EP 199: Meet New Epic Consultant Josh Pollock.

42 inch 250s buck 12 on each side yeah he hunted the ponce with his brother and then goes watch his dad smoke a 250 buck on a general unit anything to do with western big game welcome to the epic outdoors podcast powered by under armor hey everybody jason carter adam brownson chris chris is at the keyboard i don't know what we'd do without you over there chris for some reason it's just a little security blanket when you're in the room oh good i'm glad we would do nothing yeah we wouldn't have a podcast didn't where's that little portable one that you like set up for adam and i on the road and it was dummy proof like a sony walkman in the back room built it's actually not dummy proof it's it's a little bit it takes a little bit of setup yeah it seems like you set us up will you set that up and let's put it where nobody can touch it in case

you die in a car wreck yeah yeah i think john could get us out in a pinch i actually built a little how-to thing manual yeah a playbook a playbook we need to know where that playbook is chris this one is the playbooks right here what if you get kicked by a horse but the uh the playbook for that little thing is what if mckenzie kicked i gave it to i gave it to john at one point it was i folded it up and put it in the case of the recorder well okay so it's on record we got this recorded we know how to get ourselves out in a pinch and uh what podcast number is this chris this is 199 all right okay we're gonna have a fun two hundo a two hundo early next week with the two hundo with all the boys we get a special topic yeah we do let's not gonna tell you what it is but it's gonna be pretty fun yeah name that

unit or something similar what do you think yeah something like that maybe some rapid fire oh some rapid fire i like it would you rather look would you rather a or b unit x or unit one like the i doctor number one number two or we could do would you rather on species species would you rather okay yeah let's bring it all to the table let's do what'd you rather unit x unit y species x species cowboy questions too chris okay okay be ready her for drangus who knows who knows where it's gonna go all right so 199 chris let's just be thinking what we're gonna give away to celebrate the eve of the two hundo the two hundo okay all right we're gonna give away something we let's do it speaking of other giveaway let's talk about the under armor code carter on our website yeah so on our website we've got some brand new ua codes 40 off you can go on to epic outdoors.com log in and get yourself a code

it's it's right at the top of the screen on the home page right at the top of the screen on the home page get 40 off under armor gear uh it's on the white banner right at the top can't miss it type in what your name email whatever yeah you just so what you do you go in there it says click here in yellow you click on that and it'll it'll ask for email name address city state zip code and then you click to get discount code it'll spit you out of code and then as you check out on ua.com you're going to use that code chris is there any fine print that says they owe us their firstborn since we're giving them a 40 off code or is this just free for the taking it's free for the taking enter in all your unit choices you've applied for this year in the western u.s nothing like nothing like that nothing like that you just enter a trophy pick and tell us exactly where there's no coordinates

there's no there's no catch people we're saying you can get a card buy 40 off ua.com so there it is any expiration to that chris there's um yes supplies last but is there data on there well so this is it's it's pretty awesome you have up to two thousand dollars in total purchase which is a lot holy crap and uh you get 40 off of that and then uh it's good until seven one of 21 come on so that's the giveaway for the day we'll have a different one early next week on the two hundo the two hundo another one of our supporters here uh outdoor edge has been a long-term sponsor of us here and partner here at epic outdoors make great replaceable blade knives super sharp better be careful with one in your hands but they they can really make quick work of anything you got to take care of in the field um visit them

at outdoor edge.com um they've got all kinds of different tools multi-tools knife knife combinations things like that great partner of ours appreciate their support all right so anyway um we're kind of in a pretty good mood today bronson we just finished up a mag oh yeah april 2021 issue with nevada montana moose sheep goat bison antelope and kansas is at the printer emag will be live probably by the time you hear this podcast so oh yeah pretty excited about that of course nevatic opens up uh montana's already open but it's not due till may 1st or june 1st in the case of antelope nevada opens up monday the 22nd of march but it's not due till what may 10th yeah so it's coming don't worry you know don't get an antsy and apply the first day you don't get a twofer let's just say you get excited and apply because i'm that guy right well nevada has a nice plug and play option that's it for free

you can make and adjust choices i love adjusting those choices like 10 times before the deadline i know it's pretty fun what if kind of like what we were talking about the a or b yeah one or two but anyway kind of fun so anyway anybody's thinking about nevada we are going to have this uh emag up and live if you want to apply you can obviously start on monday like bronson said we also have the guide draw coming out next week wednesday right yeah they're going to run the draw on monday and come out on wednesday at the very latest maybe even a little bit early nevada loves to loves to have people waking up at midnight who knows they might release it at midnight remember remember how they did that phone starts chiming yeah kind of fun they made a big deal about it all the yeah midnight madness yeah oh they did yeah and then you got other states like arizona

okay well you know what i'm still looking for a hard charge you should talk about that you could use the word madness but probably not anything involving midnight it's just a three weeks of madness i'm just wondering how much the new programming team charged them to get them up and going what do you think i don't know how they got bailed out or how the draw was run or any anything about that probably but runs from some biden programmers who knows i don't know what's going on but it was a cluster of epic proportions well cards have been hit you know it'll be another week before the dust settles and who knows but it was a my card hasn't been hit my card has not been no nobody here i'm not i'm just saying people disgruntled i'm a disgruntled so is it done like if you're gonna get hit your cards arizona crushes them in one day they're pretty pretty handy on it other than there has been

people's that cards that decline the alternates it's usually five to seven days later and we've had friends get another little tiny wave several days later which would be i'm gonna be the cleanup crew i'm gonna be on the cleanup crew i'm pretty sure all right well so anyway if you drew a tag you're gonna find out exactly what you drew here probably within a week week and a half assuming that they load the portals assuming there are portals and so anyway if you get more you can get through on the phone line i mean 602-942-3000 hit option two i don't even remember it's pretty close though but anyway so yeah we're pretty excited if you drew we want to hear about it give us a holler especially if you're a member of epic outdoors we can help you get started give you outfitters names and numbers or uh also a list of members who've drawn in the past of course bronson you

and i spent a lot of time in arizona if there's something we can help you with personally absolutely happy to help one thing we didn't bring up just real quick is a maybe new change for nevada okay the grandma law grandma law well what's what basically basically you're not going to be able to uh use grandma's points to point boost you then turn her tag back in get her another point and have grandma help boost you again every year year after year after year which a lot of guys have been doing not and hey if it's legal and and the system allows it don't blame them don't blame them game and fish knew it was happening but maybe not to the degree that it was but they've kind of closed that loophole yeah you can still point boost somebody but when you draw now their points are gone you both have to turn your tag back in if you want your points back yeah so you're gonna go hunting on

grandma's boosted points but she's now back down to zero kind of cool yeah they've also yeah grandma mom whoever friend and uncle foe whoever and then um all that big change really it's a lot of people have used it and it's not again we're not we're making light of it now it's gone on it's just now gone so it might affect some people well it'll be good spread out the tags a little bit to other people there's guys you know killing big old bucks on a regular basis and i don't blame them for it at all um but anyway that'll that'll adjust slightly still be able to use grandma's points like you said but you know you'd have to both turn in to get your points back they will continue to allow you to turn your you know your own tag back in get your points back if if you apply it on a single app and just wanted to not go something came up whether whatever so you'll be able to do that they also

are initiating first come first serve option pretty cool yeah within the what the last 10 days if somebody returns a tag within that period and they don't have a time to go to the alternate list it's just going to be on a first comes first serve deal resident resident not non-resident and resident in the same hat free for all basically here's a tag whoever's first one to buy it buy it that's right yeah if you get within that what i think it's a 14 day window or whatever plus hey it's there's no resident non-resident limitations there's a tag comes up it's free for everybody you lose your points and waiting periods you'll incur a waiting period of if applicable what was the number of desert sheep tags last year like eight or nine desert sheep tags turned in so close to the deadline last year they didn't have time to reissue them so i mean i would have come first

i would have taken a rotary phone and started calling people up but you'd have made nine calls and got rid of them but in this day and age that's not proper yeah well probably have to go through protocol vet everybody i'll make sure they're not a felon i it probably just was too much huh well and if you didn't have time to scout or didn't have time off work or hire a guide or whatever there's lots of things that you get a desert sheep call a day before the hunt starts that you may decide to pass on it it sounds stupid but it's a once in a lifetime wait till happens to you and see what you do with that phone call remember when i drew that arizona sheep and then when you actually have the tag i'm not going to say it's buyer's remorse but you realize it's my one and only and i want to make sure it's in

the right unit and now you get picky and i was like maybe i'll turn this back and you were like you're a dig i'm fool and we looked at the drawing odds in nevada you should never turn one of those tags back yeah do not do it all right enough of that we got a kind of a special guest bronson yeah we've had him before a couple times two or three i don't know what it was but wearing a different hat back in that day now he's even got our hat on how about that yeah josh pollock josh morning josh hey how's it going quiet over there i'm just taking it in waiting for me to give him the head nod yeah so it's time boss it's time it's probably best that i didn't talk well we uh appreciate you being here we've announced it in this uh april issue of the magazine josh pollock is our newest member of the epic outdoors team and glad to have him on board as a

hunting consultant to help all of us here in all the different facets of our business doesn't matter what we do all of us consultants pretty much do a bit of everything and so we've had josh on in the past when he worked for the utah division wildlife resources as a wildlife biologist and uh southern utah talked a lot about that but yeah he's decided to bite the bullet i hope it's not a real bullet josh i mean i hope this i hope it's a wonderful experience and a great road we i mean we we uh i want to echo what adam says super appreciative that you decided to take the job um we offered it to one guy it was you and i was gonna say why did he say no i was number two on the list and uh anyway just uh really appreciate you making that plunge of course you got to travel a little bit and you're from in that pengwich country up there in the mountains yeah why would you want to

leave that country pretty nice and quiet i live there down here i've been there done that in that valley that's pretty nice that's right i forgot had a couple kids in that valley yeah it's a good place it is it's a good place but anyway here we are josh is on board if some of you maybe missed some of the earlier podcasts we did with josh let's maybe just tell us a little bit about yeah your background where you're from where you your upbringing was and whatnot and how you got to maybe where you are in life a little bit just yeah just by way of rewrite rewind no no problem yeah if you flip through that magazine you'll get it you'll see me as a little fat-faced chubby kid 14 year old and uh and then a much skinnier younger man later on i guess and anyway um yeah i grew up in pengwich still a little

fortunate to be back there now i was away for several years school and work and doing that kind of thing but living back there now and my wife works there we have four kids and just uh i don't know loving it it's good to be back that way and i am coming over this way it's nice i don't mind the drive i get a little free scouting in in the mornings but i don't know listen to some podcasts seems like it's now with daylight savings i get a little bit of sunlight at least before i was coming in the dark and going home in the dark there wasn't much scouting but um so yeah i uh grew up there in southern utah and just spent my whole life as much as i could out in the mountains doing the things i loved and uh went away went to college and decided that i needed 10 years of misery in my life so i decided

to work for division of wildlife why why was it so miserable josh it's it seems like an awesome job oh yeah i mean you get a fly around in a helicopter and look at elk and things like that catch bad guys but yeah yeah we did that did some of that and uh it's just exciting to get phone calls and just get yelled at no matter what you do i mean every big deer small deer yeah not enough deer it's i mean too many deer and this is you know land understand there's too many deer hunters saying you're you're not ruining my family traditions because you're trying to manage for trophies just kidding i mean it's uh you know it was a great opportunity and um it i i enjoyed working for them there's awesome people that work at that agency you know that's the one thing that i i get frustrated with you know

you hear a lot of hunters talking about you know they're ruining everything you know and it's all for money and you know i think about my experience and time working there never was i told hey you guys got to sell more permits if you're going to keep your job or never did i see a pay increase if i increase permits that's for dang sure so you know um there's some awesome people that work in the utah division of wildlife and still good friends with several of those guys that work there and and none of them set out or wake up each morning saying how can i ruin hunting today for the people of utah or the non-residents that want to come here none of them wake up to do that and intentionally do that it's it's just such a balance um you know because there's the science and then the social side of it and and a lot of it gets turned political and there's a lot of decisions

made off science and then the final decisions made off of political issues and so and and i don't gotta be hard as a biologist to see that i know what's happening then salt lake makes a final decision based off politics or if somebody gets involved between there and salt lake yeah and you're yeah you know yeah and and you i mean any of the other thing that hunters don't understand is you've got guys that literally their livelihood is this chunk of alfalfa that they're trying to grow and when you have a wild animal that you have nobody has control over and it jumps a fence it starts eating some of that the state owns the wildlife and they're and it's eaten my personal crop yeah and so you got a guy on your right hand saying if that thing comes in the field i'm gonna kill it and the guy on left

hand saying there isn't any of those and we want 10 times more of those so i can kill them you know it's a it's a hard balance and so that's why i say you you're hearing it from both sides and it it was a good well-rounded experience and i learned a lot i got to see some amazing country with with a lot of the telemetry stuff that we were doing you know when you'd get a a doe deer that dies out in the middle of nowhere that i've never been to in my life and i have to go hike into it go pick it up it was great to just go learn new country and new learn new things about the unit and stuff like that so no it wasn't 10 years of misery but uh it just feels like um you don't often get a lot of hey thanks thanks for what you're doing i have a great job i mean i was only there half of your duration i lasted five years before i tapped and then you get paid to hunt and kill yeah right yeah everybody

thinks we're paid to hunt and kill brownson i'm paid to sit at a desk it's a brutal it's a brutal grind i know yeah i'm not saying on us but it's right you know not all not all wet in the line and killing so i guess that'd be my only advice is as to hunters and and it's natural we're all we're not very patient people you know we like to go out and we like to have success and and we want to go out and especially me i you know i like to go out and see big things and kill big things and and so that's all i want to manage for but that's not what everybody's every you know everybody else has an opinion a lot of guys just want to get a tag so you're trying to just manage all kinds of things and help everybody out and in the end we're all hunters and we just need to i don't know be a little more patient and understanding and realize you mean just love each other

yeah we just need to love each other yeah exactly we need to hug more no we don't i'm gonna start doing that i'm coming to each of you guys's office we're not huggers for a hug that's so people hug we're not huggers but but no it's just uh i don't know that's my only yeah i guess thing there it's we get pretty critical and um we're we're passionate and people are passionate about it because hunting is our life it's as all of us it's been our main hobby our entire lives yeah we have some other hobbies but i think about hunting every day nine you know 80 of my day revolves around hunting i don't understand why you wouldn't that's the only thing you are yeah yeah i don't know if there is anything else so so that's why we're we're passionate people and um but it was good i got a lot of a lot of experience got to help hunters a lot you know talking to hunters on the phone trying

to help them have success that that was a joy of mine and and also you know getting to talk to a hunter after you've talked to him on the phone because they would call you back you it was a it was a small number but those guys that you'd call and maybe give some advice to they'd call you back if they'd kill something and it was always good to hear back from them you'd definitely it's just like the ksl comments you stay away from those you know when you get them you when you get the the surveys back and ask a hunter what he's saying you just you just stay away from those i mean for the most part because it's you start getting into them and that's the road you don't want to go down i remember reading one once i mean there were several of them and i mean you had everything from robert redford was out

here running elk off of my thing while i was trying to do this to uh some guy was complaining because he drew this tag and had 30 trail cameras out and and he only had one 400 inch bull on camera and still killed a 390 bull but his success he said he was unhappy with his hunt you know so it's like how do you you can't keep everybody happy and you try but you just can't but anyway that's kind of a rabbit hole we've learned you can't keep everybody happy right absolutely yeah and it's it's a thankless job like there's a lot of other professions maybe school teachers or things like that they're they're public service they're just yeah it's a hard player a coach you know even if you're a great coach and you you can't keep everybody happy can't play all the kids the same i mean you're just you're you're gonna you're 50 50 cop that pulls me over 50 you're about this good cop that pulls me over

doing 60 and a 30 very frustrating well that he's doing his job it's pretty black and white what do you mean i don't want a ticket it's pretty black and white yeah well you think so you'd think so but people could argue otherwise that's not really up for debate you're doubling the speed limit anyway all right but but yeah so you spent 10 years you know half of it roughly as a game warden the other half is a biologist right yeah started off as a game warden i'm still in luckily i was able to stay in southern utah you know when you get hired as a game warden you don't know where they're going to put you you yeah sure i showed up there on the totem pole yeah i showed up there with five guys and there was these six or seven areas that they said that we want to fill and they did let us kind of have a little say as to what we felt like we wanted but they placed us basically you know and

some of the regions had some say and i'd had a little experience i'd worked um kind of did a little bit of some school and stuff uh with the southern region where i worked so they knew me a little bit and so i i they were i was politicking to them to help keep me down here in the southern region and stuff and so instead of going to bullfrog bullfrog was always i don't know if it still is bullfrog seems like it'd be great to be on lake powell yeah wait till you live in bullfrog all year terrible yeah i mean wait when the winter in bullfrog yeah i mean nobody's on the lake i mean it used to be the lowest on the total there's the most revolving and you get the henry's though you get the henry's the henry's is your reason the lake so really two really awesome options but like you said six months out of the year they're not that awesome you're isolated try to raise a family

nobody's coming nobody's coming to visit you and most of the time if they were see if you were single they had many game wars they were you know you're out of college they weren't married yet then you go to bullfrog try to get married try to have a wife and bring her to bullfrog try to raise a family in bullfrog that's what when i when i came out so that the officer that actually went to bullfrog he was a kid he grew up in texas he was a single kid he was my roommate at the police academy and he he went there they sent him there and he was all about it he loved it because it was free housing they have a housing that's down there that's free so all your stuff's free so anything he was making he was just four or five years i think he tapped out and he moved to utah valley didn't he got married yeah he went to the meat market up there yeah he did like i know the whole

story he told me he's like i gotta i gotta move on i gotta get out of this bullfrog i saved a little cash now i'm out three days he had a wife and he didn't even know what he was happy oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah he still is now i talked to him yeah he's all good and good i don't know how we got talking about bullfrog but anyway penguins or you were in paiute county yeah wild wild west over there and went there for five years i got a you know fortunate to cover some great awesome units that we have deer elk antelope i mean some great opportunities there and so that was good 20 miles south resolve to when you took the biology yeah yeah i took a biologist job and went down and and got even better country down there and better units home units that i got to manage that was pretty cool you know you grew up

hunting these units and living in these units and being in them and then now i got to manage the wildlife in them and it was pretty cool so those would be just for everybody you know pengwich dutton poncegant uh part of this boulder east zion that that much that right all that yep it was big it's probably it's probably one of the biggest biologist districts in the state and when it came to recommendation time and classification seasons were always just insane you're just running from one thing to the next you never had a minute and uh kind of the core core of the state yeah and you had i mean we put mountain goats down there so you had mountain goats desert sheep i mean you you had everything um we even had to go do a stinking cottontail jack rabbit count a couple mornings they're animals too just do those morning morning dove surveys down on the on the no no we didn't do

oh wow i had to do that every every year within like a one week period the same week every year do they're still using the computer modeling from your your your surveys probably but it was like how many you know you had to hear him cooing and stuff up you had to stop literally every like half mile or mile i mean i had i mean the same route every year you quit after five huh no wonder it was so easy that was pretty easy i just stopped the truck got out and listened to how many doves i could hear cooing at daylight and then drive and send it in but anyway we had to drive it's like a 40 mile route and you couldn't go more than 25 miles an hour and you had to count every rabbit and they're animals so we have animals too they are so tell us uh you mentioned some big stuff earlier trophy this and that

just tell us i mean every time i look at this picture of is it your dad that killed this 42 inch two 50s general season something disgusting freaking monster county legend yeah tell us a little bit about that i was pretty um pretty exciting it was funny i was so that was my first year of hunting i was 14 that year and my first year i drew a poncegant rifle tag no way yeah so very first year hunting and i had no idea i was working for a local taxidermist there in pengwich still help him out a little bit just like fleshing and stuff back yeah sweeping the floor and caping out european mount stuff you had me practicing on that we're gonna boil the skull but you're gonna practice caping it you know so i started doing that but i'd see big giant bucks in there and so needless to say when i drew that

poncegant tag i had a pretty skewed idea of what what was gonna happen and at that time the poncegant wasn't what it is right now either you know so and the hunt that was actually when that hunt was early so it was that uh early october early october like around the ninth which is not the time you want to it's about the worst time to be hunting and so uh it was um trying to hunt the top didn't really know we didn't cover that low country very much we just didn't know and a lot of them were in the mid country and so there's a lot of private through that stuff so it was it was tough anyway i had a good hunt my dad vowed he'd never go my brother and i actually both had we drew a joint a dual application on there and he vowed he'd never go hunting again he was pretty angry at some of the bucks we were

passing up and some of that stuff but anyway so there we went we had this we both end up shooting little dink bucks on the last day but you know you're 14 so you need to kill something yeah so it was good for that and anyway but then your dad got his so yeah two weeks two weeks later yeah we just have a general tag back when it was in the southern region and it was funny we grew up so different in fact my dad gets mad at us now we try and run trail camera scout do that kind of stuff and he hates it in fact we just had a conversation about the other day he's retired now and he's been watching a bunch of bulls and he's had them nailed down you know because these kids are in school and he's watching them every morning and night babysitting them just waiting for them to drop and anyway he went up there and he noticed a couple of them had dropped and they'd moved away so he's

like i'm gonna go sneak in there now there was like some local high school kids there and so he goes pulling down there and they literally came racing in right behind him and he was josh there's people that make living on shit honey yeah and he was he was just mad he i mean he was like and he said he got out to hike and they came down there got right with him and he was he wasn't happy about it and anyway he was just like i see this is why we i hate scouting i hate he's just the kind of guy that loves to just go out stumble on you're not gonna be alone anymore just but just go stumble on go jump up a buck and looks good running away and dumping and that's what and he hunted like by himself last year we were working and he went and hunted some country that i thought i would never even go there in my

life but he went back day after day because he saw a track in there and he was bound and determined he was gonna find it so anyway he never did but he but he was by himself yeah he was by himself and that's all that mattered nobody else wanted to go nobody else was in there so anyway that was basically how we grew up hunting it was just we didn't scout anything we'd just go these different places anyway it was kind of a place that he hadn't hunted for years and hunted it growing up and he said we're gonna go over here and we're actually riding in the truck that morning i remember he telling me i'm gonna go over here and i'm gonna shoot a big black face 40 inch buck and i was like are you kidding me because this was back you know even utah general hunting was really really pretty rough roughly the year 94 95 somewhere in there it was about one hour and so we were running like nine bucks

per hundred does on our general season units back then it was pretty pretty tough yeah had some pretty bad winters right winter kill 92 93 yeah so we had some it wasn't the greatest hunting anyway uh we go down there and he was telling me how he's gonna go do this and i'm thinking yeah right and we're going along anyway a couple bucks come running out and my dang those are actually good good bucks you know and and uh we he smokes the one and my grandpa shoots the other one and i'm like dang he was right like we're not shooting two points this year this is pretty awesome i guess and we get walking up there and we were kind of walking across the side hill of it it was in some pretty thick manzanita and i remember about halfway up my grandpa was he was pretty old he was in his 70s and so he was

taking his time we were just kind of poking along and i got my binoculars up a little 10 by their 8 by 32 is whatever they were and i look over there and i'm like man that looks like an antler like sticking up above that manzanita that's yeah that's weird i haven't seen that my dad looks at it says oh he looks like he's got a cheater you know and like oh that's cool and uh and we go walking over there and my my little brother was there i think he's uh 12 years old range you know we obviously get over the deer the the dead or the deer's dead and kind of laying behind a log and in this manzanita we get over there my brother and i both were like oh my gosh and grab its head and pull it up out and i'm like dad you killed a 30 incher and uh then we get looking at it and it's like oh no that's more than 30 and and there's like points it's a disgusting 12 on each side from way

back yeah points on each side did your dad get excited i mean he didn't even have he was like he knew it was good enough deer to shoot yeah and it's funny because a lot of its extras as they come off they kind of line up and everything so really from the side it kind of looks like a four point thought you were doing a smashing ground and i i remember when he after he'd shot it it kind of turned and went over this log and at that point i was like that looked weird it was like lots of junk out here way out past it so i was like i was 14 i don't know we'll see but anyway um that was pretty amazing he didn't walk over to it he was just like he took his hat off and he's like oh my hell oh my he just walked up the hill he's like he's like oh yeah at that point well it's the buck of his he's hunted 30 years or whatever at that point in his life it was the stats on him where'd he end

up at uh he was like 41 and three quarters wide i mean it's almost 42 he's got like 12 points on each side and i think he ended up going like 248 something like that official yeah yeah did you book it is he in the book yeah yeah he's in there i'm gonna check it out on the trophy search pretty awesome so it was it was it was love the tailgate in the back of the truck pics you'll see him in the magazine the april issue i had to kind of through those because that was kind of that was when i got you like that point like this is what i need to do there's something there's something different how are we gonna do he hunted the ponts with his brother for a week and a half and then goes and watches dad smoke a 250 buck on a general unit the next week yeah pretty awesome so it's unbelievable it was awesome that's what kind of gave me the bug and i was i guess smitten then and that was part of

you know i struggled with working with the division is that's what i wanted all my units that's what i wanted everything i wanted ever because the thing is i want it was such a unique experience that i want everybody to experience that i mean there's there's something about seeing your kemmy my daughter i watched her a couple years ago shoot a spike deer you know and it's not velvet on it it's on its lips yep and just seeing her shaking and everything i'm like that's that's one level and that's awesome yeah and there needs to be that yeah for sure but then then there's that where that's extremely next level it's like man i wish everybody could have that same experience to walk up on especially just an animal that's lived that long in this kind of area that it did and yeah it was like man i wish

everybody could have that you keep trying to do you want to duplicate that it may never happen no no for you no it may not and so um you just take those and those are those memories that i guess want me to do that and so i had that drive as like a biologist and that to want to help to try and do that and obviously when you're trying to manage a general season you know that's not what we manage them for as bucks like that yeah um so anyway yeah that was a pretty main experience in my life when like big buck hunting was something that i was done so then utah comes into some big bulls how'd that treat you yeah okay i like just hey i just i just love hearing about it but yeah you know to save the full story there i guess i it was on the tail end of i guess you could call utah's glory days i mean

we'll still see some years where they're killing good bulls that's pretty weather dependent now and on some of those units but yeah it was kind of in the end of the heyday and i felt like i felt like some of those units weren't doing quite as good and i had like 12 points or something i really wanted to kill a bull in the rut but i thought i'm never going to do it i was still four or five years away from that so i ended up taking that's it was like i think it was about the second year utah came out with their late hunts and um we had known of some bulls that come down in some in some winter range country and thought you know we could we could have a chance at a good bull and some of this stuff it was only a five-day hunt um my wife had just recently had a baby our first baby and so and she had had a few troubles and so kind of during that hunt i'd end up having to come clear back

to cedar to bring her to the doctor anyway it was kind of a anyway long story short my dad ends up just going for a ride took the dogs out for a ride and was checking a water tank because he's driving by here's this bull um and he finds him there and he didn't know what he was you know he'd he had he's got extras off each of his fourths and he saw that and he's like hey this is this you know it's a big bowl and we were thinking 380 range and honestly it sounds dumb now but 380 there were a lot of 400 bulls hitting the ground back then so 380 felt like it rolled off your tongue it was more like a three like saying a 350 now or something you know and so it was like yeah that's a great bull we probably ought to try and hunt him you know i mean anyway what year was this this seven 2007 right at the end of the heyday yeah i don't know how it done eight or nine eight yeah yeah

and remember we smashed it well and we passed the 387 hoping for better and then decided we shouldn't do that yeah i'll kill it the next day yeah it was like that was the same type premise because we it felt like the next year bronson there wasn't another 380 alive for some reason it started to really taper anyway yeah anyway we ended up it was one of those things my i ended up having to we got some crappy weather you know that was that was it was actually hot a little bit and then we got some fog and crappy weather and trying to glass and find him again the next day was tough couldn't pick him up we saw a couple bulls getting into the trees but weren't sure so then i ended up having to bring my wife back over to cedar like i said and i hurried and got things taken care of then and i raced back

over the mountain told my dad hey go up there and just start glassing i'll meet you up there and we literally had a few minutes left a 30 minutes something and we basically were going to make a kind of a game plan for the next day and uh we were just talking about it joking says if i didn't have bad luck i wouldn't have any luck at all and literally there he was dipped out yeah and he was right by that same tank we actually cut we cut his track he'd been to that tank it had just rained and we'd actually cut his track crossing the road and we didn't know it was his but we're like oh there's a fresh bull track right there and so and and because we had minutes left we were just heading back and all of a sudden we had an ad into him and so i i got a shot on him it was a little bit high i didn't uh

he still he went a good 150 yards ran to the trees and he stopped over there and and i thought he was raking a tree he had his head down and he was kind of raking his tree he was choking on blood at that point you know i didn't know that but i so i tried to shoot him a couple more times and my dad's just saying don't hit him in the horns don't hit him in the horns so i was trying anyway so we it got dark on us because we waited he went into the trees we couldn't see him and um it's basically went all the way back to 1994 95 you know we get over there and pollock fashion yeah start following his track again but this time it was opposite honestly i stayed back with some blood we'd had to take some orange off marking some blood it was dark and my dad says well we were kind of talking about i said let's don't go any farther let's just stop here but we couldn't quite make it to that tree

where he was at if we would have went there there was a pile of blood this big where he was spitting it all out but we'd stopped just before that and he said let me just go right behind this tree where he lasts time and and so i was standing there and he went and all of a sudden the screaming and started coming from behind the tree yeah and he starts counting one two three four five and he gets to eight on one side seven on the other and i'm just like you gotta be kidding me and then the party began so oh it was fun so then again like that brought all those memories back of man i wish everybody could walk up on a bull like this at some point in their life because i was dang lucky and i'll take luck anytime anytime it comes um and i was dang lucky and uh i don't know i think that's where all the research comes in bronson and i and you and everybody else that's constantly thinking about

it is we're researching non-stop and part of the drive is to how we're going to duplicate in a position where that could even happen and i know sometimes it is pure random luck but there's still a whole lot that you've got to put in your favor to have that kind of thing happen you've got to be on a i mean you were willing in that situation because probably your point situation to put in for late rifle hunt versus the early ones in september when everybody thinks that's when you would kill a 400 plus inch bull yeah and they're bugling they're vulnerable blah blah blah i'm announcing my presence screaming to the whole world yeah not necessarily you know yeah you know i go now and you kill a four what do you end up going for seven eight seventeen incher in november and and while those bulls were not were more common then and they're not now that same principle exists now

there's units now you can go on and hunt three seven or eighty bulls in the november hunts um and quote steal a bull i'm not saying utah odds are easy but you got at least put yourself in a position on a unit it was ripe you felt the you felt the twilight of the utah elk trophy glory days kind of fading and you got to be in the right position got to be in the unit capable yeah and and sometimes if you just were waiting for another utah tag come along how long you would you be waiting you'd still be applying so and you know i i did i i actually i thought uh later i actually drew another tag um i it was just a poncegon archery tag but i knew i was like there's so far behind i'm not gonna ever hunt a bull in the rut unless i do something that's only gonna take me a couple points and i thought if i can

get out of there with killing a six point 320 bull with my bow during the rut and get that same experience that i wanted clear back in 2007 and have that um and you know we turned up a giant on that hunt when i had that tag and it was it was a terrible terrible thing uh in the end because i'd actually just killed the bull i did and you talking about seeing a 400 inch bull screaming or whatever this bull was i mean he was on on he was a 390 range bull and uh he was he was in that area but he wasn't screaming he didn't have cows i think he was coming in picking off a single cow here and there and he wasn't talking doing that kind of thing because uh if if i wouldn't have been there and witnessed with my own eyes i wouldn't have believed the story because literally i had just shot that bull i did he was it was a 60 something yard shot it was a little ways off and and i knew i felt good about

the shot but i couldn't quite tell you know he as soon as i shot he took off and i mean it was a great shot and he as i was sitting there i could hear him up in the trees just breathing heavy like holy cow i i guess i did get him you know and so i was just kind of waiting for him to die and started cow calling a little bit thinking we'll get him just to stay if nothing else because he had he had like 15 cows with him so i was just kind of sitting there cow calling all of a sudden i hear a bugle coming right back from that direction and i was like no way how did he get that out he sounded like he was dying you know and and so here's some elk legs start coming back through the trees and and i started ranging a few openings and he was coming right to me and so i had arranged some stop spots i actually put an arrow in thinking it was him maybe coming back and i drew and it was that giant

bull no way standing there 50 yards and i never wanted yeah and then you still don't know for 100 sure of your bull's dead no i don't i don't i'm not i i hadn't even been down to go check the arrow yet all the only thing that that led me to believe that was i'd heard some some kind of some wheezing but it almost was like he was anyway yeah and there he was standing and it was this 390 bull on a three-year-old on a one-point unit to draw what do you say so i don't know i guess you gotta say that my only thing there is i guess that taught me a lesson too is maybe maybe you don't need to wait for 20 years to hunt and bowl either like you're not going to kill unless you're out there so try and maybe i don't know take a chance and i had the luxury i thought you know i'm never going to kill a bull that big ever again so it kind of puts me in a little better spot to say i i can hunt

some stuff that take a little more risk i guess well i don't know i've bronson i ate a nevada elk tag i drew an ely elk tag i mean you know hunting one specific bull but i think how do you if i were to wait for another nevada elk tag to come along you know yeah it may never happen and so i think that's why we're you know applying in nevada arizona new mexico utah wyoming idaho i mean anywhere we can to possibly come up with a tag and researching with vigor and and you know extreme energy and and trying to you know come up with the next pollock bull you know what i mean because you mean you never know where they're going to come from so i don't know anyway so i did not shoot him i i was like you know he's here i got to check this other bull first he walked over there and dead or it's not dead and it was kind of a bittersweet thing made the right choice first bull i'd ever

killed my bow so i was excited and but then just seeing that thing where it was anybody ever killed that bull yeah they killed him the next year what where do you end up at uh the next year he was 380 range but i don't think he was quite as big as he was that year that we that we found him so anyway well pretty fun stuff man pretty awesome i don't know so anyway yeah and like the premise of being in the mountains is better than being at home thinking about being in the mountains you know in terms of letting stuff happen we could you know apply that to colorado we've talked about that until we're blue in the face just being over there somewhere a good thing can happen in colorado or in a lot of places in utah general or i don't know you got to be in the hills a lesser lesser quote labeled lesser unit something good can happen but i think in the off season you're constantly trying to

educate yourself so you can make an educated yeah guess on where the next big one will be you're also but also chasing that just the elite in every state that's the realism of of that really happening for most people that don't have the point it's not you're gonna have to be be creative on what tags you get whether it be a combination of easier to get tags general season tag whatever if you're gonna you know hunt and make something happen so can't all wait for 20 years to get great tags it's just not gonna you're not gonna hunt doing it that way okay well everybody josh pollock welcome aboard we've had uh look quite a bit of growth here bronson uh at epic outdoors we're just trying to stay ahead of the demand and trying to make sure that we answer everybody's phone calls each and every day and and that people are adequately serviced here at epic outdoors and

that's part of you bringing you on josh you're gonna be a great addition i appreciate the opportunity i i don't know it's pretty humbling and it's something i've always thought about doing and um i don't know i'm just very fortunate so i appreciate you guys reaching out to me and i'm excited it'll be good well we expect you to be here 30 years you got it i'm here so anyway and then uh we've also had some growth in our license application department as well we brought a super good gal on that's uh extremely accurate and attention to detail and fits perfectly with the team and so we've got a little bit of growth there and of course bronson you and i have our hands on everything that goes on in in that department as well as all departments of the epic outdoors and what we've got going yeah but it's

all just about anticipating what we need now but what we're going to continue to need you know we need to be able to we realize we're a customer service based business we do produce a magazine we do produce you know a lot of detailed information in there to be able to help hunters make educated decisions about how where and what to apply for in the western u.s but we also have the personal touch to be able to call and consult and help strategize or in the case of like you said license application service if you're going to turn all your apps over to us we've got uh the means and to get that done efficiently quickly accurately and all that and we've also got you know you know devon and wyatt who aren't in here with us today other consultants along with us here in the room to be able to answer

questions you know find outfitted hunts guided hunts either before you draw a tag that you don't need points to draw or after you draw a tag in a state you want to talk to a couple of key outfitters in the unit you draw we can help you from start to finish we only specialize in western north america that's our that's our love that's our passion that's where we are we're not broadening ourselves out over all the world and trying to do a little bit everywhere ever you know ever we're here this is where we belong this is where we love this is what we research and our passions at so just about anticipating needs of our members and you know helping helping us service them we're we're still a hundred dollars a year we're we don't have any plans to change that we want to always add value to our membership we've

done a lot to our online you know mapping research as well as odds and and different things like that and we're going to continue to add there um adding consultants and other other parts of our workforce here is just again value added to our membership i like it so hey you know one thing i've been thinking about is the government decided to print a bunch more money and people are getting stimulus checks right and there's it's stimulating them to buy optics and we've had a lot of calls bronson yesterday alone day before and some of these maybe it's to do with that i don't know maybe it's just spring and they're they're out chris did you get a check yet i did what are you gonna do with it we sell optics well i he's getting married remember i paid bills with it actually let's say he's getting married just all right went straight to went straight to bills yeah he he has ring bills what

else what other kind of bills does it maybe a potentially newlywed guy i don't have ring bills that was that was already been there done that and paid yeah i knew that but what else comes with long with oh then you gotta pay for a venue oh yeah i told you he's getting married it's there's that stimulus tech didn't even scratch the surface that didn't even joe biden barely paid for any visibility for food you gotta pay for all kinds of stuff yeah what kind of not about what's on the menu what do we have to look forward to ah i don't know yet i don't know yet or mckenzie's like june is this june can we put in an order say that we'll put in an order not yet but yeah i'll have the ribeye we're still looking at a few options marbled catering and whatnot well if there's anything we can do to help you let us know jason's willing to come work the traeger i'll do something i'm not

a good cook you know this but jeff john he is we can bring jeff down he can work jeff down and cook some i'll supply wild game i'll supply a traeger or something that looks like a traeger well but anyway your point is that if you have a little if it's you got a little extra and you're looking to maybe buy optics we we've done our best to have an inventory have a great inventory despite some of the difficulties that a lot of the a lot of industries have optics included of having supply chain disruptions in terms of availability and back orders and things like that you've seen it on the shelves a lot of sporting goods stores and guns and ammo world and there's other reasons that have caused those but some of the same you know supply chain issues have been disrupted in terms of optics manufacturers but we've done our best to maintain you what we know is people want need and

move so keep us in mind whether it be spawning scope you know binos tripod scopes yeah trail cameras anyway yeah and we're you know just like you can't hardly buy a mountain bike out there it some of these optics are four to six months back ordered back locked it's crazy and we've made uh we've been proactive made huge orders in advance and uh anyway doing our best to keep everybody loaded in optics because that's what kills stuff all right well i don't know bronson that's about all we had we kind of went over the news of the west real quick up front talked about some of the states that are coming out what's going on with arizona and and a few things and so anyway we're we're gonna have a news of the west section of the podcast here and there keep people posted we kind of did that in a roundabout fashion but anyway um give another couple shout outs i guess to a couple of our podcast

sponsors today red rock uh precision make awesome accurate custom um backcountry or bench or whatever you're looking for rifles uh we've many of us here in the office have some of their rifles some of us a couple of them and uh kurt and his crew there at red rock precision know what they're doing they can top it with whatever optic you're looking for and kind of customize it to what you're looking for whether you want a good all-around western caliber or whether you're looking for something specific like a lightweight mountain rifle or sheep or something lightweight they can do it for you so visit them at redrockprecision.com they've also got a custom gun builder feature on their website and kind of get you started on there but uh visit them at redrock precision.com and uh get the get the ball rolling

on something if you're looking for something for hopefully this next fall also uh appreciate hunt and fishing connection.com a partner of ours here for a short time super good guys as they got a lot of auctions going on right now um kind of the way we're getting rid of a lot of our tags in this covid environment you can go on there and check out a lot of different tags sportsman for fish and wildlife rocky mountain elk foundation mule deer foundation as well as a few uh private entities selling tags hunts and different things on hunt and fish connection.com so anyway you can watch some live auctions there'll be stuff going on here in the next few days next few weeks next couple months great place to go kind of get on there fish around a little bit and maybe there's a hunt on there for you so anyway it's kind of the new age way of buying tags if you're in the market for that a lot of

these are tax deductible so anyway go on there hunt and fish connection.com spelled out and it'll get you there also want to throw a little shout out to triple s polaris here in cedar city utah super good guys uh cranking out machines like it's their job so anyway we got a some wazoo epic build machine that's coming up where he's put a lot of different custom features on there we appreciate those guys they know what they're doing they got a great business going we know them personally they'll take care of you give them a holler four three five eight six five zero one hundred or you can go to like triple s.com i don't know what their website is ssspolaris.com oh there you go one of the things that they specialize in is building a machine out for you for your specific needs it's not just uh they open up a crate and

that's your machine no they they take their machine from polaris and then they customize it and make it yours and so it's a really cool uh system they got going how cool is that awesome well thanks chris i appreciate that just like anything out there you may need to pre-order you kind of want to get on a list if you think you're going to need one in june maybe call them now and i think that's with everything whether it's optics whether it be uh obviously guns ammo anything in the hunting world i mean just don't put it off because who knows if something gets better or worse come may june july august before you really really need something the archery bows boat a lot of bows are on back order right now um you know so it's just a it's an issue you know side by sides four wheelers things like that

you know we've also you know trucks doesn't matter if you can't have enough trucks right well you can but um you know i'm just saying if you don't have one good luck getting one so that's what i think it's crazy when you're treating hard goods like toilet paper and food storage yeah storing them stacking them and storing them huh yep so anyway don't wait that's what i'm saying yeah you may it's going to be the day before the bow hunt and you're not going to be able to find whatever you think you need to do to that's right you know broadheads yep whatever whatever when you find something you want buy it we're not trying to add to the frenzy i'm just saying don't you start start looking now get on a waiting list get on a pre-order list get on a you know wherever whoever you deal with whether

it's us or somebody else uh gonna be a lot of people i think later this fall they're gonna feel a pinch with some of this stuff anyway don't wait all right guys is that it yeah i guess uh chris you got anything else for us boss no no josh any parting words i've bored him enough all right bronson still thinking about chris's menu well i mean i'm hungry so anyway i don't know i've got a few ideas chris if you need any ideas adam and i can sure help you out okay all right all right well bronson close us out have a great weekend everybody good luck in the draws