EP 110: Our Personal Methods in Applying and Drawing Tags.

When you only have two weeks a year, you want to be in the field those two weeks. The guy that wants to get aggressive, very low tag numbers. The random odds have gotten worse and the price has gone up. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter here, Adam Bronson, Jeff John with the Epic Outdoors team. And the Epic Outdoors podcast coming at you from Southern Utah. Snowy Southern Utah, by the way. We are super excited about that. Probably the most excitement we've felt in the last two months. Well, a month. Right? Since hunting season's over, yeah. Looking good. Compared to last winter, no question things are feeling better. Southern Utah, Northern Arizona, all in New Mexico, Eastern Arizona. Bring it. Bring it. We're super excited about all this moisture. And anyway, it's a nice, refreshing excitement going on around here compared to last year. Last year was just a tough hunting season all the way around. It was tough weather in building antlers. And it was tough during the season. So we just never did get a break. All right.

Before we start off, let's thank Under Armour for sponsoring this podcast. And we appreciate them and their support. And let's get this thing started. Basically, this is a sequel to last week, so to speak, where we kind of brushed over some theory behind applying and applying here in the West. And it is very complex. There's many different facets to it. A lot of different states, species, point systems. Everything's different within each state. And so there's a lot that goes into it. And we get all excited and start talking fast and crush the place. And we want to maybe slow it down just a minute. We'll talk about individual species and what we do personally.

And each of us here at the table do it a little bit different depending, you know, obviously on our plans, what we've got going, our backup plans, our kids, our wives, and a hundred other different things that are going through our heads. And so we each have different plans. And that may help you on developing your plan. Just give you a few ideas. So that was kind of our theory in talking about our application strategies and going from there. And Adam and I, and Jeff as well, but Adam and I, you know, in large part are talking to, I don't know, maybe 20 people a day, 30 people a day, developing strategies and helping them. Of course, we're doing that for our licensed application service clients and getting a basic plan for this year and applying them likewise. That's right. It's first of the year. So last year or last week was more of a philosophical discussion about got points, use them.

Don't wait, get after it, point guards rear, point creeps rear. Today, we're going to talk about what we actually do more so. And I guess we're going to talk about it. You know, one thing to emphasize is every year we can have a different plan based on winter moisture, what we think the season dates are going to be like, things like that. Case in point, last year, I knew I was going to hunt doll sheep in Alaska in August. I pretty much had to avoid archery deer hunts of any big significance. I just couldn't ply for them. Jeff, you know you were going to go up there and hunt caribou. Similarly, you're late August and even maybe early September. You just, you're, you know, done. Archery deer was tough for me last year. This year, that's not the case. So year to year, things change. You get something planned. Maybe it's a family wedding. Maybe it's a kid going to school.

Maybe you're, you know, whatever. But maybe it's your anniversary that you were not smart enough to not get married September 1st, 15th or something like that. Ouch. That was painful. Well, I'm just saying. I talked to a guy the other day. He says his wife's birthday is like September 14th and his anniversary is September 15th. And I'm like, he's like, I just thought it'd be nice to have them all to one and then get it over with. And he's like, it is true. If you're already, if you're already committed to one, you might as well just. Or choose a different wife. Okay. We need different birthdays. So anyway. This should be on the list. Prerequisite. It came up in talking about Arizona elk and he can draw this year. And I said, well, it is a 14 day season. Chalk up the first weekend of the hunt, stay home, birthday anniversary, and then crush to Arizona for the last 10 days.

And he's like, great plan, blah, blah, blah. But it just got me thinking, wow, if you get married in the middle of September or October, it's not a perfect time to get married. I still, I can't figure out, Jason, I got married the 10th of August. And I think back and I'm like, how did Jason show up for that? Show up for what? You sacrificed. You're throwing me under the bus. No, no, no. I'm saying I did. I'm like, you sacrificed the opener of Nevada archery. Well, archery would be August 10th. I feel honored. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Just say thanks and let's move on. So, yeah. Mindset for every year changes. And that's what we, I guess, just basically wanted to let you know. We make our plans annually based on things like that. So, maybe before we get into the deer, elk, you know, antelope, which I know Jason's excited to get into. How about moose? Adam? No. We'll get there.

We'll get there. Or, and by state, let's talk about, you know, maybe let's just say what we each think we, you know, we take what we want to have as kind of a priority, which Jason is always going to be mule deer for sure. He's going to have. And big bulls, you know, bucks and bulls. Yeah. You know, anything big, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Sheep. But you're going to work around, you know, maybe a draw tag in Colorado or a landowner tag there and maybe a landowner tag in Nevada. That's your starting place, I guess. We all have a starting place for the deer. And I was talking to a guy yesterday, and I know you were too, Adam, but especially this one particular individual, he's like, dude, I've got my 2019. I want to draw. I take a sheep tag no matter what. So, apply me for better odds. Basically, you know, a tag that you guys would be willing to take yourselves.

A tag that has better odds but will still have the chance of producing a good ram. Points only for deer and elk unless it's wazoo crazy. Awesome. But overall, I've got things going. And we have that. And that changes from year to year to year. Every single year is a new year. And, of course, we keep track of that for our guys, and they'll come up with, you know, new dates that they're, you know, that we're to avoid applying for. And we have that, too. But having said that, we do have backup plans. And the backup plans aren't always made on the very tail end of not drawing tags. We've got backup plans on the front end. You know, I'll be doing a general here in Utah. Just guaranteed I'm going to have a general tag here in Utah. And I've only used it twice, but those particular years were awesome, killed a couple of great bucks. And so, you know, those are what I consider a backup plan.

Although, with all this snow, it may become a front-runner type plan. Might be a front-runner, a primary plan. And same with you. And I know you do the same thing. A landowner tag in Nevada. It's snowing a lot over there. I'm going to be in Nevada this year. Last year, I, you know, shouldn't have been in Nevada. It was hard. It made good outfitters look marginal. And it wasn't because they're bad outfitters. They're awesome. It was poor outfitters. It was tough year. And it was tough weather during the season. So, anyway, backup plans are happening now. They're going to happen on the end. Some things, there's over-the-counter tags that are available on the end. There's always something to do. Arizona archery deer. Whatever. Go hunt coos deer in the rut. Things like that. Idaho deer is kind of one of those backup plans that can happen in June or July.

There's still general season deer tags available then. But keeping, you know, keeping with your theme, a backup plan, somehow, sometimes you've got to start early. Look at some of the Diamond Creek zones and things like that. You better start in December if you want to have that as your backup plan because they sell out. You can't have that as a backup plan later on. But the deer in Idaho, you can. Elk in Idaho and other places, or Elk in Colorado, you can. But for me, yeah, the general deer, you know, last year I didn't hunt one day for me on the general deer. But I had a tag. We're fortunate, I guess, to have lifetime licenses here in Utah. So, it's a little bit of a, you know, at the start of the year, you pick archery or muzzle or rifle in the unit that we want. And you try to guess where you're going to have the most time. And I guessed wrong last year.

I had some kids draw tags and some other things that I didn't have any days to hunt for me on the muzzle, which I don't want to have again. That's the casualty. Yeah, but that can happen. That's the casualty of doing business. Yeah. You're going to eat some tags. A lot of people are worried about eating tags. Honestly, if you're eating a tag or two, and meaning not that you hunted and ate the tag, meaning I ate it, I couldn't even go. That's the casualty of doing business. It's the price you pay to make sure you have enough tags in your pocket that you have a decent season. Yeah, the ratio of people we talk to here at the end of application season of, hey, I didn't draw anything or not enough versus, hey, I drew too many tags. I don't know what to do with them all is hundreds to one. You know what I mean? It's so rare. So don't be afraid to apply for tags.

There are some states with exit strategies. We can maybe get into that at the end with, you know, some of the states that allow you to turn back tags, get your points back, maybe even your money back. So there's a few states that have mechanisms in place to allow you to do things like that. But first off, yeah, we start with what we want to build around. General season deer in Utah is definitely one of those. You know, I know I've said this feels like a million times, and I hope I don't have to say it much longer. But for me, I'm on the bubble on my desert sheep tag in Utah. I have to plan on getting that. It's a big enough deal to me that I have to plan around that. And, you know, having you say that, you're that particular tag, I'm planning around that tag too. Yeah. Because we're going to go on that. And same thing with, like, you might have a deer hunt coming up in Arizona. Yeah.

Those are things that I'm planning around too. And so Adam and I, Jeff, we're looking at the states. We're looking at our odds of drawing compared to the point levels we have and saying, which tag are you going to get? And, yeah, if something happens and I can't go, I get it, you know. But at the same time. To the extent possible. Yeah. At the same time, we're careful on the seasons we're choosing, such as Colorado landowner deer. Or just Colorado leftover tags or whatever, turn back tags that we're going to get. Things like that come into our plan. So basically, outline your schedule. Figure out your year. Say, okay, this is what I've got. I've got nothing. Awesome. We've got a clean slate to work with. Or, no, I'm going caribou in Alaska from this state to this state. Great. No problem. We're going to avoid everything in that time frame.

And with that, how many hunts do you want to do in a year? Well, maybe you can only do that one. Maybe you need to get points for everything else. Maybe not. Maybe you can afford one or two other ones. Forward meaning not just money, but time. Or relationship with your wife. Or whatever. But figure out what you can do. And then say, how am I going to get those? Where's my goals? And how am I going to get there? Yeah, they're calling up saying, man, I've got two weeks a year. That is it. And so you're planning your whole application strategy around. And when you only have two weeks a year, you want to be in the field those two weeks. I mean, you're going those two weeks. It's just making sure you get the tag lined up and everything to make that happen in those two weeks. And a lot of guys are like that. You know, you're stuck with one or two or three weeks of vacation a year.

And you're planning on using that on before your hunting season. You better have two or three options lined up there that coordinate with those dates. With a fail safe, you know this can happen. This tag can. You can't get this tag no matter what in that week. I had a guy yesterday. And it just falls into what we're talking about. Another option. This is for him. It wasn't for me. But he's like, hey, I've got a point for deer in Wyoming. And I want to do something possibly in Montana. I've got a friend that has a ranch. Maybe I'd apply for the deer general. And, you know, and so by the time we got done, those were his backup plans, so to speak. Boy, you're coordinating a lot of little things. Yeah, a lot of little things. So we're like, okay, well, let's get you a point in Montana.

If you want to go to a general, some general region, which his particular region was an easy draw, you know, then great. You've got that. And we could get you a leftover tag in Colorado if you want. I mean, tell me what you really want because you've got options everywhere. And by the end of the conversation, he's like, crap. I can't do it all. I can't do it all. And we haven't even started to gain points or allow for an awesome wazoo random tag. To hit, yeah. You know, which happens once in a while. So, yeah, you've got to start with, you know, the top point tiers in the states that give a percentage of them, like Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, the predictable states. Those are the ones you kind of got to start with, in our opinion, block them off. We talk about forced draws. Those are what Adam just talked about.

What's the states that we call where you can force a draw compared to the points you have. When I say I'm on the bubble, you know, I could draw this year. It could be next year. You've got people shifting units. On sheep units, you've got such low tag numbers that three to four people bouncing around with my points, whatever, from year to year. It's all it takes to edge out.

You know, I've got another family member that's probably going to draw an elk tag this year in Utah. Probably going to look at the muzzleloader. We've seen the long season dates. We love those 12 days deeper into September, in our opinion. I think the dark moons. Oh, the rut's just been happening. Dark moons happening. So, I've got a plan on that muzzleloader elk this year on a big bull unit because I want to be there. That's another thing. So, those are, you know, the last part of September is done for me. It's really done with my desert sheep and that potential hunt. Even though the desert sheep's a couple months long, I want to have enough time right out of the gate. If I have a big ram found, I want to kill him right out of the gate and then move on through my schedule. If I don't kill the ram I'm after, you know, I've got October to do that. But that's how we start. I don't know.

I'm probably, I know, I don't want to steal the mic, but I feel like I'm going to do those two. I'm going to burn my Colorado points and my Arizona deer points. I'm an optimist and that's a big year for me right there. So, are we talking about deer? Let's talk about deer. Jeff, what are your deer goals and how are you going to get there? Instantly, in my head, I'm thinking deer. I'm thinking Colorado deer, right? That's where I have to go first mentally. Once again, I got handcuffs on in November. However, I've got, and it ties back into the overall strategy. Yeah. We got, I'm worried about sheep hunts. You know. Your dad. Worried about my dad drawing a sheep tag. Last year he drew. We did not find a ram we wanted to kill. Like, and we decided if there wasn't a ram, we were going to kill opening day. Like a target ram. And kind of an odd unit, I will say that.

This isn't a, this is a volatile unit, we'll put it that way. A little bit more volatile, yeah. You know, a lot of diops have gone on there. And so, the H class is not there. Right. And so, that's part of the reason. You don't normally turn in sheep tags. And he had max points. And so, there's reasons for that. It was a little bit, go out on a limb. You might find a giant ram that's still alive somehow. We can kill it on November 1st and be done. You can force a draw. Yeah. And so, anyway, we ended up turning that back. So, once again, we're in the running, but we're going to drop down to a different unit. It's going to be between 30 and 50% draw odds right in there. But you've got to plan on that. So, we've got to kind of plan on that. Now, I also am going to be applying my wife in a unit for elk that she's going to have about the same draw odds. Whoa.

That's the first time I've heard this. Is that the same with you, Jay? No, I talked about it a little bit. I thought we was talking about mule deer, and he's talking about 14 other species. And that's what we're talking about is there's so many things, so many factors into why I can't go kill a big mealy. Jeff, I don't want to hear that. I want to hear how are you going to kill a big mealy. I'm going to take Jason Carter with me into Idaho, and I'm going to tell him, find me a deer. I'm going to kill another 30-incher. Jeff, it's not going to happen again. And by the way, the gifts are done. That unit's dead. Okay. All right. So it goes back to, okay, I'm not going to have a Colorado tag again this year. Is this not a deer year for you? This is not. Other than, so I think I'm going to rely more on my general hunting for the deer once again. What season?

I'm going to do Idaho general, and then I'm also working on the dedicated hunter for Utah. So I'll probably do that. Those two will be basically, unfortunately, my deer hunting. Okay. All right. Like archery deer is, I'm kind of banking on archery deer this year, which I don't usually, I'm not an archery hunter. No, you need to start shooting right now. I need to start shooting again. Acubo. Waka, waka. Huh? Yeah. And I'll make sure I Instagram it and make sure everybody knows that I'm doing it right. You need to, because if you don't Instagram it, it didn't happen. It didn't happen. Drawback. So, yeah, so that's where I'm going with deer.

General deer. I love giving you credit. I just don't, I don't know anything. See, I feel bad for you, because I'm ready to talk about deer, and I've got some other plans. I've got some plans. Yeah, you've got some other plans. I've got some plans. That's just where I'm at, unfortunately. Dang it. Well, all right. We'll have to take the deer off your hands this year. Yeah, go ahead. Do that. Kill it. Kill it. I hope to have four tags.

Oh, yeah. You have a lot of time for that. I'm going to make it. I've said it before. Yeah, sounds like your schedule's freeing up. Every day we hear you talking about buying another tag somewhere. Not me buying a tag. Well, yeah, right. Clients for sure. Clients maybe. Yeah, but they got to do it. Clients are on the back burner this year. That's what I'm hearing. No, they're not. At the end of the year, let's do a podcast and we'll stack up the tags that Adam was not able to go hunting on. The good thing about guiding sheep hunters is they start in August sometimes or September and they go to the end of the year. That's true. So it's a three to four month season. That's the good thing? Yeah. That never quits. I can work in 10 to 15 hunters over four months. Okay. Instead of, hey, everybody wants to kill a big deer in the nine day rifle hunt, nine

day muzzleloader, and those are done and gone and that sucked and I look like a bad outfitter because I talk them into hunting this, that, and the other. So what people want the real plans, the real plans. I'm going to hunt Nevada deer this year. Oh. Whoa. Where and when? The announcement is made. Put the tracking devices on his track. Right now I've got a 231 deer tag, if you must know, Jason, which you do know because you helped me involve. Yeah, that's right. So I do have one of those held, you know, in case I don't have anything and I've been wanting to do it for a bit and I'm going to make the time to do it. The flexibility of seasons in Nevada is a big deal. And I think the nice thing about Land Ombetage, similar to the dedicated hunter program in Utah, you can hunt all seasons. It gives you options. Until you kill. And it's close to us here. I'll have the Utah General here.

If I have time, if I need to make more of it, I can. If it gets edged out like it normally does, it gets edged out. Like I said a minute ago, I'm on the bubble in Arizona deer too. I have to kind of plan on that. That's a late October or November, depending on how I apply. Yeah. And so I have to plan on that one. And you guys all, you'll want to come on that. Just like, you know, we all want to come on Jason's sheep punt, even though that was a random draw. Some tags you just don't want to miss. You don't want to miss. And then Colorado, you know, I've been going either on turnback tags or landowner tags for the last quite a few years. I'm up to 10 or 11 points again. I swore I would never get that many points. But last time I generally use my points in Colorado on something that I can't usually find a landowner tag for that I think is almost impossible.

Either a low, low tag new unit or we have no connections in. Something like I'd rather buy a landowner tag for $1,500 to $3,000 than burn my points on it. That's just the way I operate. Just because. And if it's good and I can always go back, then I always have that. And that's kind of what I've been doing. And this year I'm going to try to use them on probably a fourth season somewhere that I can avoid early November for Rocky Mountain. So you're going to try to draw. Oh, I said it right here. We need, Chris, we need one of those like little highlight, like breaking news. Da-da-da-da-da-da. One of those things. Yeah. But that's it. I've laid out four potential deer tags for me. And that's where I'm going. Jason, time is now yours to see. So what'd you like? I know Nevada. You've got. So yeah, I've got a landowner tag or two in Nevada reserved, right? And so I'll be doing that for sure.

The excitement of all the moisture and bucks that, you know, the one thing, these droughts, and I guess I'm just going to go off on a tangent for a quick second, 10 seconds or less, as my buddy always says, is in some of these drought years, there's not only do they gain a year of age, but there's bucks that are passed over because they turned to crap, so to speak. Yeah, they were 75 or 81 years. You didn't have a team of hunters after them. Right? So the teams left them alone. Right. Let's call it. And so then when they come back, you've got not only an extra year. You've got, it's two years later on a good moisture year. And all of a sudden, that's when you have these blowouts. Oh, my gosh. Henry's is off the charts this year. Well, yeah, it was moisture. But it was age class and moisture. Whereas maybe some of these bucks would normally get killed at 190, 195-ish when they turned four,

you know, a four-and-a-half-year-old that was awesome genetics. They might have got smoked. If it's four-and-a-half bad moisture, he's down. Now he's five-and-a-half on good moisture. You know what I'm saying? It's too small. Huge, yeah. And that's what we're going to find. It'll blow up. We're going to see that in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, maybe parts of Colorado. But really, New Mexico. Northern New Mexico. You're going to see it. I swear it. You're going to see it. I'm saying it. New Mexico outfitters are doing backflips right now with all the moisture they're getting. They're thinking about bulls. Yeah. And we looked, and Adam and I especially, we wanted to put a drought, kind of a drought monitor in this last magazine and just kind of cover it. The drought monitors show it's a terrible drought still. So, and we might be in inches of moisture, but it's the timeliness and it's spread out.

It started in October. It really probably started in September. I mean, nothing hit the cameras in Arizona for a long time. We had wet October last year. Wet, wet, wet. And crazy. And that translates to no feed, no antler growth until winter feed and deer condition going into the next year. They're going into it. They're going into it healthy. And it hasn't quit. It's been a little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit. It just hasn't quit. And so, anyway. Anyway, so having said that, very aggressive this year. Be doing the Utah General. Do Colorado every year no matter what. I'll end up with a leftover tag. You know, if I have to turn that back in and get a refund, I can. I can still gain a point with my first choice, as can everybody. And then we could do a landowner or a turnback tag or even draw my first choice. And then that may happen as well. So, I'm not sure.

Don't have set plans. And I'm not trying to be evasive. Adam and I, especially Adam and I, Jeff, too. I mean, we get going on a tangent. And all of a sudden, we'll make a plan on a Tuesday morning. We had no idea what our plan was Monday night. And so, we just, with a little bit of research and writing, and we get off on a tangent. Pretty soon, we're hunting 78-inch antelope in the far western edge. And Jason's got an oryx tag in New Mexico. Yeah, I'd take one. Probably not a broken horn, but I'd take something. But, yeah, that's a good point. We can get fired up. But, really, what we're saying here is definitely driving our plans for the next 30 days. How about that? Yeah. Definitely. There's some new things in New Mexico. We'll be definitely applying there. Who knows what we'll end up with. Landowner tags for ranch only. Not planning anything like that. It'll be draw in New Mexico.

Something in Colorado for sure. Utah, Nevada. Those are my set plans. Idaho. I love Idaho. That winter of 16-17 crushed the place. I thought this last year would be good, even though it got crushed. It wasn't. I was up there and it sucked. It was pretty tough. Most everybody struggled. And so, having said that, we'll be applying in Idaho. Love the general up there. Could be awesome. Never have killed anything big on the general. But we know it's got that potential. It does. And we use it as a backup plan. When you treat something as a backup plan and then you're busy, it doesn't quite get your full attention like one of these other tags, whether it be a Colorado. And it's unfortunate. It's just kind of like our Utah general. We maybe take it from granted too much. It's always there. And it's the first thing to go.

And Idaho general, even though after you buy the tags, it's kind of the first thing to go sometimes. Or you go up there for a three-day weekend and take what you get. But kind of like Wyoming too, to throw Wyoming deer into the mix, you know, we all will evaluate that usually the end of May. We usually just table that, see what draws we might find out, anything in Utah, anything in Nevada. Maybe Colorado, but Colorado with their new draw system last year didn't get the results out by the end of May. So you couldn't fully make that decision. But table Wyoming deer for the end of May for a gap filler. Well, and like you did, Adam, like there was one of those, it was an opportunity you had where you chose dates that didn't conflict with everything. And you kind of went for, quote, a Hail Mary. And you ended up drawing that, you know, 128. Yeah, I did that.

It was a year that I'm like, I just don't want these points. I hate doing points only. There's nothing getting better. That May, I said, well, I've got time in November. I'll put 128 down. And I drew it. It still was like 10% with max points. So I drew it and went up there, got done with it. Now I'm back building, you know, low points. I'll go to a general region or something like that. Probably not this year. As I've laid out, I plan on having other deer tags this year. So I'll probably just do points in Wyoming. Yeah. But it's a state we definitely build points in and things like that. When you come to other states, the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, California, we don't build any of our plans around those states. So I don't know if we need to bring them up again on this podcast. No, we don't. But we'll just simplify things. This podcast is what we want to talk about. Okay?

And so anyway, having said that, with Wyoming, I do gain points in Wyoming. It's not. It feels like it's been in a 20-year slump, although they've had some ups and downs in there. It's just not managed. The residents just, they don't want to give up their over-the-counter tags, generally speaking. There are some units that obviously they can't hunt over-the-counter. And so they might have you think that they're managing for quality. But they still don't have that mindset. And that's fine. It's their state. And they get to do that. And I get to choose, obviously, as a non-resident, if we're going to apply and gain points. And I do. Do I have a plan for those points? No. No. But if something changes down the road, maybe we learn of a ranch somewhere in some obscure area or whatever that has a few giants, at least I'm prepared to make sure I get the tag and force that draw.

As Adam said, that's one of the states you can force the draw. You can look at the odds and know when you can get drawn. And so I gain points there, you know, for $40 a year, basically. You can gain points and have a backup strategy. Kansas is something I was brought up the other day. And Adam and I talk to guys every day about that. Pain in the butt. Pain in the butt. No points with the mule deer stamp. You're sitting there with a whitetail tag that's non-refundable, mid-$400. And basically, it's an application fee if you're strictly a mule deer hunter. Yeah. No points applying to the mule deer. So it's completely random every single time you draw the whitetail tag, and you're completely random on the mule deer. And you're dealing with private. And you're dealing with milo fields and all kinds. It's just not my thing. There's a few giants. A lot out of your control. No question. Yeah.

Yeah. It's just, if you could just apply for mule deer out there, it would be a different story. It would be a lot more elevated. And build those points for mule deer. Yeah. And build points for mule deer. Or get the right landowner situation and pick the year you want to go. Burn your four or five points. I'm going this year. Set something up. Pay a trespass. Or even if you have to do a guided, because it is Kansas, 97% private. You're going to have to pay to hunt unless you've got a connection. So we've kind of talked about our three strategies on mule deer. But I kind of want to just cover a quick, some of our background thoughts on the states within mule deer. So New Mexico, some of my thoughts were is they've got two new hunts. They've got a muzzle or an archery opening up for 5B. Never has happened. Okay. Not been available. And it's largely forest.

And so, you know, public line, you can go, the guy that wants to get aggressive, very low tag numbers, not going to hurt the deer whatsoever. I don't know what the success rate will be, but I don't expect it will be super high. It's resident deer. It's early season. Northern New Mexico, great genetics, borders the hickory. Worth looking at because the list has been fairly short of trophy deer options for New Mexico. It really has. It's been short, man. It's going to get shorter. Yeah, you couple 2B that just seems like it continues to fall off with 1,800 collective tags. And now they've moved the youth hunt in October, had 150 tags. They moved it to the end of November to December 1 with 150 tags. They didn't adjust the tag numbers. And so, you know, generally states will adjust the tag numbers depending on the season dates, knowing deer are vulnerable. Right? Yeah.

And so they just, they're going to crush the place. I mean, $150 that time of year. I mean, the success rate's going to be high. Even though it's a youth hunt, the success rate's going to be off the charts. Like, it's going to be really high. The wound rate, the success rate, whatever. There's going to be lots of death happening in 2B. And that's going to make a big difference in the whole unit. Yeah. Yeah. 2C's hunted lightly on all weapon types. So this has a chance to hold over some older deer year to year. And it's lower deer densities to begin with. And you have to manage it that way. But it's, I guess, just nice to have a few new hunt codes to pick from in New Mexico. If you're hoping to dig up a big buck, they're just not deep in mule deer. But the craziest thing about it is, like, 2B and 2C border each other. And there's, like, over 1,800 total tags in 2B.

And you can, you know, within. Like a hundred or something. Nothing on 2C comparatively. So, I mean, there's an obvious management strategy difference there. So there's a few options, whether it be 2B, again, you know, 2C, 5B, things like that. 4 is resident only. So we don't even talk about that too much anymore. I did on New Mexico. Arizona, Jason, you've burned your, quote, once in a lifetime max points in Arizona. Killed the deer of, you know, 10 lifetimes. And you've got a fair number of points there. Yeah, no, and as I've talked about, I'm kind of waiting for that chance for me. And I've got to plan around that because I'm maybe, you know, maybe. Which means I'm planning around that. So my personal strategy would be, like, more of archery. You know, the archery stuff now. Now that you're building points.

Yeah, and maybe I'll go with the seasons that you're looking at as my first choice. And then archery as a second. Hoping maybe I get lucky on random as my first choice. But knowing, I'm kind of marking those dates out, you know, hoping that you're going to snag a tag. And you're right on the bubble. You're dealing with a few people in your tier. So, and then once I get done with that, I'll be, it'll be more opportunity or archery hunts from then on. Or you've got coos deer in Arizona that you can always fall back on. Deer points are just deer points. Which you did once, I don't know, six, seven years ago. I think you did. I ate that tag again. I love eating tags. But meaning I went. I actually didn't just stay home and eat it. I went and spent more money. You went and chewed it up. I spent gas money, food money. I doubled down. You doubled down on it. And I'm not a good gambler.

But anyway, Arizona is one of those long-term mule deer states. There are a few other states other than the 12 and 13 units up north. A few other units in the state that can produce big deer. They're not as close to us as these that are right here in northern Arizona. Three, three seas, some of those. Yeah, some of those like that, one occasionally or 27 and even 10 and some nine and some other weird places like that that big deer pop up. But in general terms, that's a long-term mule deer strategy until maybe you draw one. But if you don't have a lot of points built up, the only reason I'm holding out is I do. I've got like 20. But they're holding you hostage. They are. That's the one thing we've talked about in other podcasts is you be careful that these points aren't holding you hostage. Burn them and run. If you've got enough, okay, wait. If you're within a striking distance, do it.

But if you're a 10 to 15, that sounds like a lot. It's really no man's life. It's no man's life. And what we've talked about, being held hostage is okay when you have four other plans for this year. Yeah, not a big deal. So it's okay to be held hostage. Who cares, right? You're not planning on it. If I get it, I know, and I'm planning around it, at least the date-wise. So if I get it, I can give all of its due diligence and attention and put all I have into the hunt. There was guys that are, like we talked about, Adam, you said no man's land. And if you're in no man's land at, let's say, 13 points, you can draw a late hunt for coos deer in December. Oh, yeah. An amazing hunt. Sent Rush Young on there. Yeah, my boy. Down in 23. Your boy. Random tag, but still, yeah. You can have a great experience in December hunting coos deer. But, you know, we've talked about Nevada quite a bit.

You know, either the landowner tag process or applying for tags. It's a tough state to draw a tag in. They look at all five choices. I think collectively sometimes we wish they wouldn't do that. Mix and match weapon types. Yeah. So, people end up putting pie in the skies for their first couple and then all the other tags is their third through fifth. And there's not great drawing odds unless you, in my mind, go down the list of what I would define as true trophy units. Or do archery. Yeah, like just what you said right there. Archery and like the sixes, sevens, that stuff up there. The rubies. The rubies. The rubies. 101 to 108. It's freaking good right now. Yeah. It's in an upswing up there. Yep. Be realistic in Nevada if you're new to the points game. Early rifles and or archery are the way to go. They don't generally give that many muzzleloader tags.

So, they aren't as good of odds as you'd think for a primitive weapon, even though, you know, they're in lines or you can use them, but you can't use scopes. But Nevada muzzleloader are terrible odds. It's been. It is, but it's also been my favorite because you feel like you have a governor's tag. Well, it's September 10th, October 4th. And generally speaking, generally speaking, for 90% of the state. And you just, it's awesome. Like Adam said, no tags, basically. You can get them. They're well worth having, but they're. And they're in their summer pattern. And, yeah, it's just. Anyway, killed many good bucks during the muzzleloader season over there. And it's just been, it's been awesome. So, don't be scared of it. However, you do need to be able to see open sites. So, if you got that problem, it's not a modern muzzle state, so to speak. Yeah.

Utah, we've talked a lot about our general season strategy here. You know, we as residents, we have to pick either between deer, elk, or antelope to apply for. So, you know, all of us in the office are a little bit different. Some are on deer. Some are now on elk, things like that. So, we can't really base around a whole lot. We've used deer points in the past. Some of us, Jason still has probably the most. But, you know, we've used our elk points in the past. So, we're kind of generally in this. Other than you, Jeff, you've got a few. Sounds like your wife is in the running for that, for elk tag. But for deer, I don't know that we're commanding anything. I turned my tag back last year. I drew a tag and kind of forced to draw and turn it back. But that's another thing. We've got these turn back options. Nevada, Utah, Colorado will let you turn them back and get all your points.

Not that year's point, but all your prior points. One thing we've got to remember about Utah is for deer, you have three different places you can get a point, right? Dedicated for deer, general deer, and limited entry for deer. And as a non-resident, every one of those are available for you to buy a point for, right? A resident as well. But that's one option that guys need to just keep in the back of your mind. I like the option. Those three different points. And we have our license app guys, a large percentage of them getting at least a point for general deer. It's cheap. It's nothing, so to speak. And so get you a general point. We've got outfitters that work on some of these general units. There's good bucks coming off the general. You are going to see a sea of orange, similar to Colorado. You are. You're going to be having a lot of people on that general.

But it's a great opportunity to go and have kind of another backup opportunity. It's me and my kids, me and my boy, me and my dad, whatever it is, you can go. It's a low-stress tag. Low-stress tag. It's a fun tag. You go, you have a good time. And if you take it, if you took it serious like it was a big deal tag, you might walk out with a freaking giant. Yeah. That's going to happen this year because we're taking it serious. Let's jump to elk. Wapiti. Yeah. Elk is one of those things I think, I think it's interesting how people say that mule deer, you know, book non-typical mule deer, book typical whatever, are the hardest things to kill. But, you know, when it comes to elk, go try to kill a bookhead. Yeah. How many people do you know that have killed a bookhead? They're hard. It's a big deal. I mean, extremely tough.

And so just getting a tag is a trophy in and of itself, let alone actually laying one down that's a giant. But it does feel like when you get a good elk tag, a 350 plus, you know, I don't know, we can debate on what that equivalent is in mule deer inches. But it feels like that's a little bit more of a, I don't know if certainty is too strong a word, but it feels like when you get a good elk tag or you buy a good elk tag, things do happen more often than not. When you get a good mule deer tag through the draw or lanner tag, it still takes a lot. Everything feels like it has to go right to still capitalize on those tags. But to Jason's point, killing a 380 to 400 inch type bull, which is what it's going to take a gross bull to be able to net 375 or 385. And, you know, that's a significant bull. But having said that, you know, we don't hunt elk as often.

We've, I don't know, I'm kind of through hunting elk to just hunt elk myself. We're elk snobs. We're elk snobs a little bit. I just want them to be really good hunts or I'm fine to not hunt elk that year. And some people are completely different. My philosophy could be different than somebody else that's wanting three elk hunts for the year and they don't really care about mule deer. But for me, I usually draw elk when I know I'm going to draw elk. You know, I cashed in my Colorado points a few years ago. I cashed in my Arizona points a couple years ago. My Wyoming points before that. And then I'm on rotations. Of course, there are states like Utah and Nevada that just now randomly could happen. But New Mexico. But I don't plan my year personally around hunting elk unless, like I alluded earlier, I have a family member that's going to draw a big bull tag here in Utah. That's different.

I usually know when I'm going to hunt elk. I don't know if that's the same with you. Yeah, no. And it is. And I've done the same thing. So I've, you know, basically utilized my opportunity for Nevada. I've drawn clear back in year 2000. Hunted one specific bull. And ate my tag there. Another eater. Anyway, but then in Utah as well. Ate my tag there. But did my, you know, draw there. But then I picked up a landowner tag here and there. And New Mexico I've drawn. New Mexico's actually treated me the best. I've killed a couple of bulls over 380. And it's just one of those states that have really done well. I'm going to be very aggressive in New Mexico. They're getting the moisture. There's no points associated. It's okay. I mean, it's okay to kind of draw and fail, so to speak. Draw and fail. Go. I'm going to try something. Go down swinging. Weird stuff, you know.

And so, anyway, I'll be doing some weird stuff. There again, I usually don't know. And I know everybody might think I'm lying. I'm not. I don't have a plan for which unit I want necessarily. It's kind of that day when Adam and I are on a tangent. And all of a sudden, we just throw in for the draw. Well, and down there, you get three choices. And so, unlike some other states like Utah, you put in, you know, if you draw, that's what you're going to get. And down there, you've got three choices and all are valid. But so... Mix and match weapons. Who knows? You don't know. I usually stick to a season date chunk on a lot of my choices. Like if my September's good, which it does not look like it's going to be this year, I'll put all my hunts in the September. So, I know if I draw, it's right during the window, I know I can go do it.

Or if it's going to be on one of the rifle muzzleloaders, it's early to the first two weeks of October. That's usually how I apply in New Mexico. I usually favor archery, but my September's seem to be more busy than my October. So, more often than not, I end up gravitating to the muzzleloader or rifle stuff there. Or the early archery, the first to the 14th, which I think is undervalued to some extent. You know, everybody wants to hunt deeper into September, but first to the 14th sometimes is the time to kill a big bull. So, anyway, that's what I normally chase down there. This year, we're going to go after it. It's green light, full speed ahead, New Mexico. Arizona, too, but you lump that into it, but we don't have the points to command a draw down there. I don't think any of us in the office do. Chris has drawn a couple years ago. I'm rebuilding. Jason, to some extent, you are.

You've got, I don't know, six or seven probably down there. So, those two states, though, green light. Do all you can to get elk tags this year, in our opinion. Well, and look close at the magazine this month. If you're a magazine subscriber, look close. There's a couple new hunts that we've added in there in New Mexico. Different season, differing season dates in a lot of units. So, pay attention to those dates. You know what I mean? Really look at the magazine close. You can see exactly what, you know, what we're talking about there. And you can plan your app strategy using that information. What about elk in Utah? I mean, we're residents here. Once again, not all of us can even apply for elk in Utah. But it's a long-term plan if you want to hunt big bulls in Utah. Who is on elk? You're on. Yeah, I technically am now. Yeah. I'm on elk. Trish, you're on deer. John's on elk.

John's got mid to high teens in elk. He's within striking distance. We did look at some hunts the other day that he could maybe draw out the muzzleloader. Definitely archery. But, Jason, you're on deer. So, you know, but for non-residents, it's the same thing. It's a, you know, try to use your points however you can. The glory days, all the 400 inches in Utah have gone. They're solid. I don't see them getting better or worse or better really right now. They just kind of are what they are. Use your points to get what you can there to the extent possible. I'm pretty bummed out. I was planning on a unit. Well, this year, last year, it jumped up two points. Just took it out of reach. And that's in the resident pool you're talking about. It's in the resident pool. Changed two points. And so I'm like, well, I guess my archery elk tag's gone. So what do I do now?

You know, because I was kind of planning. I was kind of banking on drawing that the next year or two. And it's obvious that it's going to be years, years chasing that. So I'm not going to chase it. I'm just going to find something else. Well, elk in Arizona, you know, Utah, Nevada, if you're going to apply at all, you're going to apply for probably elk and deer and maybe other species since you're already buying the hunting license. But you really, you're not predictably going to draw a Utah tag unless you've got 20 plus points now. Similarly in Nevada, you can't predict it. We generally tell people plan on 10 to 15 years at least. And that seems to be maybe going even higher than that now. But, you know, they square your points and throw your name in the hat a bunch. You just draw when you draw. You just can't predict it. I use Nevada like Jason has.

I hold out for the exact hunts and units that I want because when you draw, you're done. You've got a seven-year wait. And then by the time you start over again, it's a one or two tag in your lifetime thing in Nevada. So I just hold out for what I want in Nevada. I don't get cute like we maybe talked about in New Mexico. Mix match, year to year, do whatever. Okay. Well, yeah, I do a lot in New Mexico as far as I've drawn a lot of those early rifles that we talked about a little bit. I killed a, you know, a .367 bull down there in 23 on the first archery. So about September 7th and they were bugling like crazy. And so great opportunity there. We've kind of covered that enough. As far as Nevada, there's a lot of good units besides just the Ely units. The Ely units are always going to be awesome. They're always going to, people are going to gravitate to that because it's kind of what's

been popular for years and years and years. I have a good friend that drew Area 6 up there with the muzzle. It was awesome. Off the charts unit. And so there's some big bulls in Area 13, the 131, 132 country. And so there's a lot of application options for big bulls and trophy hunters. And like Adam said, five points, you can't really tell. They square the points. It's not like you can force the draw over there. So Wyoming is one of those. They do have random tags. There's some units that don't have random tags. There's not very many non-resident tags, so to speak, in a lot of those units. And so be careful when you look at our drawing odds. Make sure there's a random tag. If you don't have enough points to draw those and to force it, as you want to make sure you're in a random draw. And so anyway, that's the boat I'm in. In large part up there, I could force a draw.

I'm looking at a few things. You could have put it in there this year? Yeah. You are? You are. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's a good year up there. And so unlike you, you've killed enough full 350 bulls. I'm looking to continue to lay them down. Well, I like killing them. I just, I guess, if I don't draw one, I don't care. Not the end of the world. I'm going to do points in Wyoming this year myself. My September. Yeah. Generally going to favor the archery hunt. And I just don't have time this September. So I'm going to do points. And some years in Idaho, you know, we'll do sheep. And if you do sheep, you can't do anything else. Or if you do goat, you can't do anything else from moose. Or you can do deer, elk, and antelope. And so, you know, some years we are applying for one of those crazy awesome opportunities such as 54 for elk. And they've got some of the biggest bulls in the West.

They're some of the absolute most biggest amazing elk in the state of Idaho in Unit 54. So, I don't know. Might do something like that, too. There you go. Does that cover it pretty good? You forgot Colorado elk. Duh.

We could sum it up very quickly. Point creep is the worst of all the states. There's not enough. And for trophy, trophy elk hunters, it's really not a state. Unless they change the point system and draw system in the future, it's pretty depressing. Units that are taking 20-plus points to draw, like 61 even, you're still not expecting to hunt 350 bulls. You're just not. And it's just a product of Colorado, log jamming everybody into the same 8 or 10 units. And, you know, there's other weird units, you know, coming on. We're hearing some things about, you know, other units in the state, you know, like. Gunnison. Gunnison. There's good opportunities. We'll cover that in the magazine. And so, you know, but it's hard when guys come to us with an app strategy. If they want giant bulls, you know, we're not telling them to get points in Colorado. Not even telling them to get points.

But if you're looking for 300 to 320 or something like that, yeah, grab a point. You know. Two, three points, draw a muzzleloader tag or something like that in a few units. There's some outfitters and stuff that are out, you know, they're chasing 300-inch bulls on those hunts. And with decent success rates. So there are some options there. For the low point guy, it's just, if you're even sitting there looking at the top couple units in Colorado. And you've got 20 points. Forget it. You're still not going to draw those top couple units. It's not going to happen. Okay. Sounds good. We've covered it pretty well. Unless you guys want to talk about Oregon elk or something like that. I'm good. Okay. Let's jump into sheep, goat, moose. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sheep are the, with the exception of, you know, like maybe our home state here.

Jason drew his desert tag through the max point, you know, set aside process, forcing the draw, so to speak. I'm due for that here shortly. Jeff's dad, as we've talked about on the Rocky Mountain side, is due for that this year or next. Ignoring those for the time being, because there are other states like that, like Wyoming. We filled in people's calls the last week or so, have 19 or 20 points. It's a big deal to pick the right year, the year in your schedule to do that. You're going to get a tag here in the next handful of years. But for the most part, we'll gloss over those because if you weren't on the, you know, points building game 20 years ago in some of these states that set aside them, you're really talking about the random draw for sheep, goat, and moose, and bison. We'll just lump them in.

You should simply apply for as many states as you can or can afford or that are easy add-ons like we talked about, the Utah, Nevada, Arizona, states that charge you a hunting license. If you're going to apply it for deer and elk for 10 or 15 bucks, add it at a sheep application and almost just forget about it. Yeah. Because sheep tags just, that's how they're going to happen. They fall what they fall. Yeah. They come when they come. And we can probably go through the states that we would probably, maybe we should break them up through Rocky or deserts.

Jason, I don't know if you want to do, you pick one, I'll do the other. Just jump in. Just for what you do, starting on Rockies, I guess, first, we'll just do Rockies. Well, yeah. So for Rockies, Adam and I have often talked, Rockies may be even a tighter bottleneck than deserts. It used to be that deserts were the toughest animal to, you know, obtain a tag for and actually put in your collection, so to speak, where we're finding Rockies are actually the bottleneck. And so, you know, definitely we consider applying for Rockies every year in Idaho and in a lot of cases we do, especially like deer and elk, you know, especially this last year, deer in a slump. So definitely might continue with it being in a slump. They just don't rebound in one year. So we might definitely consider applying for Rockies up there and have that be our application choice.

Montana, you know, we killed a California bighorn in Oregon that's technically a Rocky. You know, I kind of go for the gold in Montana personally. Go for the gold and, you know, hunt the brakes or something like that or an equivalent, somewhere we think we can kill a 190-inch type ram. However, this last year was tough to find 190-type rams up there. It just was in a little bit of a funk. And so that's what we do up there. Wyoming, man, you know, I was applying. I don't have enough points. I'm in a random draw forever. You can tell that. They forced me to pay $150 to get a point. Not too fond of that. It doesn't make me super happy. And I'm in this random draw of $1 in $300. I've got to decide with the 2.5%, you know, percent credit card fee. Is that worth it to me? Is it worth a couple binges plus? About $220, $220 non-offendable to apply for sheep.

But you also front the tag fee when you apply. Yeah, how happy does that make a guy? And so it may or may not happen. It kind of depends on the year and whatnot. And I think you're in a similar boat. We do. You know, I do most years. But some years, depending on how I'm feeling, I don't feel it. And some of the random number of tags have gone down. And so there used to be the random odds have gotten worse there. So there's the random odds have gotten worse. And the price has gone up. It's not a no-brainer for Rockies. It's simply not. Colorado, we're not going to let it go. We're definitely going to continue to apply there. However, they are going to be $100 non-refundable to get a point, looks like. Yeah, we're heavily invested. Last year, they kind of opened the floodgates. You didn't have to do the paper application with black ink and capital letters and send a check in and all that.

Number nine envelope or 10 or whatever it is. Whatever it was. And we played that game for, what, 10 or 15 years? 15 years. We're both, you know, 3 plus 12 or 15 points or more in the hat there now. Last year, they opened up the floodgates to everybody, $3 application fee. And it was thousands and thousands of applicants, 5,000 to 7,000 more of some of these. And everybody complained. They listened. And now they're charging us $100 non-refundable. Plus buy an $85 license. $85 license and $100. So I had a guy yesterday. He's like, I really pissed me off. And I wrote him a letter. And I said, you know, now I've got everybody in there. And before, I've been doing this. And I said, well, buddy, they listened. They're now charging you $100 per species. That's going to weed everybody out. Well, they are. They are going to screw people. They're charging too much.

And it's like, you don't know what to say. We all complain. And then they listen. And then we all complain, right? I mean, now I'm going to shell out the cash. And so. They've kind of got us. I'll apply there forever. It's not an elite trophy, rocky state, at least for the units that we non-residents can normally apply for. They're usually 160 to 175 rams for the most part. But we're going to do it. I'd like. I want to hunt a. I want to hunt an alpine type mountain rocky sometime in my life. I do. I want to do that. Kill a upper 180s Ryan Benson type sheep. How about that? That'd be right. Back to Wyoming. Yeah. Or Idaho. That's got me thinking. You bet. So. All right. Now, you know, and I drew last year for deserts in Arizona. They will now. You know, I can continue to draw. Even though sheep points are sheep points. Yeah. You got two points. For either or. Yeah.

I've got the loyalty in Hunter Ed. Pretty much planning on drawing a rocky in Arizona. Well, tell me what you apply for and I'll block the dates off right now. How about 27.6 or 28. I don't know. I'm not sure. But that one's one that you can do a rocky in. We'll talk more about the deserts here in a bit. But then what's next? New Mexico. New Mexico. Yeah. That's one you're going to have to front the fees. Put it on your card. Let them sit on it for a sec. Brutal odds. You've got the guide draw and the non-guide. We break those odds out in the magazine. It's generally twice as good if you go in the guide draw. And it's kind of an interesting way, the way they divvy out tags and the way the percentages lie. It is. You know, it about doubles your odds. But, you know, roughly I think we're talking 1 in 6 and 700 versus 1 in 12 to 1,400. I mean, that's basically what it is.

If you're going to go guide it anyway, you should probably apply it with an outfitter and the guide draw for sheep. Yeah, it doesn't hurt you. Most people, you know, a lot of people would probably go guide it on that hunt. They don't give very many tags. Big sheep, though, so it's kind of a dream big state. You know, you could draw one of the, what, two or three non-resident tags, you've really got something. One of the gold. You're going to kill a good run. Nevada, since we're on Rockies, I guess, basically for non-residents, we get to apply for the California Bighorns and we just say do them all. It looks like they've got some units proposed, and so we'll see how that shakes out. But anyway, definitely apply for those. There's separate points for Deserts versus Calis there in Nevada. It doesn't hurt you. It's a cheap application fee. You don't have to front the tag fee.

So we do them all. We apply for every unit available. There's five choices, and in the past, there's only been four options. That's right. So everybody's in every single one. Pretty much. And then I guess we'll gloss over Oregon and Washington. Washington, you know, 110 or so bucks a species for sheep, moose, and goat in a squared point system that's been around for a long, long time. So it's a little daunting. Jump in with the residents. Yes, that's right. No resident, non-resident quotas. Of the two, Oregon definitely feels like the better option. Jason and I drew back in the day when I think the license was about 70 bucks or something like that. And then $8 per species. Now it's 167, I believe. 165. Oregon. 70. Oregon. And so it's not as, you know, it's another, it's 175 bucks to apply for sheep.

And if you're going to do it, might as well add eight bucks for goat and deer and elk points for eight bucks on those two. No points in Oregon. Mostly California bighorn. I think about five, if I'm not mistaken. I'm totally going from memory. Five units this year. One Rocky. One true Rocky unit. For non-residents. For non-residents. That's right. So we've done it. We've drawn it. We've moved on, I guess. But it is still a state a lot of people. It registers in their head. Hey, there's no points. I'm going to do Oregon. And it's hard to tell you not to do it for that. And we do. Yeah. But your odds, I mean, you've got to look at a one in 250 to one in 400 on your calories. And would you pay $175 for that raffle ticket if it was a true raffle? And that's just how we, that's how we paint the picture. Everybody's in a different boat. It may or may not fit you. Yep. That's right.

That kind of goes over Rockies, doesn't it? We're good. So deserts, there's obviously fewer states to talk about when it comes to that. Nevada's probably the first one everybody should consider. They give roughly 30 tags a year to non-residents. The most desert sheep tags of all the other states combined. 10 in Arizona. Yeah. Ish. Depending on the end. Yeah. So definitely add it. You get five unit choices. Still tough to draw. Very high demand for it. Nothing's easy in Nevada. But it's still, they give the most tags. Arizona's the next most. Like Jason said, they draw about 100 to 110 total sheep tags in Arizona a year, which non-residents can get up to 10%. Some of those could go to Rockies. But the majority of their state, we generally consider Arizona apply for Desert Sheep State. The Rocky tags are so fewer units, the odds get worse.

You can't really play the odds on the Rockies, so to speak. But once you draw a desert like Jason has, you've got to switch to Rockies, and you're naturally going to do that. And some guys will do first choice Desert, second choice Rocky, or vice versa. And it doesn't hurt you. It doesn't hurt. Points are points. That's right. Tags are tags. But definitely one we always do for Desert Sheep for sure is Arizona. Jason, you know, had an awesome hunt with him last year. Living proof. Real people do draw. And I think this may be the time to talk about that, Adam. And we've talked about it in the past, you know, is what's on paper, what people kill on paper is really indicative of the people that draw the tag, not what's truly in the unit. You have no idea what a lot of these guys are hunting with bows down there in Arizona, which is great.

The sheep are, you know, I wouldn't say easy to kill with a bow, but they're not that difficult in most units. And so guys elect to choose to hunt with a bow. And with that, they might not go for the biggest ram in the unit or whatnot. And when you have one or two total tags, and more in some cases, you truly don't know what those genetics hold. When you start seeing a unit that looks like it's killing 170-inch rams and they're six years old like my unit was, there might be something bigger. Because who knows who drew those tags? I mean, we don't even know what effort was applied. And they're killing 170 for two years in a row with only one ram. Okay, there's something decent going on there. Something going on there. And the point you're getting at is, of course, if you're an aggressive hunter,

if you can do it, don't be afraid to play for stuff that's not the absolute best unit in the state. So you can increase your odds of getting that tag. And that's maybe the best Nelsonite, you know, killed in the state on not the best unit. Not what you would put on paper as the best unit. Not on anybody's real radar. It hasn't has a track record of a big ram. Right. And Adam and I are always, always applying for kind of the weird, out-of-the-way, off-the-wall type units, knowing that there's a chance for something good anywhere. And that's the same thing with Nevada. Nevada, too. Same thing. To the extent possible. Exactly. So be aggressive. Don't just say, I only want the best or nothing. Yeah, and that's generally our philosophy on sheep, both rocky and deserts, collectively. Now, there may be a few instances like Montana that have the biggest Rockies of all the states.

We generally go for higher trophy quality there ourselves because they're very big. But you've already killed a Rocky. That's right. But Colorado and all these others, we're probably not going to kill book rams. No. Probably not going to happen. So we just want to get drawn. We've even done archery sometimes in Colorado. Yeah. Moving over to New Mexico, you can apply for both Rocky and desert sheep on one application and apply for three choices each. Within each. They don't charge you $3,200 twice, once for Rocky, once for desert. So you might as well apply for both. Oh, yeah. There's no reason not to. Even if you've already killed a desert or a Rocky, apply for, I don't know, unless you just truly say, hey, I'm going to, don't want to be selfish. I've killed one. I won't. I wouldn't pay the three grand for a Rocky tag. Yeah. Okay. Or desert. Okay. I get that. But we do.

We do do that and plan on it. Moving up to Colorado, they draw one or have been drawing one desert sheep tag a year for a non-resident. We can't pick it because if you choose Rocky Mountain Bighorn, you can't apply for deserts. And vice versa. That's right. And they don't have a point system for deserts. And so there's a lot of guys that do have the three preference and then some weighted. And then they wonder if they should switch over for one in roughly 1,200 odds, depending on the year. We generally tell you no, don't. Unless you kill a Rocky and you said, I just need another name in the hat on a desert state somewhere. And so in that case, I guess, do it. We did have one of our members draw this last year. Killed an awesome ram. We'll have that story upcoming in the March issue of our magazine. Killed the one non-resident draw tag.

As we talk about Colorado, Adam, they do have archery only tags. And at times, and Adam's talked about this earlier in the podcast, but we will choose archery in a lot of years over there. Yeah. We're playing the odds. Just for the odds, and maybe part of it is we've killed a California slash Rocky. So we're just like, just give us another tag to hunt sheep somehow. And the odds are generally a lot better over there. So probably the last unit, we'll talk about California quickly. We don't apply for desert sheep in California. They draw up to 10%, which has only been one non-resident tag for the last handful of years, we'll just say. It's a fairly expensive license, $160 or $80. I'm going off of memory. And then they'd run the maximum point draw first. 75%. Yeah. Yeah. And so they give 75% of the tags to people with the maximum points.

If a non-resident draws a max point tag, there is no random non-resident tag that year. Now, we're hearing rumblings that they're going to be potentially up in the tags a little bit in California this year. Maybe that'll give us two. They might give us two, but that remains to be seen. It's still, when you factor in, they give up to one antelope tag, up to one elk tag. There's not a lot of other reasons to add California collectively. So it's an easy one to not do. But if you've got max points or you're a resident in California, obviously do it. Then you should. You should do it. But we counsel people daily not to do it. It's not worth the money. That's right. It's kind of interesting. There's a lot of people who lived in California, built all those points. I talked to a guy last night. He has 20 points for sheep. And he moved to Utah. Now he's applying as a non-resident.

And he's like, is it even worth me? Even with 20 points. I don't think max is quite that high. But to your point, he went from bad odds with resident max to terrible as a non-resident with max. Oh, yeah. It's tough. Yeah. So anyway, frustrated, definitely with California and not something that, you know, especially like they give, and I didn't want to go here, but they give like one, up to one non-resident elk tag. If it's an antlerous tag that happened to be divvied out, then that's it, right? A two-leakow tag. That could be it. Whatever. And so, yeah, not super big fans there. Let's jump into Moose, Adam. We can be very quick with this. I apply in one state, and that's Montana, simply because I started when they started their point system, and I still have max points. Max, yeah. And every year they change the units on what we can apply for.

And sometimes Adam's like, I don't see a trophy unit available. I want. And now they have a points-only option, so you can do that if you want. Just, Moose don't mean that much to me. They don't. And I have applied back in the day. Jason and I took a year off of sheep or whatever we were doing in Idaho and both applied for neighboring units up there for Moose. Clear up in the panhandle. Yeah, he drew one. Crappy unit. On the year I drew that Arizona deer tag, we couldn't get the Moose killed and in the truck fast enough. Let's get the Arizona. To get back and start scouting Arizona. Cold, snowy. It was November 15th or something like that. That sucked. But anyway. Jason's killed the Shiras, 43-incher. Yeah, it was 43-incher. And that's another thing. You start looking on paper and you get excited about inches wide, but it doesn't tell you how they're built. And he wasn't built that great.

Even though he's 43 inches, he was just a bull. Having said that, I killed one. Put it on the list. That's great. Continue to apply in other places. Other options, especially for non-residents like Utah, you can apply for everything. Throw it in there. 10 bucks. Throw it in there. Colorado has some great Moose. Great opportunity for guys that are really stuck on doing that. You know, apply for it. Get more expensive like we talked about earlier. Only a few random tags. But Wyoming is tougher. There's a huge log jam in their point system. They give 75% of their tags to the people with the most points. And so that translates to many units. They've got to give four tags to a non-residents unit before one of them is going to go on the random draw. Which is kind of contrary to a lot of states. Usually if there's one tag, it's available in the random draw. It's not the case in Wyoming.

So it's a hard one to say start because you've got five or so units, maybe six, that they give a random tag in each year. And the odds are, you know, pretty bad. 150 to 500. Idaho, we talked about that a minute ago. If you choose to apply for Moose, it's awesome. If you said, I want a Moose tag, and you're willing to pay the non-refundable fee and the $40-something application fee, non-refundable license fee, it's a couple hundred bucks a year. And have that be your one application. You'll probably draw a Moose tag. You could say you're probably going to draw one at some point. Especially if you're aggressive. There's so many units to choose from. But if you're only going to stick for the best in the state or one of the best, yeah, you know, it's a little bit tougher. But if you're willing to accept a Moose tag, there are some really good drawing odds up there. There are.

So I think that's it. I mean, call it a day on that. Talk about goats real quick. You know, I've killed a goat. Jason's killed a goat. He killed one in Utah. I killed one in Montana. Goats are, for us, for me, I wouldn't mind killing one more, maybe a big one, or doing it with a bow or something different. But you don't need three to four goats in your life, most people. So we can maybe just talk about the states that probably make the most sense to apply for for goats. Like I said, I drew Montana back in 2003. Killed a nice goat. Had a great experience. Did it on my own with my brother. And, you know, I still apply for them. Had to wait seven years, and I'm back in the draw for them there. I don't normally apply for goats anywhere else. I just don't. I don't use my one-and-done application in Idaho for them because I'm always going to choose either sheep or deer or elk.

That's what I'm going to do there. Occasionally I've applied for them in Wyoming, and I know you have as well. Yeah, I have, you know, especially it just depends. But Wyoming has no point system for goat or bison. And so that's, you know, it kind of makes it nice with guys that haven't, you know, gained points or started in a, like you said, a well-established point system, so to speak. And so it's truly a random draw. So at times we'll apply for that. You know, hunted Willard up in northern Utah, killed a nice goat. We've got points, both of us there in Colorado. And so we do that. Never have you had goat be my one-and-done, so to speak, application for Idaho. Usually doing deer and elk or sheep, something like that. And then in the Montana at times haven't been super consistent.

But goat is one of those things, Adam, we talk about, like we can find you a goat hunt in Alaska or in Canada or whatever. You want to kill a goat, you can kill a goat. That doesn't break the budget, too. Yeah, it doesn't break the budget. At some point in your life, you know, we'll just say round number, round 10 grand. You could save up money and go do a goat hunt and kill a goat. And you can do a moose hunt that, you know, whether it be in Canada or Yukon or Alaska, you're going to spend more than 10 grand. But if you want to kill a bit, if you just want a moose sometime, and the North America 29 or something, and a Shira's moose is not, like, on your list to have to have. For a lot of people, you can go kill those. Go kill a big one. Go kill a big one. That's right. Now, some people call them Shiraz, but if you have to have a Shiraz, go in the lower 48 and apply. That's right.

You do need to do that. And having said that, Jeff, we've got outfitters with Shira's moose tags. Yeah, actually, dedicated tags for Shira's moose tags. Utah and things like that. But if you want a goat, you know, let's just say, you know, most state tags are average around two grand for a non-resident, 1,500 to two grand probably. And so you draw that, you're in it that much. And then if you need a guide, you might be in it another 5 to 6,500, you know. So you're not far off from a $10,000 Alaska goat hunt when you draw one. So just keep those things in mind. Compare that, though, to a rocky or a desert. You know, you're 50 to 75,000 anywhere to go touch one where you're going to probably have a good chance to kill one. 100% different on a different situation.

Yeah, that's out of reach for a lot of people maybe at any point in their life where a goat is something you can, you know, if you're, you can go do it. You can wrap your arms around it. It's something you can actually, you know, it's obtainable. So it's not maybe one of those what we consider to be once-in-a-lifetime, even though in many states it is considered to be a once-in-a-lifetime tag. Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, we've covered those. Idaho, Nevada doesn't have a non-resident option yet. They have them. They have big goats, really tough drawing odds when they do allow us to apply for them. Oregon's an $8 add-on fee if you're doing cheap. Go ahead and do it. But don't, like, go buy your $167 non-refundable hunting license to apply for a goat. Just apply for a mountain goat. Although they've got good goats and good hunts, you know.

And so, anyway, those are the options for mountain goat. Washington's kind of the same thing. Don't just start Washington for goat. Well-established point system there. We have members draw every year up there. Most of them are residents because they, you know, invest their hunting license and their application fees are cheaper. They've been doing it a long time. But not a no-brainer state to apply for. It's just simply not. But bison, we'll maybe just talk about that. The free-ranging, wild, you know, true experience bison. You get a few states that do those. You know, the Arizona. You know, it seems like most of these all are in adjacent to parks and things like that. It's very frustrating to deal with the bison. You know, I mean, Utah has an amazing experience. Yes. Wild, free-ranging. I drew when I was 15 years old. You know. Henry Mountains, right? Henry Mountains, yeah.

Back when you saw dust trails, you didn't see bison. You saw dust trails. They were so wild. It was crazy. In fact, the hunters before me, you know, came up to us and they didn't kill them. They went home empty with no buffalo in their truck. And so, anyway, those were, you know, those were back in the days. Now they're, you know, new for this year. Tons of opportunities for bison in Utah. They're trying to thin them out. They've had a lot of expansion, which has worked great, plus bison coming off the Ute Res there in the book cliffs. We talked about that extensively in our magazine. That's right. We did. No real issues with the bison in Utah. They're mostly public land hunts. You're not waiting for migration off the park. The wild horse bench unit is the only real exception to that off the reservation. That's a slight concern. Yeah. But you moved to Arizona, and that's an issue.

You've got bison that were established in House Rock Valley, but found and gravitated to Grand Canyon National Park, and that's a refuge for them. Yeah. It's been a refuge, and they've learned that that's a refuge. And so, you know, dry years, they'll come out to water catchments outside of the park, and so that'll draw them out when it's really dry. And then they're available to hunt, right, so to speak. And they'll have wandering bison that come out anyway. Yeah. But it's a non-residence over $5,000 for a permit. But just when you're gone. And what if you ate it? Yeah. I'm eating a four-wheeler. Well, yeah. And then maybe you need a guide. You're eating two four-wheelers, you know. So it's just, yeah, it's very tough. You know, of course, you can get two points in Arizona. It's the only place I know of you can get two points a year for a big game season.

I still can't get my head wrapped around that. Two application periods. Two application periods. And there's usually only one of them that has the long seasons that you would really want. Some of the short seasons or some of the, they do have some other bison and then Unit 5 in different places in Arizona on some wildlife management area stuff. But back up to, we'll just talk about Montana and Wyoming kind of together in and around Yellowstone Park. It seems like we've always said that the Wyoming's by far the best option. And it still is, but this year was pretty rough. This year was tough. We had buddies that hunted it. And it was, you know, again, the bad weather. We talk about 2018. I'm glad 2018's gone. Yes. I'm glad it's gone. And these bison hunters are as well. However, they've been smoking some the last week.

A good friend of mine, that Travis Osmond, he guides up there and he just sent me a picture of what he says crushed the state record. Yeah. Broken. No way. Yeah. Bunch of brand new fresh snow. And those, you're dealing with bison that moving out of Yellowstone that moves south toward Jackson National Elk Refuge in that country there. So it's, you're watching borders and you're watching them close. I mean, very close. Good license app client of ours at McKenzie Sims. He smoked one too this week. I mean, everybody, seems like everybody's happy, happy right now. But after a lot of stress and anxiety for three and a half months. Brutal. And they do have long seasons. It's an expensive tag to have too. It's another expensive one to eat. Anyway. Over four grand for a non-resident. Yeah. It's not cheap. And so, and they do have long seasons for that purpose.

Just don't know when they're actually going to make it out. And that's the only way they can really manage them or keep them in check, so to speak. So, and on the north end of the park and west end, you've got Montana does hunt them in the, you know, Gardner and the West Yellowstone units too. Again, you're hunting bison later in the year when they leave Yellowstone Park and drift out. They're not always consistent hunts. They're definitely more, more inconsistent on the Montana side of things. Kind of what we consider marginal opportunities. And so everybody, you know, when we have guys that ask us about them, we're going, are you ready for a, you know, 10 minute explanation? That's right. And then, because you've got to really decide, you know, if you're willing to take that chance and get on the list. That's right.

That probably, and you know, if you do, you know, there are different places around the west, whether it be ranches or things like that. If you're just concerned for a bison on the wall, there's a lot, a lot of places you can do that that may, may not be considered fair chase. They may be private herds on big ranches. I'm not saying they're high fenced or things like that, but there's other places. But they have barbed wire fences, you know, just normal barbed wire fences and private herds and whatnot that you could go. You could even do, you know, maybe something on the utes. I don't know. We have conservation tags here in Utah as well that guys purchase and whatnot. Adam loves guiding those. No, I don't. I've done a few, but they're, yeah, lift up a bison, bullhead bison with a cape and put that on your back. Yeah, let alone dead of winter. So anyway. Anyway, but I don't know.

That probably wraps up the majority of the species in terms of what we kind of do, where we think you could do it or should do it. Again, some of them maybe aren't as high as maybe what's on your list right now, but what other points do we have to talk about? We need to, I mean, we've been so long-winded, but there are like black-tails, coos, deer. There's obvious other things that we could talk about a little bit, but I don't know. Yeah, there's, you know, you got the West Coast and New Mexico and Arizona, so.

Oh, geez. Antelope. The two points. Chris, we didn't give you a mic. Antelope. Okay. I've gained 17 points in the state of Colorado. Yes, Jason, and we'd like to know right here now what you're going to do with those. We're all going to know, and we'll announce it here live, the year Jason draws his antelope tag in Colorado. Wait for 10 years so they purge? We'll have that hot take, Mike. We do apply for antelope, you know, across the West. You know, Adam drew in Arizona. I've drawn in Arizona and killed. My son had a Utah tag last year out of the Expo, one of those $5 draw tags. Speaking of the Expo, Jason, yeah, we'll be there. Yeah, we're going to be there. Booth number one. Booth number 2744, February 14th to the 17th. We're going to be validating for tags up there. Anyway, yeah, my kid did draw one of those, and we killed a great antelope in less than two hours.

He just doesn't have that much time off school. And so killed a great buck. Yeah, heavy buck. Yeah, heavy sucker. So anyway, same thing, Nevada's got some good antelope units that we apply for. Wyoming's the freaking antelope capital of the world and offers tons of tags and easy draws and whatnot. So if you do want an antelope, apply for Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and if non-residents, just throw in for, you know, $10 in Utah. Maybe just briefly, Jason, describe the big change in New Mexico because it's kind of been a cluster to hunt the best places in the state. It's kind of been a two-step draw in the past. New Mexico has huge monumental changes. We covered it in our magazine. Basically, you know, draw tag guys, rifle, draw tag guys, normal tags. I'm not talking mobility impaired or youth. Normal guys have not been able to hunt public lands.

They've been assigned to private ranches. They've hunted the public lands on mobility impaired and youth tags. And archery. And archery. And so there was a lot of bucks. And so these governor tags had it good. They could go. And so there was a lot of bucks that were gaining age. And there were some big bucks in New Mexico. That's changed. And with private land tags, now if you have permission on a particular ranch, you can walk in and get a tag. There is no quotas for private land. Landowner can sell as many as they want. Landowner can kill every antelope on his place. Okay? And so that's going to be interesting. There's a lot of frustrated people that care about antelope. And we tease about not caring about. We do care about antelope. It's a fun. They're a fun critter to hunt. We consult on them every day.

And so it is frustrating to see each individual ranch being able to manage however they want. Some landowners hate them. Some want them. Whatever. And if you have neighboring ranches that have conflicting management strategies, what's that going to turn into? It's not going to work. You can have a whole herd if he's on the wrong spot. Generally, you know, game or property of the state, and the state needs to manage them. And they're just saying, nah, we're not going to deal with that. That's for you. That's for you. You see fit. Yeah. It's a very backward way of thinking. You know, with new governors, new directors coming, there's just change. Yeah. Change is prevalent in New Mexico this year. Looking at the bright side, and that's all you can do, I guess, is now you can apply for a rifle hunt in a unit X or Y or Z. And if you draw it, you can hunt anywhere in that unit.

Like a normal draw tag. How nice is that? And then if you've got private land and you can secure permission, go hunt it there. But we're probably going to do antelope more often now. I'm going to apply. New Mexico, I want to hunt unit X or Y. And I want to hunt for a big buck only, or I just do not draw. And we used to apply, you know, for clusters of units down there. Now they've broken them up into individuals. So within our magazine, we don't have drawing odds. We don't have kill rates, so to speak. It's a whole new ballgame. They've wiped the slate clean and changed the entire program for antelope. And so it'll be interesting how that comes about. We're definitely going to be applied. It's on record. I'm applying for antelope in New Mexico two or three years. The quality may take a huge dive with the new management practices. So anyway, I don't know. Does that cover antelope?

That does. We basically use it to supplement stuff like most people probably do. There's a few people that are just antelope fanatics, and we've covered the best states to do that in. If it makes sense for you to add it on in some of the states you're already buying a license, like Utah, Arizona, Nevada, go ahead and do it for $10 or $15. But, you know, Wyoming is the place we all think of. Montana even is pretty easy to get antelope tags, especially eastern Montana, 700 tags. You can get them pretty easy. But just fun, easy hunts. We don't – we fit them in now and then every five to, I don't know, eight years. We don't hunt them that often. But we research them like they're freaking giant mule deer or elk. And so I've got so many thoughts going in, like the New Mexico youth and all of these things. There's a lot of these units that are given 45 youth tags and five adult tags.

And so the youth get preference, mobility impaired in some cases get preference, especially in the past. Not so much now. But there's just a lot of factors into why we listed the units we did within the magazine. A, you've got to look at the public land available. A lot of that stuff in the northeast corner, there wasn't as much public land or very little. But yet there's a lot more tags, and so it allows people opportunity hunts. Of course, you know, 15, 16, 17, 18, all of those units, you know, may have a lot more higher quality. But when you dip down to five tags, you end up with one outfitter tag, which can be given out to a resident or non-resident, yet no non-resident tags. And so you'll see that reflective in our tables at times when they dip down to five total tags for normal applicants. There we go, Chris. Did we do sufficient justice to Antelope? All right. He's happy.

He's happy. He's ecstatic. All right. Gave the nod. I thought when he was holding up, he was holding up twos in the air, and I was thinking that it's two hours. No, I was thinking this podcast is two hours. It feels a little long, and so we'll probably better wrap it up. Huge long. But I know it's a lot of it are thoughts. A lot of it's rambling. It's not structured. We're bouncing all over the place. We're trying to give you some ideas. Hopefully something we've talked about today gives you something to think about, things like that we're not talking about. You know, doe, antelope, and cow elk, or anything like that. You know, there's a lot more you could cover. You could cover about. Having said that, we do, at times, we do apply. Not me. Okay.

But some of our kids and whatnot do apply, and we want, you know, have more opportunities, so they want to, you know, antlerless tags make sense in some cases. It's just sometimes it's hard. We're always taught that you're supposed to, you know, increase numbers and yada, yada, yada, and, you know, female hunts don't seem to necessarily make sense, but at times it does. There's enough, we've talked about so many of those opportunity things that we can get. We normally, somebody in our family is shooting an elk every year, and Jason, your kids shot two of them last year. You don't need to know well. It's crushed me. Anyway, no freezer space. We've got plenty of white little packages in our freezer space. Yeah, lots of them. We need to Instagram that. We need to barbecue that here at the office. Freezers full of meat.

Invite the public in to have, to sample wild game as an introduction to hunting. Come down here to the Epic Outdoors office, get the smoker going. We need to open up some of those LaCourty meat packages, you know, all the summer sausages and all that kind of stuff. It's lunchtime. All right. Well, that's about it, everybody. There again, you know, our way isn't the only way. There's a ton of different strategies out there, and Adam and I definitely consult on, you know, tons and tons of guys and develop strategies. But when we're doing that, we do look at what your goals are and what we would do if we had your goals. And so I do feel like we do a good job of being objective and considering things from your perspective. If you want us to apply you, you know, we have a $500 max where, you know, it's obviously state by state by state.

Once you reach 500, you know, everything else after that is no additional charge as far as our fees are concerned. And so it's a great program. You know, just give us a holler. Adam and I will take time. We'll get you a schedule lined out, and we'll get you applying and gaining points. So that time of year, Jason talked about the Western Hunting Conservation Expo a bit ago. We'll be there here. That is, what, February 14th to 17th. During the Saturday of that event on February 16th, the Full Curl Society Social, which is basically just a big get-together of sheep hunters, sheep enthusiasts, or sheep wannabes, all of the above. And there's going to be 11 sheep hunts drawn and given away at that event. We'll be there. We've been a major sponsor there. We love supporting that. We like seeing people yell and stand on tables and get crazy when they win sheep hunts.

That is, again, on Saturday, February 16th. You can go online prior to them at fullcurl.org. Buy your tickets. There's different packages there for doll sheep, stone sheep, Rocky Mountain Bighorn, Desert Bighorn. Some of them you have to be present to win. Some you don't. There's something for everybody, but we'll see you there at the Full Curl Society at the Western Hunting Concephers. We sponsor them in a big way. So, you know, huge advocates of being able to have more opportunities at drawn tags, and this is kind of one of those things, especially even our own raffle, so to speak. Our membership drive here at Epic Outdoors. It honestly is probably some of the best odds there is. You know, we're very careful in how we market that. We don't want to be perceived as that that's the only thing that matters in life. We're an information service.

That's what matters in life is that we're the best at consulting for Western Big Game, and that's where our focus is. However, we do need to have membership drives, and it's good for business, and it creates an excitement, and we're excited about it. But the drawing odds are going to be amazing. And so, anyway, just want to throw a little plug in for that. You can go to epicoutdoors.com, pick up some tickets, and, of course, we're giving away an Epic knife. It's customized, customized with our logo on it from Outdoor Edge, the replaceable blades. It's great, you know, if you buy a $200 package or a $500 package, and if you buy the five, we're also working with Cheston Davis at PhoneScope. We appreciate him and his support. You can get a PhoneScope package, which we give you a gift certificate, and you go online and get that, as well as a knife. A $500 deal is the best deal.

I mean, you get everything for that. It's pretty good. It's just, and we've talked to guys, Adam, you and I have talked to guys, and they say we've got to have at least one ticket in every sheep draw we can get. And that's the way we look at things. We do it. Obviously, we can't do our own draw, but when we go to the sheep show, we go to the Western Hunting Expo, we do some of the other state, you know, sheep foundation organizations that have a doll sheep or a stone sheep. We throw a ticket in. They're $40,000 hunts, and that's what the one we're giving away is. You can buy these tickets through February 28th. Anybody that joins our service before then will also be entered into a free doll sheep hunt. So you can get in for a doll sheep hunt just by spending $100 and joining Epic Outdoors service, magazine service.

If you want to purchase additional tickets for the stone sheep, brown bear, deer, elk, antelope, cougar, you can do that. That's up to you. And if you refer a guy, you're tired of freaking giving him your passwords and letting him steal your magazine and whatnot, which, A, we're kind of tired of it, B. Anyway, get him to join. Give him a gift subscription, whatever you want to do, and you're going to get a ticket in for any of the hunts that you choose, any of those six hunts that you choose. So anyway, it is a membership drive. All right, sounds good. Thanks for listening to that. Thank you.