EP 169: Legendary Bulls of the Acoma with Scott Mabray

We've cut at least one bull that was 14 or 15 every year. When do you generally find peak rut? Compared to the west wide opportunities, very reasonable pricing for what you're getting on Half a Million Acres exclusivity. Anything to do with western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson. Busy time of year, phones are going crazy, but anyway, appreciate all you listeners out there. We've been cranking out a few podcasts. We're also right in the middle of application, draw results, things like that, landowner tags. Everything's happening right now. People are ordering optics like crazy, trail cameras. It's that time of year. We're out scouting every weekend, just going crazy. Anyway, got a super good podcast coming up. Before we get started, we want to thank Under Armour. Appreciate their support here at Epic Outdoors. We crank forward podcasts, magazine, everything we do. We work with them, and they're awesome. They're an awesome partner of ours, and we appreciate them. Got a lot coming out here.

Mid-July is when they're going to showcase all their different products and have them available online, ua.com. You can go on there, type in Baron. Pretty much all the options will come available, and that changes day-to-day with July 15th being kind of their opening up of the 2020 lineup of gear. All right, let's get started here. We're going to call the Acoma Indian Reservation. Scott Mabry, super good guy. We've dealt with him a bit in the past. They got quite a program going on over there. So, anyway, we've got him lined up. We're going to give him a call and visit with him about what kind of hunting opportunities they've got on the Acoma.

Hi, this is Scott. Scott, hey, Jason Carter here. How are you? I'm doing great. How about yourself? Doing good, doing good. How's things treating you down there in New Mexico? Doing great. Finally starting to get outside at work and out of the office a little bit, out of the house. So, things are looking up. That's awesome. Yeah. How's the weather and everything? We've got some fires going on around us up here on the Kaibab and different parts of this place. We don't have anything real close, but there's a few fires popping up around New Mexico, and we're waiting for that monsoon pattern to come through. Yeah. Always hoping for rain. But we've got a lot of moisture over the winter, so everything seems to be greening up well and just hoping that the moisture keeps going over summer. Yeah, you bet. Yeah, we're in that same boat, and everybody's starting to get out and scout and whatnot.

How's the reservation looking as far as any COVID restrictions, or what have you guys got going on there with all the things that are going on at this point in history? So, right now, the reservation itself is pretty much shut down to outsiders, non-tribal members, and even non-resident tribal members. Yeah. But we're working towards opening up, and all the casino businesses are moving that way. And just creating COVID plans for the fall and making sure everybody's safe and keep everybody healthy at camp, all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Everybody I'm talking to, they're expecting, you know, the hunts to go forward. Even had a guy at the Navajo hit me up, and he said, hey, you know, our regs are out, and are you going to apply, and a few things. So, it seems like everybody's, you know, the general consensus is, is things are going to be lifting, and they're expecting hunts to go forward.

Is that what you're feeling? Yeah, we're moving forward as if hunts are happening. So, as of now, we're good to go. Just kind of make sure we have the plan in place for whatever the current status is once September comes around. Yeah, you bet. But, well, before we get started, why don't we get a little background on you, who you are, you know, growing up. How did you get into the position you're at? A little bit of history with you, a little bit of history on the reservation, and things like that, just to kind of, you know, get us affiliated with you a little bit and your position there. Sure. So, I'm the wildlife biologist for the Acoma Game and Fish Department on the Pueblo of Acoma. I started there in August of 2015. So, I've been there for about five years. Growing up, I'm here from Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is about 60 miles east of Acoma.

So, I grew up kind of hunting around that area and all that. Yeah. And then, kind of my peak interest in wildlife, my dad's best friend was the long-time biologist at the Hickory Apache Reservation. Okay. And my dad actually was a veterinarian and kind of helped them with some capture stuff back in the, you know, late 90s, early 2000s. So, I was pretty much being out on the Hickory, helping them out, really sparked my interest in wildlife as well as working for a tribe. It's really where my job searches was. So, I did get my master's up at Utah State University, kind of near next to the woods. Geez, that's, so, Bronson just, he just came in. We're super busy here in the office. But anyway, he's joined us here. He's graduated. What years were you there? What years did you do that, your master's? So, I started working for another grad student in 2011 and then started my master's in 2012.

And I think I graduated in 2014. Gotcha. So. Well, cool. Yeah. A little more recent than when we were there. We're old. Right. We're old. Yeah. We were there in the mid-90s-ish. No, right. Mid-late 90s. Ish is a good addition to that. Nice. Well, so, yeah, tell us, I guess, a little bit more about as we get into the hunting and the camps and what the hunting's like. And maybe you already covered this, Carter, acreage-wise. Did we talk about how big the reservation is? No, just kind of the intro. How big are we talking for our listeners? I mean, in terms of size-wise and, you know, what it looks like distribution of game-wise and things like that. I mean, Jason and I have known about it for a long time, but a lot of our listeners probably don't know. For sure, yeah. Yeah. ACMA has had a program since the mid to late 90s, and it really took off in the early 2000s.

But ACMA itself is in South Central New Mexico. It's about an hour west of Albuquerque, and it encompasses about 475,000 acres. So, really, if you're familiar with the area, it's northern boundaries up on I-40 near Grants, and then it goes south, and it almost makes it down to Magdalena, New Mexico. Its southern border is the Double H Ranch, which the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation used to own. Yeah. Well, it's been known, and the reputation for us goes clear back into, like you said, the late 90s, early 2000s. I mean, it feels like, you know, back before people really knew what a 400-inch bull was, you guys were killing them. Pretty regular. Right. The heyday back in the late 90s, early 2000s, I believe the best year, they killed four 400 bulls in one year. And we get a lot of real clean 400 bulls, clean six-by-sixes, which, you know, aren't super common.

But we do have a lot of non-typical bulls. Over the years, our clients have killed 13 bulls over 400, and the reservation record is 462. And that bull was pretty much a 412, and then it had a 50-inch third main beam. Wow. So that was about as non-typical as you can get. And that bull right now is the New Mexico state record, non-typical for the Safari Club scoring system. So, and then the most recent 400 bull we killed was this past year in 2019. There was a 413-gro spoon and crock it was killed. Wow.

Big enough. Yeah. Big enough. Right. Like, I've told Adam, and I mean, a clean six 400-incher is like the ultimate, the absolute ultimate. For 20 years, we've said that to each other. I know. That's our dream goal. And for you guys to say, and that's the kind of the, you know, not to say it's common, but you're known for clean six-bys that are giant. I don't know. It's just pretty special, you know. Right. And honestly, you know, back in the early 2000s, there was a lot more clean bulls. And recently, we've been seeing a lot more extra points and stuff off our bigger bulls. So it is changing a little bit, which is interesting to see. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Wow. And so back in the day, maybe give us just a little history of the reservation. It seemed like you, you know, there was an outfitter that was kind of running your hunts versus how are you doing it now?

Maybe just walk us through that little bit of history. Right. So when it first started in the 90s, there was an outfitter named Ross Johnson. He's pretty well known in the New Mexico area. Yeah. That started outfitting. And he outfitted for about five years. And then in the early 2000s, the tribe decided that they would like to essentially own their own outfitting business. Yeah. So we now have what's called Acoma Big Game Hunts. And the best way to think of it is an outfitting business that's owned by the tribe and then operated by the game and fish department. Okay. So the thing that's a little bit different for us is once you purchase a license with us, pretty much everything else is taken care of. You don't have to worry about hiring a guide. You don't have to worry about finding accommodations, any of that sort of thing. It's kind of an all-in purchase.

And then we take care of all the other stuff for you. So how do you choose guides? The subguides, let's call them subguides. We call them subguides. Like Nevada, they have an official designation of subguide. But how do you choose those? Do I get to, as a customer, say, hey, what about this guy or that guy? Or tell you what I'm looking to do or whatever? I mean, how do you line up clients and guides? Is that up to the game and fish? Is it up to you? Right. So that's up to our hunt manager, our head guide hunt manager. He's been working with Acoma, a gentleman named Rick Chancellor. He's been working with Acoma for, I believe, 18 years now. So he is in charge of setting up guides. And we try to pair guides with the client, what the client's looking for, maybe physical ability, that sort of thing. Because we assign our guides areas.

That's kind of how we do it to make sure that no hunters are seeing each other, no overlapping. So each guide is assigned an area that's a minimum about 10,000 acres. Okay. So kind of like a concession within the reservation. Like that would be where I guide. I guide this portion, southeast corner or whatever. Exactly. And we really like our guides to, you know, learn that area, master that area, you know, become a, obviously an expert on that area. And then we bring our clients in and kind of pair them up with what the guide's seeing. You know, if a client's coming in looking for, say, a 350 bull versus somebody that, you know, won't pull the trigger unless it's a 380, you know, we'll pair them with different guides in different areas just knowing what's out there. Gotcha. And how do you run your hunts, I guess, a little bit when it comes down to it?

They, you don't have to follow a New Mexico game and fish guidelines, season dates, things like that. Thankfully. Thankfully. Right. So what are your season dates? And I guess maybe we'll jump into a little bit about, you know, the main species. We're talking about elk. That's what we've, Jason and I, have associated with Acoma. Right. So primarily. But you probably got a big old deer we need to know about. Yeah. So there's, you know, we have mule deer, Miriam's turkey, pronghorn antelope, bears, lions. Um, the mule deer and turkey, um, are reserved specifically for tribal members. So the mule deer is a really important cultural species for the tribe. And they have decided that mule deer hunting is, uh, reserved specifically for tribal members. So that's, you're not going to hear anything about Acoma mule deer, but the potential for, you know, 180 to 200 inch bucks is there.

Um, definitely not the size of, you know, Northern New Mexico, Colorado stuff, but it's there. The potential's there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know even on the public side, let's call it the public side, the normal game and fish, uh, you know, regulated under New Mexico game and fish. Um, there is great potential there. Uh, you know, it's just, but it's a lot of, a lot of thick, flat, somewhat tough to hunt type country, which allows us to, which like you said, doesn't not necessarily matter for, for guys like me that want to come there. Not, not a, not an option necessarily. So take the camera. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the stateside stuff is, you know, there's the potential for big bulls, big bucks. Um, you know, New Mexico definitely, you know, I'd, I'd argue every unit in New Mexico, you have the ability to find something monstrous, but you know, obviously other places, some

places are better than others, but for, for Acoma specifically. So, um, as my job with the game and fish is we've been tasked by our tribal council that, uh, we do all the flight surveys, all the data collection on the projects. And then I make, um, tag recommendations to the tribal leadership and then they approve them on an annual basis. Um, so our management is extremely, extremely conservative, um, with our trophy elk program. And then, um, the desires of the tribal council and tribal members, we manage all our species for quality. Um, so, you know, it's an age class thing. Um, very, very low conservative tag numbers. Um, just really trying to get those bulls and bucks is up to mature. Give us an, give us an idea on, on what do you mean by low? Like, just give us an idea, you know, tribal wise, and then, you know, trophy wise from a guy that's a non, let's call it a non-resident.

So, so elk specifically, um, we give about 90 tags to tribal members and we give 40 tags to, uh, non-tribal or trophy hunters and that's bulls and cows, um, together. Wow. How many roughly of that 130, how many of those are bull? Um, there's about 80 bull only. And then a few either sex archery tags for tribal members and then some cow hunts. Gotcha. So on the trophy, are, are the 40 kind of what you could designate as trophy? Maybe it's the season dates or, or when can the tribal hunt versus non-tribal trophy? So we have the date staggered a little bit and then we have, um, say for archery, we have tribal specific hunt areas and trophy specific hunt areas. So they'll, there will be tribal members hunting the reservation during the trophy hunts, but they're in different areas. Okay. Um, so for example, the tribal member archery season starts September 1st, um, but just not

in the areas that the trophy operation is running. Gotcha. And on the trophy operation, they open September 1st as well with archery or with any weapon? Um, so we're a little different since we're not stateside with our hunts. Um, so we do six weeks, essentially we do six weeks of hunting starting the first week of September is our main camp. And then we do a one, uh, one week of late season rifle hunts in, which is the first week of December. And really the general setup is, uh, three archery hunts, a muzzleloader hunt and two rifle hunts for that six weeks. But, um, a hunter could choose the weapon of his choice during those his or her choice during those weeks. So you could hunt an archery week with a rifle or a muzzleloader if you, if you chose to and the way that would, right. And that would change the price would just change versus your weapon or the date.

So if you want to hunt a rifle tag with a bow, you can do so, but you have to pay the rifle tag. Okay. So that makes sense. And so let's say, uh, September one, it looks like for your first, let's call it three weeks, you know, you got three weeks of archery. A guy could go hunt rifle. And maybe the reason why you're allowing them to do that is they're in a designated area. Let's say a 10,000, I want to keep calling it a concession, but a 10,000 area acre area with a specific guide, I'm not going to be hunting against other archery hunters or whatever. Right. Exactly. And we, we really do try to keep our archery hunters, um, away from if there happens to be a rifle hunter in camp, um, we'll even make sure that the rifle hunter is far enough away that archery hunters aren't even going to hear a gunshot. Right.

I mean, no, if they want just the archery experience, they don't want to hear gunshots and we'll, we'll work with that and just, you know, we have enough room that we can keep them separated to do on half a million acres to spread out. Exactly. It's giant. Some of the best habitat down there. There's no question. I mean, you guys, I mean, geez, it's crazy. And it's, it's not the typical, you know, a lot of people think elk habitat, they're thinking Aspen's up in Colorado or, you know, high country or steep stuff in Montana. Um, we're flat Mesa lands. Um, we range from about 7,000 feet to 8,500 feet in elevation. And we're looking at a lot of pinion juniper country. Um, and then we'll get up into some Ponderosa pines in the higher elevations. But overall, uh, a mellow by physical standards, moderate to easier elk hunting country than, than a lot of places. Right.

It's honestly probably one of the easiest physically when, when it comes to elk hunting, it's probably one of the easiest hunts out there. Um, you know, you might be walking say seven, eight miles a day chasing elk, but it's flat or, you know, just rolling hills type of country. So, well, we're, people are kind of used to some of these giants. Like we know, Bronson, we've watched for decades giants coming out of Arizona and a lot of, most of those units, uh, with the exception of maybe one or two are this same type of habitat. This flatter, high desert, high desert stuff, grassland, not, you know, scattered pinion juniper, run, run and gun and trying to catch up to them because it's a, you know, elk can cover country and flat ground pretty easy. They can cover country and steep ground, but man, when you get them on the flat ground and they're, they're walking, you can't catch it.

You can't catch it. But Adam, you killed a fricking giant in New Mexico last year in, in the same type of country. Oh yeah. I mean, it's desert country. That's a lot of New Mexico. Frankly, a lot of it is, you know, this type of country. It's a, you've hunted some units like that too. You got little mountains at what rise up 500 or a thousand feet max over. That's where the big animals are. I don't know why. I just love it. I don't know if it's just the, I don't know why, but they, that high desert, let's just call it high desert for lack of better terms. Nevada, Arizona, parts of Utah, New Mexico, they're producing monsters. Well, part of the reason maybe, and part of it is when they're bugling, obviously it's a different story. That's a, that's a giveaway. But when it, when they're not and it's flat and it's maybe a little bit harder to glass in some places, it's harder to kill them.

You look at units nine and 10 in Arizona when they're not rut hunts, they can be tough. You know, units like that. It's not big V, giant V canyons. You're glass and shooting thousand yards, long rains across canyons. I mean, it's not as conducive to that, you know, when the masses of the tags are issued and you guys are different down there, Scott, that you're not, don't have that many tags collectively anyway, but overall, yeah, just security. You got flat seeders. That's, that's a secure blanket for elk when, when they're not bugling and rutting. So anyway.

Exactly. And I mean, our, our late season hunts, once those bulls get into winter mode, they get into, we have some big, deep, rough Mesa canyons that they drop off into, but during the rut and the early season, you're exactly right. You might have a couple of hundred foot hill you can get on and see some country, but a lot of times if they're, if you're down with them, you're not going to see them. So, so I'm just wondering, Bronson, I might want to come in December in one of the 10,000 foot areas that are very glassable where we could long range kill some giant. I mean, it's possibility nowadays people are, people are learning how to hunt these bulls late season. Right. And we, um, we've killed some of our biggest bulls in the late season too. Um, it does take a little bit of time to find a clean bull, um, with our, our bull numbers,

the finding a, a non broken bull in December is pretty tough. And we actually, we do price our hunt, uh, lower in that late season to make sure that because of that broken bull thing, it takes a little bit longer to find that bull. Well, I'm sure. Yeah. Because if you're not killing that many bulls, what's your, I mean, maybe fluctuate some, what are you, what's your bull cow ratio like on the res? I mean, it's gotta be pretty high and that's contributing to the breaking is I guess where I'm going with that. Exactly. So our, um, overall bull to cow ratio this past winter was 73 bulls per hundred cows. Jeez. That's stupid. And that's, that's post hunt. So now that's a pretty staggering figure, but if you only had a hundred elk, that would be concerning. Yeah. Right. Right. That's true. Do you have an estimate of that?

Do you do, I don't know if you do any, it's tougher because of the overall population. Yeah. Citeability and flat. Do you do aerial surveys and try to strap light? What do you anticipate or estimate you guys? Yeah. So the way we fly, we do more classification. So we're really looking at population demographics and then trend data. But, um, you know, this, for example, this past winter, we classified 755 elk. So our, at any given time, we're looking at about a thousand to 1500 elk on Acoma. That's why you're thinking. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So within that sample size of a 755, you're, you're deriving that bull cow ratio 73 and then your cow calf and, and looking at, you know, that year to year and how that, how that trend looks. Those cows have, you know, half of them are bulls, half are cows, uh, you know, as far as their calves.

And then, you know, you've got a natural mortality rate, but I mean, overall, you're very conservative. It appears from the outside looking in on your tag numbers. Yeah. We're, we're about as conservative as you can get. Um, I mean, we were, you know, we're looking at that 73 bulls per hundred cow, but you know, we break it down to, you know, we consider a, a, a shootable trophy bull to be 350 inches or bigger. Um, and that's an age, an age class thing. So really we've determined that, um, at age seven, um, is when the majority of our bulls are hitting 350. So, uh, we're trying to shoot bulls seven years or older. Um, our peak antler growth is about 10. Um, and we 10 plus 10 year old bulls are older is very common. And since I've been there, we've cut at least one bull that was 14 or 15, either by a client or a tribal member every year.

And with genetics and feed, are you finding that the bulls you're killing at are 10 plus? I mean, are you finding they're big bulls or do you feel like there, do you, is there a need for management hunts and things like that to take out a genetic, a specific genetic, or are you feeling like most everything is reaching that 350 plus mark? Um, so there's a little bit of management, uh, that we're going to have to look at in the future. Um, really the past five years has been trying to get the, um, bull to cow ratios. Cause so, you know, we're at 73 now, but when I started my first flight, you know, our bull to cow ratio was like 130 bulls per cow, which you're wanting to go back to 130. Where are we at? No, no. So you're half as good as it used to be. Is that about what? No, we're, we're happy with what we are. Not as good as that once was. Oh, that, that's impressive.

The reason it was so high though, is because of our cow population. So we've really been working on our cow, getting our cow numbers up and becoming healthier. And that's, is that, and I, are you reducing most of those would be probably tribal member harvest on antlerous animals. Have you reduced that, that harvest over the years to let more cows survive or what was it? Yeah. So we, we essentially dropped all of our non-tribal cow tags. Um, we're giving about a hundred of those a year. Um, and then we, all tribal member hunts were either sex tags and we went to mature bull tags on most of those. Um, and it's, you know, a temporary fix, just trying to get the demographics how we want it. Yeah. I gotcha. What's the definition of mature bull? What are you guys regulating on that? So when we, when we fly or, uh, for a tribal member, it has to be a five by five or bigger.

Essentially as a mature bull. Yeah. So we're not, not a, not a rag, not a raghorn with a double tine up front. Right. No raghorns, no, no spikes, nothing like that. Um, but numbers have come up and, um, our bull to cow ratios kind of got down to where we want to be. You know, our management plan is we want it to be at least 50 bulls per hundred cow, but we'd like to see it about 75. So we're sitting about right where we want to, want to be right now. But when we stopped our cow hunts or essentially shut our cow hunts down five years ago, um, when we're flying now, our five-year-old four to six-year-old bulls, um, the population coming up is, isn't, you know, it's insane how many bulls are, are in that age class. Wow. Because, yeah, you let, yeah, you're adding a big core, big cohorts coming up. In the next few years as your cow base has grown and you're dumping more calves, obviously

in half of those being bull calves every year. Mature bull designation. I mean, there's probably a number of factors that are helping with that. Exactly. I mean, there's all sorts of factors that go in, but limiting the cow harvest and antlerless harvest limits our calf bull harvest. And it's just helped, helped bring the age class structure right where we kind of want to see. So for example, with, you know, back to the bull to cow ratios, you know, we break down, um, to say a five by five or bigger, but not over three 50. So not a trophy bull, but a mature bull. We're sitting at about 33 bulls per hundred cows for that. And then when we're looking at raghorns, we're sitting about 25 raghorns per hundred cows. So we're stacked up exactly how we want to see it. And so you're, you're taking the 73 and then splitting it out on, okay, of those, this is

a certain number of raghorns or less five by five or less. And then, and then your trophy bulls. So you're taking a percentage of that. Well, we actually, when we're flying, we're looking right at it. So if we're a classifying, we'll break down the classification. We're not, we just won't put bull, you know, we'll put trophy bull, five by five, raghorn, that sort of thing. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you're not just saying here's, we have, we have 73 to a hundred. That seems good. You're actually taking and having sub goals within that goal. 30, you said that number is 30% or 30 something bulls per hundred are mature. Yeah. Rags are 25. Right. So about 33, five by five are bigger, but not trophy. And then we're sitting about five, on a typical year, five to six, 350 plus bulls per hundred cows. Wow. And that's what your goal. That's what you're wanting. Right. That's post-season.

We're talking post-season. Yes. This is post-hunt surveys. Yes. So they've killed, you know, all, I mean, you're, a lot of your non-tribal members are killing maybe some of those bigger bulls are coming there. They're expecting that. They're paying the money to do that. I'm sure your tribal members are going to kill some of those too. But what of the, of the number, would you say the average bulls? And I realize this is a hard number to pin down, but, but number of 340 or 350 plus bulls killed by people of the trophy bull hunters. We'll call them that of all weapons. Out of those 40 or half of them going away. Going home with, with something special. Yeah. So with our limitation, you know, our strict harvest of older mature bulls, we're looking at about 50% success rate. And the majority of those that are not successful are the archery hunters.

Just because of our bull to cow ratios, trying to weed through the satellite bulls gets a little daunting at times. It'd be tough. That's the one downside to having high bull to cow ratios is your. Don't blow a cow call. Exactly. It can get a little crazy. We had a, we had a muzzleloader hunter pass seven bulls in the first 15 minutes of his hunt this year. Come on. Just gotten a pot of, pot of elk and the rut, the rut had popped and it was, it was crazy. When, when, when, let's call it the, when, when do you generally find peak rut there? Or, I mean, obviously we're seeing in Arizona and New Mexico, we hunt in Mexico quite a bit, but it just depends on the year a lot. And I, I totally get that. But what are you saying? Rough, rough dates for that. It's usually the end of the second week of September into the third week of September is usually when we see that peak hit.

And is that still the end of your last archery hunt then kind of their designated archery week? So the end of the last archery hunt, we'll get the beginning of it. And then, um, a lot of times the muzzleloader hunt is really when it pops. And that follows your, your archery and then you got rifle right after that. Right. So they'll still be bugling and all that pretty hard in the rifle tag or the rifle per weeks. But, um, that, that third week of September seems to really be the year after year kind of when we really start stacking up antlers in camp.

Pretty awesome. This is getting me fired up to hunt elk and I've already got too many elk hunts. How about you, Adam? Yeah. Well, yeah, I've got enough, but yeah, you're talking about elk and popping stuff, popping and antlers stacking up in camp. I've heard a lot of terms. Yeah. Bold to cow ratios and the sizes. And I think there's just so much going for, for the reservation. You guys, uh, you know, and I, I haven't been following the double H today. It's nice to have neighbors that have a great management program as well. I mean, it seems like you're just in the perfect location. Always have been. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah. So, um, really on for the unit surrounding us and where our, our animals kind of go, we really only have three sides cause we are Northern borders, the unit boundary.

So on our Southern side, um, we have the double H ranch, which is more conservative than us on harvest. Um, there's a couple owners of that and they, they only take a couple bulls a year off, off their land. And then, um, to our East is the Laguna reservation. Um, so there's another reservation that borders us and they're pretty conservative with their, their harvest as well. The only difference with that is there's about a 400 foot cliff rim rock that separates the two reservations all the way around or, you know, all the way down that side. So there's not a ton of movement between those, but you know, our neighbors are very conservative as well. So, and then even unit 13, the unit surrounding us is a primitive weapon unit in New Mexico. So it's archery and muzzleloader only. So there's no rifle tags in there at all. Yeah.

We, and we've got, we, we sell some of those tags and, uh, we've had even Bronson, we had a cover bull come off 13. And it was an absolute monster out here. It was a monster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that was the drought year of 18, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just, I mean, it's just crazy, you know, the potential, the genetics, I mean, you're in some of the best country down there, you know, and like you said, no rifle hunting. And it is, it is, um, there's a little trade off, you know, the densities are definitely not as high as you'll see in say Northern New Mexico, but the. The genetics for size is there and we, we happily trade that off. Yeah. Well, um, I know you guys have a lot of repeat clients. What's the chances for guys to get in? How would they, is it, do you have an application process? Maybe talk just a little bit about that.

And then, you know, I want to draw some comparisons to other hunting opportunities across the West. Bronson, we're selling tags in Nevada. Like there's tags going for $30,000. Tag only landowner tag, not guided hunts. Yeah. For $30,000 or Utah, our conservation tags and. Crazy. Yeah. So let's talk about that in terms of you, you alluded early. There's a little bit differences based on the week you're looking at coming, whether it's the first archery hunt versus the muzzle that might be in the peak of the rut versus October, early, early October rifle or December rifle. Give us kind of the spectrum of where you're looking at in terms of how do you, how do you go about securing a spot? What are you looking at price range and waiting lists or however that. So how we do it is a, it's first come first serve with the caveat that our return clients

have an option to return prior to us opening up sales. Okay. So if you, if you get in, you want to be there, uh, we give you the option to come back before anybody else has the opportunity to buy that, that tag. Okay. And then usually we wait until after we do our annual flights to even start selling tags again. So that's going to be at trade shows. So we go to the Safari club trade show and then we're going to start going to the Western hunting expo this upcoming year. So that's really when we start selling the available tags. Okay. And then action. Yeah. In the past, what is that looking like? How many of them are gobbled by repeats and how many are on the open market year to year roughly? So out of that 40, usually we have about 10 or 12, um, available on a given year. Just for anybody that wants to come.

Then once you get in, you're in, if you want to, you have your option the next year to pass or come back or rebook or whatever. Right. And we also give our clients the opportunity. If say you came this year and you know, and in 2021, you have a say an Alaska hunt and you're not going to be able to make it, you can deposit up for 2022. So it's not that you have to go. You don't have to continuously come to keep your spot. Okay. As long as you rebook it for the following year, you're still got your foot in the door. Yeah, exactly. So, um, you know, we sell out pretty quickly around the trade shows. We actually just with the current, um, COVID situation, we actually just had one hunt come available, which is pretty rare. And so that hunt is going to either be, uh, somebody could choose between the second archery

week, which would be September 7th through 12th or the first or the second rifle week, which would be October 5th through 9th. Um, so somebody, if somebody is interested, we do have one trophy elk hunt available first come first serve. Um, and then when you're talking pricing, um, our late season hunt is about 10,500 for the late season. And then our archery tags are 13, five, our muzzleloader tags are 15, five. And then our rifle tags are about 18, five. That includes guide fee. That includes everything. So you're, that's everything, but gratuity, meat processing, post hunt things. How can we sign up? You can give us a call. No, like me, me and Adam. I heard you just say a minute ago, you already had too many out. Well, not at this price. I mean, honestly, I just want to put this in, I mean, to put it in, put it in perspective. Yeah, no, that, that's what we're saying.

We're talking about, um, incredibly controlled hunting situation. Half a million acres. How many hunters do you have there during a hunt of those 40? You're probably talking about four to five a week, or maybe it's a little more than that. A couple of them. I'm just trying to do over six or seven. We keep, yeah, we keep our first week and our last week pretty small. Um, so in a typical week, the maximum we're going to get is seven. Every once in a while, we'll do eight. If there's a group coming in on a archery hunt or something like that, we can get up to eight, but so yeah, eight hunters max. Well, it's just an, I guess I'm just astounded, uh, you know, but a lot of it comes back. A lot of it comes back to the history back in the Ross Johnson days. It's, I mean, you guys were putting them out and, and, uh, and kind of started that whole giant bull era, so to speak.

You know, it was just one of those, the, the timing and, and people were just learning how to score bulls and you guys were putting them out like crazy. And, and I think it was just, you know, and you continued on with that, obviously, you know, a lot of repeat clients, there's kind of hard to get in really. I mean, if you're only having 10 to 12 spots total amongst all the seasons, um, you know, it's, it's quite a premium experience, obviously. Only, yeah, it's only one or two openings per season, but you got to realize some of those you have none because the, maybe the muzzle on the first rifle where a lot of the repeat guys want to stick. I'm just guessing Scott, that's probably, probably a lot of the muzzle and first rifle is where a lot of the repeats, the heart of the deep September hunts. Um, maybe the third archery, 30 archery, there'd be another one like that as well. So, yeah.

Um, but compared to the West wide opportunities, very reasonable pricing for what you're getting on half a million acres of exclusivity and the quality of bulls you're averaging what eight or nine year old bulls. I don't know what your average harvest is, but, um, you know, it's a lot of, you know, if you're killing 14 year old bulls every year or a 14 year old plus bull, you've got plenty of 10 plus. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's very unique. I mean, Utah's best units right now, the best units in Utah average seven and a half to eight and a half. Yeah. Um, the San Juan, the beaver, the boulder, and those are great. Um, it's a little bit different situation. You're talking about public land hunting and you know, you're not guiding. Everybody's not guided. Uh, everybody's not, you know, you're not. There's different differences. Yeah. But, but still, I mean, just give me an idea.

Which is kind of what we brought up, like the age class versus size. We have, we have three 23, 30 bulls that are eight years old or nine years old. That never get bigger. That never get bigger. I don't see that as much, you know, down there. Just right. And we, we do have a couple of bulls. You know, if we're, if a hunter's coming in, we're seeing a, say a three 40 class bull and he's looking old and mature, you know, the, the age class we're looking at, you know, we'll sit down and, you know, myself as a biologist, our head guide and the client's guide. And if they have photos of it and you know, we, we determine that's an old bull. We'll, we'll let the client shoot that three 42. Cause really it's not the number we're looking at. Jeez. Well, it kind of fires me up. I just can't believe the value. Um, I just can't believe the value.

I guess I just wouldn't on this giant bull killed last year. And I'm a specific bull buck kind of guy. But anyway, um, I think you said he went four 13, but like what, if you don't mind me asking what season was he killed on? Did you guys age him? So he was the first week. Um, he actually, he was a rifle tag because the, our auction we, so we auction off a couple hunts a year. And one of our auction hunters, um, got him, uh, the first week. And, uh, he ended up, he was an 11 year old bull. You say first week, you mean first week rifle. Is that around October 1st? No. First, first hunt week actually. You mean September? Like they can hunt. September. They can hunt. I don't know. It's your auction. And we'll get to your raffle tag. I know you raffle one off too. Do they get more days in addition? What is your standard week?

Cause a five day, seven day hunt when you buy and book, what do you get for that versus that? So the, the, um, lots of questions, Scott, we've got a lot of, no, no, it's, it's great. Our, um, our typical rifle season is five days. So the way we do it is our, all the hunters come in on a Sunday, uh, go, come up to camp, get everything settled. Then we start hunting Monday morning. So we'll do Monday, Monday through Friday for the rifle guys and muzzleloader guys. And then, um, our archery hunts are Monday through Saturday. So six day hunt. Okay. Gotcha. The auction hunter gets essentially the first two weeks. Of the, of September. Of September. So they're, they're, they're in conjunction. With archery hunters. But again, one guy on a half million acres with a gun and the rest of them both. Yeah. Gotcha. Exactly.

And, and the, the other thing that the auction hunter gets is essentially any area that's not designated for tribal member hunts. Um, you can kind of jump around. So do you have areas that are only available to tribal? Yes. There's a few areas that we only allow tribal members in during that time of year. And what, like for, for trophy reasons for them? Or more cultural or sacred reasons on the rest? What type? So it's more just trying to give opportunity to everybody during the, the run. Same time. Yeah. Yes. That way, that way we're not, um, putting our non-tribal members ahead of our tribal members. You know, we're trying to allow, you know, uh, uh, archery hunt for tribal members is the whole month of September. And they can hunt, you know, that, their areas. These districts. Yeah. Yeah. What's your muzzleloader restrictions?

Are you just, do you kind of mimic what New Mexico Game and Fish does? Which basically, you know, any scope. Inlines and scopes. Yeah. Inlines and scopes, no problem. Or as long as you push that bullet down the muzzle, it's, it's fair game. You could even do smokeless. So you can, you can do ultimate muzzleloaders in line, um, scopes, whatever you would like. As long as, as long as you're pushing it down the muzzle. So we could push the very limits that technology would allow us to do. Exactly. We wouldn't have to use your open sight, Pete, that we talked about last week. I did. Hey, Utah, I killed a bullet. I did it with open sights and it was back in our scope days, but I don't know. I just didn't have time to work on it. In all, in all honesty though, you know, guys might bring an ultimate muzzleloader and then they're shooting their bullet within a hundred yards. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. That, that time of year with the red activity. We blow a cow call and they're just shooting them in self-defense. Exactly. At times it seems just like that. Wow. Awesome. Tell us, all right. So we talked about the auction real quick, uh, which is, sounds like one tag and then one raffle tag. Is that how it works? Yes. So the other option we have is our raffle. Um, and it's, we call it our dream hunt raffle. And so we use this as a way essentially to raise money for conservation efforts. So habitat work, um, GPS collars, that sort of thing is what this money is earmarked for. Okay. And that hunt is October 5th through 9th. So it's the last week of our hunts. Um, with any weapon rifle, I assume. Yeah. Yeah. It's weapon of your choice, but you know, we're going to recommend you bring a rifle. Um, and that's a, we were going to sell 200 tickets maximum and they're $200 a ticket. Okay.

And you can buy as, you can buy as many tickets as you would like. Do you normally sell out of tickets or are there some years the odds are better than that? Or do you, some years the odds are definitely better. Or do you, um, yeah, you normally sell out or is this the structure, what you've been doing? And is that, that's the way it's going to go this year? And yeah. What's the details of when and how and deadlines to buy? So right now we're, our deadline to buy a raffle ticket is next Tuesday or no, sorry, two Tuesdays. So, um, June 30th is the deadline to buy your raffle ticket. And then we will hold the drawing, um, on our Instagram page on Instagram live. We'll do it, um, that Wednesday, July 1st. We'll draw. Um, so if you want to buy a ticket or multiple tickets, um, you can give us a call at our office. Which is, um, five zero five five, two nine, eight, six, six.

And then, uh, we can take payment and then we'll mail out your, your ticket to you. Or if you buy it late, um, you know, we'll, we'll still mail it out your ticket and your receipt, but we'll let you know what number you are and all that, that sort of stuff. Um, so essentially if you're the lucky winner, the winner last year bought one ticket and he won on his one ticket. Um, you get a $18,000 rifle tag, um, and you have no additional cost. Um, you know, besides travel, taxidermy, um, gratuity, uh, things like that. Everything else is included. Food, lodging, guide, tag, everything like that. Exactly. And, um, the thing with that hunt too, is, you know, we have that three 50 minimum for our trophy hunters. Um, so we're trying to get the, the, the winner to shoot a three 50 bowl, um, just to go with our management plan. But we're also treating it a little bit separate.

Um, so if we really want this person to have a hunt of a lifetime and go home with a bull. Um, so we're, we're willing to drop down to, you know, three, three 20, three 30 bowl, even if we need to, to make sure that this, that the winner goes home happy. Yeah. Well, that's awesome. So there's an opportunity out there, guys. Anybody out there that's looking to have a hunt, got a little bit of an open schedule. You might give the ACMA a try. They've got, uh, they're selling 200 tickets, right? It's got 200 tickets up to 200. Some, you know, a lot of times it sounds like you're just, you're, you're under that. So the odds could be just incredible. Right. I think last year we sold 175, so. 75 tickets. You buy two or three or four tickets pretty soon. You got better odds than any of these States. Huh? Well, right. It's, it's a pretty good, pretty good draw.

And it's, it's the time of year that you've either known a lot of people are hungry for, they don't have enough. Carter's got elk tags. It sounds like left and right. But, well, my kid, it's got the, between me and my family, you know, I don't know. You got kids, Scott. I mean, these kids are just killing us. They need optics. They just don't want normal optics. They want the best. Exactly. No, I don't have kids right now. I have, I have a couple of nieces and they're fun to hang out with, but I get it. I give them back to my brother. So. Okay. All right. Spoil them and send them home. That's right. Exactly. That's right. What a great, so tell us a little bit. But, I mean, you've got our interest. We're definitely, we're probably going to be booking a couple of hunts. So, but let's talk a little bit about more.

So you alluded to some other non-tribal species hunts that are out there that guys can come and take part in the reservation. And, and, you know, I don't know, spring hunting, different things like that. Right. So, um, historically we've had, um, pronghorn hunts as well, but we're giving our population kind of a breather. We've shut down all hunting on our pronghorn just to get our population up and our, our bucks time to, to mature. So the next couple of years, we're probably going to open up the non-tribal pronghorn hunts again. But for now, that's shut down. The year you open that, we want to be in. Okay. All right. We'll, we'll let you know. If you haven't heard, this is Carter's year of his antelope year, but it could extend into the future. Oh, it'll extend for something like this. You're going to have 90 inch plus bucks. Don't you think? Huh? Yeah.

We're, we're, we produce about, you know, mid eighties to nineties doable. I mean, part of, part of the reservation is in Socorro County where the world record came out of it. No take, no take, no take. How long is it going to be closed? If you, you know, but I mean. It is, it has been closed now for four years. Okay. Yeah. So we'll probably, what we'll probably do is open it up very limited to tribal members for a couple of years and then we'll open it up to non. I thought you guys were trying to be fair.

We try. You've got to keep your job though too, right? This does not seem fair. It does not seem fair. They can't run you out of the place. My first, my first priority is definitely tribal members. Yeah. You got to keep your job and treat them. Well, this, when the, when the time comes, you've got our number. Okay. All right. Right. For sure. All right. So, so, so that'll come up available again. And then we do bear and lion hunts. So hound pursuit hunts. We actually use Wade Lemon out of Utah there. He outfits our spring bear and then our winter lion hunts. Um, and then we usually run about five spring bear hunts a year. And on, since I've been there, he's had a hundred percent success rate on that. And we have a lot of color phase, black bears. Um, last year they shot an all time boot and crockett bear, um, a really, really big chocolate bear out of there.

That's 20%, 20% kill rate on booners. So if guys are interested in buying or booking one of those, do they contact you or do they contact Wade Lemon Direct? So they'll actually contact Wade directly. Okay. All right. And then, um, yeah, so probably not a lot of openings there. I don't know. We'd have to visit with Wade. Right. He, he usually sells those out pretty quick. And then this year, just with, uh, the COVID situation, um, we did not hold those hunts. So he's rolling all those hunts over until next year. So it'd be a couple of years to get in for bears. And then, um, I guess our, our elk hunters can add on a bear or lion tag as well. And the way we do that is it's, uh, a feed, uh, purchase a permit and have it in your pocket. Cause obviously you're there for elk hunting.

But if a bear or lion happens to come in, say when you're sitting in water as an archer or something like that, then you can go ahead and harvest it. And then there's a kill fee that you would add onto that. Wow. Well, anything we haven't, my head's spinning. Is there turkey? Is there any, what else? There's a tribal member. Oh, tribal. Okay. So for turkey, turkey and mule deer are tribal only. Right. All right. And then the only other way to hunt Acoma is we do two predator calling contests a year. So November and February for anybody that likes coyote calling, um, we do that. And do you guys put that on yourself, sponsor the event or whatever? Uh, yeah, the game and fish sponsors it. And, um, just a hundred dollar buy-in per two man team. And, um, we don't keep much of the proceeds, you know, it's just a way for us to supplement our predator. Yeah, exactly.

Help our deer and antelope out as much as possible. Keep going back to these tribal mule deer hunts. Like, let's just talk about the, what constitutes a tribal member. He's not going to. So for some of these young bucks coming up through the ranks, what if you marry a tribal member? No, that's not going to work for you, unfortunately. You have to be a registered Acoma tribal member. Well, there's definitely a very high demand for mule deer hunts. Is there, is there, is there quite a high demand down there? Yeah, for the tribal members, but we. Do you do those by a draw for them though? A draw? We do. Yeah. We do a draw for tribal members. And, um, we actually, right now, we only give 17 total deer tags a year. Wow. Yeah. And there's, uh, we just started a waiting period. So if you draw a deer hunt, you have to wait one more year before you're eligible to apply. And what about elk?

No waiting period? No, no waiting period. If you want to hunt elk as a tribal member, you can pretty much be guaranteed to tag every year. No way. Wow. Even with that few tags. Right. Wow. Well, pretty awesome. Great summary. I've learned a lot today. Is there anything we're not highlighting you think is noteworthy that we should be about how you run things there? Um, a lot of great information, very conservative, huge, giant reservation. Um, anything? I'll give you a little, give a little information on maybe the camp itself. Uh, I think we kind of started down that road and kind of didn't get there. But, um, so we hunt out of canvas wall tents. We have like a centrally located wall tent camp. Um, so it's, we do carpeted tents and then we have cots for sleeping, you know, gear cots. We give lounge, camp lounge chairs in there.

Um, we bring in a trailer that has indoor hot showers and toilet facilities. And then, uh, we actually bring in a chef that works at one of the main hotels at the Towski Valley up in Northern New Mexico. So, um, it's one of, it's probably one of the only elk hunts that you might have a chance of gaining weight on. You might be walking all day long, but the food, the food we eat, um, it's hard not to gain weight. So, well, that's awesome. Well, that's great. Did you, uh, I mean, have you, are you a hunter yourself? You, you killed some, you know, noteworthy critters on the Acomar. Do you get a hunt there being an employee? Do you get a hunt or is that still not? No, no, I'm, I do not get, I get to manage and, and. They don't let you, they don't let you hunt or you don't hunt by choice? Uh, they don't let me hunt on there. I would jump on that opportunity in a heartbeat.

That wasn't a perk of the job. I would think maybe it would be naturally, but. Yeah, no, no, I wish. Wow. Yeah. But no, I, I, I hunt myself and I get, got an, uh, archery antelope tag coming up in about a month and a half. So it'll be here before we know it. Where, I mean, now you don't tell me exactly where, but like, where are you hunting? Yeah. New Mexico archery antelope? Yeah. I got, uh, out in Eastern New Mexico archery antelope that starts, um, August 4th. Wow. That's great. I ought to be needing water about twice a day right then. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, sit water or flag a man or what do you, you've got any plans decoy? I think I'm going to try to spot and stock and decoy early in the hunt. And if, after I get my butt kicked a couple of times, I'll probably move over to water. Share a blind with a snake or two. Right. That's right. Yeah.

New Mexico and August and a pop-up blind is not ideal. All right. Well, let's see, uh, first come first serve. Um, and then also one, you do have the one hunt, uh, you said is open. If our listeners and that, what would the price on that one be? You said you had the two options. Let's reiterate that once again, cause that's for 2020, the only thing left to buy other than the raffle ticket. Exactly. The only guaranteed option, um, it would be our second week archery, which will be September 7th through 12th. And that would be 13,500 all in. And, or you would have the option for a rifle tag, um, October 5th through 9th. And that would be, uh, about 18,500. Okay. And that's your guaranteed. And then if you are luckier than me, um, I'd highly recommend, uh, a raffle ticket. And those are $200. If you're lucky to win, you're all in at 200 bucks. Okay. Perfect.

Anybody interested, give the Akamah call 505-552-9866. And then, uh, you can visit us on Akamahbiggamehunts.com or Instagram, uh, Akamahgameandfish. Uh, you can see our past harvest and, um, I try to, you know, show what our antler growth is looking like and all that throughout the year. So. Do you? That's awesome. Great. That's awesome. I can't think of anything else. No. It was a great wrap up. Very informative. I thought I learned something. Well, we learned that we need to be hunting the Akamah. That's what we've learned. All I can hear is 10 to 14 year old bulls alive somewhere. You had me at that. But if you're looking for that 350 to 365 bull, you know, that's kind of our bread and butter. And then the chance for, uh, 400, 380, you know, it's, they're not around, not behind every tree. We're not going to lie to you, but you know, any, any given year, there's going to be something

like that. Well, and I think each, each of the reservations have strengths. Um, yours is obviously elk, you know, Hickorya, they're, they're known for giant deer and then they've got a good elk population as well. But man, you guys are strong in the elk world. Yeah. And we're kind of a hidden gem right now, but hopefully that doesn't stay that way too long. Well, you know, it's, yeah, it's not going to. And, and I don't know, I think where you got such a great repeat, uh, clientele, obviously they know what they've got and, and, uh, the prices are, they're affordable nowadays, this day and age. I mean, they're affordable. It's that's the bottom. For what you're providing. It is. I mean, you, you put it on par with a lot of landowner tags in other States, or just even, let's just look at unit wide landowner tags and neighboring units of 15 or 17 or 13 in New Mexico.

By the time you buy a landowner tag and guided hunt, you're not much different. No. Really. Right. For a unit wide tag and a, and a guided five days. You just take a guided hunt on unit 15 archery. You're 85 for the tag and you're 65 for the guide fee. It's very, it just adds up. Just so pretty comparable. What a great opportunity. It is. Yeah. Appreciate your time, Scott. Thanks a lot. And, uh, just keep us posted to how we can help you. And, uh, you've done a lot of it today. We'll try to get the word out. Obviously you got to, what is that? Two weeks left roughly on this raffle entry. So yeah. Cool opportunity. Right. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And, uh, it'd be nice to be back on. All right. Okay. Sounds good, Scott. Thank you. All right. Have a good one. Okay.