EP 215: Chasing Tags and Antelope

The only thing that kept going through my mind is Jason saying, these are truck chasers, truck chasers. I'm like, no, they're not. I'm looking at something, yeah, and Chris is like, what the heck is that? And it's an antelope. Bedded in the road. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey, everybody. Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, and Devin. Devin, how are you? Good. Pretty good. Yeah, you've been in the field and killing chis. Smashing blood on the hand. Doing a smash and grab. We got a text saying, I'm headed home, and then two hours later, there's a dead antelope. Right? Wasn't there a text saying, you guys gave up? Oh, no, we found this a couple hours later. No. I'm going to pull it up. Something weird happened with the text. I asked him about that. Yeah, the text weren't quite right. He missed a buck earlier in the day. We passed a buck that we called Mad Cow. Mad Cow. Yes, we passed up Mad Cow. A couple hours later, you found a traditional-looking, great-looking buck. Awesome. I said it was a good thing we passed that one, because, yeah, we found another one. A couple hours later.

Well, first off, I guess we want to apologize a little bit, too, because it's been a couple weeks, and we know that. We've tried. It's not ill-intended. We haven't really been killing a bunch of stuff everywhere. You know, I'm so too busy to do a podcast. It's just been things. Well, we... Like what? A couple big girls. We had it on the schedule. We did. Last week on Wednesday, I believe. And then the rains came. When Carter... And the floods came. When Carter started... The rains came down and the floods came up. Carter's home at his house sitting in the SOS on his in-reach. Dude. So, yeah. So, Jana, luckily at my camp trailer, I get a little cell service. And at 4.20, my time... A.M. Yeah. She's on the phone. Get here now. The window well's full of water. And I'm like, are you crapping me? It's dry out there. It's not even raining in town. No. It's not even raining in town. Not... Yeah.

Even in the seat of our house. It didn't even rain in your house. No. No. No. No. But it rained on the mountain five or six inches. Yeah. It rained on the mountain. And so I got here, and then pretty soon, she's like, there's nothing you can do. Go back to hunting. That's a good gal right there. And I'm like, no, I'm not going back hunting. And sure enough, what, 10 o'clock, we got another... Deluge. Giant. Whatever. And it ends up that, what, Coal Creek... All these canal systems that divert, split. Right. Cedar Valley is a floodplain. Let's just say it. Cedar Valley is a floodplain, and we have big creative canals to take the water away from houses and in and around houses through town. My canal took on all the water because the other canal was plugged up. And then it broke. And then it broke by my house.

And there's people, there's one set of houses between me and the canal, and they took, they became the creek, and my dirt berm along my house became the creek, the side of the creek. And it was three, four feet deep, running like a river. With pine trees in it. Pine trees, lots of them. Hundreds of them. Logs everywhere. And then I get it in the yard. What do we have, Bronson? You helped put the sandbags four or five, maybe five sandbags tall, and that creek came to the bottom of the top sandbag. About three, two and a half, three feet. That's insane. That's against your window well. The window wells have three feet of sandbags above them, and they dang near didn't hold it out. Yeah. But I don't know how they did. And I'm pumping from window well to window well. Anyway, somehow didn't get any water in the basement. I don't know how.

But it left a creek bed in my yard, and everybody else's yard, three feet deep of sludge, and it's nasty crap. They said at one point there was 500,000 gallons per minute coming down Coal Creek. Yeah. It looked at, it was a raging, raging mess underneath the brads. You know, did you guys know Connick's boxes float? No, I did not. Yeah, they did. Those rail car? Yeah, the rail car boxes. They float. So people that have them, they were floating. And then, you know, our buddy Jerry had built like a little lean-toe. Over it? Over it. And it, with doors on the end. So, I mean, it looks like a shed. Yeah. And it floated and freaking tweaked the roof. Freaked it, you know, with all his tools and everything in it. So it's floating inside a shed. Yeah. Hanging against the walls. That's right. And so were cars. Cars were floating, hammering other cars.

Like, these guys around me, a few have collectible cars and race engines and CNC machine. Like, it was serious. It didn't seem like, I mean, the water's a problem, but it's like, what is it, half water, half silt? If water came and went, everybody's happy, right? Nobody likes it, but what it left was a creek bed. It was just unbelievable. Mud. Rattlesnakes, fish. What about rattlesnakes? And your fish in your yard? Okay, so there was fish flowing. Live fish. So we have a pond. There's a pond next to me. Another gal and guy have a pond with thousands. A thousand? I don't know. And they're like the big giant goldfish, and then they've got all kinds of, like, little stuff. You know, perch and little stuff. That's now proliferating throughout Cedar Valley. Oh, dude, they swam by our boots in my driveway. I mean, literally, in the mud, swimming.

I'm there in crocs, barefoot, and there's snakes. Yeah, and then you found a rattlesnake. No, you just showed me it dead. Well, anyway. Yeah. Guy found it stuck in the mud, and head and all, like, nobody had even smashed it, and here we are. We got it in my trash can, a rattlesnake. And we don't have rattlesnake. And who knows how far away it came from? Yeah, it came down the river. It floated down the river. So anyway, guys. Pretty big curveball. That's what I've been dealing with. Like, so even archery hunting, I went from archery hunting, a nice buck against good, significant hunters that are out in the field, to letting them have the buck to themselves. And I've just been running a skid steer and trying to muck out. So, great. Anyway, that's what I've been dealing with. Bronson, what have you guys been doing? Devin? Bronson? Nothing that extreme. I can tell you that.

No, but like your kid boys had a tag. You guys have been out. We did go out on the Archery General last week in Utah. Had a fun time and had one of those classic six or seven hour waits in the thick trees, oak, where you see a buck go in. You know he's better than a 40, 50 yard circle. But after six or seven hours, he blows out. And your boy finds out that's bow hunting. And luckily, he can't wait to go back. I mean, you can go either way in a situation like that. But anyway, did pick him up. Leftover, turn back, whatever you want to call him, antelope tag in Nevada. We'll be going out there this week. The first come first serve program. Yeah. Dude. It works. It works. Archibald? Archibald. You picked up one of those. Tell us how it works. Well, you've got to be quick on the click. That's for sure. Quick on the click. I like it. That's a tongue twister. You came off well, though.

If you want to smash and grab, you've got to be quick on the click. I was lucky. You find a few, but you hadn't even looked in your unit. Keep that in mind. You hadn't even. Just one afternoon. You got your tag like two or three days before the hunt started. The day before. Yeah. The day before. Yeah. We just went over there and looked over a bunch of bucks. Yeah. You and Chris got a good clean kill. What? What? Went that time and then. Yep. They were a little bit skittish. We were there day and a half, right? Yeah, day and a half. We stayed a day and a half. Spent the night out there. Yeah. In our trucks. I skipped a lot. I mean, covered a lot of it. You didn't kill at that point. No. We covered a lot of it. Roll up on a truck on fire? Yeah. Is that the time when that happened? Yeah. We rolled up on a truck and the doors were open. The hood was open and we asked them if they were okay.

Smelled like gasoline. Spewing fuel and the guys trying to put the gas lines back together. I'm thinking I'm running out through the brush. Yeah. Well, they had just driven on those roads that were overgrown, I guess. And all the weeds and sage and twigs got stuck between probably the skid plate and up underneath your diff and it has all that pocket probably. We get talking to him and I'm thinking, I told Wyatt and Chris, I said, we probably booked him on this hunt. Epic Outdoors, man. Sure enough. We did. We did. Yeah. He's a good guy. Broke bread. Shared a kipper snack on the tailgate. Kipper snack. They are amazing in the hills and they're terrible at home.

I've never ate one at home. Oysters? Oh, dude. They're amazing. Out in the hills are amazing. We tried to cook them a desert dog. I love oysters. They were going to Ely, so. Well, but anyway, then you came back and went to work for a day or a minute and then went back and spoked a great buck. Yep. Went back. Me and Chris saw a buck that had a, he went up and then straight out. He was asking weird. I don't know if bugs were biting him or what. That's when we tried the decoy. We walked like a, we think this thing's like 1,200 yards. We walked 2,000 yards. I remember you went to the craft store to get the, kind of some. Wooden dowels. Wooden dowels. For the decoy, right? Yeah. It didn't work. Joanne's? Joanne's crafts. Yeah. Named him Mad Cow. Yeah. I don't know if bugs were biting him or what, but he was like jumping around, like spinning. Anyways, he runs 10 miles.

I mean, he saw us and the decoy and he's gone. That's okay. Literally, I've never seen an antelope do it. But he ran and ran and ran. We can see 10 miles of flats. And he just, we watched him run until he was out of sight. They're all doing that. Anyways, so we go back. You guys are getting me spooked for this weekend. Sounds like it makes antelope sound hard. The only thing that kept going through my mind is Jason saying, these are truck chasers, truck chasers. I'm like, no, they're not. These ones are not chasing our truck. They're not chasing our truck. I wish they would. It just depends. That same goat later on might chase your truck. You never know. Well, same goat later on, bed at 150 yards in the road. We're going along and I'm like looking at this black thing. And you can tell because it's got a loppy horn. What the heck is that?

We should tell the story of how we got to that point because it's kind of funny. So we come back yesterday and we decided we're going to sit on water in the morning. If we don't get them, we're going to sit on water. So we get in there and we actually see a really nice buck and runs off kind of toward the water. So we're thinking, all right, let's go sit the water. So we sit there for, what was it? 27 minutes. 27 minutes. We're like, we can't do this. But we could see the buck way out there in a mirage running all over. Yeah. Just running. Just a mirage though. Looked 10 feet tall. And so I'm like, Chris, what are we doing here? This is a snake infested, like, and it's hot. No shade. So we went and got in the truck. Yeah. And then we're, well, I'm thinking let's just, instead of sitting here and melting, let's just drive around. We can see them for miles.

So we might as well just go chase them around and see if we can get lucky. And we're coming down this road and you can, there's Mad Child. I'm looking at something, yeah. And Chris is like, what the heck is that? And it's an antelope bedded in the road. And it's the Mad Cow one. And he's not as big as we thought. Really? He's just unique. Yeah. He goes up and goes straight right like a kicker. And I'm thinking, he's got a kicker, you know? He's got a kicker. Yeah. His whole horn is folded over on one side. He's probably diseased because he wasn't. And what, he let you draw right up to him? Yeah. 200 yards. The same one that yesterday ran for 10 or last week. Yeah. Like we had shot 20 shots at him. Yeah. Just running. But it was just funny. It was funny. I was, when we rolled up, I'm thinking this can't be an antelope sitting there.

Because that same antelope had seen us from 2,000 yards and ran. Jeez. But now he's just sitting in there in the road with his head literally in the middle of the road. He's just sitting looking at us. So we went to another area where there's some actual hills and broken country instead of like a flat valley. And it worked out. We were there for 20 minutes. We're done. Yeah. Kill a buck. Kill a great buck. Flashed him up. He's feeding alone, watching these group of doles and another buck. Maybe a buck head. We'll see. The key was you saw him before he saw you, right? Yeah. And then we were able to walk down a wash. Cut the distance. Instead of being out on the flats, walk down a wash. Hop up on a hill. Hop up on a perfectly little knob. Smashed him. 411 yards. Boom. Laser beam. And you know what's funny? I shoot. I mean, I had to hold for wind a little bit, but it's like perfect.

12 inches. And I shoot, and there's just poof. You should see the dust. I mean, and it's only a tiny bullet. So I was surprised. The bullet passed through. And I'm thinking. And I look, and the thing runs over, and then he slows up, and he just, oh, tip's over dead. But Chris couldn't see it. He ran out of my field of view, and I'm thinking, oh, no. Here we go. He turned around and looked at Chris. Another 12 miles. Here we go. And his face, you could tell he was like, here we go. When you're on a camera, that first shot is like you get set up. You get everything. It's perfect. You hit record. Perfect focus. No jiggle. Nothing. If there's a miss, then the pressure's on because they're running, and you have to follow them. If they stop, you have to stop. You have to be on the right one. If there's other animals. And so it's. That's what makes you irreplaceable, Chris.

You want that first shot to hit because if you don't, it's stressful. And you want to make sure you hit record so you get the shot. Oh, you missed that, right? I missed that part, yeah. I stopped the video, went to start it again, and I apparently didn't stop. So you would have had two angles. Yeah. Phone scope versus regular video. Yeah. Now I just have it in my memory. Bronson, we missed all the fun. We made some fun. Yeah, we did. We did, but hopefully we have a little bit of our own here coming up. So you've got your boys. Oh, they're locked going up. He picked up a turn backer. Yeah. You're going to maybe go with him there on the weekend archery. Sean got a 231 archery, you know. Just, you know, minimal points. Why not? But he's got a full-time job, and I'm. So he's kind of weekends now. Yeah. Well, the weekend's coming. We've got some stuff to do this weekend. Hopefully we have.

We'll have a good time. Some more stories next week. Well, we mentioned a minute ago, I'm going to give another shout-out because it's that time here. If you're out hunting here for yourself or a buddy, make sure you've got a phone scope because if you don't video, it didn't happen. That's right. Just got to hit record. Hit record. But check them out at www.phonescope.com. Phone scope with a K dot com. Check out the input, whatever optic, whatever spotting scope you got. Yeah, because there's a little adapter for that. Yeah, little adapter. Also, your phone. Phone cases are all different. Janet tells me. Janet tells me. I bought a phone scope yesterday for herself. She bought a phone scope. She went online. Went online. Bought a phone scope. She's got all her own gear, backpack, tripod, tripod, everything. She decides she needed a phone scope. And so, anyway, I haven't asked her.

What adapter she got? Yeah. I don't know what spotting scope. It's probably the Swarro 95, you know, with, I don't know. We'll find out. 30 to 70 parts. Yeah. I might be looking for my spotter. Well, get your phone scope. Next one, I'll give a quick shout out to Triple S Polaris here in Cedar City, Utah, Southern Utah. But they are willing to talk with you, put something together for you, whether you want a factory or stock version of a four-wheeler, side-by-side, whatever. Or if you want to put a little bit of thought into something that you want to customize. We've done one of those for the Epic crew. And if you want to put that together, you can get another $250 off your next purchase and $250 credit toward Epic Optics and in-store credit. But I have to call them for details at Triple S Polaris, 435-865-0100.

Colton Francis and the guys ready to get to work, put something together for a machine for you all. Colton's a good dude. And they specialize in customizing vehicles. That's what they do. That's what they do best. I went over there the other day just to see what they had. It's fun. Don't go as big as you want to go. There's one. Did you see that one drove into our parking lot? That machine was out front. And I swear, that thing is like five feet off the ground. It had 39-inch tires on a Razor. It looked like a miniature monster truck. Yeah, it did. Pretty fun. But I say that because they can literally do whatever you want. So if you wanted to specialize for hunting, they can set it up for you. Yeah, Colton and the guys, they know what they're doing. Of course, our epic rig has been seen everywhere at Bronson. John's had it all over Cedar Mountain.

I've had it out in the desert, and it runs. I mean, this sucker runs. But anyway, and John knows that. John's, I don't know how many miles that thing has on now, but it wouldn't surprise me he's got a few. Up on Panguitch, up here on top. So anyway, he's been looking around for some elk. He's got a great elk tag. So anyway, also want to throw a shout out to St. James Sporting Properties. Super good guy, Blaine St. James. He does a great job of finding properties and also selling properties. He's a hunter himself, so he specializes in, of course, he'd sell to anybody. But anyway, sells to hunters and knows what he's looking for, knows the landowner tag systems, knows what people are looking for. And so if you're a hunter and you're looking for a hunting property, Blaine's the first guy I'd call. So anyway, give him a holler, 877-354-7247.

Or you can email him, info at sjsportingproperties.com. That's the best way to write it. Info at sjsportingproperties.com. You can obviously go to sjsportingproperties.com to see what's available. So anyway, super good guy. Adam and I, we've known him for years and years. Yeah, I saw him do a post on his Instagram the other night. I think he killed a Roosevelt Bull in California, wasn't it? And that's 28 of 29 of his North American 29. So he's, I think he needs, I think he said a sick of whitetail, was it? It was his last one. Yeah, yeah. So he's going to go up there and. He texted me right in the middle of when I had water in the window well. Did he? I didn't text him back. Yeah. If I left you out, anybody just give me a little bit of a break. But anyway. At least you have an excuse. Yeah. Some people don't. Sometimes I don't. Also throw a shout out to MOA Rifles.

Super good people there at moarifles.com. Bob Beck, he's, of course, he's been killing stuff left and right. Killed an absolute monster buck up there in Oregon. Congratulations, Bob. Knows what he's doing again. Bronson, you've got one of his rifles. Yeah. We're going to take that out this weekend. My boy's antelope hunt. Little Sheila's going to get her chance to shine. So another Nevada antelope going down. It's awesome. He got that tag. Turnback. On a turnback. Yeah. How cool is that? That's good. What a great opportunity. These antelope tags are not easy to get, dude. We're talking after 15 years, you've got a 1% or 2% shot, depending on the unit. And, you know, you can't always predict good antelope years. But by most accounts this year, Nevada's growing some great bucks. There's a lot of great bucks hit the ground in Nevada for antelope this year. Antelope and elk. Deer suck.

Deer suck. Antelope and elk. For the most part, southern and especially. Well, northern and be all right. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway. So, yeah. Hopefully, we've got another quick report, like first of next week. Anyway, MOARifles.com, 541-526-1820. Half inch MOA guaranteed. All right. Let's talk real quick. We've got, just to give an optics plug, we've got BTX, binos, rifle scopes, spotting scopes, everything in stock that you could want. We've had a busy couple weeks. A lot of people, obviously, the hunts are becoming front and center for a lot of people. And a lot of people, I guess, until you start thinking about packing your gear a week before your hunt or two weeks before your hunt, you're like, ah, I need a new pair of binos. Well, if you do, give us a call. We've got a lot of stuff in stock. We've, with coronavirus, doing a lot of disruption in supply chains. We aren't perfect.

We have a perfect inventory. But we've gotten very aggressive to do big orders to anticipate those last-minute calls that people have. Hey, I need a new pair of range-finded binos. I ran over my spot and scope with my side-by-side. I need something. Whatever it is, we've heard everything. Trust us. And so give us a call, 435-263-0777. If you need something, either in a pinch or if you're just ready to, you know, buy it off. You've got Biden bucks that you're coming to show up in your mailbox. We take those. We do. We take the Biden bucks. There's credit cards out there with Biden's name on them. There is? No. Yeah, there is. Wow. Well, probably Kamala. Got her name on a few. All right. So anyway, there is. We do sell a lot of optics here at Epic Outdoors. We appreciate everybody's support. We also have the best pricing. So give us a holler.

Because we sell a lot of optics, we also have a lot in inventory. So, you know, we sold some 3200.coms this morning, Bronson. I mean, we've. There's a lot. There's a lot. LHT rifle scope. I remember. I remember. Sold Vortex at Suaro. It's a busy time of year. It was that guy's third scope. Same one. Really? He's liking them. Yeah, he loves it. Sold the few. We sold a bunch of fusions. Got them out the door today. I mean, there's just. There's a lot going on here. Of course, we're here. We're out in the field a lot. But we also have a great staff here. Somebody's here to help you. Yeah. Sometimes not always on a Friday. We're still kind of in the summer mode. Give our ladies, you know, some of their time off in the summer. Or even though school's getting going again. That'll change here in the next month or so. But just keep that in mind.

Monday through Thursday for the time being here the next month or so. It's probably what it's going to look like. Yeah. I like it. I like it. I can't wait to hear the stories after next week. We got a lot. Bronson, you and I are slammed. Yeah. It's almost like the acquisition of tags is more than half the kill for me. I love having tags. Getting a tag. And then, yeah, then you got to. Make good on them. Yeah, that's right. In sometimes tough conditions. Yeah. Especially on some of the deer in the southern of the state. Our Utah general, not as exciting as it was a year ago. Just not in dry year. Hard to get excited. And, you know, we got plenty of seasons. Some of us got dedicated hunter or, you know, kids got rifle tags on every season. So they go on and on and on. And sometimes you want them to end.

I like those short seasons because you have to quit. You can't even feel guilty. You don't even feel guilty. Dedicated hunter, I got until October 31st. And you feel guilty every day you're not out there. That's true. This morning I thought about it. Yeah. But New Mexico has the five-day seasons. When the fifth, sixth day, you're done. Kind of just go hunt your guts out. You can do anything for five days. You can. Well. Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. I don't know if I get to chase that antelope for five days. Yeah, that's pushing it. Oh, it was a good story. I love it. That's great. You guys did good. Congratulations. Turnback tags work. Anybody that's looking for something, there's an over-the-counter in Colorado. There's some turnbacks in Colorado. You're going to see stuff trickling in Nevada all fall long.

If it's, you know, within 14 days of a season opening, they just throw them on the web. It's a highly competitive process. And just like Colorado, now they announce when they go. They announce the day before. Here's the tags. The next day, they go on sale roughly around 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. And there's a lot of luck involved. But there's tags. And as other hunts get within that 30-day window and pass, you're going to see more of the muzzleloader and rifle tags come available in Colorado as those hunts get closer. So if you have a desk job or have the ability to sit and watch the computer on some of those key days, you might get lucky. Quick on the click. I can't say that. Quick on the click. Do a smash and grab. All right, everybody. Let us know what you're doing out there, what you're killing. We've got photos at epicoutdoors.com we want to see.

We're getting loaded daily with that, with a lot of archery, antelope, and deer hunters. So elk hunters starting too. So good luck to everybody out there. And see you in the field.