:08:17:15 –> 01:08:38:22
Well, and you get, and Scott was talking about, you know, some of the area 14 and 15 antelope being bulletproof, you know, you know, just growing despite heavy harvest. Well, we know what elk can do, so you’re also, you gotta be, you, you gotta be on top of them because they’re, even, they’re, they’re as bad as a coyo, you know, I mean, they’ll live everywhere. You can’t kill ’em. They’ll go everywhere.
01:08:38:27 –> 01:08:39:22
They handle the
01:08:39:22 –> 01:09:09:03
Weather, they, they only die from lead poisoning, you know, stuff like that. So you’ve gotta, and there’s overlap with, with ranching communities, whether they be in private land or primase or things like that. So yeah. You know, elk or they eat a lot more. So there’s a lot of reasons you can’t just back off. You have to have the tender loving carrot principle. You gotta be on top of it, so you don’t, you don’t run into issues where, yeah, habitat problems are an issue or you know, then you get into a drought and you’ve got a thousand too many elk on the landscape or whatever. So those
01:09:09:03 –> 01:09:27:16
Are significant issues. And so maybe Scott dive into, you know, back to you for a quick sec and then we’ll go to Joe. But you know, what are you seeing, and o obviously area six has had its challenges too. You might address that just a little bit, but, but the Oh sevens and, and other units in your basic area.
01:09:29:13 –> 01:10:10:07
Yeah, and just backing up a little bit, but all of our unit groups have population objectives for the most part 6 1 7 ones uses habitat objectives to dictate the numbers, but most of ’em have a hard number. And that was set through a social process, not through a biological carrying capacity or anything along those lines. Okay. And so that’s where we really run into issues is trying to maintain quality, maintain, you know, hunter satisfaction as well as maintain these artificially low population objectives in a lot of these unit groups.
01:10:10:14 –> 01:10:18:22
So it could be better, could be better. I mean it could be higher, higher numbers of elk. It could totally handle it. It’s just you’re dealing with the social part of it.
01:10:19:29 –> 01:10:56:18
Absolutely. And I mean, you know, factors of five or 10 and some of the unit groups. Wow. And so you brought up area six, you know that six two through six eight uni groups, huge area, numerous, you know, suitable mountain ranges and we have a population objective of 500 in there. Yeah. And you can have that walk across the border of a reservation and you can be, you can either have zero elk or you can have a thousand elk. It just depends on which side of the fence they’re on. Right. And so it makes management excessively difficult.
01:10:58:25 –> 01:12:01:27
John said, you know, most of our areas are within our bull objectives, you know, we’re not looking at a bull ratio in that scenario just because all of of those objectives left us long ago. We’re trying to maintain a quality hunt there and then do your population management through the cow harvest. Okay. Which, if you’re at a maintenance level is totally or pretty doable, but when you allow those populations to get past objective and then you have to knock ’em down to objective, you have to target both bulls and cows in those scenarios. Or you just end up with 1200 bulls in a unit group and not have anything to produce any calves. And that’s kind of where we’re at in that oh seven six unit group I, I know Devon’s familiar with, we overshot those objectives and that’s why you’re seeing those increases this year.
01:12:02:28 –> 01:12:50:09
If, if we had our druthers and we were just managing, you know, at bull objectives, we wouldn’t see any changes in those quotas this year. But because we’re so far over in both cows and bulls, we have to start chipping away at both of ’em. And so we’re gonna see sizable increases in all of those, or at least proposed sizable increases across the board. Most of the other unit groups were close enough to be close enough to objective to where we’re, you know, just tightrope walking with last year’s recruitment class and just like everything else recruitment’s off the charts the last two years. And so a lot of the quota increases in cows is just accounting for that. Mm.
01:12:51:16 –> 01:13:10:15
Is there any chance that you, do you see any change or potential for change on, on population objectives if it’s just based on social? Are we, I mean, is it something you just said, oh, let’s just raise the, you know, the population objective a little bit and enjoy the, you enjoy it a little bit? Or is it just not really in the cards?
01:13:12:23 –> 01:13:41:20
We are in the process of updating our species management plan. Our statewide one was written in 1997 and has seen, you know, a few subplan revisions, but very little revision to the actual statewide plan since then. And so through that process there’s potential. But yeah, it’s really up to, you know, the commission and yeah. Other social
01:13:42:18 –> 01:13:42:21
Entities
01:13:43:05 –> 01:13:43:18
Pressures. Yeah,
01:13:43:18 –> 01:13:44:08
Yeah. Yep.
01:13:44:21 –> 01:13:48:11
Livestock interest. Yeah. County advisory boards, all that type of stuff. Yeah.
01:13:49:09 –> 01:13:50:21
Any questions, Devin, you’re thinking?
01:13:51:05 –> 01:13:52:26
No, it’s interesting learning a lot.
01:13:53:12 –> 01:13:55:09
He’s on an elk waiting period, so he’s kind of, well that
01:13:55:09 –> 01:13:57:12
Doesn’t care. He’s all, he’s, he’s still in envelope.
01:13:57:14 –> 01:14:21:23
I mean, elk jail too, but that country and with those elk, there’s so much movement, movement too. Just like we talked with the deer specifically in that country, like yeah, oh yeah, I’ve seen bulls September and then been on a late hunt seeing the same bull and I mean, it shocked me. You know, or just finding the elk in general, how far they go. It’s, it’s, it’s interesting. Very unique to
01:14:21:23 –> 01:14:48:12
That country. And you know, that country, you’re, you’re losing elk, you’re gaining elk to Idaho, you’re doing the same to Utah. Everybody has colors that have showed that movement. We’re losing them to other unit groups. And so yeah, it, it can be pretty tricky when one side of the road’s at objective and the other side’s grossly over, it’s hard to keep that, you know, consistent pressure on ’em to where they don’t run across the road and cause problems.
01:14:48:27 –> 01:15:01:06
So yeah. Seeing good quality in, in area 12 too, you know, the last several years especially it seems like and May and I think it’s been good for quite some time, but maybe speak to that just a little.
01:15:02:25 –> 01:15:56:09
Yeah, I, I mean Area 11 continues to be awesome. Area 12 is definitely producing at a high rate the, like so many places Pine Nuts really caused a dip in hunt success last year, but quality still maintained throughout, you know, just talking to people that have hunted a UniGroup for a number of years in a row and just saying that, you know, we usually go to this basin and see X amount of bulls and they were going there not seeing anything for a number of days. And yeah. But just knowing that you’re seeing the same amount of tracks, the same, same sign and everything else. Pine nuts just,
01:15:56:18 –> 01:15:57:00
Yeah, they
01:15:57:00 –> 01:15:58:10
Don’t, hunters
01:15:58:11 –> 01:16:53:00
They don’t have to come out and feed, you know what I mean? Yeah. They’re just, they’re in the thick trees and a little bit tougher. Joe and Joe, what do similar perception, we’re seeing great quality in 11, like what you’re talking about there, Scott. Just, I mean, just from the hunter’s side in dealing with hunt hunter, submitting photos and all the hunt success stories and all of the things dealing with the guides and whatnot. Area 11, 22, 23, you know, continue to be just great. I mean, it seems like Ely country especially has been great for, I wanna say decades. You know, it’s, you see these ebbs and flows in a lot of other states. It just feels like Ely Hass been great since I, I mean a hundred. It, in year 2000 it was great. We were a hundred, 400 inch bulls. Yeah. In 2000. You still are 25 years ago. Yeah. And so anyway, continues to be just awesome. Something everybody, everybody wants to tag there. Right. And so maybe Joe chime in on, on what you’re seeing as well.
01:16:53:28 –> 01:18:14:23
Yeah, everything’s looking good in 23. Some of the movement that we discussed earlier, this unit is always an enigma. You got the Geyer Ranch, which could have 450 elk on it in the middle of the summer and turn into the Serengeti during the rut. And then, but you look at harvest metrics, 50 inch main beam, everything looks great and it’s, we’ve had collared elk in there and shown movement from 22 to there, to Utah back and forth on any given Sunday. So it’s, we conduct our aerial surveys in January and, and that informs us to the best of our ability, but then we really rely on the harvest metrics in there. But even 16, we’re seeing some quality in these days. It’s, it’s not just one unit, it’s not just Ely country. I mean, and Scott can attest to this, if you, seems like if you find a good bull in area 13, it’s a good bull. Yeah. But then otherwise the success rates maybe aren’t great. But when you look at those harvest metrics and compare it to, I mean I’ve got, I applied for a lot of Western states and have max points in places and I’m applying for hunts where I’m gonna be excited to go see a 3 25 bull and, you know, it’s, that’s just not Nevada. You have the opportunity to find that three 50 glass bull in a lot of these units.
01:18:15:18 –> 01:18:27:17
Pretty awesome there. Sean, have we missed anything as we’ve been discussing or anything come to mind just as, as an over overarching opinion or, or whatnot on, on Elk in Nevada?
01:18:30:25 –> 01:19:28:12
I don’t think so, Jason. I mean, we talked about movement and you know, when you think about how elk around White Pine County, for example, might exist on the landscape and you know, you’ve got all these different mountain ranges and you just think those animals are specific to like the North snake range in 1 1 4, the s now South snake range in 1 1 5. They’re really not, they can move between all of those mountain ranges and the shell creeks and yeah, it, it, it’s, it’s pretty awesome to think about how they use that landscape and how mobile they are. We kind of thought that maybe that winter in 22 had an effect, if any winter would’ve, that probably would’ve been it, but it might have to a, to a degree, but certainly not like we saw for Deere or anything like that. So yeah, no elk are, elk are doing fine and in some places better than we need them to. So, no, that’s
01:19:28:12 –> 01:19:29:27
True. That’s not a success story.
01:19:30:15 –> 01:20:07:11
That’s not true. We love it. What we love about Nevada, it just feels like that’s a, a destination state that everybody aspires to go to. And, and it’s pretty cool to be that, you know, on the flip side of it, it’d be nice to draw a little more often. So there is, there is that balance, but man, what a special place it is for, for Elk. It, it, it really is, it’s commendable what you guys do at the limited resource and habitat and whatnot that you have, I guess, unless somebody else has something to that you wanna talk about there, Sean, you could set us up for talking about sheep and desert sheep and whatnot.
01:20:09:12 –> 01:20:10:06
Yeah, so
01:20:13:29 –> 01:21:38:26
Certainly, you know, we’re in a place with our, our desert big horn, largely due to drought issues here recently. But overall, I would say in the last decade, disease issues, that’s not uncommon for any state with Desert Bighorn has had to deal with over the last decade has caused us, particularly about four or five years ago, a lot of issues with dwindling population size, lower recruitment levels. It seems like we’re starting to climb out of that now, especially in some of our, our northern ranges. But we just, we just have a situation right now in the extreme portion of southern Nevada where we went through about from the summer to, oh, I guess it was almost mid-February where I think we had 214 or so days without a drop of rain. Wow. So a lot of our water developments specifically for Bighorn went dry. You can imagine what that did to the vegetation on the landscape and how dry it made that the growing season, you know, usually is from all about late October, mid-November through February. And we just didn’t receive anything during that, that timeframe.
01:21:41:15 –> 01:22:51:06
Barring that we have a population of sheep down there in unit 2 68, 2 68, the Muddy Mountains, which somehow defies all logic and acts more like a wild horse bird in some respects. And seems to be pretty productive and in high numbers, which is befuddling in some respects that it continues to do that. It has not knock on wood experienced disease issues like a lot of the other herds in the neighborhood. But the situation remains that it’s, it’s virtually a free water less area in the north, in the southern portion of the state. Largely relies on water developments except for a few springs here in Natural Springs here and there. So we’re in a situation where we have to move sheep out of the muddies and we have to deal with an expanded population of sheep. We estimate about 600 or so sheep in that population. And actually, and Joe can speak to this better than I can physically surveyed, you know, over 440 sheep in that mountain range.
01:22:51:07 –> 01:24:32:21
And it’s got a, it’s got a high ram ratio, it’s got a pretty high lamb ratio despite all the maladies that I described earlier. So there’s, there’s some management challenges that we have with that particular herd. We have some other mountain ranges nearby that are like the Arrow Canyons hunt Unit 2 44, which are also looking fairly positive in terms of numbers of animals, number of mature rams, but a landscape that really may not be able to sustain those animals as we’ve moved into the summertime. And there’s a couple other mountain ranges like that too that, you know, unfortunately we had fairly decent population size, some issues with disease for sure, but we have mature ram segment that was, that was looking, you know, pretty good. You know, most people want to hunt places like the McCulloughs unit two 60 degree where there’s quality, but that particular herd has various strains of mycoplasma affecting that population pretty bad. Drought conditions, we’ve had to haul water to several developments there. You know, it has a little bit of diversity in terms of the mountain range that exists on maybe a little bit more resiliency, not much, but definitely there’s going to be challenges in the future for that where unless some things change as you get further north in Nevada into those more central Nevada units, Fallon,
01:24:32:21 –> 01:24:33:12
Same, some of that
01:24:33:19 –> 01:24:57:00
Dealing with a lot of disease issues. But as you get towards Churchill County, there’s a few mountain ranges like the plan alpine range and the de toia range that really rebounded in terms of lamb ratios. So we’re getting more productive there and, and the quality of Rams is looking really good investment too. So that’s kind of a statewide overview from south and North is
01:24:57:00 –> 01:26:16:23
What we desert. Great. Yeah, that’s awesome. Appreciate that. Joe, you can chime in here. We’d sure like to hear your opinion. You’ve been intimately involved and you, you care as a sportsman, let alone the biologist and, and been over that region for ano for quite a bit of time and dealt with all of that, everything to do with everything that we’re talking about. And so chime in here on, on what you’re seeing. Of course, from a non-resident perspective, you know, it, it’s, it’s been nice to, to be able to go, there’s high pop, there has been high population still in all reality, fairly high populations considering other states and and whatnot. So while we’re seeing a, a major dip due to drought and other disease and other issues, still a positivity there from, from our perspective, it’s hard to watch things get knocked down just like we watch deer and, and other things struggle over the course of, of time, whether it be winter loss or, or droughts and things like that. But, but having said all that, still an an optimist, an optimism there, you know, knowing that it’s not always gonna be this way. You know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna see some positive, positive change there and we’re starting to see that as Sean indicated, but maybe dive in on, you know, teach us some things that you’re seeing out there, what you’ve seen and, and in the future as well.
01:26:17:26 –> 01:27:10:03
Yeah. So Sean set that up pretty well. I’ve been living this probably the last five years. It was the worst day of my career when we were flying in the Muddy Mountain wilderness around the Jerry Water development in 2020. And there was 2025 dead bighorn sheep right On a guzzler. We’ve had two good years out the last five years, but the three bad years have been terrible. And so as I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, we’re hauling since December to our 14th different mountain range in about our 30 different water development. And we still gotta finish out the rest of the week and that’s just to get us, you know, 70, 80% in some projects, you know, or start off as we get into the warm season. So it’s, unless if we get monso precipitation, it’s, you know, during the summer months, this is gonna be a reoccurring event.
01:27:11:09 –> 01:28:43:13
We went out and thanks to our gracious or we’re very thankful to our NGOs, ku, you know, the fraternity NBU, all the mbs, all the different NGOs. I mean we’ve raised over a million dollars for a project for these aerial water hauls. And we’re actually going to embark on a large sheep translocation in June where we’re gonna move up to 150 sheep from unit 2 6 8 up to 50 is gonna go to year grade state of Utah. And then we’re gonna based off NEPA compliance move, you know, up to 60 to the Cortez range and 1 41 and then the Tobins in oh four five, we actually evaluated a lot more sites where we, you know, Sean mentioned the bacterial pneumonia aspect of it. So we went and pres sampled a lot of different units, 180 2, 180 3 0 4 5, 2 0 2, the Excelsior range where we went and sampled a lot of yearling individuals to see if they had recent exposure from the blood serology test versus the nasal swab. And that just indicates that there’s active infection on the landscape. So the only units that came back completely negative through the ELA testing was oh four five and then one 40 one’s a reintroduction. So we have to get aggressive with those quotas in there. That’s why you’re seeing the RAM quota as high as you are with 75 toll tags, including the archery and the U quota of a hundred. We gotta get that population down to a more manageable level in
01:28:43:13 –> 01:28:44:07
2 6 8.
01:28:44:26 –> 01:28:49:04
Yeah. We can’t keep hauling water at this level, it’s just not sustainable. So
01:28:49:04 –> 01:29:04:19
Your point is, is here and there we’ll haul water and we’re good with that, but when we’re dealing with the overall feed feed quality and the overall, you know, water year after year after year, at some point you just can’t sustain it. You know, at some point with this particular weather pattern that we’re in.
01:29:05:09 –> 01:30:22:03
Yeah. Eventually Mother Nature’s gonna take care of itself unfortunately because there’s not the vegetative groceries on the landscape. So you’re just, you’re trying to find, you know, they’ve responded well the last couple years because we had decent moisture patterns with high lamb recruitment, you know, Sean mentioned it, we classified 442 animals with lamb representation of 42 where replacement for sheep’s about 30. So you’re constantly having an increasing population when you have those lamb ratios and we just can’t keep doing what we were doing and expect to maintain it. I’m about to lose my mind because it just seems like Groundhog Day and just think about the resources where we’re not spending it on the other species that we’re very passionate about that we’re utilizing and then, you know, like I said, our thank you to our NGO community, we couldn’t do it without you guys, but, and the volunteers on the ground, but it’s gets to a point where you gotta manage it a level that’s sustainable and that’s why you’re seeing what we’re doing there. And then you mentioned some of the other sheep herds, you know, you look at the quality metrics or 2 6 3, the McCulloughs, the arrows, you know, 2 44, you see the Meadow Valleys now has a non-resident tech. There are some exciting, we
01:30:22:03 –> 01:30:22:17
Appreciate that
01:30:22:19 –> 01:31:01:01
Opportunities for non-residents out there where they will have the, you know, if they can hike in some of those units and know what sheep look like, they, there is potential for book class rams. So even in spite of these drought conditions, but it’s like every species we talk about, if that lamb is born to a malnourished u or that fawn is born to a dough not in the greatest body condition or they’re struggling to keep ’em alive, they’re never gonna be that next level animal. And so it’s, it’s just hard when you’re trying to balance those expectations with what reality is on the landscape.
01:31:01:25 –> 01:31:25:21
Yeah. Sad but true. That’s, that’s, that’s the fact. So yeah, so for like 2, 6 8, you’re gonna do, you’re, you’re gonna transplant a bunch on top of that. We’re talking about putting in two seasons with 30 resident tags each, three non-resident tags each. I mean the positive side is, is we’re gonna utilize this resource and people are gonna be able to draw, like there’s more people gonna be able to draw. There’s a positive Yeah,
01:31:25:21 –> 01:32:17:03
And there’s plenty of mature rams, 6-year-old plus rams on the landscape. We see ’em on survey. There’s a lot of 5-year-old that cohort coming in. Like it’s, you’re gonna have the opportunity to harvest a mature ram even at these quota levels. It just may not be the book RAM that everybody has become accustomed to, but times have changed. I mean, look at our statewide population estimate the last five to seven years where 12,000 to seven thou, like, it’s, it’s resonating all throughout and we just, between disease, drought, everything else, we just have to use the best management practices and not put naive sheep in a bad situation and evaluate on a side by side basis. But we still, I mean we’re still talking a couple hundred RAM tags, you know, in relation to other states. It’s not like That’s right. It’s not like the bottom’s completely fallen out of it. That’s
01:32:17:03 –> 01:33:28:04
Right. Yeah. That’s what we’re seeing I think too is what you’re doing to educate the public on why you’re doing what you’re doing. You, you know, the commission gets to decide, right? So but, and they’re answering to the public and they’re answering, you know, to themselves and you guys in proper management and, and weighing out all of these things. But I think it’s good to educate everybody, this is what I’m seeing and I’m not joking about it. I see I’ve seen 20 x amount of dead sheep around the guzzler or this is not sustainable. And I think that education piece goes a long ways to getting the support you need to manage the way you feel like it needs to be managed as an as in doubt not Joe necessarily endow. And, and of course you’re a major part of that because this isn’t you that wants it, this is proper management. I mean you’re, you’re the one that’s seeing it and reporting it and dealing with the numbers and then at some point you all come together and say, these are some of the things we think we need to do. We have to do this, you know, and so anyway, commendable hard, hard to do that it’s hard to, you know, be a major purport reason why the population’s gonna have to shrink. I mean that’s not, that’s counterintuitive to knock a population down when you got good sheep numbers.
01:33:28:26 –> 01:33:47:00
Yeah, but I, I always like to see it as a success story, right? We have the opportunity of a disease free population to move upwards of 150 of ’em, allow people the opportunity to go out there and harvest some, like where can you harvest that many sheep in a unit and still be okay? I can’t think of
01:33:47:01 –> 01:33:47:10
Like,
01:33:47:10 –> 01:34:27:25
That’s, that’s where I look at it is a kind of a positive story. I mean e everybody might say, well why’d you build these water developments remotely and everything? I mean we wouldn’t have the sheep hers we do throughout the state of Nevada if these water developments weren’t built. But now we just have to manage what the current climate that we’re experiencing. So you just gotta adaptively manage and build some of these guzzlers bigger and then adaptively manage build ’em to where you could drive to ’em. It’s just, it just takes time to build your way outta some of these situations. And, but you gotta have to, the, the hard realization that maybe the levels you had pre 2020 aren’t what you could sustain on the landscape anymore.
01:34:29:28 –> 01:35:16:28
Yep. True. We’ve been there, we’ve seen it with our own eyes, Jason. So it’s, it’s pretty amazing how dependent they are on these water sources down there in Nevada and, and we all know how freaking hot it is. So it’s like how they stay alive and rut during all that period of time. And then obviously when they run out they, there’s nothing for ’em to do. They’ve drank their whole life out of an artificial water source, you know, so sad. You gotta do it and you’re, you’re, you’re banking on knocking ’em down now and hopefully with good weather, you know, and better, more consistent not these two or three years in a row of a decent monsoon and then a shutoff for six or seven months of nothing, you know, to where they have to use these water developments through the winter months, which they almost never usually did or have to, but they become relying on in, in these winter months.
01:35:17:02 –> 01:35:54:23
Yeah, we’re, we’re seeing them go on the water developments earlier. They’re utilizing them as we speak, which that’s unprecedented. Normally you get to the May june timeframe. Yep. Before they start utilize in December, I was jumping 2030 sheep off of pretty much dry, dry water developments, but we were monitoring and they expected once it got to the cool season they can move off. But we didn’t get that moisture in late November to allow that green up that you would expect. And then those cooler temperatures, then they could utilize resources away from those projects. So it’s, it’s all related, you know, of how they’re hammering those resources within a couple miles span of those water developments
01:35:56:17 –> 01:36:57:04
Wild times it, but it, but again, I think Joe, it speaks like it, it is, it’s not all doom and gloom still really good. Cut it in half and it’s really good considering any other state, considering Utah, you know, Arizona’s great but look, New Mexico has its challenges numbers wise, although, you know, has some great quality. We’re seeing some changes there too in overall quality and, and num numbers and whatnot. And that’s just part of cycle things cycle. Not always, not always great. However bad in Nevada for desert sheep still great, I guess is kind of a positive spin on that. And I like what you were saying with that is what a success story that is. So anything else you want to add on that, Joe? Of course you’ve re you’ve regurgitated this 14,000 times to everybody within the agency and then the public that’s reaching out and whatnot and I’m sure you’re somewhat nauseated with it, but at the same time No, I you’re passionate about it and so yeah, if we missed anything on, on that,
01:36:58:00 –> 01:37:09:06
The, the one thing I would say for non-resident sheep opportunities is when you look at 18 and then compare that with other states, total quotas, just, just think about that as you tell your folks.
01:37:11:17 –> 01:37:20:27
Alright. Okay, sounds good. And then Scott, have you got anything to add up there? We don’t wanna leave you out. Maybe you can talk about some of the
01:37:21:05 –> 01:37:22:07
Goats or Rockies or
01:37:22:07 –> 01:37:26:17
Something like that. Goats and Rockies and anything else that kind of comes to mind up there.
01:37:28:27 –> 01:38:48:13
Yeah, goats have been really exciting the last couple years. We’ve had fantastic recruitment rates specifically in 1 0 2 in the rubies itself and we saw a pretty sizable increase in tags a couple years ago and we’re gonna see another small increase, two more tags in there this year. They’re, we’re just seeing fantastic growth. There’s a ton of young billies on the landscape that really came out in the harvest last year. There was a lot of young goats taken but they were all billies, which was the first time since mid nineties that we didn’t have any nannies harvested. So good things are happening there. 1 0 1 has been really since that die off in 2009, 2010 just yeah, on this long-term population contraction. We didn’t see any recruitment for years and years and years and it finally turned the corner a couple years ago and we’re seeing real growth there and then we were able to come to Utah and got 16 goats this year from the beaver unit down there and moved those goats in there.
01:38:49:26 –> 01:39:33:25
Everybody’s alive and happy and yeah, good things seem to be happening. And with that increase in recruitment the last couple years and we had a better than expected survey this past summer, we’re gonna see a, you know, one tag increase. But it’s pretty fantastic after, you know, 15 years of just being totally depressed in there and, and then 1 0 3, it’s just 1 0 3, it’s just, yeah, a couple dozen goats just plotting along right in the middle of a domestic sheep allotment and they never seem to do too well, but they never seem to do too bad, never go away.
01:39:34:25 –> 01:39:37:10
It’s always there one tag are there last 20 years, they’re always there.
01:39:38:09 –> 01:40:30:11
Yeah. And then Rocky’s, you know, pretty short conversation. Have the two tags in 1 0 2, quite a few rams on the landscape. Awesome Age structure. I’m sure you guys see pictures every once in a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s, the hunters had some difficulty last year and I think a lot of that just had to do with fantastic high elevation conditions and had cheap, just scattered to the wind. They weren’t in the ram groups, weren’t in their normal, you know, canyons or rocky points that they normally are in. And then one 15 just to struggle with the winter this year didn’t have enough winter weather to push ’em out of the park. The hunter worked his tail off and just, it didn’t come together, but there’ll be one TA in there again.
01:40:30:25 –> 01:40:44:09
Yeah. Awesome. When are you, when are you gonna let us at these moose? I mean we’re you got We could, it’s a little revenue generator on the out fees. I’m just gonna throw that out there. That’s what we have to offer you some app fees. Yeah,
01:40:44:28 –> 01:41:15:16
Maybe grab a point we could buy a point. I don’t know, but I’m just saying I know you got probably more than you realize, I don’t know. But you know, maybe, maybe once every 10 years throw a non-resident attack. I, I don’t know, let’s get creative there, but pretty, pretty fun. Pretty, it’s fun to, it’s fun, it’s interesting and it’s fun to watch and and fun to learn about it. Of course we don’t have a tag as a non-resident, but, but still really interesting. I’m glad you guys are hunting ’em. I’m just light lighthearted about it, but, but yeah, seriously, when, when are we getting tech?
01:41:16:03 –> 01:42:02:28
Yeah, I don’t know. We didn’t think we’d be hunting them this soon, so it might only be a handful of years, but yeah. Yeah, proposing two more tags in there. Both bulls that were harvested last year were four year olds, both mid forties, just nice bulls and there’s, there’s a ton of older age class bulls out there. You know, it’s a huge hunt area and hopefully with time some people will spend, you know, more time out there and really take advantage of all the opportunities. Last year they both hunted a handful of days and we’re done in early September. So yeah, soon as we get to 10 resident bull tags, Jason I know,
01:42:03:13 –> 01:42:07:23
And I’m just saying I don’t see a problem. Let’s throw 10. I don’t see a problem. We know
01:42:07:24 –> 01:42:09:21
The standard answer and we just want it a little
01:42:09:21 –> 01:42:14:01
Sooner than that. I know it’s a 10% rule, we’re just, ugh. Anyway, come
01:42:14:01 –> 01:42:17:11
On. You got your mountain to mountain goat tag back. Let’s not be
01:42:17:11 –> 01:42:39:24
Greedy. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s meet in the middle. You guys give a silver state tag and then at least we can apply for it. It’s gonna be a revenue generator, it’s not gonna hurt a thing. Having a third tag. Let’s, there we go. Run that by the commission. Run that by the commission. In fact, let’s just, Bronson and Carter, we’ll even throw Devin in there. Devin, do you dare stamp your name on this and make some people laugh. Why not? Let’s do a silver state state. As long as we
01:42:39:24 –> 01:42:41:18
Don’t have to drive somewhere to go to the commission, I’ll in
01:42:41:29 –> 01:43:29:19
Hope the name on anyway. Silver State Moose. It’s not a bad idea. I’m just saying not a bad idea. And then at least, hey, non-resident could have a chance. Got a chance. It’s probably gonna go to a resident, but we’d have a chance. But anyway, pretty fun to talk about and and whatnot. I guess as we wrap up and you know, if there’s something we missed, I’d like you guys to address it, but I just, we, we love talking about Nevada. It it is, it is somewhat tough to draw and when you’re dealing with the quality that you guys are aspiring to have, your commission’s pushing you, the public’s pushing you generally resident pressure and and whatnot, you know, you’re gonna have limited tags and, and there’s two sides to drawing ons. There’s applicants and there’s tags. And so when you have limited tags and you’re trying to deal with a, a quality resource and a quality experience and a quality product as though Jack used to say like proud to produce a quality product.
01:43:29:21 –> 01:44:49:27
And I feel like you do that. And so I don’t mind, I like supporting your state, me and my entire family buying hunting licenses and, and many years not entering your state, but feeling like that’s a, a good contribution to continuing to help you guys afford to manage wildlife and proper and having a quality experience. And so anyway, those are, you know, and even playing some of the, the PIW and the, and the silver state and the dream tags and whatnot is, is when you see a state trying to do what they’re doing and coming out like they are and having bucka dough ratios the way they do and bulled cow and everything else, dealing with challenges on desert sheep but still offering more tags than anyone else, it’s pretty easy to support ’em. And, and as a, as a non-resident and, and also treating our youth the way you do, you know, for $15 non-resident youth license to dive in and, and to participate and to gain points and whatnot. Hey, we appreciate it and you know, trying to make those application dollars stretch as best you can but still play the game like, like Joe indicated and playing in other states as well. So anyway, we appreciate what you do. We appreciate you guys being on, but anything else that we’ve missed, Bronson, that you wanted to kind of bring up on some of your thoughts?
01:44:50:10 –> 01:45:16:00
No, I just, yeah, I wanna give them a chance to, if we haven’t covered something that they felt likes noteworthy from a 2025 perspective in Nevada this year, letting want a chance for them to end on that so that we can wrap it up. Man, I appreciate you guys’ time. It’s been very informative. I think a lot of listeners are gonna learn a lot and get after and get their applications in now, apply accordingly. So anything you guys wanna hit you three that we haven’t covered in depth enough?
01:45:19:15 –> 01:45:59:29
I don’t think so. From my perspective, we’ve covered quite a bit of territory and we’ve certain, certainly given your listeners quite a bit of fodder to listen to as they drive to and from wherever they go and, and whatever they may draw coming up this next year hopefully in, in the state of Nevada and, and get to experience, you know, something that’s, that’s pretty unique and you know, that most folks that draw Nevada and have a, a fairly reasonable chance of, you know, getting an animal that, that they dream of. So as they’re driving back and forth across this state or your state, hopefully they’ve got gotten some out of this.
01:46:01:00 –> 01:46:02:22
Appreciate it Sean. Thanks a lot.
01:46:03:15 –> 01:46:32:21
So I, I do have, I guess Wyatt brought this up. Oh, it brought this up. Maybe Sean, you can address this or anybody that knows the answer, but he was like, ask him what the predator, what the predator the predator fee. Oh, your option to click. Yeah. You got the option of habitat and predator like where that money, it’s a, it’s a $3 fee I think it is. But tell me like does that go into a fund? Does it go into aerial removal? I mean is it particular hotspot? You know, what dictates some of that as we pay that fee?
01:46:34:17 –> 01:48:06:19
Yeah, so that, that went, underwent a change last year where folks could kind of dictate where they wanted their funding to go to and when they, as you guys know, when you apply for each species, it asks you at the end of the application period when you, when you get charged that $3 fee where you want that to go, the split last year was around 64% towards lethal control of, of predators and 36% to non-lethal work, which we call it our habitat re restoration and management portion of that fee, that portion basically under follows our heritage process or wildlife heritage trust account process. And so we accept proposals for that funding and then it goes through a ranking process and then that, that funding is, is doled out based on value of whoever might propose whatever they wanna do. And then the other portion actually gets allocated and moves through our predator plan process, which we conduct annually. Joe’s over is overseeing that program. Now I took it over for a little while in the interim while we were hiring for that position and we have about, I don’t know what is it about six or eight projects, Joe, that are within that credit plan currently?
01:48:07:07 –> 01:49:33:03
Yeah, so there’s six projects. So that breakdown that Sean alluded to last year, the 64 versus 36% equated to about 722,000 lethally and about 372,000, the HRM and those six projects, we, you know, there are some specific projects such as project 40, which is now transitioning to area 13, which we lion and coyote removal. But a lot of it’s more statewide driven, you know, where we’re responding to needs. Say you have a lower big horn sheep population where you have collar mortality, you may go remove individuals there or you’ve got meal air enhancement program projects, project 47 where we identified line removal and area 12 and 11, like it’s, it’s all over the map. So that’s where your funding’s going from everything from raven removal for the protection of sage grouse to lion removal statewide to coyote lion removal, to even our Turkey applications where we have meso predator removal like at our wildlife management areas such as coyotes, skunks, bobcats, so on, so forth. So it, I do manage that program now and I’m starting to embark on what FY 26 is gonna look like. We’ll finalize that the next commission meeting, but it’s, yeah, it’s gonna be undergoing a transition with assembly bill 70.
01:49:35:08 –> 01:49:57:26
I like the word removal. I I think, Joe, let’s keep that up. Let’s keep this removal word going and remove all predators. How’s that? Delete? I don’t know that that’s realistic and that’s probably probably not the proper thing to say but, but anyway, it sounds like, it sounds like you’re working hard on it, you catch
01:49:57:26 –> 01:51:09:00
It. Yeah, it’s a lot to keep up with, especially from a, from a mountain lion standpoint, it, it, it’s quite a bit, it we’re pretty aggressive with, with lions that as Joe mentioned as they take collared bighorn sheep, you know, especially are used that are basically disease freeze and producers. We try and reduce that mortality rate by removing those lions on the landscape. And then even within, you know, our, our, our urge that undergo some sort of disease event, we try to get a little bit more aggressive with Mountain Lions to provide big horn with a chance. We’ve even got a little bit more aggressive with lions in places like the still waters and the clan Alpines post wild horse removal, the BLM removed 3000 horses from that 180 2, 180 3 sort of clan Alpine Stillwater complex. And so we got a little bit concerned that pre switching might be something that would occur as they moved, as those lines moved away from horses on the landscape and transitioned back to Desert Bighorn.
01:51:10:01 –> 01:51:54:02
So we got a little bit more aggressive with Bighorn in those two mountain ranges. So, and then Joe mentioned the projects we’ve done with some of the like hunt unit 1, 2, 1, we got pretty aggressive with mountain lions in that particular unit this year as well as 1 12, 1 13. So there’s been, there’s been work, but it is, you know, it’s money intensive, it’s time intensive and so there’s some limiting factors there. Yeah. You start conducting predator control really have to be strategic about it and you know, you kind of cut with the scalpel as much as you can rather than move in with the chainsaw and trying to do everything all at once. So, so
01:51:54:15 –> 01:51:55:15
Makes sense. Yeah. And
01:51:55:15 –> 01:52:26:21
One, one thing I’ll add to your listeners, for your listeners is where we’re gonna be either reintroducing sheep or trans locating sheep, we will conduct pre and post-treatment line removal in those areas. We actually have non-governmental organization funding and law sportsman willing to help. So it’s in our big game release plan that we’ll conduct that work. So starting about mid-May until mid-June and then a little bit after. ’cause a lot of these animals are gonna be collared we’ll be conducting that work as well.
01:52:27:14 –> 01:53:15:10
Okay. Right on. All right guys, well it’s been a long go. So our podcast is probably the longest one we’ve done in three or four years. It’s an hour and 50 minutes or plus it’s a long time for me. I need a nap, bro. I don’t know, it’s just part, anyway, but appreciate you guys being on Sean, Scott, Joe, you guys are awesome. Of course. I wish we could talk to all of ’em. I, you know, Salisbury, Jason, he’s always fun to visit with and very intense. There’s a number of you guys, I li I like y’all and, and Bronson and I, Devin, we’ve dealt with most of you. And so anyway, we appreciate you guys being willing to, to work with us as non-residents and, and we, and we like covering the state. We talk about a lot here at Epic Outdoors. Help guys apply, anybody out there listening, you’re welcome to call in and visit with Adam or I or Devin, Wyatt, Josh, any of us.
01:53:15:12 –> 01:54:07:05
And and we’ll go over some, some of your options as non-residents. Again, epic outdoors.com 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. Again guys, you’re awesome. Appreciate you keep up all the hard work. It is hard. It is hard, you know, and, and you can’t please everybody. And, and I like to tease you about the extreme trophy and that is, that doesn’t pertain to most people. We, we also need to be able to hunt over the course of our life. So we can’t just offer three tags in every unit like I might want, but anyway, sure. Appreciate you guys in, in balancing that with all species and it’s been very infor informative. This is the probably the most informative podcast we’ve ever done and, and I appreciate you aug through it with us. It’s been fun actually. It’s been very, I’ve been engaged myself. I’m staring at the screen, we looking at these guys. Well you know, it’s just learning a lot and, and so in a state that we love
01:54:07:08 –> 01:54:10:06
And a lot of positive stuff, that’s what’s exciting. Yeah. Ready,
01:54:10:14 –> 01:54:11:07
Ready to go apply.
01:54:11:15 –> 01:54:12:27
I’m already, I’m already applied wipe,
01:54:12:27 –> 01:54:19:07
Couldn’t wipe the grins off our faces over antelope and it’s not my most favorite thing in the world, but geez, I’m ready to kill about five of
01:54:19:10 –> 01:54:23:19
’em. You lit up more on Antelope and Moose than I think maybe even deer today. You’re pretty excited
01:54:23:19 –> 01:54:42:16
About those two things. Mean it is state of the nation for Deer West wide is tough. Not just in Nevada. And so, you know, yeah, sometimes you do look at other species and then when deer are good you go back to ’em. But I don’t know, you can’t seem to leave them. So anyway. But again, appreciate you guys, Sean, Scott, Joe, you guys are awesome. Thanks for your time today. Thanks
01:54:42:16 –> 01:54:43:17
A lot guys. Appreciate it.
01:54:44:25 –> 01:54:45:18
Yeah, thanks.
01:54:46:03 –> 01:54:49:06
Yeah, thank you. Good luck in the draw all. Thank you. Yep.
01:54:49:29 –> 01:54:50:28
Okay everybody.
01:54:51:24 –> 01:54:52:28
Logan you applied? Yeah,
01:54:52:28 –> 01:54:55:15
There we have it. Logan, you got till May seven, you’re in.
01:54:55:20 –> 01:54:56:29
I’m in. I’m good. You’re in. Alright,
01:54:57:04 –> 01:55:00:10
We’re set. I’m in. But it’s a placeholder. I can plug and play. I’m not you
01:55:00:10 –> 01:55:07:22
You taught I can change. Jason Carter taught me something. He said you apply early that way if you end up breaking your leg or hospitalized. Yes.
01:55:07:24 –> 01:55:13:29
Well, my biggest fear you’re in, it’s something my biggest fear is that I’m gonna be in the hospital and I won’t be able to tell Jana to get me alive.
01:55:13:29 –> 01:55:16:03
You go into a coma for three weeks and wake up.
01:55:16:03 –> 01:55:17:21
Yeah. Jana, did you apply me for ad?
01:55:17:21 –> 01:55:24:00
Did you tell me I gotta go. I’m gotta be behind a point. You know? I mean, this is probably my biggest fear and I don’t know. Is that weird?
01:55:24:02 –> 01:55:25:27
Well, you could get in a car wreck or something and be in the hospital
01:55:26:00 –> 01:55:35:29
For a week. I know. I’m gonna come out of it. I’m gonna be ticked that I don’t have a tagger. At least I’m not in the draw. So anyway, apply early and then you can also go in and plug and play. We plug and play free. Free amending. Free amending.
01:55:36:15 –> 01:55:37:23
I amended my app today. You did?
01:55:37:23 –> 01:55:39:23
You did this morning. Now after this conversation,
01:55:40:05 –> 01:55:44:00
I just thinking about something I said that’s not gonna work with my schedule. I went in and changed it.
01:55:44:04 –> 01:55:48:22
Really? How come you didn’t ask your Bronson and I for any opinions or, I mean, I feel bad about
01:55:48:22 –> 01:55:50:01
It. I felt pretty confident in my choice.
01:55:50:17 –> 01:55:51:27
What was your choice? I went
01:55:51:27 –> 01:55:53:16
From a muzzle to something else.
01:55:53:24 –> 01:56:10:16
In what? Specy. Maybe. Archery or no, Muzz. Iss not gonna work based on what’s going on are so secretive. Devon’s the worst too. Oh, you’re so full of it. Oh, anyway. Whatever. Dev, whatever. You do what Devon does. What’s that? DW. That’s why D,
01:56:10:18 –> 01:56:11:09
You don’t want do it.
01:56:11:15 –> 01:56:20:00
I do half the time. DWDD Do what Devon does? No. Alright. Well anyway, it’s been a fun conversation, so everybody you got tell May 7th get your in.
01:56:21:28 –> 01:57:11:10
Let’s face it. If your goal is to kill big stuff, you need to draw quality tags. Quality tags are typically hard to draw. To increase your odds of drawing good tags you need to apply in multiple states. That’s where an Epic Outdoors membership can help. For only 150 bucks a year, you get access to our consultants, our online tools, and to Epic approved outfitters and members only optics discounts. With unlimited access to our team of consultants and access to the Epic Outdoors magazines. Applying in multiple states is easy. No more worrying if you’re applying for the best areas. No more applying for a unit where there has been a die off and no more missing opportunities where you could be in the field and not sitting at home. Go [email protected] or call us today at (435) 263-0777 to find out how you can become a member today.
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Go to epic optics.com or call in to speak with our consultants who will fit you with the perfect optics for your next hunt. 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7. If you are looking for your next hunting property, look no further than St. James. St. James are the experts at all sporting properties across the west. Their team of agents will spend the time getting to know you personally and find out which property out of the hundreds they have listed is perfect for you. If you’ve always wanted a property where you could hunt and fish, go online to st james sporting properties.com or give them a call at (855) 711-7577 to learn more. Vortex makes optics for every occasion. Whether you’re a long range shooter, dialing in that perfect shot or an archery hunter in need of an easy to carry optic without sacrificing quality. Vortex has you covered. Head over to epic optics.com or call us to learn more about your vortex options today at 4 3 5 2 6 3 0 7 7 7.
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Check out their brand new line of trail cameras, including the Revolver 360 degree [email protected]. Epic Outdoors is an official stealth cam dealer. Call us to order yours today at (435) 263-0777. Phone scope changed the game with their Digi scoping innovations and have remained the top phone to optic adapter on the market. Check out the incredible new Carbon Pro phone scope [email protected]. P-H-O-N-E-S-K-O-P e.com. Outdoor Edge is the knife that we all use here at Epic Outdoors. Whether it’s a replaceable blade or fixed blade, you will not be disappointed with your outdoor edge knife. Head over to outdoor edge.com and check out their brand new razor VX knife today. Epic Outdoors is proud to be an official Zeiss dealer and optics partner. When it comes to top tier quality. Zeiss has been a leader in the industry for generations. If you are in the market for new optics, give us a call for unbelievable deals on Zeiss products.
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Giving you the highest quality and durability out there without breaking the bank is what makes Zeiss so good. Check out our website, epic optics.com or call us at (435) 263-0777 to find out which Zeiss Optic is perfect for you. Epic Outdoors is now an official CVA Muzz loader dealer. If you are in the market for a new muzzle loader, our staff can go over the different options that you should consider. CVA muzzle loaders are the go-to muzzle loader for Epic Outdoors and Crew. We’ve definitely got our favorite setups for Western big game hunting in stock. Call us today at (435) 263-0777 to find out which CVA is perfect for your next hunt.
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