EP 146: Hunts We Would Personally Go On. Epic Hunt Giveaway

The deadline is February 29th. That's this Saturday. Malaska doll sheep hunt. This is a hunt I've personally booked twice over the years. Yukon moose hunt with Doolingstone Outfitters. I love giving these hunts away. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, coming at you from Southern Utah. We're cranking on apps, cranking on magazines. We just sent one to the printer. Super stoked. We've got Colorado, Idaho sheep, goat, and moose, and Montana deer now coming at you here shortly. We'll have the e-mag up and live here fairly quick. So anyway, before we get started, we want to thank Under Armour for sponsoring this podcast, sponsoring everything we do here at Epic Outdoors. We appreciate them and their support. They've got a lot of great products. And you can see them at UA.com. I type in Baron usually. Just slams everything that's out there in the UA Baron camo pattern comes up. So anyway, you can get on there and check out what they got. A lot of fun things coming out for this summer.

But anyway, pretty awesome. Appreciate them and their support. Kind of a fun week ahead this week, Carter. February 29th, we got our... A rying of our own. Yeah, that's right. Everybody likes to... That's why we're here. That's why we're talking. We like to hunt. We like to play for tags. We like to dream about hunting. And we have our 2020 Winter Epic Hunt Giveaway Membership Drive going on right now. The deadline is 11.59 on February 29th. And that is to buy tickets online, obviously. We'll be here through Friday. Maybe part of Saturday morning. Who knows? But you may have to be confined to Saturday just to buy tickets online. Anyway, some awesome, awesome hunts. And so what we thought we'd do is just kind of go through those. For those of you that are maybe members of our service and haven't ever bought additional tickets for this, might go through those one more time.

Might prompt you to throw a few tickets into that. But also maybe you listeners that aren't members of Epic Outdoors can maybe get more familiarized with some of these hunts that you don't see in the magazine that we've been advertising for the last couple months. We do these Epic Hunt Giveaways. We do a couple of them a year. They're membership drives. Anyway, we appreciate your support. And of course, it kind of gives guys a reason to tell their buddies about what we're doing here at Epic. And so anyway, it's an awesome opportunity. You can buy tickets to get into some of these hunts. And then we also have a hunt that we're guiding, Bronson. We're guiding it. Deer in Nevada. Yeah, we are. We're excited about it, mainly because it's a big deer. And it's a great tag. We bought the landowner tag in full. Obviously, the full guided package will be included there.

Jason's going to cook and clean up after you. Come on. And all will be good. I don't know. We might even hire a cook for this one. It's going to be fun. We're going to have the whole crew. Oh, yeah. We want to go smash and grab a freaking giant. Let's start with that one maybe. Just talk about the unique way that that one is, Jason, to enter. You can't buy tickets for it. Yeah, this is one we wanted. We wanted something that you couldn't buy. You couldn't buy tickets to get in it. You have to be a current member, and then you can refer your buddy. So that's how a current member kind of benefits is that they get to tell their buddy about it, and if their buddy joins up, then they get a ticket into this. So the odds are going to be incredible. We purchased the landowner tag bronces, $12,000. That's what we paid. And then, of course, the guiding. We're going to guide it for free.

Jason's firstborn. Jason's time. I don't know if I can afford to pay him what he wants. What about you? Bronson Guide Service ain't cheap either. Yeah, but, I mean, overall, yeah. Plus 14 spotters to come along, the Epic Outdoors office. Cook, cleaning, all that stuff. Oh, anyway. But that is something we wanted to give. We've done different things in past years where if you just join or renew your membership, you get a name in the hat. But we wanted to do something different this year. This is obviously for you have to be a member of our service and refer somebody, which is $100 membership for the year, to join Epic Outdoors, the magazine, consulting, everything that goes with that. If your member calls and joins, make sure they give us your name as the person that referred them. Or if you don't trust your buddy to go through it and make the call and you want to be a good hunting buddy,

buy him a membership. You can do that. You'll get credit for it that way. And then maybe it's up to him for next year to renew or not. So that's the only way. The dates are set. November 1 to 5, fully outfitted. Should be an awesome year. Nevada moisture has been off the charts good. With the landowner tags, yeah, it has been. And I agree 100%. It's been raining. We've been watching the radar over there, including yesterday. Huh? The day before. Flocked with snow. Crazy. The landowner tags there are good for all seasons. And so while we're, you know, wanting to take the guy November 1 to the 5th, that's the best, kind of the best part of the season. The very end of the rifle, those deer migrate a little bit and they start to rut. It's awesome. There's very few people in the field. That's a very unique season. They only offer a few tags to be able to take part in that late season.

And so we figure that's what the bulk of, you know, people are going to want. However, if you wanted to do archery muzzle, something else you sure could. The landowner tags good for that. May or may not work into our schedule. But you are totally capable and able to go do that. So anyway, pretty awesome opportunity. We'll move forward. That's awesome. All right. We're super excited about the first time. First time. We've ever done one of those. Done one of those. And looking forward to that. So let's start. Let's just do, let's blow through some of these cards. Let's start. I'll start with one of them, Alaska Doll Sheep Hunt. This is a hunt I've personally booked twice over the years, about 10 years apart. I've been with Ultima Thule Outfitters. And as most recently as 2018. Boom. Killed an awesome ram. Just a giant ram. We bought a hunt from them. Again, we did.

We gave one of these away a couple years ago. We've got another one now. The hunt is for August 22nd to September 2nd of 2021. Once again, this is fully paid for by us. But if you're a little concerned, you maybe don't have the time in your schedule this year, or you're maybe not in what you define as sheep shape, don't worry. This is a 2021 hunt. One of the best Doll Sheep Outfitters in southern Alaska. It's hard to really book with these guys. They take about 10 sheep runners a year. You can't book. And a lot of repeats. As many, you know, many people go back every four years on the, you know, with the law in Alaska. If you kill a ram, you can't go back to Alaska and hunt doll sheep for another four years. So they don't have a lot of free openings every year. Free for, I guess, people on waiting lists or things like that.

We've got one of these legitimate chance to hunt a 160-plus ram, great genetics, awesome area. And they're angle saying the last part, preserve. You can't really buy a better doll sheep hunt in Alaska than this one right now. That's right. That's what I find interesting is these very top-tier, upper echelon-type hunts, even full price. Bronson, they're like, they're five years out. I know. And we're not getting deals on these. We're buying them because they can sell them for that. We're just paying the going rate. That's what we're doing to secure a hunt just as if you were to call and pick up the phone and do it. But obviously, we've done this a couple years ago, bought this hunt, so that we could now give it away in 2020. That's right. And we like to give away hunts with first-rate outfitters. We could get a deal. There's people that give us a deal.

But anyway, that's not what we're doing here. So next on the docket, Yukon Moose Hunt with Dooling Stone Outfitters. Jarrett Dooling, super great guy. Bronson and I have personally been with this outfitter. We went and killed Moose with him. It was awesome. Yeah. It was incredible. 2014, I believe that was. And anyway, it's incredible. It'll be a horseback hunt. Got great base camps. You're going to fly up there to Whitehorse and go out from there. Super good guy. One of the best out there. Incredible bulls, as you can find there in the publication or online. You can see some photos in there as well as read about it. Just unbelievable. You'll charter out from Whitehorse. High success rates. Alaska Yukon Moose. Normally $22,000 hunt. September 17th to the 29th of 2020. A 13-day hunt. That's this year. And that's the latest moose hunt he offers. Meaning latest into September.

Latest in the rut. So that's why we bought those dates. It's not just a leftover, hey, couldn't sell a hunt. But we bought that a year and a half ago as well. Or more, two years ago. I don't know. To secure the late dates for that hunt. You're not going to have to necessarily be in sheep shape. So we went ahead and went with this year. Anybody that draws it can go. I'm fairly confident of that. You know, horseback type hunt. Should be an awesome opportunity for anybody that gets tech. Good luck to y'all. Awesome. Another hunt. Alaska Interior Grizzly Hunt. This is a 15-day Alaska grizzly hunt with Freelance Outdoor Adventures. Lance Kronberger there. Hunt dates June 1st to the 15th of 2020. That's this. Now, this one's a quick turnaround. Here we are the end of February. This one's going to be the early June 2020. This is a $20,000 hunt.

But keep in mind, June, what else is going on in June? You probably already crushed 14 turkeys, bears. How about applying for deer in Arizona? Okay. But you're applying. You're not hunting. That's right. You're dreaming still. Hawaii. Access deer. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay. Keep going. But not a lot of hunts, I guess. You probably, you know, we've all hunted turkeys, maybe a spring black bear or two. But Lance and his crew is one of the best crews of the Outfitters in Alaska. This is a spring hunt. It's a backpack hunt, not brutal terrain. You get dropped off in a remote country in cubs. Spike out camp from there. Hunts will be glassing, spot and stock, looking for a big boar. We booked this hunt because it's breeding season. You know, it's a great time of year.

And in our opinion, it's probably when we would go for a couple of different reasons, one of which I mentioned is spring. Not a lot can interfere with an early June hunt on your hunt schedule. Big interior grizzly bears. This is not a brown bear. This is interior grizzly. We've had several clients, many clients go and take these bears with Lance. Long track record and glad to be giving that hunt away to somebody as well. I had a good friend of mine at Under Armour go out and do this hunt with Lance. Incredible opportunity. Like I say, Lance is world-renowned, killing monsters. Just such a great guy. I don't know that you could find a better hunt. Great guy. Next up, Nevada mule deer. Yep. Nevada mule deer. We just, we booked a hunt with Silver State Guides and Outfitters. They've produced some of the best deer in the last several years of any of the outfitters over there.

We bought a landowner tag. We're cranking. It's awesome. You'll be able to go on this hunt and be able to, again, similar to the one that we're giving away with the membership drive as far as getting your buddy in. This one is good for all the seasons. You get to choose on this. Archery muzzle rifle. Seven days. Fully guided and outfitted. With Silver State Guides and Outfitters. Tag included. Not the state tag fee, which is very minimal anyway. But the landowner tag and the guide service all included. So, anyway, if you're looking to kill an absolute monster, 190-inch pluser, we've had friends kill 200-inch deer with these guys. It's a legit opportunity. It's the hunt of their choice. They asked us to buy this tag in this unit. That's right. And then you get to choose.

The reason why there's not a set season date, you get to choose, you know, right away whether you want to go in the archery hunt, the muzzleloader hunt, or the rifle hunt. Seven days of your choice. Even though the tag does allow the winter to hunt any open season until their tag is filled, you've got the choice to book your guided portion within a seven-day period there. This is one, once again, unlike the hunt with the epic crew, this is one that you can buy tickets for. You can buy entries for and should be an awesome year for Nevada deer this year. We're talking a $20,000 type mule deer hunt. If you were to buy the landowner tag and the guide fee, that's where we're into this thing. So, basically, pretty awesome opportunity. Another one we've got is a five- or seven-day elk hunt with a premium hunts crew in New Mexico in the Gila. This is either a seven-day.

If you choose the archery option, we can go either way this way. Archery option is a seven-day window between, what, basically, Jason, September 1st and 24th. First to the 24th. A seven-day window in there, whether you pick the first season, which is a 14-day or the last one, you get a seven-day window in there, archery. Or, if you want to pick the muzzleloader hunt, this is in unit 15, I believe. It's a five-day. It's a five-day. That's as long as New Mexico makes their firearm hunts. That's it. This hunt's valued also at over $15,000. Again, we bought a unit-wide landowner tag plus the guide fee with the guys at premium hunts crew. Great guys, aggressive, young, hardworking guys. One of the great units in the state, 15 has a long-standing reputation in the state. Winner can choose to hunt, like I said, seven days of their choice.

I had a chance to hunt with part of their crew last year on a different unit that I drew and killed an awesome bull. These guys are going to work hard for you. It's a great opportunity. And I guess I might add a little unique twist to this. Because the winner of this could probably apply in the guide draw with them by March 18th. Since you know you've got to hunt with them, you could apply in the guide draw. If you draw the tag, we'll buy the tag back from you. Landowner tag. So, yeah, great opportunity. Also, you could do the youth hunt, the youth muzzle. Let's say you had a kid. That's overlooked. Do the youth muzzle. Early season, early October. It's unbelievable. My kid has done it. We have done, in fact, on a landowner tag. Spoilt little kid. We did the youth on a landowner tag in Unit 15. And it was unbelievable. You should have killed the .370 bull.

Long story, the bull wasn't all the way down. And the muzzle went off anyway. And it just barely tapped the primer. And it didn't go off. So, anyway. Good point, though. That bull walked away. Yep. You could if you won that. And you do have a youth. That youth season for the muzzleloader is a full week before the adult season. And right at the tail end of the rut could be a great opportunity for them. We threw in a Utah mountain lion hunt as well. Super good guys. Garrett Smith, Valfa, Outfitters in Utah. Just one of the best lion hunts we could think of out there. We work with a lot of great outfitters. A lot of great lion guides out there. But, anyway. We chose this one here in Utah. It'll be during the winter 2020, spring 2020. Excuse me. 2021 time frame. Next winter, basically. The next winter. And if you're flexible, you're going to kill a great lion.

Generally speaking, these guys like to call you when the snow's good. Of course, this winter's been incredible, Bronson. People have been killing great lions. Little dustings of four to six inches over and over. It's good. 100% success rates. Incredible hunt. Mature lions. Just an awesome opportunity. That's actually. I mean, they're all great drawing odds. Again, we'll talk about that as far as you. Bronson, you and I play raffles across the, you know, western states. And some of these hunt expos and different things. If we could play our own, we'd play. Absolutely. No question. And with this hunt, too, we're going to give this away here within the next week. Like we said, the Utah application period for lions is not until the fall. So, like, I don't know, September-ish. And if you wanted to apply, you can apply for a limited controlled hunt area there.

But there's also harvest objective permits in Utah, so you don't need to draw. But there may be a certain unique unit that Garrett knows of a certain lion that he wants to target. You'd have the option to apply for that and see if you drew it. You can hunt that. If you're not, if not, got a harvest objective general season. Just exactly like you're saying. Just like deer, elk, or anything else, some of these slobs are named. And there might be in a limited draw unit. Three toes. All right. Yeah. All three toes. All coffee. All scarface. Yeah. So, anyway, next up, Bronson, this is a hunt that you've done. Why don't you take it away? Yeah. This is a Hawaii axis deer hunt on Maui for two hunters. This is a five-day hunt. Pick your weapon in Hawaii, June 15th to the 19th of 2020. That's about when I went there.

I went there with my family at one point and went on family vacation and we towed guns over there with us. So, I had a lot of family members, extended family. Of course, my wife and kids knew we were bringing guns. But it was even my parents. They started seeing my wife and kids put stuff on Facebook or whatever. And saw the guns and they had no clue. And I'd leave it up to Adam to take guns to Hawaii on a hunt. And it wasn't it. I didn't even hunt. Family hunting trip. The kids hunted. The kids got to hunt. They probably wanted to hunt the chickens in the street. Did you see a bunch of chickens out there in the street? Oh, left and right. Huh? They're running all over the place. Yeah. So, this is a great opportunity to hunt in Hawaii. Unique, beautiful deer. The axis deer in Hawaii. Great vacation hunt with plenty of game. All kinds of animals. This is kind of in their breeding season.

Tail end of that. But they're all hard antlered. It's great. They're all free range. Running wild. But this is on private property. Most of Maui is that way. And so, it's not like you can just go crush one with your own gun out there. It's private land. So, you're paying for all that experience. All that. We're also including $1,500 cash going towards your lodging and accommodations. Rather than us book a hotel that we, you know, we could have done. We just decided it's easier to just give $1,500 cash to the winner. Let them book their own hotel. If they want to stay at the best place on Maui, let them. They can put that toward it. I forgot about the $1,500 cash. We're going to have to save up for that. Yeah. If you want to sleep in a rental car on the side of the beach, I guess you can do that, too. And take that $1,500. Put it in your pocket. That's right.

Maybe buy an elk tag here in the States or something. These guys have been operating hunts here since 1992 and a lot of great experience on the big guy in Maui. This is specifically on Maui for access deer with Hawaii safaris. Great opportunity there. Valued over $7,600. Keep in mind, that's two shooters, two dead deer, not just your wife comes along and watch you kill something. So, if you've got a wife who likes to hunt or a kid or whatever, great hunting opportunity there. Well, and this is one that Jana is actually, hey, we should do a family vacation. We started talking about Hawaii, and everybody's reminding me, because I haven't been. Everybody's reminding me. It's like 80 degrees, Carter. It's not like Mexico in June. We're talking nice weather. It's like 85 in June. It's like 80, 85 right now. And you're taking guns. It seems a little odd.

But at the same time, we're still in the U.S., Bronson. That's right. It's easy. I'm just telling you. It's no problem. It's no. I mean, just taking a gun. You don't even need a passport. Just like you're flying to. Yeah, it's a cheap hunting license. I can't remember what it was. Less than 100 bucks, if I remember right. It's cheap and easy. Awesome. So don't need to, you know, no draw, obviously, things like that. So great hunt. Unique hunt. We threw that one in there. We had some feedback from some wives of hunters a couple years ago at our hunting expo. Put something on there for the ladies. And so we thought, well, here's something. If you don't hunt, but here's a trip to go to Hawaii. Get your husband off center. If you can't get him off center to go to Hawaii, here's a reason to go do it.

So if you got a non-hunting wife in your family and you want to take her to Hawaii, apply for this one. I mean, maybe she'll become a hunter. I don't know. You could smash and grab and cook a steak on the beach. Huh? How about that? Providing for the family. Okay. We also got a ticket package here, bonus item. This is awesome. This is a 231 tag. In Nevada, you get to choose your season. Tags, they're selling for $12,500 plus or minus. Incredible opportunity. And you can do with it what you want. It's your landowner tag. You want to use it? You want to sell it? You want to do whatever? Have at it. Right? So anyway, if you buy a $500 ticket package, you get a name in for this bonus item. No other individual way to buy for that 231 tag. We bought that unit-wide tag, as they all are in Nevada. And somebody's going to win that.

Again, the only way to enter is if you end up spending the $500 package. Something we might mention, if you spend $100 or $200 with us already, and you're interested in maybe upgrading, we will. Go back. We've got your orders on file, obviously. If you spend a cumulative order of $500, you'll get an entry for that ticket. So if that puts you over the edge to buy another couple hundred dollars worth to get in for that, that's great. You also give a shout-out to Outdoor Edge Nice. For every 10-ticket package that we sell, which is $200, every one that you buy, you'll get your 10 tickets in your choice of, you'll get an Outdoor Edge knife as well. Custom Epic Outdoors, engraved series, razor light, replaceable knife, which is another $40 value. So anybody that buys a $200 package, you get that. Engraved with our logo. How about that? That's right. Huh?

There are not many things out there engraved with our logo. It's pretty awesome. Good-looking logo, I might add. Anyway, again, the deadline is February 29th. That's this Saturday. Apply online if you've got to do it on Saturday. But, you know, you're welcome to call in. We'll take orders over the phone through Friday. Try not to work this Saturday. We've been working every Saturday since the Huns quit. Huh? Pretty much. A month of Sundays. This is something that's unique to our members. Obviously, as a business that's, you know, in terms of launching the magazine in the last four or five years, you've got to have something as a mechanism to drive and recruit new members, but also to be able to retain new members. And hunts are a way to do that. We're a hunting business. You know, we're not, you know, this is a way to, you know, maybe send people on hunts

that maybe they otherwise couldn't go on. And we ourselves, Jason, in other places, we enter hunts for stone sheep hunts or doll sheep hunts or statewide raffle tags for deer, elk, and all that. And, you know. You've got to have your name in the hat. It's like your soapbox going out in this next March issue, Bronson. Yeah. You've got to have your name in the hat. The ones that make sense for you, you know, play the game. You know, hopefully some of these. We try to mix up some of the hunts so that you have different opportunities, different things. People have different interests. We have some of the same. Some of the sheep and moose. Some of the deer and elk. Try to throw in a few of the other twists just to maybe give you something you might want to consider going on. And for a cheaper price than booking the full price hunt yourself. It's not our style to gimmick you to death.

At the end of the day, we know our service is worth it. We want you to join because you want to join. If you believe in it and you believe in what we're doing here at Epic Outdoors, it's a pretty easy sale to your buddies or a gift membership to them. And we can even put in a little gift membership that says such from you and you'll be able to get into that referral giveaway that we're guiding personally. So anyway, we appreciate all the business out there. What else, Bronson? What's coming up? Just give them the website at epicoutdoors, E-P-I-C, outdoors.com to enter. Or you can call us Monday through Friday, 435-263-0777. All right. Well, other than that, you need to get your Utah applications in. They're due March 5th. Get cranking. New Mexico shortly after that. Of course, Bronson, the end of this week. We've got Wyoming. Sheep, goat, and moose. That's right.

Sheep, goat, and moose for that. And just a little, if you're the kind of guy who likes to check your credit card, long about Friday morning, you might keep an eye on it for Arizona. Arizona elk and antelope. Here we go. The deadline to update your cards, just for a shout-out for that, is, what, 1159 on the 27th. That's Thursday night, 1159. If your card that you applied with, something's gone bad, you can go online. Renew your, go online where you applied. Update your card. Remember, you have to do it for both elk and antelope. It's, that's just Arizona system. You have to do it on both entries. Update it to a card that's going to work, because then the next morning, starting the next morning, it's usually pretty early, 6, 8 in the morning. Charges come. They start crushing people. Like crazy. So that's a telltale sign that you draw. You're not maybe going to know which choice you drew,

but if you see a charge for 650 or 550, hey, that's antelope and elk fees. Yeah. You got something. So if you got a wife or girlfriend that's spent you into oblivion, maxed out your cards, make sure you get it updated. That's right. You want to have enough on there for an elk. Pay your balance down before Thursday night. Yeah. That's right. Or put her card on there. Make sure it's got enough on there. All right, guys. All right, everybody. Good luck. There's an epic hunt giveaway recap. Hope you'll be giving a call this time next week. I love giving these hunts away.