EP 114: Nevada Department of Wildlife Deputy Director, Jack Robb

We have 895 species we manage and we hunt or fish 8% of those species. The rule changes are the shed antler gathering law and the other one's a trocam law. Anything to do with western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter and Adam Bronson coming at you from southern Utah. Snowy southern Utah, might add, Bronson. Absolutely. Got a lot of weather here. A lot of weather across the southwest. We're super excited. Of course, everybody that pays attention and lives out here is super excited as well. Water means antler. And antler means happy people. So, anyway, super excited. It's awesome. Almost March. So, here we go. But, anyway, another podcast here. We've got a special guest, Jack Robb. He's the deputy director of Nevada Fishing Game. And we're excited to get in it with him. We've known him for many, many years. Been a huge supporter. Him and all the different aspects he's played over the years. Been part of the commission and now within the game and fish itself.

So, before we get started, we want to thank Under Armour for sponsoring our podcast. Sponsoring a lot of different things we do. We appreciate them, their support. They've got a lot of good things going. And you can order some of their gear at UA.com. I just type in Ridge Reaper and up comes all the hunting gear. So, anyway, check it out. They've got a lot of things out there right now, even kind of in the off season. So, if you're looking to get a new rifle set up for this upcoming falls hunt, give Kurt and the guys there at Red Rock Precision a call. Call 801-425-6574 or visit them on the web at RedRockPrecision.com. Great custom rifles. They can customize a caliber. For each situation, whether it's a sheep hunting, backpacking rifle, or a great all-around rifle. Great guys. Very knowledgeable. We use their guns every year. Great long-range setups.

But just great all-around, well-built guns. So, give them a call and you won't be disappointed. Anyway, as we get started, we just want to thank Jack. Jack, you on with us here today? Yes, I am. How are you doing? How's it going over there? It's a good day in Reno. It's the first day that I haven't had snow in front of my house since the beginning of January. It warmed up enough. It melted stuff off pretty good last night. Yeah. Happy to see it warming up a little bit, but glad we have all the water. Yeah, absolutely. It's just like that over here. The last two days, we finally got the first smell of spring fever, it feels like. With warmer weather, it's melting, water running in the gutters, snow's melting. But hopefully, we got good things to come. I know the prairie dogs are poking their heads out yesterday the first time, so I guess that means something. I don't know what that means.

But spring's coming, that's, I guess. And you guys have been good over there, it sounds like. I know most all the weather that you get, we get, not necessarily Reno weather, but from you to Vegas, that weather pattern really comes through us. And from what you're hearing as well, we're really excited about the moisture that's been hitting Nevada, southern Utah, and all that. Is that pretty much what you're hearing from your guys across Nevada, Jack? We're in the Sierras, up 150, 160%, and across the state, we're seeing that also. It's great for habitat, but it grows cheatgrass at a rapid rate, too, and then we have those. Fires. It's a blessing, and it's good and bad. Nothing's perfect, but we'll take it when it comes. Let's just call it good. How about that? Let's call it good for mule deer over here on this side, at least this side of Nevada. Give us a little background.

Where'd you grow up? How'd you get started? Just a few things like that. I'm proud to say I was born in Tonopah, Nevada, and many people probably don't know where that is. Way to wait. You said you're proud. You're proud to say you're from Tonopah. Let's talk about that a little bit. How many people live there?

Currently, less than 3,000, and it's 250 miles from Reno and 200 miles from Vegas in between. And it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's in the middle of God's country, too. Yeah, you probably get to do what you want out there. Nobody's bugging anybody out there. It's everything I wanted growing up. Access to the mountains, access to the resource. Not many people around and surrounded by BLM. If you saw it, you could go climb it. You didn't have to worry about asking permission to go through a gate to get someplace. You just went and did it. That's awesome. All right. Sorry to digress there. Go ahead. Keep going. Yeah, I was born, went through eighth grade in Tonopah, and then my family moved to Reno, and I've been in Reno since 1982. Another great place to live. Proud to say I live here, but Tonopah will always be home, without a doubt.

I assume growing up in Nevada and outdoors and all that, you started hunting at an early age. How did you get involved in that? The way I really got involved, my dad was always supportive, and my brother, I have a younger brother, both of us hunting, but he wasn't an avid hunter. But I grew up, all my friends were avid hunters, from Brian and Mike Pichetti, Joe Mousslatch, the normal Tonopah crew. They were very avid. And it set in to my brother and I, and then my dad supported that. It's continued. Lifelong friendships with those guys, and still love to just get out and be around friends and outdoors. That's awesome. Yeah, you mentioned Joe Mousslatch and a few of these guys. You know, those guys, I mean, they defined early hunting there in Nevada, early meaning, you know, 20-plus years ago, seems like to me. They've been there and done that, about every aspect of it.

Well, they're multi-generation have been there and done that, from their grandfathers to their fathers.

All of our parents and grandparents grew up around each other, and multi-generations doing the same thing in the same area. A lot of knowledge, a lot of knowledge there. So how did you, you moved to Reno, and then how did you, career-wise, obviously there's some steps along the way that got you to where you are now, with Deputy Director within Nevada Department of Wildlife. Tell us a little bit about your career path, and then what motivations you had to get to where you are with the Department of Wildlife. I took an odd career path to end up being Deputy Director of Nevada Department of Wildlife. I was married and had kids when I was in college, and had to go get a job and be responsible adults. So I went to work for a power company, and ended up working for a water company, and then owned my own business for seven years.

But during that time, 1995, I got lucky enough to draw a sheep tag in central Nevada down the Pancake Range. And the same year my brother drew a sheep tag in 16 at Mount Jefferson. Wow. And when we did that, I looked at him, and I told him, I said, you know, we'll forever be indebted to the Fraternity Desert Bighorn and Nevada Bighorns Unlimited, because those opportunities were given to us by those organizations through their efforts to trap and transplant, guzzlers, and everything. The areas we drew were transplanted areas. No, they weren't there before. They were there extirpated, and those groups helped bring them back. And it was a special opportunity my brother and I had, and we started doing guzzler projects, different projects with them. And that was 1995, and come 1997, I found myself on the NBU board.

I did that for eight years, and that led into being a wildlife commissioner in 2005. And then I was changed governors. I was off the wildlife commission for three years, and then changed governors. I was back on the wildlife commission for three years. And during that time, the second time I was on, I owned a business and was traveling the West Coast. The economy went down in Reno, and I had to figure out how to make money for my family, so I went on the road.

The economy was coming back in Reno area, so I figured I'd sell my business and try to get a job back in Reno. I went off the commission at the same time, and I was offered a position at the Department of Wildlife. At first, I said no, because I'm not a biologist, I'm not a habitat guy, I'm not a warden. But our director was forward-thinking and wanted to focus more on the customer. We focus on the customer and the wildlife a ton through quality opportunity. We manage our big game for quality opportunity and older age-class animals, but we needed to convert that experience into license simplification, into new vendors that are user-friendly and mobile-friendly, and just change the way we do business and interact with customers. So we've been working on that for the past four and a half years, and I'm extremely happy to be at the Department of Wildlife and just love what I do.

And I'm fortunate enough to have great staff that has common vision and goals, and we can get some stuff done that benefits sportsmen. You know, we remember you. Adam and I attended a lot of those commission meetings. And back, you know, pre-deputy director, back when you were on the commission, you know, I mean, we would go and, of course, just mostly listen, because as non-residents, we don't want to, you know, voice our opinion too loud. I mean, obviously we help fund your state, but at the same time, it's your state and the residents, and they kind of get to decide and whatnot. But we did get to watch a lot of change happen while you were on the board and whatnot. But tell us a little bit about that. And, you know, there's just a lot of pressures to please everybody, and you can't please everybody and whatnot. But at the same time, you're trying to do what's right, you know,

whether it be, you know, politically with people or managing game. And so just tell us a little bit about that. Well, Nevada's experienced huge changes. Growing up, Nevada had less than a million people in it. Currently, we're sitting right around 3 million people. So I've heard statistics, one in five people living in Nevada were born in Nevada and from Nevada. So there's been a huge change that way. The first time I was on the Wildlife Commission, there was a little bit of controversy, but most of the controversy was with our sportsmen. Then during the time I was off the Wildlife Commission, Nevada implemented a bear hunt, and there was some trapping controversy. And multiple groups merged together, and we found ourselves in the political crosshair more than ever. And that was when I went back on the commission. I knew that I was going into that type of environment.

And being a commissioner, you know you can't please everybody. If you think you walked out of there and you pleased everybody, you're lying to somebody. Yeah. You've got to make tough decisions, and you've got to stand by what your morals and values are. And it's hard on friendships sometimes, but you've just got to stay true to who you are and what you believe and try to do the best for the sportsmen of Nevada and the citizens of Nevada. As a wildlife commissioner, you represent all wildlife. You represent all citizens. The Department of Wildlife, we have 895 species we manage, and we hunt or fish 8% of those species. And less than 2% of Nevadans pay for the right to hunt and fish that funds the management of the 895 species for the 98% of the people that don't hunt or fish or pay into the system.

So it's a balancing act, and we're in a legislative session now, and it's not our job to lobby things. It's our job to put the facts out there and tell them what we know and let the citizen legislature tell us what they believe the political wind is that day, and then it's our job to implement the laws they put in place. Nevada's changed a lot. The West has changed a lot. I know Utah has some growing pains. Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming. Wyoming, I guess, they're pretty stable right now, but things change. Demographics have changed, and values towards wildlife have changed and how people view wildlife. So that's something we struggle with on a daily basis around here, trying to juggle all those balls. And like I said, you can't keep everybody happy. You just have to do the best for wildlife and stay true to who you are. So from that perspective as a commissioner, you're right.

I mean, we attend meetings over here in Utah. I would say more when things come up that are maybe controversial or maybe… Especially when they're controversial. I wasn't going to emphasize that too much, Jason, but thank you. But you know what I mean. When we're passionate about something, whatever, you're going to go and speak your mind. But it is a tough, you know, it's tough to manage for wildlife and the betterment of them and the habitat and things like that. And then you superimpose things like drought or wildfire or all the things that get thrown on top of it. And you guys feel pressure to reduce deer populations in certain places with whether it be, you know, antlerless hunts or whatever on a short-term basis so that you can get the fire rehab in place and done and established before you start trying to grow deer or elk again.

And it's, you guys, it's a hard deal because you've got a big picture. I have a biology background and I know what that's like going there presenting one thing that is not a popular thing because you feel like you know that that's best for the specific situation that you're making that proposal for. And it's a tough balancing act and it's a social, biological balance and it's not an easy job. Well, and I think there's a lot of things that come into play too with the economy within the hunting industry. You've got outfitters and a lot of different people trying to make a living, you know, within the hunting industry. And there's decisions you're making that impact them directly, whether it be season dates or tag quotas and quality or lack thereof or whatever.

And so there's a lot of pressure and a lot of, you know, very emotionally charged people when it comes to change or even, you know, trying to make change. Maybe they want change and yet trying to do what's right. You've got the department's perspective in regards to game and fish. And then you've also got, you know, commission trying to represent, you know, hunters and sportsmen. And then how do you mix the two? Yes. And, you know, it was a real learning experience for me that second time on the commission. I always grew up thinking that if you could educate people, you could inform them into your way of thinking. And what I've come to realize is there's core values that people have and we all have them. And core values oftentimes don't marry up to other people's core values. So the Department of Wildlife is finding itself stuck in the middle of controversy on a regular basis.

And what we have to realize is people have different core values and you just have to respect them and listen to them. And a lot of times as a commissioner, we are told you didn't listen to me. And listening and agreeing are two different things. Just because I didn't vote with the way you thought I should doesn't mean I didn't listen to you or take it into consideration. But you just what I found you people's core values, you don't change them with data. They'll dismiss data to stick with their core value. And you get into wildlife management, you got two extremes on the items as predator control. You have sportsmen and ranchers that think we don't do enough. And you have animal rights people that think that we shouldn't do any. And we're stuck in the middle on a regular basis. Yeah.

So as you move from that commissioner role to your role as deputy director, tell us a little bit about what you do. Your director is Tony Wosley. Jason, I remember him back from his biologist days in Elko. That was where we associated him with a lot of times. Tell us about what your role is there and then talk about some of the changes. You alluded to him a bit ago. So what you were you're trying to steer help steer the ship for Nevada Department of Wildlife and the changes in this, you know, 21st century. And maybe from when you started really getting involved in the 90s to now, what your role in that is and what you're where you're where you guys are trying to, you know, rebrand. If you can use that term, the Nevada Department of Wildlife. I appreciate that term rebrand because we truly are. My role, my official role on paper is I'm deputy director over resource management.

So I have all the wardens, game biologists, habitat biologists, conservation, education, fisheries, and then the diversity, which is a non-game. They all fall under me in the org chart. But we have tremendous people that run each one of those divisions. And Tony, with his biology background, he handles the day-to-day biology decisions with each one of those divisions. My role here has been more in the public interface. I spend, depending on time of year, 50% of my time dealing with public records requests. People want to get information out of the department, whether it's on wind energy, bear management in the Tahoe Basin, just a whole host of items. So I spend a great bit of time with the public that just wants the information out of the department. Like grammar requests, like grammar type requests when they're wanting public records. Tell us a little bit about the black bear.

You made mention that takes up an alarming percentage of your daily routine or yearly work. But tell us a little bit about that and the challenges there. Most people probably don't understand what that means. Black bears are not the sexiest of the big game species in the West. But why is that a hotbed of controversy in Nevada? We have an ever-expanding black bear population in western Nevada, focused around the Reno-Tahoe area.

It's not a Nevada black bear population. That's one thing we always try to point out. To bleed over from California. We share a black bear population of 40,000-plus animals with California. It's just some of them happen to live part of the time in Nevada. Some of our Nevada bears live part of the time in California. We have tracking collars on a good number of them. We see their movements. We, through DNA analysis, know that it's one population. They're not distinct populations. But there's a lot of people that love to see them. And there's a lot of people that get their homes broke into, their cars broke into, their kids get bluff charged. So you have two extremes in a very heavily populated, recreated area in the Tahoe Basin. We have a duty as the Department of Wildlife to make sure citizens are safe.

And if we have a bear breaking in the houses, we need to address that situation or remove that bear from the situation. Whether take them out of the basin and locate them in another portion of the state. Tonopah? Or have we put them out there yet.

We put them in there. That's pretty funny. You've got to admit. That's pretty funny. It is pretty funny. But we do have bears show up there naturally. But, you know, the Department of Wildlife, they think that we're scattering stuff out. Things show up naturally. But if we relocate a bear, it's into bear-occupied habitat. We will not at this point, without going through the federal agencies and through a wildlife commission, a very public process, we wouldn't be moving bears into other areas. I've been surprised at the lack of bears over on this east side. Just surprised that, you know, it seems suitable. But, you know, they don't really have them over there. We've got kind of a gap on this western side of Utah that kind of probably blocks to some extent. It's a lot of desert to cross. Well, we do have confirmed sightings in Lincoln, White Pine, Elko County, even Nye County.

That's the dead center of the state. We are getting not just anecdotal sightings. We're getting scat. We're getting good, reputable sightings of bears in areas that they haven't been in 100 years. And if they're moving in there on their own, that's great. Wildlife needs to do what it needs to do. And they were there for hundreds and thousands of years. And so if they go back there, it's suitable habitat. And we'll learn how to manage them just like the moose that are moving into Elko County. That's been a big thing lately. We do have moose moving in Elko County. And that's become quite the topic down at the legislature this year. And made the press more than we ever imagined. So a couple moose show up. And it really makes people smile. Let's jump into something. I don't want to call it more exciting. It sounds like we're under-harvesting black bears to me.

Is that the end of the day you're feeling? Or can you say that? I think we have a reasonable amount of harvest. Okay. We look at what California harvest percentage-wise. And we look at what we harvest percentage-wise.

We're currently doing a couple different models. Dr. Settinger up at the university is helping us. We have other universities helping us do models to verify each model to come up with a population estimate. Like I said, those bears, they're part-time California residents, part-time Nevada residents. It's just one population. Well, let's jump into sheep, deer, elk, some of these exciting things. We've seen incredible things happen with sheep. The numbers are off the charts. Adam and I just marvel every year at the number of tags we're able to have and whatnot. You guys have gone through, you know, a lot of phases. And just, you know, it doesn't seem like disease has been a huge issue. I mean, although it's here and there, it's just, man, it's just off the charts with populations and whatnot. We've got some new units coming on for non-residents even.

And a few things, both California bighorns and deserts. But tell us a little bit about that. As we talked about earlier, the sheep programs have been driven greatly by the NGO community. Nevada Bighorns Unlimited. And there's multiple Nevada Bighorns Unlimited chapters throughout the state. Elko Bighorns Unlimited. The Fraternian Desert Bighorn. Those guys, they do fundraisers that bring money. But more importantly than just the money they bring into the sheep arena, they bring volunteers. We have, off the top of my head, been around 150 big game guzzlers throughout the state that benefit sheep. And those guzzlers, you show up on a weekend, they're building a guzzler, rebuilding a guzzler. You'll have 40 to 60 guys out there volunteering their time. We do a guzzler project in one weekend. It's a pretty amazing feat.

But the benefit to the Department of Wildlife, when those volunteers are out there, we get to count all their man hours and assign a dollar value to those man hours. And then that becomes a match for the department that then pays, helps pay for the materials to build the next guzzler. It's just something that, between the dollars that NGOs bring to us and the volunteer force that they bring to us, it really has been a driving factor that has made our sheep program. To go from 2,500 sheep in the state of Nevada and with only one species, Nelson Deserts, in the 1960s, to 12,000 sheep in the state of Nevada today, representing three species, it's been an incredible success story. When I drew my desert sheep tag in 1995, there was right at 100 tags given out. This year we put out 316 tags. Is that for just deserts? That's just for deserts. That's what I thought. That's a lot. 316 desert tags.

Yeah, and Jason and I often, we get asked by a lot of people, as we're building draw strategies and stuff for folks, we tell them Nevada, I mean, they give more non-resident desert sheep tags than all the other states combined. And you guys are about 30, 28 to 30, 31, you know, depending on the year, for non-residents. So that's awesome. 31 non-resident sheep tags. Every time I talk to somebody that's had a chance to hunt sheep in Nevada, I really stress that they need to join NBU and the fraternity and even see one of their dinners to find out the work that went into giving those non-residents that opportunity. It's a passion on a lot of these guys. A lot of my best friends were made through sheep programs, guzzler builds, lifelong friends that have actually become part of the family, special people. And then you talked about the non-residents and putting in for tags in Nevada.

We do have more areas this year for non-residents. But one of the things you get asked, I'm sure, a lot is what's the best area to put in? Last year, I'm looking at it, we killed 23 Boone and Crockett rams out of 15 different areas. So when you look at that, what's the best area? Well, I'd tell you the best area. The one you draw. The one you draw. That's exactly what I was going to say. We had two rams. On our checkout, they show 179 inches, but I think the final B and C score on both those rams were 180. Those are just fantastic sheep. Yeah, they are. 91% harvest rate. And an average days in the field of 5.4 days. And the commission, a couple years ago, even lengthened the season from November 20th for most seasons through the end of December, gave it another 10, 11 days, which my wife really appreciated because that just gives me more time to go out with different friends. Chase sheep.

Yeah. Well, it's Chase. She really appreciates that. But they do. Our wives appreciate it, too, because we chase sheep over in Utah, but that usually is over by about the 10th of November for us over here. We're done. And so we love to slide south and go to the warmer weather, Jason and I, in November and December or whenever it is and get on another sheep hunt or two. And it's awesome. The sheep numbers in Nevada are really incredible. And I know us over here in Utah, I used to serve as the president of our Utah sheep organization, Utah Finaw's at the time. And you guys were great partners, Nevada Department of Wildlife, in providing transplant stock for us over here on many of our units. You know, historically, I mean, our Zion unit, our East and West Kaparowicz units are pretty much all a product of Nevada stock from the 1970s, 1973 or 4s when they brought them to Zion.

And, you know, look at what that's done both inside the national park and outside now where there is hunting. And as well as Kaparowicz, East and West in the late 90s, early 2000s, mid-2000s either from a lot of different source populations in Nevada. And I know you guys have done that with other states as well. I think maybe Colorado got sheep from you. So just an incredible resource of sheep. We're talking about desert sheep primarily, but that is really extended outside your boundaries of just in Nevada. And I know as Utah residents, we really appreciate that because we have what we have to some extent because of our sheep organizations in Utah and our Utah DWR. But you got to have sheep to put on the mountain and you guys have had them to give. And so we're appreciative of that. Well, we've been on the receiving end of that.

Our California bighorn sheep, our elk, our Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, our goats. A lot of our prized possessions in our state didn't originate in our state. They were historically here, but we had to bring them back in Canada, Colorado, Oregon, Wyoming with our elk. A lot of people have helped us build the level of game we have in our state also. And so we don't see it as giving sheep away. We see it just as our taking our turn in the betterment of everybody. Yeah, it goes around, comes around and type of thing. And that's kind of been true. What about your Rockies? You know, we get questions every year from applicants that have some Rocky points built up and mountain goat points built up for Nevada. And they just are kind of sitting there, you know, in their account. Can you give us a kind of a current status update?

You know, we know of the die-offs back in the East Humpholts and that, where you guys were killing phenomenal rams in the early 2000s until the disease issue went through there. And I know there's been some reintroduction efforts there. Maybe bring us up to speed on those as well as the goats as well. We're hopeful that we could get that back. It's had a couple die-off periods and it did come back. And that's when we were hunting them. I think it was 2007, 2008. We had that crash again. We're trying to do some studies right now. We believe that there may be some goats that are shedders that are the disease carriers that limit our recruitment. When you have a shedder, they're actively carrying the virus, but it's not killing them. But when you have the young come on, they transfer that to the young and then your young don't make it, so your recruitment is low.

And we believe that's part of our problem with our goats and our Rocky Mountain sheep. So we're trying to design some studies that we can go in and capture and color some animals, look for which ones are potential shedders, and then look for ways to remove those out of the population so we can get a healthy, viable building, growing population again. So I'd like to say it's growing and things are all rosy, but right now we're still struggling with our Rockies and our goats. They're just not performing as they did in the past. We're trying to figure out why, and as soon as we figure out why, I know that we have the habitat to support them, and we'll get back to where we need to be. It's just we need to get better at it, and it's going to cost some money, and that's where those NGOs come in.

And it's going to take some volunteers to do some things, and we're going to stay after it until we get there. Right on. Yeah, we totally agree with that. It's tough, and some things just aren't totally in your control. And so you just do the best you can at managing them and continue to work with it and learn from it and move forward and take care of some of the problems that may have caused it initially. Absolutely. Before we leave that, we do want a little shout-out. We talked about Nevada Bighorns Unlimited. You can go to NevadaBighornsUnlimited.org. I think their banquet this year is April 5th. They sell out. I don't know if they're sold out this year, but anyway, anybody that's interested might go on to their website and check it out, maybe buy tickets. Same thing with the fraternity there of Desert Bighorns there in Vegas. May 18th is theirs.

Adam and I are planning on making that one. You can go to DesertBighorn.com and get tickets and learn more about that and then show up. It's going to be quite an event. So anyway, Adam and I have both been to Nevada Bighorns Unlimited here and there. Depending on the year, we get busy this time of year here in the office. But anyway, we thought we'd go support the fraternity down there in Vegas. And so I just want to give another shout-out to another one of our partners. PhoneScope. It's that time of year. If you've got a new phone and you need a setup for your binos, spotting scope, whatever, before scouting season comes, jump online at PhoneScope.com. P-H-O-N-E-S-K-O-P-E.com. Pick the model for your phone and your optic of your choice. Get it set up before you need it. And capture a lot of great scouting footage. We all use this here in the office.

Won't leave home without it on a scouting trip. So visit PhoneScope.com. P-H-O-N-E-S-K-O-P-E.com. Anyway, a little shout-out to them. And before we get too far away from desert sheep, Adam brought up that he likes that the Utah sheep season ends and he goes south and he hunts. And then a little while ago, I also spoke about 91% success rate. When people look at Nevada, I think they need to do their homework. Some of that 9% is not successful. They put in for areas that they can draw. But we do have some northern units that have big mountains. Mount Jefferson, the Arc Dome area. They're just 11, 12,000 foot mountains. Very rugged. We have people draw those that are out of state and they come in and they don't know what they're getting into. They think they're going to a desert big horn sheep hunt and they're hunting zero degrees at 10,000 feet. Make sure you do your homework.

Those are great areas. They're some of my favorite areas to hunt. But know your own physical limitations when you're applying for each area. Don't just look at the area that you can get a tag in. Look at what your own physical limitations are and apply accordingly there, too. That's where you guys come in. You can help your clientele pick what areas better suit their own personal challenges. You're right. Yeah, we do publish that. And a publication will come out in the April issue. In fact, we're working on it right now. And we do go over those units and what to expect and things, kind of give a brief overview. I did talk to a guy that hunted the Arctone Desert this past year. And he loved it. Went on and on. And there's just a lot of unknowns. There's, you know, bigger sheep than people think. And it was quite an interesting conversation.

And so, anyway, a lot of quality spread across the board, just like we talked about earlier. But let's jump into elk a little bit. There's been, of course, Nevada. Adam and I have always argued, not argued with other people, just that Nevada is one of the top producing elk states in the West. I mean, maybe not numbers-wise, but quality is pretty much unsurpassed. And Ely's helped put that on the board. And now it's branched out in a lot of different areas, whether it be Area 13, Area 6, all that country, clear up by Wells and Elko. Been just phenomenal. Had a buddy draw. One of the two non-resident muzzleloader tags up there in Area 6. And just off the charts had the time of his life this past year. And so, anyway, just dive into that a little bit.

What you guys have seen, the quality numbers, the spreading out of elk and whatnot, which allows, you know, increasing tags and different things. Well, our bull-cow ratio is just through the roof. And elk hunting in Nevada is just a phenomenal thing. I've been lucky enough to have a muzzleloader tag up on Table Mountain in Area 16. Both my boys have been lucky enough to draw over an Ely. And all three hunts that my family's been on have just been quality hunts. The chance of seeing big bulls every day is great. The chance of getting to them is big country. Big country. Tough to get to. Tried up, as you guys know. And they make you work for them, but the quality's there. We, throughout the years, when I was on the commission, we paid for studies. You might remember going to the commission meetings. We talked about collecting teeth from elk so we could do age studies on the bulls. You bet.

And we equated those ages. And we were taking ages and we were having a hunter harvest. People send in what their main beam length was. And we've come up with, you know, an eight-year-old bull is where you start seeing that 50-inch main beam. And that's the type of bulls we manage for is that 50-inch main beam. Most areas were over a third of the elk killed with a 50-inch main beam. And some of them were up to almost 50% of the elk killed in some areas with that 50-inch main beam. So eight-year-old bulls are out there. Eight-year-old and older bulls are out there. It's not a rarity to see a big bull. You hunt over an ely, you see a lot of big bulls. Like I said, seeing it and being able to get in position to make it happen are two different things. But every day you have that chance to try to make a different move to get in the position.

And it's just a special thing to hunt elk in Nevada, without a doubt. And with our success in elk and moving them in Elko County and, you know, Lincoln County, Nye County, we do have agreements with our federal partners that we need to keep our elk numbers at a certain level. So we had exceeded most of those caps in a lot of areas. So we really put the gas pedal down and started harvesting cows at a pretty good rate. And when you harvest more cows than bulls, that's when your bull ratio really starts growing too. So some of our areas are almost one-to-one cow-to-bowl ratio.

I know some of your listeners are opportunity people also. I'm going to put meat in the freezer.

40% of our tags last year for non-resident cow elk went to people with zero bonus points. People overlook Nevada as a place that you can come harvest a cow elk. In archery or muzzle or rifle season doesn't conflict with a season in your own home state.

That's one thing people don't realize is we do have cow elk tags that 40% went to people with zero bonus points last year. That's something. And their success rate's high too. So good place to come hunt elk and chase elk. And it's a different point system, right? Worth pointing out, right, Jack? So people don't need to worry about burning their regular bull points for that, right? Yeah. Yeah, we have bonus points because we have a spike elk hunt. We have a bull hunt. We have a cow hunt. Each one of those is a subcategory and have their own hunts. Your bull, cow, and spike, your points gain for bull and your points gain for cow. Yeah, separately. You don't gain for weapon class because on one application you can put in for muzzleloader, archery, and rifle on one application. So that's one set of bonus points.

But that and the other thing, Nevada bonus points work different than everybody else's too. We're not to take the top off. You know, you don't have to be in so long to draw. We have people with zero, one, two bonus points draw desert big orange sheep tags. We have people that have max points that don't draw. The point system, we square your bonus points. All it does is put more chances into the drawing for you. It's not a guarantee like it is in other states. It's more chances. But what we really like about our point system is everybody's in the game year one. You know, there's places I'd like to hunt in other states that I don't even put in because I'll never catch that wave. I wasn't in at the beginning. And if I start now, if it takes 10 points to draw that area, by the time I get there, it'll be 35 points to draw that area. In Nevada, I'm in year one. It's kind of a hybrid.

You know, we're not Idaho and New Mexico. We're straight non-bonus point. But you're still in year one. Random draw. Yeah. Yeah. Five choices as well. So it allows you to stagger your choices a little bit from swinging for the fence maybe on the first couple to gradually third through fifth units you're willing to take. Yeah. I drew a California bighorn sheep tag on my fourth choice. Yeah. And was it the area I wanted to go? No, but it was a great sheep tag because it was in my pocket. That's right. So, well, very, very good points there, people, especially a lot of folks. We get a lot of calls from folks from maybe from California looking for, you know, cow elk hunts, things like that. And obviously they got to drive through Nevada to get to Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, all these others. So good that you brought that up for those guys.

And so do you find any areas in Nevada you still have in your sites potentially where you think elk can expand? Or do you have at least populations where you feel currently where you can grow elk and manage elk? Elk are naturally expanding. The Santa Roses, north of Winnemucca, we opened them up to hunting a couple years ago. That's not a transplant area. Area 17, just straight north of Tonopah. We didn't put elk in there, but there's an increasing elk population in there. We manage it with Area 16.

Not too much opportunity to move elk anymore. They've done it on their own. They've done it on their own, but they continue to do it on their own. We have sheep continue to do it on their own. We have pioneering elk and sheepherds. And, you know, we think we know where we want them to go. And they'll tell us sometimes where they want to go. Elk will live about anywhere. They're experts on it. They'll tell you where they want to go. Tell us about when you mentioned Area 17. Just for the listeners that don't know, that haven't spent, you know, 20-plus years applying for Nevada. You know, tell us about Area 17 versus 171 to 173 as now known, you know, nowadays. Just the difference. When I talk about Area 17, that's just old school talk growing up in Tonopah. If you ask somebody in Reno Area 14, they think of Granite Mountain north of Gurlack.

And you ask somebody in Unit 14, they think of the Diamond Mountains in their backyard. And 141s. 141. And that's because I think back in the days they call them Area 14. It wasn't segregated into three-digit units, you know. That's exactly it. When you bring in sheep and you bring in elk and you have these different species, you have to manage in different ways. So Area 17, what I call 17 is now, we added 17 south, not we. The commission added 17 south a year ago, 171 south to split 171 so you can manage those sheep populations different. You have that high alpine area. The ark dome area that's 10,000, 11,000 feet. And then 20 miles south, there you have some rolling hills that go to 7,000, 8,000 feet. And it was two distinct populations, but it was in one unit. And to manage those different than you come up with, do we just keep subdividing those units? 17 becomes subdivided.

And right now we have a 171 north and south. And in the future, when we get around to it, we're going to have to give it another number than just the north and south. Yeah. You look at what we've done in 211. It was a sheep unit. It used to be 211. It was 211 north and south. And now there's a 213, 214. So it used to be Area 21, then it became 211, and then subdivided even more. Yeah. That subdivision happens for different management strategies for different species. So when I talk about 17, I mean, tonal pond, it's the 171, 172, 173. And when I talk about 16, that's 161 through 164. Right. And we just get a lot of questions of that. Just, you know, but it just stems back from the old days. 24, 241 to 245, all that. So anyway. And when you draw a deer tag, it is all the 171s or everything that's in the 170 series.

And when you draw a deer tag, it's everything in the 160 series or the 14 series. Sure. It depends what species you're after, but it has been subdivided over the years for different management plans. Well, let's jump into deer. Of course, we've seen a lot of good things in elk. We've had tags ourselves. We tell everybody they should be applying. Nevada's a must-apply for state when it comes to desert sheep, California bighorns, elk, deer, and antelope. And so anyway, definitely huge advocates of the elk. We've been a part of some of the amazing bulls. Actually, I guided, you know, 400-incher over there clear back in the day, back down in 24 when it first opened. And so it's just one of those things, you know, and I've ate my tag, too, personally. And they're looking for a giant and hunting a specific bull. But we are, it's always exciting. There's not a lot of non-resident permits.

However, for the minimal non-refundable application fee, you know, to apply, it's well worth getting points for. And so Adam and I tell guys, every person that has any interest in elk, sheep, deer whatsoever, to be applying. And so I just wanted to throw that out before we move on to deer. But you have anything to add on that, Jack? I think that we have different deer hunting in Nevada than a lot of other states. And we manage for things that other states don't even consider managing, too. We're at a $30 per 100 doe post-hunt buck ratio. A lot of other states don't see 20%. And we do have some areas that exceed 40% buck per 100 doe post-hunt survey. That's just unheard of. Is that in all units or just certain units and you have others that you manage for below 30? But is that a benchmark you try to have in all units post-season? Well, $30 is what we manage for.

But you go through a county advisory board process and you go through a commission process.

The commission is the social end of wildlife management. And if they want to have some areas that are $40 per 100 does, the way they set the quotas, that's what comes out in the quotas. And that's part of the department commission role is the department tells them what the biology is. And the commission is there at the social end of meeting what some constituents want. And we do have extremely high buck-dough ratios. We have high success rate. What I'm seeing off my dashboard is 55% success rates statewide last year. That's just opportunities there. And I think what really sets us apart from other states is we're 85% public land. Like I talked about before, if you see a mountain, 99% of the time you can go hunt it. You may not be able to get up a particular canyon because of private property, but you can find a way on the mountains.

And that's what I love about Nevada is just our ability to get out and hunt in areas we want to go without asking for permission or a trespass fee or whatever it may be. You see it. You want to go there. Put your boots on. Let's go. And the other thing, there is a lot of high mountain areas that you've got to put your boots on and go and earn it. And because of some people's physical limitations, there's a lot of areas in the state that have tremendous road access also. So that's something that needs to be taken into consideration too when your customers are applying is their own physical limitations. And there are some areas that offer better access, whether it's through UTV, ATV, or truck. And we have a lot of areas that, like I said, they're BLM and Forest Service managed. And pick what hunting style you have.

And there's a lot of opportunities to match that in this state, whether it's get 10 miles in or away from people and hunt out of a two-man tent or whatever it takes. Or drive around and take that chance. Anywhere in between. Yeah, Jason and I talk a lot about that with our clients. And you have, for the most part, you have, you know, archery, muzzleloader, and rifle seasons. And in some cases, two or three rifle seasons, an early, a middle, or a later. At least one long rifle season, sometimes a later season for those people that want to, you know, try to be a little bit more exclusive in the hills with fewer people. Dates that flirt with the rut or even get into the rut. So there's something for everybody in Nevada. And the other thing worth pointing out on deer, you don't have a waiting period. If you draw a tag one year, you're back in the next year.

You know, you've got to wait, you know, seven years for elk, ten years for sheep. You know what I mean? Those are maybe one or two in your lifetime for most non-residents to get. But where deer, you know, you draw, you're back in the next year. Apply aggressively if you want. If it's a year you need to get a tag, add some, you know, opportunity hunts for archery, muzzleloader, or maybe some of those high country units you alluded to. If you want to get a deer tag in Nevada, it's something you can be as aggressive or non-aggressive each year. And it's interesting that antelope has a three-year waiting period and deer don't. So, you know, for us, I know there's less antelope tags and I get the demand for all that. But it's just kind of interesting. We are grateful there isn't a waiting period for deer. We like to kill your deer, Jack. Yeah, I know.

And I think you guys will agree it's a special opportunity in Nevada. And there is some units that do historically produce bigger bucks. But just as we have in our sheep, there's big bucks all over the state. You just got to go find them. And I want to, yeah, I was going to expound upon that a little bit. Adam and I have talked a lot about the changes we see in the different units. And a lot of people say, well, the same units produce the same year in and year out no matter what. And it's just not the case. We've seen the 270s for desert sheep go from, on paper, the worst units in the world for desert sheep to be one of the best trophy producing units in the state. You know, quality-wise, we've seen the Sheldon in that northwest corner back in the late 90s, early 2000, was the most revered country in the state for mule deer.

You know, to now being, you know, less than perfect trophy quality-wise, where we've also seen, you know, Elko come and go. Country in Elko has an incredible history in the record books. And then they took a dive, and now it seems like they're coming back a little bit. And, of course, Area 7 seems to be doing really well right now. But, you know, and then everything along the Utah border, you know, like you said, and, of course, you know, the 240s and 230s and 220s and 130s are just producing an incredible number of good deer right now. So, and a lot of that, you know, depends on moisture. Nevada's an arid state, as we've talked about. But we have seen change come and go. And like you said, you know, the more we branch out, Adam and I branched out, I've hunted 25 and a few of these other places. You start to realize there's good quality, you know, wherever you go if you work hard at it.

And some of these are easier to draw than others. And with less than perfect season dates, you've got really good drawing odds. And, you know, there's, you bring up a few of those areas. You go to that center part of the state, 16, 17, 14, they're big mountains. People don't realize the mountains we have in Nevada. We're one of the most mountainous states in the country. It's just, it's not one big mountain range like the Sears or the Rockies. It's just 7,000-foot valleys with 12,000-foot peaks on each side of it. And just a lot of different ranges. And my boys and I, we love putting the boots on. And our goal is to find deer. But we start with finding where we can get away from people. And then we go look for deer when we get away from people. And those possibilities exist in a lot of those areas. If you want to get off the road and go hunt, a lot of times you'll be by yourself.

And that's a pretty special experience. We just want to know where you're going to apply, Jack. Where are you going to apply? Or does old habits die hard? One of those numbers you just came up with, I'm going to apply for, but I'm not going to tell you. We're going to Sheldon. We just rattled off about 10 units. So it's one of those. I'm not going to the Sheldon. The Sheldon and then northwest Nevada, it was subject to record-breaking droughts. Yeah, year after year. Four consecutive years. It's just your recruitment's down. The habitat just really got beat up during that time. And I wouldn't be putting in for the Sheldon for a while. But when it comes back, we have good moisture up there this year. But it's going to take a few years to get that thing back. You know, a few good consecutive years to get the habitat and condition that you can start producing what it used to.

It's got the genetics. We need that habitat back. And when you have snow tail sites that don't register any snow over a season or a couple seasons. It doesn't matter if you're in Vegas or Tonopah, that's a problem. Yes, exactly. One thing unique you guys have in Nevada as well for rifle deer hunters is the Nevada guide draw for deer, which is pretty unique. There's only another state. New Mexico has that for all species. But talk a little bit about that. The application period is open right now for about another 10 days. It closes on March 11th. Just discuss that. We have a lot of clients ask us about that. We generally tell them, if you know you're going to use an outfitter when you draw, you're in almost every single case. Chase and I have not found a case, I don't think, where the odds are worse for a particular hunt. There may be one obscure one.

But for the most part, we've looked at it's two to four times better drawing odds to apply for the same unit in the guide draw. So talk a little bit about that. It's unique. And you also get to find out six weeks or two months earlier that you drew a tag or not. Definitely so. Legislature has probably been 20 years now that the guide draw has been in effect. And approximately 300 tags a year. It comes out of the non-resident quota. Non-residents get 10% of all species. The guide draw comes right out of the non-resident quota. And you have to apply through a guide. The way it currently works is the guide can apply for you or we assign all the guides a unique number for their guiding operation. And then they can give that unique number to their clientele and then tell them what areas they would like them to apply. It increases your odds, like you said, tremendously.

But you are hooked to going with that guide. It is a guided hunt. So you can't just use that outfitter to apply to get the tag and then do it a do-it-yourself hunt. You are tied to that guide at that point. He needs to accompany you in the field to legally have that tag. For the whole duration, like New Mexico has a provision of a minimum of two days. But Nevada, any time you hunt with that tag, you've got to have a license guide. Yeah, some of your seasons. And it's for rifle only, like Adam said. And some of your seasons are, you know, three-plus weeks. And, you know, a guy's going to get a tag, you book a five-day hunt. I mean, unless you rebook, you know, you're not able to be legally in the field. Stay on your own. And need to be applying where that guide guides, too. You can't, you know, don't expect a guy, you know, out of Pioch or something to be going over to Reno to guide.

You know, or, you know, anyway, there's just different provisions that way. A lot of the guides that we deal with, they apply for their clientele. So their clientele can't, as we talked about earlier, we have what people in Reno call Area 14, which is Granite Mountain. And then you've got people in Eureka that say Area 14. They talk about the 140 series. So guides will apply for their clientele just to make sure that those little nuances don't creep in. And all of a sudden, one of their clients draws a tag in an area that they might not have a forest service permit for. So work with your outfitter. Another opportunity we see a lot is outfitters working with private landowners. And we, on elk and deer and antelope, we have landowner tag opportunities that the department works with landowners, whether it be in a damage compensation fashion or in an elk incentive fashion.

Private landowners get tags, and they're not really tags. They're vouchers that they can turn around and sell. They can sell them straight to the client, or a lot of times they go through services like Epic Outdoors, or outfitters also get them and do it that way. And sometimes outfitters work through you guys on those tags. So there's multiple ways that you can get tags in Nevada, whether the general draw, the guy to draw, landowner tags. Depending on your financial wherewithal and your want, there's opportunity in Nevada. Yeah, and we're huge advocates of that, being able to, you know, you guys issue landowner tags. Basically, layman's terms, we're talking about landowner tags being issued to landowners, and they can sell them for profit. Not a big deal. You guys condone that, obviously.

And it allows people in the private sector to be able to, you know, help with compensating for damage. So landowners actually, you know, don't mind having wildlife on their property and fixing fence and a few other things that damage that may occur having animals on their property. So what a great program. I know none of these programs are perfect. Every state deals with, you know, the different ways that they divvy out landowner tags. Some of them make them transferable to blood relatives only or ranch managers, things like that, whether it be Wyoming and whatnot. But anyway, we do deal in those tags, as you mentioned, and happy to do so. I think we probably, you know, one of the largest companies that deal with those. But a lot of it is just because we're huge advocates of hunting deer and elk in Nevada.

You guys got a great resource managed for quality, you know, for the habitat you got and whatnot and the animals that you have. You sure do a great job of managing them. And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of demand for those tags. So part of that equation is predators. You guys are also fairly liberal when it comes to lions and different things. You know, maybe you want to take a quick second and just talk about your predator management. Yes. If you apply in Nevada, every application, there's a $3 fee for predator management. And then there's a legislative mandate that the proceeds of that $3 fee, we have to use 80% of that for lethal predator management. And we use that management tool. If we have a certain population that's underperforming, whether it be sheep or deer, we may go in and do some coyote removal. On fawning grounds, we may go in and do lion removal.

If we have a bighorn sheep population and we think predators may be a limiting factor to them getting over the bubble where they can be self-sustaining. So that's the $3 fee program. You brought up lion hunting. That's another activity that guides really enjoy in Nevada because, like I talked about, the 85% public land.

Good snow conditions. Lion hunters are out now. We do have a 365-day lion season. And so if you have a tag in your pocket, it's good for 365 days from, well, tomorrow will be a brand new lion tag because it resets once a year. It's not an annual January to December. Yeah, it's March 1st. You have to reset quotas at some point on the year. And this is March 1st is the day you do that. Well, the nice thing about that, too, we notice when you apply, everybody, when you apply for Nevada, you guys are pretty cheap when it comes to non-resident lion tags, just like $104 or something. If you draw a tag and want one in your pocket, even on an incidental hunt, deer, elk, or something like that, you see a lion, give somebody for $100, gives you an option to whack a lion on your deer, elk hunt, things like that. And it's happened.

Those opportunities are coming more and more prevalent to the hunters just out in the field. So if you're going to spend some time in Nevada, I'd say pick up a lion tag. It's worth the $100. Definitely so. There's an unlimited number. We just have a limited number of harvest. You're supposed to call in before you go into the field. But during your deer seasons, we've never, deer and elk season, sheep season, we've never reached that harvest limit. I haven't seen us reach the harvest limit since I've been associated with this. So those opportunities exist, and I know it's something that the guides love doing in the January, February timeframe with the snow on the ground. And it just gives an additional opportunity to come to Nevada and hunt. And you can get two tags annually currently. So you go pursue one, you like it, and you can come back and do it again the same year.

We want to talk about something controversial. Yeah, we can't let you off too easily. We're going to rattle your chain. So go ahead. Bronson, go ahead. Rattle this chain. Well, probably a couple of changes that have been very recent in Nevada, a couple of law slash rule changes are, one is the shed antler gathering law, and the other one is the trail cam law. So tell us a little bit about, I guess, let's talk about the shed season law that was in effect the last year or two, maybe two years, something like that. And how that came about, I mean, I realize there's resource protection, but, you know, it feels like for us Utah people. They love to shed hunt your state. It's a little bit targeted to the eastern side of Nevada. Bothersome, Jack. It's bothersome. Hey, it's all good. You know, back in the first time I was on commission between 2005 and 2008,

we recognized that shed hunting was pushing animals more than sometimes we liked them pushed on winter range and tough winters. So it was something that was on our radar. I actually did a radio spot over in Ely encouraging people to shed hunt ethically.

The commercialization has changed it. You know, it's a good family activity, and we really support family activity and having people out in the field. It's a great thing to get your kids out and do. But we just saw more and more heavy pressure on some critical mule deer winter range and elk winter range. And the legislature, I believe it was 2011, actually mandated the Wildlife Commission take a look at a shed season. And it took a few years to come to fruition. And then it was talked about. And when I was on the commission the second time, and we actually passed a regulation, but the way that it works in Nevada is anytime the commission passed a regulation, it goes to a legislative body that then has a final say whether the regulation passed by a commission can become law. And it was held up.

Even though the regulation was passed by the commission, it wasn't passed into law by the legislative body. And then a couple years ago when we had that terrible winter and Utah didn't want people out in their habitat, we saw an influx of people coming in Nevada that year. It really drove the need for some type of regulation to protect key habitat when animals are most vulnerable. Let's just be honest. You're talking about people driving cross-country or just doing anything and everything it takes to gather sheds. Pick up a brown. Because that's what you were – I mean, I'm not – I mean, you know, just call it what it is. You know, between fat tracks, ATVs, UTVs. Yeah. It just – it was pretty outrageous some of the things we were seeing people do. And actually discharging firearms to get deer to run, hoping they'd go through the trees and knock off antlers. Yeah.

It just – it was a situation we needed to address. The Wildlife Commission addressed it. And we're not saying don't shed hunt. We believe it's a great activity and we want you to get out there with your families and do it. Yeah. We're just saying, hey, let's wait a couple months and get out there when those animals have moved off that critical deer winter range. And then respect the habitat when you're there. Don't grid out with your claws and ATVs and fat tracks. Yeah. Over in Ely for – you know, I did a – when I had my own company, I did an electric meter automation job over there. I'd been to every electric meter in White Pine County. And I was over there working during the shed season. And the number of trucks in town with fat cats, everybody had one in the back of their truck.

And then you couldn't get to a wash or a canyon that didn't have, you know, fat track tracks up the bottom of it and all over gridded out. Especially in that Tonopah country. Especially out in that area. Yeah. There's a lot of country out there. And, you know, this stems – it was acceptable, so to speak. Back in the early 90s, there wasn't as many people, like you said, the commercialization. Things changed, you know, and it was different. It was just different. And nowadays, you know, with the people and the demand and whatnot, there – you know, as things change, maybe you're indicating there's a need for regulation to change. Is that what we're getting at? It was time. It was something that had been talked about, like I said, since about 2006. And it is a wholesome family activity.

I don't want to do anything to not have a guy take his son and daughter out and, you know, his wife and have a great family activity. But we just need to respect those animals and let them do their thing during the tough times of year. We just wish you would have done a pilot program in other parts of the state that aren't near us, you know, for a little while. Yeah, exactly. So the way that stands, is that of May 1st through, I mean, December? That's your anything-goes type thing? I mean, in terms of shed hunting, yeah. And from January 1 to April 30, right, that's the critical time you guys have kind of wanted that avoided. And only in the – I believe it's the six eastern counties, Eureka, Nye, White Pine, Elko, Lincoln.

And, you know, that was part of the reason they didn't pass the time before is because we have chuck runners in Humboldt and Washoe County that would be out and stumble into a shed. And, you know, they're like, I want to be able to turn – Pretty soon, now they're in violation. Yeah, well – Yeah, but we separated it out. Not all counties are covered under that regulation. The western counties aren't. The eastern counties are. Well, and part of that, too, is, I mean, we've talked about that on your elk distribution. I mean, we're talking deer and elk, but when elk antlers are 15-plus bucks a pound, I mean, there's the commercialization of that's what you're talking about. That's where the bulkier elk are and better deer zones, too. And so that kind of mirrors that. I mean, we feel targeted, but we know we're really not, Jack, I guess is what we're saying. I'm not so sure yet.

I'm not convinced. But I do – we do love it. We do love it. And it is – you know, there's – I would say 80%, 90% of the people, you know, by the rules wouldn't do that anyway. It's the few that have caused that. And so, anyway. Another factor we have is we've been devastated by wildfire on a lot of our winter habitat, and we're trying to get that habitat to come back. And when you have wildfire go through big sagebrush stand or buckbrush stand, you know, bitterbrush stand, the next year when that brush isn't there, do we just see snowmobiles and ATVs just gridding that stuff out? And it's like we're trying to get this to come back to support the wildlife, and you're not helping in that effort by being out there tearing it up.

Tell us about the trail cam law, another one of those controversial subjects, although, you know, we still can run cameras, but just not from August 1st to December 31st. But just jump into that a little bit. Is it something you guys would continue to condone after going – you know, after having it, you know, on the books, so to speak, after the first year? Yeah, last year. Last year was the first year. And it's a – that was a big argument that started when I was on the commission the first time also. And it was a growing concern. And when we have water developments that the fraternity of Desert Bighorn and NBU and others have paid to get it in there, and it's doing great things for wildlife in very water-limited country, that's why we put the guzzlers in. And we had 35 cameras on a guzzler site. And people say, well, my camera's there. I'm not disturbing it.

But when you have 35 different cameras and, you know, people going in and checking cards and stealing cards and stealing cameras, and it was to a point that it needed to be addressed because we do believe it was having an impact on our wildlife resource. And the commission took that on. And if it's a transmitting camera, it can't be on after July 1st. And if it's a camera, you have to go pull a card on. It can't be on after August 1st.

Did you guys see any – You know, if you ask me, and I take heat from some of my friends on this, I love sheep hunting. And sheep are a lot of times tied to water.

We've had multiple sheep tags in my family, and I've never used a camera. I would rather put my boots on and wear an area out every weekend before the season, you know, put 30 days in the field, glassing and figuring out the animals rather than spending five days in the field pulling cards. That's just who I am, and that's the way I go after. On the flip side of that, it's like Christmas for a guy that likes to run cameras when you're going – you know, you're out in the field. My kids love it. Oh, yeah. You know, we're setting cameras. We're hiking in. It's teaching us country and setting up a camera and then going back and checking the card. It's just like Christmas. I mean, it's just – for a guy that runs cameras, I like running cameras. Adam runs cameras. You know, and it's not necessarily directly tied to success, but it does help at times.

But it's so fun to see what's on the camera, see what's in the country, especially in arid states. And so, you know, it's a love-hate deal. I can see it. It's going to save a few animals here and there. But it's – I don't think it's responsible for all the death of the bigger animals taken like some might think as well. So there's a couple sides to it. There is. And one of my best friends, he was on the commission with me, and he really loves it. He's out of Eureka, and it's a good family activity for him. And like you said, it's Christmas. Because, you know, to see bobcats on it, eagles, there's a guzzler named after my dad. And there's some video of an eagle using my dad's drinker – I call him my dad's drinker – drinker at my dad's guzzler – using it as a birdbath for 15 minutes. It's just in there splashing around. Yeah.

You can see some fantastic things, and there's a lot of legitimate uses for them. And it's a controversial item, but it's one of those items that the commission looked at and said, you know, it's time that it did continue to grow to a point that something had to be addressed. And they did address it. With sheds and with trail cams, it will be in place for a couple years, and I'm sure it will be addressed into the future of – Sure. Is this working? Is it working? Do we need to adjust it? Sure. What needs to occur? Sure. And those discussions will come. Yeah. All right. Well, we grilled you enough. That's not too bad, though. No. It was too – And I want to go into – You answer these questions every day. We know you do. Yeah. And I want to go into something else about the shed hunting.

A lot of people think we keep them off the habitat longer than they really should because those deer and elk have moved back up out of their winter range. And they could go in there and collect those sheds at that time. But there's a big concern with a lot of our biologists of letting people back in earlier because we have the safe grass issues. Nevada is a lot of other western states, and we don't want to have that influx of people hit that habitat right when we have peak lecking. And, you know, the survival of our sage grouse and keeping them off that endangered species list is one of our key activities we've had here for years. Sure. And we just didn't want to keep people off to help out the mule deer and elk and then have it be a negative impact on those sage grouse during key liking times. So there's our restrictions, and we held that date off a little longer. Yeah.

What a lot of people are comfortable with. But there's a biological impact you can have to species other than just the deer and elk that we're trying to avoid at the same time. Well, and a lot of other states face the same thing with sage grouse. A lot of people scratch their head, why do we care so much about sage grouse? Well, sage grouse habitat is mule deer habitat. And so as they hopefully are never listed as endangered or threatened species and all the governmental restrictions that then come in place with having to manage them and the landscape that they're in, that's going to affect mule deer. So that's the connection. And, yeah, so you might be able to let them on. April 1st, you know, things are starting to gravitate up, but April's a big month for sage grouse lecking like you talked about. It goes back into managing those 14,000 different species you were talking about earlier.

Yep. Without a doubt. We can't just look at the ones that pay the bills. We need to look at all of them, protect them all at the same time. You brought up a bird, sage grouse. So I've got to bring up one that's very unique to Nevada. And maybe you can just briefly talk about the history of how they got there and the uniqueness of the Himalayan snow cock. We're the only ones. I mean. We just want to kill one. That's what we know. We just want to go harvest one. It's on my bucket list, too. My brother's actually taken one. I have to. My boys and I, we need to go after that and get that done. But it's something that if you want to do it, it's one of those high out. They're called Himalayan snow cocks for a reason. They're just a great big partridge. They're overgrown chuckers is what it comes down to. We go another hour. We're going to get you really comfortable on this podcast, Jack.

Tell us where they're at and how did they get into Nevada? Did they fall out of a pickup truck on I-80 one day? 747 or what happened? No, no. They basically came in on a 747. In the 40s and 50s, 50s primarily, the Department of Wildlife really experimented with multiple upland game species. Weird birds. Yeah. But the chucker and the Himalayan snow cock, Hungarian partridge, a few of them managed to survive and become viable populations. Jeez. The chucker just took off. Synonymous with Nevada. Main upland species. Yeah. And that was, growing up in Tonopah, they'd be in my backyard. It just, they were special birds to me. I can remember as a kid, my aunt, my great aunt, she would tell me, my brother and I would chase chucker. And she'd say, you know, your Uncle Tom was instrumental in bringing those in. And your Uncle Tom brought those in.

And I never understood what she was staying until I came to work here at the Department of Wildlife. And I had a question about a commissioner from years past, and they wanted a list of who was commissioned years past. It was within the first couple weeks I was working here, and Suzanne Scorby gave me the list of prior commissioners. But I looked on there, and my Uncle Tom was a wildlife commissioner in the 50s. Wow. That's awesome. And so I didn't know the family history because that part of the family, they're all deceased. So by the time I was a commissioner, nobody could relay that family history to me. I found out after I worked here. But that's what it came down to is the department went all over the world to... Gathering beasts and fowls. Jeez. And it worked. You know, it's a unique opportunity.

And the Himalayan, it's something that took my brother multiple years, multiple refining opportunities. We ask anybody that comes in and pursues them to get a permit so we can manage effort and take and just make sure that they're getting taken care of in a proper manner. How can we as a non-resident get a tag? I mean, landowner tags, what do we got? No, no, no. What can we do to get a tag? It's just a permit process and come on in and pursue them. They're in the Rubies, just east of Elko. It's basically, the Rubies are the Yosemite of Nevada. It's Lamoille Canyon. Unfortunately, we had a fire in there last year, but it's just a beautiful canyon that offers some camping. It's a good place to drive into. It's paved road. You can drive in, camp, and then take off on day hikes or backpack in for a couple days and pursue that big old bird.

If the listeners haven't seen them, you've got to Google Himalayan snowcock. Oh, yeah. They're a different animal. They are something special, and we're just extremely lucky that the department and the sportsmen of Nevada years and years and years ago jumped at those opportunities and traveled around the world. Picked up crazy birds. Kind of like the modern-day Noah's Ark, and they opened the thing in Nevada and see what lived. Bronson. And we have some older publications around here I've gone through, and it wasn't that we tried the three birds I spoke of. They tried all kinds of birds, and some worked and some didn't, but the ones that worked were lucky to have. They're a tremendous opportunity. And, you know, if somebody draws a big game tag in Nevada, you talked about getting a lion tag. In Nevada, you can pursue the chucker without any stamps. We simplified everything we have.

There's no trout stamps anymore. There's no upland stamps. There's not a state duck stamp. Non-residents, when they come in, they get a hunt-fish combo. There's no... And that covers everything. You're not going to get us for a Lacey Act violation and have too many chuckers. It covers everything, and that's what we wanted. We wanted to simplify... I think that goes in large part when we were talking right before the podcast starting about, you know, the department's change of looking at hunters as a customer and you as the business and where you guys are trying to become more customer-friendly. And we applaud that, quite frankly. It's not... People forget about an archery stamp or some obscure habitat stamp and access and validation stamp and different things that all the different states are dealing with. And it's frustrating on our part because it's not like we want to be illegal.

We don't care. It's not necessarily about the five or ten bucks or four bucks. But it's just hard to keep track of it. And then you've got 14 kids applying in five states. And anyway, it's just we like the simplicity of it, and I think that it shows with Nevada trying to do that and be more customer-friendly. Well, we did focus groups. It wasn't something we just sat down and wrote on a napkin. We did focus group surveys. We did all kinds of background checking to find out where we needed to be. And we went from 28 officers down to eight. And during those focus groups, there was two comments that really stuck and resonated with me. One of them was buying a hunting license is buying a truck with no tires. And that was an accurate statement because the hunting license was just a vehicle to hold the stamps

that allowed you to go do what you want to do or allowed you to put in for a big game speech. The hunting license did nothing for you. The other thing that resonated with me was the guy said, I know there's six different regulations, but there may be a seventh. And instead of getting in trouble, I just choose not to do that activity. Yeah, yeah. And so when it becomes a deterrent, growing up in Tonopah, you guys know what Tonopah is. I'm not a duck hunter. Yeah. There's not much opportunity to have water to hunt a duck. Maybe the white ones are some kind of domestic. Yeah, but not domestic. You'd be lucky to get one of those in Tonopah too. Yeah. But not growing up duck hunting, I can't identify them in my hand, let alone on the wing. Yeah. So with the federal regulations on duck hunting, I choose not to duck hunt because,

not because I don't want to duck hunt, because I can't get in trouble. Yeah. And that's a bad place to be. We need to do better than that. And we recognize that. And that's why we've made the changes. Our licenses are good for 365 days. We have, like I said, non-residents get a fishing line. I'm sorry, my phone's beeping at me. But non-residents get... Turn it off. Turn it off. Yeah, I know. Non-residents... I'm talking, I can't turn it off. Oh, that's a good point. Non-residents get a fishing license. But people don't realize the number of streams we have that hold native trout in them. We have a tremendous opportunity. And if you come here, if a buddy of yours is lucky enough to draw a tag, you come here, bring your fishing pole, because you will be surprised the fishing in these small streams in Nevada, the small lakes in Nevada.

Even the lakes, like Pyramid Lake and some of these others, there's amazing fish in Nevada. No question about it. And people don't think about it. But if we put a fishing license in their pocket, hopefully if they come here scouting, while they're scouting, they go, well, I can go fishing. And then they'll realize that there's native trout in these little streams. That they're not... You know, a lot of the streams are not trophy quality, but they are pretty good in the frying pan. Yeah. Well, that's what we like. We like Nevada for a number of reasons. You can go out there and hunt coyotes and do all kinds of fun stuff and be out there by yourself. There's not a high population base of people anywhere near except for Vegas and Reno. Yeah. And so we're just... We're huge advocates. We love it out there. You feel like it's the last of the good places. It just... It's pretty awesome.

I mean, there was a time... I remember deer hunting down there in 24 and I came back to my truck and there was chuckers in the bed of my truck, on top of my truck and crapping all over my windshield. And I was just... I couldn't... You know, at times it's just... Like you said, it's an amazing resource that I always just took for granted. I wasn't really raised around chuckers. We killed a few back down in southeast, you know, Utah there by Moab and whatnot. But overall, just an amazing amount of resource and opportunity for the state that it is, for the arid state that it is. And so, anyway, we're huge advocates of Nevada. But anything else you want to talk about? Any crazy hunting stories you want to share with the listeners? I do have one hunting story I'll go into with you guys. But before we get there, you talked about the customer service.

Last year, we put in that new system and it actually saved the sportsman a considerable amount of money. We made it user-friendly. We know that 51% of our people in the first year applied on a mobile app or not a mobile app, but on a mobile device. But the one thing that we did as an agency that you don't often see with state agencies, we put people in this building during that application period from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. If the phone was still ringing, we are here till 9. If the phone was still ringing, we are here till 11. Wow. We wanted to make sure that if a customer called, that phone got answered. And we'd have people call 7 o'clock on a Sunday and we'd answer and they'd go, God, I can't believe you answered. It's like, well, if you didn't think we'd answer, why did you call? We have calls like that when we're here at the office on the weekend, cranking on a magazine

at about Saturday night at 10.30. Geez, Adam, it's 6 in the morning. I didn't think you'd be there. Why did you call me? But, you know, that's a business approach at things. And we realized that we can't just give a quality product. We need to give quality service along the way. And I can tell you our staff really stepped up. And it was one of the best team building experience we've had as an agency rolling out that new vendor last year. It was a home run, increased license sales in both hunting and fishing, and saved us money over prior years' contracts. So it was a good thing for the agency. And it is, just wait, it's going to get better. When you apply, things are going to get better. We're communicating in different ways. Return cards. You know when you hunt Nevada, it's a mandatory return card if you have a tag. We have good emails now because we kicked you off the system.

You need to have a good email. So everybody has fresh emails. We send out postcards. And now we got down to the end, and some of the people hadn't done their return card. We actually sent a text message to those people. And that drove a ton of people getting their stuff in because not everybody checks their mail or checks their email. But you text them, they're going to reply. So we're using different things to make sure we can communicate with our customers. And they want to be able to apply in their state. They just missed an email or went to their junk folder or whatever. It's not that they're – and maybe they are ignoring you for the first couple emails. I get it. But, you know, it's not that they're being belligerent about it. And I think, too, we appreciated the simplification of the license, which we talked about. And then we're huge advocates of the youth.

And, of course, you know, let's just talk non-resident perspective. But the youth licenses were $15. That helped Adam and I with our kids. Of course, we were applying them anyway back in the day and paying the big bucks. But it is nice. Helps out a lot. Helps encourage the youth to apply, get points. And, of course, it's good business for you because they're going to continue to want to gain points after they turn 18 years old. And they'll be a customer for life in giving you that non-refundable license fee if you're going to gain points. They've been vested for five or six years already. That's right. It's good business. But, you know, we appreciate it for the young kids. Of course, it helps our pocketbook. And, you know, you talked about a hunting experience. And I'm going to relay one to you.

And I know you talked about taking bulls over 400 inches and elk or, you know, over 400 deer over 200 inches. I can tell you I'm lucky enough. We have enough sheep tags in the state and I've got enough friends that I get on two, three sheep hunts a year. So I'm extremely fortunate that way. But I can tell you my three favorite sheep hunts I've ever been on, we killed rams between 148 and 152. And if I had to give up all my other hunts and just have three, I'd keep these three. One, I was with a gentleman that had cancer. And I ran into him in the field and ended up just helping out a guy I met in the field the day before, harvest the ram. He was with his two boys and his grandson. His gun had problems. He ended up actually using my gun to harvest his ram. And he sent that picture out as his Christmas card. And I think he died by Easter.

It was just a special moment to be able to help somebody out in the field. Another one, one of my dad's good friends, he was 80 years old, two bad, three heart attacks, two bypass surgeries, macular degeneration. He draws a sheep tag. We took him hunting. And he had his wife with him. It was in her late 70s. You know, we killed a six-year-old 150 ram. It was just a special time. So not everything, you don't measure the best time in inches. But the one that sticks out to me is my dad passed away in 97, and we built a guzzler in memory of him in 1998. From the time my kids were little, we go to that guzzler multiple times a year, look at the sheep, do maintenance on the guzzler. And that's our special place to go connect with my dad. And my son actually drew a sheep tag in that area. And that, for some reason, it's the volcanic hills and area 211.

And it just, that year, it's a very small part of the big unit. But that year, there was four hunters on the volcanic hills, and it usually didn't get that kind of pressure. And we were after one particular ram, and we couldn't make that happen. And then we're right along a highway, and all the rams went north and went into another unit where we couldn't hunt them. And my son's sitting there with a sheep tag, and there's no rams where we want to hunt. And I looked to him. I said, hey, we need to head down to the Silver Peak so we can find your ram to harvest. He looked at me and said, I put in for this area to harvest ram behind Papa's guzzler. We're here. So we looked at an empty hillside for a lot of days and stayed with it, stayed with it, stayed with it. And 21 days later, we got lucky and found a ram that somebody else had previously taken a crack at

because it had a hole in the end of its horn where somebody else had shot it prior. And, you know, my son ended up harvesting that ram, and those are special times. And he put in for that area for reasons, stuck with it. And that meant a lot. That's pretty awesome. That is. Yeah, that's what hunting's really all about. Oh, yeah. Family and knowing who you are and what you are and why you do it. Yeah. Well, we want to thank you for spending some time with us today, Jack. You're a good dude, and we appreciate you spending a little bit of time. We've had a few states on, and we appreciate them as well and our partnership. We feel like it's a partnership. We cover your state in depth in our publication here at Epic Outdoors, and we try to do it justice. Try not to be too critical, although get our point across at times.

We are passionate hunters, and we represent a lot of non-resident hunters as well. And so keep doing good things. I know you've got to be thick-skinned over there in Reno. You're dealing with a lot. And, you know, you've just got to realize if it's not you, it's the next guy. And everybody that's in that position has got to be thick-skinned. You can't please everybody. But at the same time, you know, we know you listen and take in a lot of different info from different groups and whatnot. Yeah. Well, we appreciate the partnership. We do see it as a partnership. And I do appreciate you telling the listeners what a special resource Nevada is because we see it here. But I just hope more people get to see what we have here because it is special. Absolutely. We're glad to do it. And thanks again for coming on, Jack. Appreciate your friendship, too. It's great to run the sheep show for a bit.

And if luck's on our side, we'll spend some time in Nevada ourselves with our families this year, hopefully. And hope you get to do the same and keep doing great things over there. Yeah, we also got to visit with the Calcami boys there that kind of run your application system. And that was, I thought, a great move on your part to have them there and actually listen to, you know, listen to people. Yeah. Yeah. The users that use their licensing system. And so. Well, when we brought Calcami on, we told them we weren't looking for a vendor. We were looking for a partner. And that's the way we approach a lot of things is partnerships like we have with you. Let's do the best thing for the sportsman and make sure it happens. Yeah. Well, good. We'll be covering Nevada here shortly, everybody. Our April issue, we'll be covering it in depth.

Jack, we're going to want to visit about a few deer quotas. We want to kind of be careful on a few places. So we'll talk about that off the air, maybe. How about that? All right. Anytime. All right. Thanks, Jack. We appreciate you. Appreciate it. Have a good day. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you. You bet. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Hey, everybody. We want to throw a little shout out to Outdoor Edge. They're a good partner of ours. They make a wide variety of products, including a knife that has replaceable razor blades. They're very sturdy. We've used them on a lot of our hunts, and they're just an incredible product. So give them a holler at 1-800-447-3343 or go to OutdoorEdge.com. I want to do another little shout out to ourselves. We have a hunting application service. We're coming amongst a bunch of deadlines. We've got Utah coming at us. It'll be March 7th.

And so anyway, we're busy applying, guys. If you need help, give us a call. Adam and I are happy to visit with you over the phone. You can call us at 435-263-0777. We charge $50 a state. If it's two or less species, three or more is $100 with a max cap of $500. So as far as the regular state applications, you can't spend more than $500 with us. And we go through. We develop a file with you, get a personal program built for you, and we keep track of those from year to year to year. So anyway, happy to help you out. Very personalized to what you're looking to do. And so give us a holler. Happy to visit. Yeah, if you're the kind of guy that does your own applications, but you want another tool or resource, you may just consider, and you're not a member of Epic Outdoors, just consider joining. It's $100 a year. You get nine issues of the magazine.

The first six months of the year, it's monthly. We cover two to three states. We break them all down, how their draw works, drawing statistics, kill percentages, best units, narratives on all the different species in each part of the state. It's a very in-depth tool. Also, we have an added feature that we started this first this year is our online Epic Hunt Planner, which you can use unit overlays, GMU overlays, aerial imagery, topo maps, all that for all the various different hunt units across the West. Drawing odds, you can search and query minimum point queries, all that online. All that's included in your annual membership for $100. So check us out at epicoutdoors.com or give us a call, 435-263-0777. We'll get you set up. In addition to these magazine resources, we're talking about as far as covering the units and helping you apply and figure out what units match you.

We also have a member draw program. If you draw a tag and you need help, of course, you can call out on I, Jeff, Chris, John here at the office. We can visit with you about some of the units and different tags that you may have drawn. We also have a resource. It's our member experience database. We will get you out free of charge for those people that are members. A list of members who've had your tag in the past. And, of course, in large part, a lot of these tags are tags that are extremely tough to draw. And so guys are sure willing to help you out. And for doing that, of course, you agree to be on that list to help guys out in the future. So what a great membership we have here at Epic Outdoors. We've got serious hunters that are willing to help each other. And it's just awesome. It's been such a great resource.

So, anyway, shout out to those guys that have helped make this program successful. And don't be intimidated to give us a holler and let us know what you draw. We want to help you.