EP 219: Hunting a New Unit For The First Time.

Going to brand new units is scary, and then once you come out here, how do you do it? You're moving, you're checking out new things, you're going to learn a lot in five days. A lot of deer migrations are that way, just there's something in their brain that tells them to leave. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson is not here. Where are you, Adam? I think he's in Idaho, but probably doesn't want us to tell everybody. Anyway, John, Josh, Chris.

We come in for one day and you guys hook up the mic. What's the deal, Chris? You can never lay off. No, I keep getting all these messages of people wanting to hear from you. Well, anyway, we want to thank Under Armour. We appreciate their support. All they do for us here at Epic Outdoors, they support us in everything we do. So, anyway, go to UA.com, check out some of their stuff. I've been wearing some of their new boots. How about Josh? We even got the insulated ones today. Yeah, tried those on. I actually used them in New Mexico and pretty good. Uninsulated, though, on those ones. Uninsulated, yeah. I did like that other one, that one we got. It's a little more stiffer. It feels a little more secure around your ankle and stuff when you're hiking. Charged Raider. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Charged Raider with the, well, these new ones have the 600 grams in them.

So, anyway, it'd be pretty cool to check them out. They do feel better. They just feel great. There's a lot of support there and stability. They're putting new product on their website all the time, so keep checking back. If you're after something in particular, keep checking, then it'll show up. I like it. All right. Well, let's see, John. What have we been talking about? Maybe we're going to be at the Hunt Expo. How about that? HuntExpo.com. Be at the Hunt Expo. Get your hotel rooms now. We even had a little bit of a concern that COVID might, you know, cause it not to happen, but we've been assured pretty much it's going to happen. It's a go. So, here in Utah, we don't put up with government overreach, right? That's right. Even if we have to wear 14 masks, we're going to put on this show. Today, my wife just called and she's at the store and she's like, some lady from California

is in front of me in the line. And she's just complaining like, I can't believe all you people. You're not wearing masks and you're not considerate of other people. And she said, don't leave California. She said it. You're what? So, all right. So, this is Jen. Yes. So, Jen's French and they're very frank. Remember, Jen was explaining, she's like, in France, like, if you're fat, we say you're fat. Or if that outfit doesn't look good on you, we say, you know, that outfit doesn't look good on you. Yeah, they're very direct. And here in America, you guys are fake. You'll tell somebody, it looks good on you even when it doesn't. So, picture Jen, a French gal telling a gal to go back to California or to stay in California. Pretty funny. It is funny. And she comes from a socialist country, which you'd think she's the opposite. She's so conservative. Oh, really? Oh, my gosh.

She's more conservative than I am. Is it because of the health? She was involved in the healthcare program. Yeah. And just everything. Everything there, she just, you know, she's like, socialism sucks. Really? Yeah. People who have really actually lived it and then don't have to live it anymore realize, wow, this is a better life. Well, we know a lot of Canadians that are, I mean, you get in a year-long waiting list to have a surgery procedure done or something. So, they just come to the States? Yep. Kind of crazy. Everything's covered, but it's crappy service. So, Jen in a French accent. Oh, yeah. Accent. Say in. Tells her to go back to California. Go back to California. That's my favorite. Do you have any other fun stories? Because she's full of them. Oh, yeah. She's pretty fun. She's pretty fun. Any, nothing else? She's fiery. She says it just like it is. So, hey, got to like it.

All right. Well, Josh, you talked about elk in New Mexico, and that was a brand new unit. And I kind of think, you know, Chris, you came up with this subject, and it's because you deal with our Instagram and social media. By the way, Epic Outdoor, Epic Hunts, Epic Optics, whatever, is run by Chris. We appreciate that, Chris. And so, anything you see out there is posted by Chris, and of course, he'll get to you with your questions and things. And he also gets the request for the podcast. And so, Chris mentioned. Well, and it's this time of year, we're all getting ready. We're all on the verge of going our separate ways for a while. We're going to go second, third, fourth season Colorado. We've got Idaho tags going right now. And so, I just thought it would be helpful if we talked about going to a unit that you've

never been to before, how you approach it, how you get started, and then what you do once you get there. And I figured it'd be great, especially since, Jason, you're hunting multiple units that I know nothing about. You know nothing about. As far as having hunted there. And I complain why I never kill the biggest animal in the end. And I do complain about it. I'm tired of it. I want the biggest stuff. And it's hard when you're going to a brand new unit. But I think part of, you know, going to brand new units is scary. The bottom line, there's a lot of apprehension in the world of, you know, especially we talk to guys about Colorado every year. Hey, you know, you can go on this zero or one point unit or whatever. I talked to a guy just barely. And you can hear it in their voice just like, okay. But, you know, they want to know more.

And so, people are attracted to units that we've hunted personally or whatever. And we also have the member experience program of a list of guys who've hunted the places that you're going to be going. But I guess I was just growing up learning new units. I just grew up with it. So, it's kind of second nature. But maybe we talk about some of these. It's, you know, Chris, you've been to new units. We all here in the room have been to new units. And what all that entails here in the West, just going West for Easterners is nerve-wracking. And then once you come out here, how do you do it, right? How do you do it, start to finish? Josh kind of was starting in on yours, picking on you a little bit. But New Mexico, you went and hunted a brand new elk unit. You only have five days to make it happen. You don't have an extra five days to pre-scout. And Jenna loves it when I use the word pre-scout.

So, I just threw it in there. Because she's like, no, scouting means pre-scout. You don't say pre-scout, but I don't care. We pre-scout around here. So, you don't have, you know, a whole month to devote to it, so to speak. So, what do you do? Yeah. And especially with that hunt, you know, I have big aspirations to get out there early. You're going to go two days early. Take at least one whole day. Because I feel like when you go to a new unit, it takes at least a day. Because we were talking earlier, you can look at it on map all you want. You can sit and angle it to see the 3D version all you want. But really, until you physically see. On Google Earth. Yeah. Google Earth or on X, whatever. But until you physically get there and see it, you know, you just kind of have to wrap your brain around it. Okay. Where does this road go? How does this go?

You can look at it on a map and say, okay, here's our boundary. And it runs up this big ridge around that in New Mexico. And just eyeballing it. I'm like, okay, the boundary runs up there. Look at all that good country. Well, we hiked up in there. Yeah. All that good country was in the other unit. And so we kind of wasted a little bit of time hiking up in there. There wasn't as much to hunt up in there as we thought. Half of what you thought. Yeah. And part of that, too, was my fault. I learned a lesson to sometimes when I get on an on X or something like that, I'll leave it on a satellite mode. And I'm like, if I would have just thrown that sucker into just the topo mode, I could have seen like that, that it wouldn't have been in there. The boundary. So, yeah, it makes much more sense. So, learn to read that kind of information first because you think it's going to be all in there.

But anyway, you just have to almost take a whole day just to kind of wrap your brain around where this road goes, what direction it is, how it looks, that kind of thing. And then once you get there, that's the thing that changes so much is the conditions when you get there. You can't tell what the feed looks like in a map. Right. And what that feed looks like from last year to five years ago, maybe you hunted it even five years ago, whatever. The amount of information that can change from year to year, you almost have to go there and just physically see it and figure it out. And unfortunately, sometimes we find ourselves into a situation where you're spending multiple days doing that, unfortunately. You know, I know when we went to Nevada earlier this year, you get all the information you can, you hit some spots.

And I learned a valuable lesson there as to those deer would rather eat weeds than eat bitter brush, you know. The most beautiful bitter brush country in the world. And it's no deer. Oh, no deer. Did dump a coyote, remember. Josh, how far was it? 8.15. That's right. All right, keep going. But I just remember I went to the place where there was weeds. I didn't see a lot of deer at first, but I'm just like, there's chuckers out here, you know. What am I doing here? So then, and I didn't see a lot of deer, so I moved over. And then I took in a lot of information. You'd talk to locals. And the locals all say, you got to go here. You got to go high. You got to, you know. Yeah. Well, some of their experience I actually found out was old information, you know, kind of information maybe they used growing up. And they just kind of went there.

But I switched and went over, and I was like, oh, this is the ticket, you know, bitter brush to your armpits. And if it was in Utah, it looks exactly like where the deer in Utah would just be a mecca. And I spent two days in there and literally saw about five deer. And then I showed up and showed you a giant within what? No, I'm just telling you. Go ahead, Josh. Six minutes. You're done. I love the desert. I was too busy trying to hold down the tent to survive that storm. There was a storm that moved in, so I went in and just went to the desert, you know. And I know Josh is on the mountain. That's your home. Yes. I'm like, I'm going to go to the desert. You're in the desert. I'm going to go to the window of the truck. I video a gorgeous whatever, $190s buck. And I'm like, I don't know what Josh is doing. He's ready to go home. But here's a buck. Maybe we want to hunt.

I was so stoked because I saw a 3.2. I was so excited. By the time he got to cell service, he's just, yeah, anyway. I'm like, did you get all the text messages? No. Well, look at this. This is a good one. He's like, I'm such a, anyway. But it was luck on my part and going to a different part of the unit. And I think like you're talking about, the country you were in is the most gorgeous, amazing deer country there is. And I'm grateful you spent time there because I didn't have to. You know what I mean? And that's part of it is as much as the good country is in a unit, where's all the bad country? What's not? What doesn't have deer in it? I want to know that so I don't ever have to go there. And that X'd off, what, 65% of the unit. We wrote it off. And there'll be a giant there. Maybe somebody will kill a big deer there. There is. And I guarantee you there is. But it is big country.

And I couldn't see all of it, you know. But once we've unlocked a little bit of the piece of the puzzle. Yeah. That's where all the deer were. And the locals are like, what are you doing here? Yeah. I don't think they liked it. I don't know. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. We told you to go high. Like, why? How do you know? What are you doing here? Yeah. You know what I mean? And so, anyway. But nobody teaches you that. That's the one thing. I think our member draw experience is a little bit different. Where these tags are the tough tags to draw. People are willing to share info. Yeah. The stuff that they're going to hunt year after year. The general stuff. Whatever. That type of tag. A little bit more reserved with the info. Because they're not going to be hunting it all the time. Right? And that's a natural. We all expect that. But I think part of it for me.

Like, hunting a new unit. It's like, I want to get that paper map first. And we have a map center on our website. Epicoutdoors.com. We have the map center. I want to see it. Like, I got to wrap my arms. I'm old school. John, you've seen my map. My map drawers. Several filing. Disgusting. Disgusting amount of maps. Yeah. And I told Jan to keep that. Because I can say that I had. I ledgered a journal my whole life. Yeah. Because there's a lot of notes on there. You know what I mean? Of places I've been. And that's my journal. Your kids will be selling the notes off that. I said, yeah. I will roll over my grave if those maps leave our family. So, anyway. But I'm still attached to that. I'm old school. I like to grab that paper map. And then, like Josh says, using, let's call it Onyx, whatever, base maps. Whatever you use.

GoHunt has a mapping system. But you can learn how to use it. Like, what is that? It's one thing to have it. It's another thing to know what layers. There's different layers. So, there's options. You go on to Onyx, for example. I'm not pushing Onyx. Nobody's paying us for this stuff. But, and so, anyway. Whatever system you use, there's layers. And you can add and subtract them, right? You can add the units. Like Wyoming. You can say, I want all the deer units. I want all the elk units. Or I want the sheep units. And they don't all overlay at the same time. And so, you want to overlay. If you're going deer hunting, overlay them deer units. Okay. Got that done. Then go through. And they've got different access points. The trails, trailheads, access yes programs. Like in Idaho or whatever. There's those overlays as well. Then there's burn overlays.

And it charts the years of the burn and different things. And that'll teach you, you know, this was burned last year. This was burned within the last three years. This could be an amazing burn. Like I need to go check that. Or this was a 20-year-old burn. Or whatever. And so, anyway. I like to just familiarize myself with that. Look at it. But it's one thing to have the mapping. But it's another thing to know what it's saying. What it's telling you. You know what I mean? Well, and like you were saying. Having that paper map. It's kind of the same way. Like I was saying. It's turning it to a topo view. When you're sitting here on your phone. You can see 5.7 inches of a unit at a time. And when you lay out a whole map. It's almost like when you get there in person. And you can actually comprehend scale better. I feel like. And size and shape.

Looking at a paper map still has a lot of value to it. It gives you just a different eye for that area. Well, and there's a lost art to reading maps. Yeah. Like my kids. You know. The only thing they know is their phone. The only thing. The only maps. And they live by an Onyx-based system. And they look at it. And they always use the aerial view. Yep. I'm like. And you can't. They don't even know how to. They don't even comprehend the top of you. And I'm always in the top of you. And you can't. You can't. You can't see on an aerial. Is that a canyon or is that a ridge? I can't see it. You can't tell. I can't see it. I can't see it. I mean, you can kind of. And supposedly with some of the 3D options and whatnot. Right. You can. There's a hybrid. You can throw some lines. I do a hybrid most of the time. Do you? Yeah. It does help. That's what I do too. But I love. But I'm old school.

So I'm usually on the topo. And I'm looking at the topo. And of course, lines that are close together are steep. Far apart or flat. Flatter country. Yeah. And then the springs and mountaintops and all valleys and all of these things. I can just read it because I was taught to read it when I was a little kid. And that was a long, long time ago. And you know what I mean? Like the layers, like you're talking, you know, it seems like most of us, and just me anyway, when I think about how I draw a unit, the first thing I go look for is like springs and water. You know? First thing. Just because it's a, I'm used to hunting desert-ish type terrain. And that's what things are thirsty. Well, when you go to hunt third season in Colorado, you probably don't need to worry too much about where the springs are. I never have looked for a spring in November.

You probably need to have your migration layer on. You know, and that might be obvious. And the migration layer. Yeah. Now, what if you don't even know that layer is available? There's a lot of guys listening to this, don't even know it's available. And there's a winter range. You can throw on mule deer winter range for third and fourth season, second, third, and fourth season. That's pretty important. Yeah. That's telling you where to go. And you can say, okay, here's probably the lowest they're going to be. Here's the direction they're going to be coming from. So if you get down and say there hasn't been a snowstorm that's pushed them down or something, then you can work your way back up. But it's probably wise to throw that on and start that first. What do you mean probably wise? That in and of itself has killed a freaking ton of deer in Colorado. Yeah.

They don't have the migration layer like in Utah that I know of. No, no. I know there's not. Not every state has it. And you know it because you're a biologist. Why don't you guys give that up? It's harsh. I think because a lot of it they don't, you know. Publish. A lot of it's there's gee whiz. They kind of move through here. But most of it, you know, they're still building that layer through GPS stuff. It wouldn't surprise me. It's all going to come out. At some point it will. Maybe it will come out. And it's not top secret information. This comes through the racks and boards and in packets. And it's available. It's just not as refined as Colorado is pretty darn refined. And that is a huge help in Colorado. That is. You don't get that on a paper map. We used to draw it on. You go to Colorado's website and 1,400 layers deep you finally find the migrations. You know what I mean?

Of whatever animal you've clicked on. And then we used to manually, Chris and I, I mean, John, Chris, now you, manually draw them on paper maps. The first year I went over there I printed out the map. But I put in on the computer all the migration routes by hand. Printed it out. And without even talking to anybody, you're kind of ready to go. Like that in and of itself, you're ready to go. And you could do summer ranges. So if you're archery hunting or muzzleloader hunting, great. There's summer ranges. Okay. Which, yeah, naturally go high, right? But there are places that have more congregation than others. And those are on there. So the layers, be familiar with the layers. Every state has different layers. I mean, some, Nevada has a guzzler layer. Probably go see the guzzlers because Nevada's a dry state and deer like water. Having said that, Utah doesn't have that layer.

No, they kind of don't want you to know in a way. You know, but just to try and help protect the wildlife and give them a little bit of a buffer so that you're not. You know, I mean, it's not like they're hiding anything. You can find them. But, yeah, they kind of try and do that to respect. Day after day on Google Earth, searching. All of a sudden, there's a little saucer. Yep. If it's a saucer, it's probably not working. Yeah, exactly. But there's some old saucers that are crap. Oh, yeah. But anyway, so I think learn the different layers. Play around with your systems because you got a huge tool in your hand of, you know, your phone and all the layers and mapping available to you. If you don't have it turned on and tuned up, you know, you're missing out. It could help you a ton. You know what I mean? That's what I think.

Just think about your hunt in particular, what those animals are going to be doing, whether it's a summertime pattern, whether it's rut or whether it's winter range, something. You know, it's not a blanket for all of them. Just try and focus in on what your hunt's going to be, and then you need to learn that part of it. So, Josh, it brings me to the next point is, so we were hunting a unit in Nevada or going to hunt a unit in Nevada. And, you know, I said, hey, maybe call member drawer or call the biologist. And your point to me was, okay, let me get the maps. And I'm like, okay, well, I've already ordered them, by the way. Here's some maps. And you're like, okay, I'm going to go home, get familiarized myself with Onyx or whatever system, Google Earth, along with the maps. And then I'm going to call. Yeah. Why did you do it that way versus just jump on the phone?

Because I've been on the other end of it trying to describe to a guy what Mount Dutton looks like, and he's coming from West Virginia. And he's like, Mount Dutton? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is this Dutton Mountain there? And you're trying to explain something that looks like Lord of the Rings to someone, you know, something out of a movie that they don't, you know, someone from Florida that doesn't, we got some hills or some canyons around here, you know? And it's like, no, it's pretty unreal. Cooleys. Yeah, exactly. And so I guess after being on a biologist or a game warden side of it, it's almost frustrating as well. I would often tell people, go get some maps, go look, go do a little bit of research first. And then call me back. And then we can talk.

Well, I think another thing is if a guy doesn't know what he's talking about, you're giving him the three basic mountain ranges and a place to stay. And honestly, you know, he can't even absorb anymore. No. So as a biologist, you're holding back just saying, I could tell this guy everything and he doesn't even get it. He can't even absorb it. So he's not ready for it. But if you're ready for it and you're like, okay, I've got it. I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking about this. I see there's a burn here, whatever. Then the biologist is like, hey, okay, he's ready to visit. Yeah. And even write some stuff down that you learn. Come up with a few questions. Having a few questions, whether you really know or whether they're just a question to bait the biologist in, whatever it is. You're going to learn something. Ask him, hey, what about this particular canyon?

Hey, I noticed this part of the unit. There's this corner that does this. Look at some of those things and build some questions as well. And that's going to help, even if nothing else, build a rapport. You can talk with them that way. It just makes it a little bit easier and a little bit better to do that. And when they're spouting off some of these kind of things, where this road goes or whatever, you'll also have an idea. So you won't have to write that down as much. You can say, okay, he's talking. Have your map out in front of you while he's talking to you as well. You know, even pull it up and start pulling around and looking, zooming in, whatever, even if you don't tell him or you don't know. You know, be prepared when you do it. Don't just call while you're trying to pick your kids up from school, you know. Right. Take the time, do some research and do it.

And you will get a better response. I can guarantee you that. Even personally from me calling biologists from other places, game wardens, whatever, you'll get a better response and better information. But on the other hand, too, at the same time, it's not like these biologists or these guys have a lot of hidden information that they're going to hide from you or they have a lot of special things. Obviously, they're going to know their units really well. But the information that they're going to give you is fairly general type information. And it's general information that goes from year to year to year. This is one thing that I almost ran into in New Mexico. So there were some changes I felt like in the habitat that didn't cause the elk to do what they normally do eight out of 10 years.

You know, you could run into a situation where like this year on some of our elk units up here, that grass, John, you saw it. I mean, knee deep. And then it greened up early and then it re-greened up again. And so those elk are... Weather and conditions, timing changes a whole unit, can change a whole unit. You have the burn that went through there. I mean, a giant large-scale fire, 70,000, 80,000 acre fire completely changed that unit to where when Adam was a biologist, the information he was telling guys is completely irrelevant to what the biologist is telling guys now because those elk have completely changed their habitats and changed what they're doing, how they use that habitat. A lot of them don't ever leave 8,000, 9,000 feet now because the grass is so tall. Whereas in October, they were all down in the sagebrush, in the mahogany, all that kind of stuff because there was...

It was all just thick timber up there that they couldn't use. No grass ever grew. Well, now the grass is knee deep and they can dig through the snow. They really don't have to leave. So keep in mind those kind of situations. If you have a unit that you've even hunted for 20 years and there's a large-scale fire or something, you probably need to do a little bit of... You're going to have to change up what you're going to be doing. But yeah, just getting that information from the biologist, that's what I ran into in New Mexico was there was a lot of green feet up high. There was nothing to push them out. There were some bulls that just out of habit left. And you'll see that. There'll be some elk that still leave and head to winter range just because in their brains and their timing, they know that they're going to leave. A lot of deer migrations are that way.

Just there's something in their brain that tells them to leave. But you could run into a situation in some areas, I've seen it here in Utah when I was the biologist, that a migration can get stalled if they run into, say, an oak belt that's full of acorns. They know the food source. In some areas, we don't have any acorns. Yeah, the food source that they know. So you'll see a deer, their migration route or their trails, they'll get held up for 10 extra days, two weeks. You'll see it on a telemetry. Yeah, they'll physically stop and they'll just stay there for two weeks and eat. And you're like, wow, yeah, there's acorns this year. Yeah, and people are down hunting on the desert. Where's all the deer? They're not here. And they don't think to go maybe up and check that kind of stuff. So you're really part of your scouting needs to be checking in on some of those feed conditions,

something like that that may change. Or these early snowstorms we had here in Utah. Right, right. All of a sudden we had early snow and everybody's fired up about it. Yeah, yeah. And so anyway, those are some things that a unit can change from year to year. Well, and a little plug for the New Mexico biologists. I think they treated you well. Oh, 100%. 100%. And then when we talked to one or two in Nevada and, you know, a little vague. We got the spill, you know. We did. We got the normal bio spill. Yeah. But some biologists are not super passionate hunters necessarily. Right. They do their job well. They do the aerial counts. They know what their game are roughly doing. But they don't, like, wake up wondering where the next giant is or why is this mountain range producing a little better than this mountain range? They know it. They just aren't. It's just not on the top of their head.

It's not the forefront of their mind. When I was a biologist and a game warden both, there was a game warden there that would give information out that I'm just like, he would give out the basic information for all the units about one unit. And we'd say, well, there's snow, so they're going to be down. Well, no. It's the same thing that's happening now on the penguins unit. The Dutton, those elk, they'll winter at 9,000 feet because it's a black rock. The sun burns off on those south slopes and those elk stay up there. And elk can live in three feet of snow if they want to. Yeah. They don't go down to the valley because all the cold air settles in the valley. It's actually warmer. There's this little thermal belt where it's warmer for them to stay at 8,500 feet.

And you're taught, like, you don't, if you're lost and you are scared you're going to die of hypothermia, be in the middle of the mountain. Not on top, not on the bottom. Right. Exactly. When you go to set up your camp, don't set it, if there's a little bit of a ridge or something, set it up on that little ridge. Don't go down in the hole. That's right. Or you're going to freeze and you're going to walk up 10 feet to go to the bathroom in the morning. You're like, oh, it's so much warmer. That's what happens. 10 feet up, you know. In the winter range. That's what happens. And so he was telling everybody, well, you've got to go into the valley. That's where all the elk are. Well, no, they're not. You know, and that's just that. So you need to do that. But, yeah, the biologist, the game warden that I talked to in Mexico was phenomenal.

Like, I wouldn't even have been able to know where to begin.

Yeah. Really, with the information that he gave me. It was very beneficial. Chris, did you have something you wanted to? Through all this, you see that there's no replacement for physically being there. So you can do all the pre-scouting, the e-scouting, the calling the biologist, calling people who've hunted it before. And that's all great. And that will put you ahead. But being there in person is what really lets you know, okay, what's going on right now. Because I've had areas here that I've hunted for 10 years. And year to year, the deer are in different places just because of what you're talking about. Feed conditions change every year. Some years there's grass lower and they're down low. Or feed lower. Or they're up in the acorns. It just depends on the year. So you've kind of, if you can go early to a unit, I would say go early.

And some of these units, I love to pick on Nevada, but when they have a drought, sometimes those very arid desert country, I mean, sometimes they'll produce giants on good wet years. And then the next year, it's not even worth the gas money to drive down there. And you can tell that by the spring and summer, early summer rains. You can tell if you, like, I didn't even make a trip down there. I didn't even go down there. I already know there's not going to be a big deer down there. And from all the reports, yeah, there's no big deer down there. And so, you know, that changes from year to year. So if you were to call somebody that's, you know, 2016 and say, hey, you know, where did you hunt and was it good? They might send you to the desert saying the biggest freaking deer in the unit are down there. I'd be down there in three seconds, you know.

Well, on a drought year, there is nothing good down there. You want to go up where they got a little bit more rain. And even if they didn't get rain, it's cooler conditions, a little higher elevation, and there was some vegetation. You know what I mean? And it's something you may want to consider, even if you've never gone on a guided hunt or had an outfitter in your life. If you wait 18 years for an elk tag, you don't want to go spend five days trying to learn a unit. Well, what really frustrates me, and I want to swear, but we're not supposed to do on a podcast. It's when you walk away from a unit wishing you knew at the start of the hunt, but you know at the very end of the hunt. Yeah. I had that Arizona elk tag a couple years ago, and I went down there, and I spent day after day after day, and it was a severe drought year.

And so everything everybody was telling me was irrelevant because the elk were not in the same spots that they usually were. Yeah. And so I just pounded my head against the wall, and I relied a lot on what people were telling me who had been there before. And so I wasted. And they're like, what do you mean you can't see anything? Are you even glassing? Exactly. It doesn't sound like you're in the same unit. I have never even been to that knob and not seen an elk. Exactly. I usually glass 30 bulls off that. And now, you know, Chris Peterson's out there. I hadn't even seen a bull. So I wasted the first three quarters of the hunt trying to find bulls in these areas that everybody else had told me were good. And then finally, the second to last day, You found the mother. Finally found where the bulls were. And it was a matter of we ran out of time because we found the bulls too late.

And had we gone earlier or whatever and not paid so much attention to what everybody else was saying and gone and hunted differently, it might have worked out. Yeah, it's true. And had you known that earlier, and maybe 10 days of scouting, pre-scouting would have helped you. You know what I mean? But in that particular situation. However, that season is sandwiched. That's a tough season. It was tough. But what we figured out toward the end, and had I known this. You have an early archery, which is a late archery, prior to your hunt. Yeah. I can't remember. Yeah. You were sandwiched in between a late archery and a late rifle in a muzzleloader hunt. But like you were saying, had we known what we knew at the end of the hunt, I definitely would have killed a bull. If I had one more day, I would have killed a bull. Yeah. Anyway. And I don't know if you ever get past that. Honestly.

We all walk away from a unit going, all right, I'm ready. Give me another tag. Yeah. I need another 18 points, John. Yeah. And I think Josh made a good point about the 18 points or the 20 points that it takes to draw that type of tag. There's different classes of tags. I think in Colorado, those that didn't, you know, never spent their points and they've gotten 15 and don't know what to do with it now, that's different. But the guys that are spending three to five points, that's a different type of tag than 18, 20 years. Well, and it might. Yeah. And I think if you don't have the time here in Utah, I drew a unit that's close to home. I knew I could put in the time before the hunt. And so I did it myself and didn't get an outfitter. Now, somewhere else. Did Jen have any French words for you during this scouting, pre-scouting time? This one, she was really supportive. It was great.

You guys never had any French battles? No, no, no. And I took the trailer up and she stayed in the trailer and we had Wi-Fi. I made sure we camped where we had Wi-Fi. She was happy, happy camper. So anyway, but back to my point, if it's somewhere, I wouldn't be afraid to, if it's one of those once-in-a-lifetime type tags or rare, rare tags, to hire an outfitter. Just to not waste that type of a tag. It's different if you're going to Colorado and you can go over and over. I think sometimes, I don't know, sometimes you've got to do it enough that you can go into a unit and you know what you're looking at. You know what you're looking at. You know, it's hard to know. Like, it's one thing a guy can drive around in a unit. If he doesn't know what he's looking for, he just kind of learning where the gas stations are. And you know what I mean? But you've got to know what you're looking at.

Like, what a deer like. Like Josh was saying, while I'm using prior, past experience tells me deer like bitter brush.

But there was a lot of yellow stubble and forage kochia type country. Yeah. You know, like a tumbleweed looking forage kochia. And there was a lot of deer in real crappy environment. Yeah. A real crappy environment. But it really, if you think about it, it was an old, I don't know how, when some of that stuff, it looked like it had been burned in the last few years. But it had some pretty, and some of those little forbs like that for deer, it's actually more nutritious or just nutritious as bitter brush for them. So, and they can hammer that stuff and there's no reason for them to touch this stuff that they normally are going to be eating because there's all this new fresh growth. And depending on, you know, weather and moisture, things like that, that stuff could be more plentiful on some years.

Well, and I've been hunting some country just recently and because of snow, rain, whatever, and now sun up, you know, good fun sunny conditions, there's like green shoots of grass everywhere. And these deer are sucking onto it hard. Yep. And so there's just, you know, which that may not happen on another year. Another year, you know, October dry and, you know, it can be tough. And so things change. But anyway, so just, I think part of this, I'm taking away from what y'all are telling us. I'm just taking away, be willing to adapt, not just take for, I mean, past member experience is great, biologist member experience is great and words of wisdom and whatnot. But go into it with an open mind because this is a new year, right? It's not 2020. It's not 2019. It's not 2018. It's not 2017. I wish it was 2016. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And just so I think just go into it with an open mind and be able to move and change. And I think that's one thing I'm good at is pedal to the metal and I'm not afraid to fill up that gas tank. And I run a truck hard to wrap my arms around the whole unit. I, from one end to the other, gut the middle of it, whatever, and then start putting the pieces together. You know what I mean? And I try to, I try to do that as fast as I can. So, so that being said, so you show up in a unit, what's the first thing that you're going to do on the first day of hunting when you get there physically? What are you going to do? What are you going to look for? What's your strategy? I don't know. I mean, the gas station, I need to know where the gas station is. I need to know where they sell monster, diet, Pepsi, and ice. And, and then I just, I usually run hard.

So I'll, I usually have the places in mind that I want to see top to bottom. Right. And so I go to these places first and just look at them, look at them, look at them, look at them, look at them. But there was some of this country prior experience. Not one person told me to look in a river bottom, but we've hunted river bottoms. Chris. Oh yeah. Yeah. Back in the day, we've hunted river bottoms and there's always something there. And so I'm like, so I'm running through it and I'm like, in the very end of it, you know, our, our first stint, um, I'm like, Josh, those are river bottoms. Like, and I'm driving up the main pavement and there's does down the river bottom and nobody said anything about the river bottom. So I called the bio and was like, Hey, tell me about the river bottom.

You know, and he kind of was caught off guard cause nobody's asking about the river bottom, but yeah, there's some, well, there's does bucks like to breed does and bucks will walk many miles. They'll walk 10 miles overnight for, for doe. Um, you would too. I know. I know. John. Absolutely. You know, when we went to Nevada, uh, I kind of made a plan. No, I'd never been there. So you'd have to start somewhere, you know, and, and had a plan made, go to the three main mountain ranges. I made this plan and said, okay, here's where I'm going to set up and here's where I'm going to go. And, uh, what is it? It was a box. Mike Tyson, I think says something about everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. I'm going to say that again. I didn't catch what the quote was. Yeah. Like everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, you know? And it's Mike Tyson.

If you get punched in the mouth by Mike Tyson, your plan's probably out the window or you're biting your ear off or whatever. But, uh, definitely chewing on it. But that's what I felt like. I have this great plan, all these big aspirations. I'm going to go up there and just see all these deer. And then you get punched in the mouth and it's like, okay, now. Reset. Yeah. Now I got to do something else. And so go in with a plan. I mean, it's not like all this stuff we've talked about hurts at all. You know, you got to start somewhere, but you've also got to realize that that may be the worst plan that you ever came up with in your life. And you just need to adjust from it. And there's still room to do that and try and just be optimistic. I think that was one thing that I've tried to do better is just say is, you know, this is all new. Take it in day to day.

You never know what's going to be around the next corner. It may be the worst hunt you ever went on in your life and you're never going to go back there again. That may be a reality of it. Well, Josh, when you and I got started in this unit we're talking about, I mean, I was like, had I not known, and this is the one thing I think we don't put enough value on, is history in a unit. So if you know the history, this buck was killed here, this buck was killed here, this buck was killed here, or these X amount of giants have come from this unit, I hate this place. I think this place sucks, and I haven't seen any deer. I'm ready to go home. If you didn't know the history, we'd have gone home, never went back. But we knew the history. Not exact locations, but you know, we're missing something.

This unit has more to offer than what we're finding, and so we're going to freaking stay here and figure it out. Like, there's something to this country. I don't know exactly what it is yet, and so far I hate it, but we're going to keep after it. Because you know the history, and we know the history. Like, it's good. What is our problem? And I think the more time we spent, then things started to work out, and things started to come together, and you're like, okay, okay, okay. And it's one foot in front of the other. But if we didn't know the history, and that's what keeps me going in some of these units that we know in the prior, you know, and we've killed a lot of, you know, good animals in, is, well, we know this buck was killed here, this buck was killed. You've got to just keep going. You've got to keep going, because this unit's amazing. It just doesn't feel amazing today. Yeah.

And enough that, you know, I spent as many days as I could there, and eventually you just have to call it quits. You have other things going on, maybe other hunts up work obligations, whatever, and you've got to come home, family stuff. But, I mean, I think we're both trying to scratch out a piece in the schedule to get back there for a couple days, even if we can. So the one thing I like to do, too, is I like to find these areas that are hard to get to. They always say, you know, it's hunting up in some of the high country in Wyoming. And, you know, if you can go two ridges beyond the road, you're going to be in animals. And I found that to be true. Like, you could go just a little bit deeper than the average guy, and all of a sudden you're in game. Josh, you and I went on a 100-mile freaking trek. Thankfully, it was in your machine. Although it broke down the next day.

It's all good now. I don't know. What was it? Some of the stupid seatbelt thing. Yeah, I know. It was the seatbelt thing, and it would chug-chug like the governor wouldn't let you go on, telling you to get buckled. Yep. Anyway, it's completely— I think it was the six inches of dust that were inside the seatbelt component. It needed a good flush. It did. So, anyway, but we went on that trek. Like, you know, and the one thing we were looking for, A, is water, but as we're going along, we're looking for track. Yeah. How many tracks did we see?

Horse tracks. Really rough, right? Some antelope. Antelope. And we knew, I mean, just the way, the shape of the hoof. But, I mean, it was just—it was brutal, and we never had to go back. We never had to go back. We thought—although the country we ended up accessing kind of brought it all together, and it all started to make sense, right? So, it's good. And what else were we supposed to be doing? I mean, we went and spent the morning, when the prime time, when the deer started bedding down, we didn't have a buck to chase or anything like that. So, it's like, you can go back to camp and have a nap for four hours until it's good again. Or we just jumped to the side-by-side and said, let's either cross this off the list or find a gold mine, and we crossed it off the list. I've said this before. I mentioned this story, and it's embarrassing.

But when I was young, you know, 21 years ago, I had a client, and he would. In Nevada, you got a half hour in the morning or an hour and a half hour at night. And when it's in the summertime, it's hot and dry and miserable. There's nothing else going on. And so, we'd go back to the trailer and screw off and do whatever. And you know what I mean? And he's like, let's go hunting. Like, let's go hunting. I'm like, no, you don't understand. This is Nevada. This sucks in the middle of the day. You don't do anything in the middle of the day. We didn't have trail cameras, right? It's pre-trail cam. And finally, I'm like, fine, get in the truck. Let's go. And we went and just started learning country a little bit. And I'm guiding it. And I know it. I think I know it. But there's always something. You don't know everything. You never know everything, no matter how many years you've been in a unit.

And we went into this new area. And outside the window, there was a buck track. I was just like, that's a freaking giant. That's a freaking giant track. This is the middle of the day. That night, we set up. Didn't see anything. The next morning, we set up right there. It was on a, it was a little ravine. There was a little ravine below us in a ridge we could glass off. And dude, it's 34 inch, or excuse me, 31 inch, nine by six comes under us. And we pile driving. That came from driving around at noon, just wasting gas. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, we were looking for something. We didn't know what we were looking for. We were looking for a big deer. You didn't really know, but that taught me a huge lesson. You know, just go do something, even if it's wrong. And make sure you're in prime times. You're where you should be.

Learning stuff on a ridge glass and doing whatever, but doing something where you feel good about. In the middle of the day, just do something. Just do something. And it's easier when there's 22 hours of daylight in the middle of summer. I mean, that's hard to spend that many days. No, you can drink two or three monsters. Yeah, that's true. And get away with it. Yeah. Because there's enough time that your body can work through it all. Yeah. But when you're into eight hours of daylight on a fourth season in Colorado, you're going to have a time change. And there's not much time, really. By the time you get out and hunt your four hours in the morning, it's like, ooh, the sun's already getting low again. The shadows are starting to come out. That's right. There's no reason to really go back and do something. If you have to move or something, that's okay.

But there's times in the day and times of the year where it's easier to stay out all day and just hunt. Or even if you have to take a nap, have a nap while you're out there on the hill. Nothing else. Right. I mean, you're already there. That's right. Yep. I like it. Yeah, I think all those things are good. So, you know, you don't know how to quantify what you're looking for. For a guy that's back east listening to the podcast, I don't know how to tell you what we're looking for when we're out in the hills. But bitter brush, deer looking country. But once you do it a few times, you start to pick up on it. And what looks good to me may not look good to another guy. And maybe he finds a giant for some reason. I don't know. I mean, you never know why deer are where they are, especially in the rut. I mean, all they care about is does. And the does care about eating.

And so wherever you find a bunch of does, we keep track of where those are. And then we go back and check them. And, you know, they'll bring in bucks from. I mean, even we have a buddy of ours in Nevada hunting. I mean, over the course of the first summer, all summertime, and the first archery muzzle and the first part of the rifle was terrible. Would never go back. Never buy a landowner tag there again. Not nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden, then I talked to him two weeks after that. And he's like, dude, this place has changed. I don't know where these bucks are coming from. You know what I mean? And the tempo changed. His attitude changed. And so, anyway, sometimes it's just timing. Even if you are from back east, you spend five days. And during the middle of the day, you're driving, learning country, learning country. In the morning, you're moving.

You're checking out new things. You're going to learn a lot in five days. You're going to see where the deer are. You're going to pick up does. Even in the middle of the day, sometimes you'll see does. You'll find out where they are. You're going to learn a ton. Well, I think, too, stop and talk to people. People like to visit, right? Humans like to visit, except for Chris.

Chris, tell us about every time when somebody comes up on your glassing knob and starts talking to you. I don't know. Chris won't even acknowledge their presence. I'll say hello. I don't think so. I don't. He won't. He won't. But anyway, and I don't blame him. But having said that, generally speaking, people will visit. You stop in camp. They're like, hey, how's things going? And some of them may lie to you, right? That's hunting, right? But then a lot of them are like, yeah, we haven't seen anything for X amount of days. And we've been here and here and here and here. And you start to get a feel. They know what they're talking about. They have good glass. And they're not seeing anything. And I haven't seen anything for two days here. I'm taking off. I'm not, and so visiting, you know, Josh is good. He's a people person. I hate it. I hate it. I put on my mask. I double mask up.

I look like a liberal. I go in and grab every, you know, gas pump and walk in and put my shades on. And I don't, I'm not that guy. But I always tell Josh, Josh, go talk to them. I'll tell you guys. But you never know what information you can get from a cowboy on a horse following three cows through the middle of the desert. I mean, if nothing else, kind of the same with a biologist. Ask him, hey, do you know where this road goes or just whatever? One little conversation leads to another. Yeah, what are you doing there? You know, I saw a buck up there. And some of it may not be anything. There's no bucks here until January. You're wasting your time. But those are, those guys have probably better knowledge of some areas than an outfitter. I mean, they're out there all summer, all winter, all, you know, they're out there with their cows, whatever.

You never, you never know what information you can get from someone to just check something off or they can tell you how to access an area. You know, that was part of the reason we were trying to figure out those roads that day was like, this is an area we want to figure out. It's landlocked by private on this end. You can't get into it. And to just look at it on a map, you could be like, oh, yeah, it's, you know, it's not worth getting into. And you can zoom in and zoom in and zoom in and zoom in on Onyx all you want or whatever, Google Earth. And that kind of looks like a road or whatever. Just go drive it. You know, go look at it. And we found a way that we figured was totally impossible to get around. Yeah, it was like six hours long to get in there. But at least we knew, hey, you know. Scared for gas. Scared for locked gates. Stopping every now and then. Counting on Crustables.

See how many we have left. Two for Josh, one for me. Okay, two for me, one for Josh. We're going to have to share this last one. I get the jelly. You get the peanut butter. And what was nerve wracking? It's like, if we have to turn around, we won't make it. Yeah, we got to that point. We seriously stopped. And it was like, okay, it's closer to go this way. But we don't know what we're going to find this way. And we even got down to the point of, hey, even if we are this way, it's closer to walk back to the truck. Yeah, and it wasn't. And it wasn't. I'm so glad we didn't. When we got to the main road and we drove for like 30 minutes at 30 miles an hour. And I'm like, yeah, we weren't walking back to the truck. Right. And I was scared the whole time. But no, you know, you just kind of have to do that. And by doing that, we learned a lot. Yeah, we learned a lot.

So anyway, yeah, I just think, I think talk to people. People are willing to, you know, and worst case scenario, they do what Chris does and shuns you or whatever makes you feel bad. Go to the next guy. He'll be nice to you. And I think in Colorado is a good example. It looks like, let's say you're hunting deer. It looks like you've, in your mind, everyone's hunting deer, but half of them are hunting elk. Yes. And they're willing to spill information. Oh. You know, or vice versa. And if you know where a cow, where you saw a cow elk, they're going to tell you where. And then they love you. 35 inch, 8 by 8, triple eye guard to pipe mass. What were you going to say, Chris? I was just going to say, in my defense. There is no defense, Chris. Sometimes I like to go just figure it out on my own.

And part of that is how many times have you gone out and somebody's told you something and you've wasted three days chasing a ghost. I know. Right, right. So there's the opposite side to all this. Or you spend three days and then you find this 3 by 4 and realize their giant was a 3 by 4. Right, right. So take what other people tell you with a grain of salt. Yeah. But you got to learn how to read people. Yeah. Yep. The guy's got Swarles, a 95 with BTXs. He's going to lie to me.

He is going to lie to me. So do exactly the opposite. But the guy at the... And he's there glassing for a reason. Yeah. Well, and that's how I had to run into town just to get some coolant. It was the day before you got there, just from my side by side. And I didn't know. What was that? Why would a bike be low on coolant? I have no idea. I was just... This bike needs to go. I literally opened it up. A seatbelt. I opened it up to knock the air filter out so it could breathe. And you saw that it was low. I was like, oh, it's just kind of low. You know? So I just didn't want to be stuck out there 40 miles. This is a brand new bike, John. It's a brand new bike. Oh, it's... Never trust other people's stuff. Moff brand.

Kawasaki. Not a Honda. It's a Kawasaki. Yeah. My wife taught me that. Kawasaki? Oh, her brother's Kawasaki. They're not all suckies. Yeah. But anyway. But just even then, I just went in and the guy, well, what are you... You know, where are you from? And I told him, well, what the heck are you doing here? And he told me... And it was kind of like what Chris is saying. Well, go up there to such and such a peak up on Horse Mountain up there. I saw a big buck this summer, you know? And kind of like, okay, I'm trying to gauge, you know? That guy did not go... Yeah. You've never been to Horse Mountain since 1983. When you graduated high school. Yeah. That's the last time you were at Horse Mountain, I could tell. Because you couldn't even get on a horse to get up to Horse Mountain. And so you have to take it for what it's worth. But at least, you know, there could be something to it.

I guess gauge it on how much time you've got to burn. Exactly. If you have something better to go on, well, maybe go on something better. But yeah. Sometimes it's worth chasing. So it is. Yeah, anyway. You just take it and you never know what is going to be the key to unlock something. But a lot of it could be false. Well, there's a lot. I mean, we've got even more things to talk about. But let's call Bronson real quick. Let's just see if he's available in service. He's learning new units left and right. I think he's a bit frustrated some days, like we all get. Let's just see what he does to learn a new unit, see what he has to say. Hello.

Hey.

You're in the wind. Are you on Horse Mountain?

It sounds windy. But I'm in somewhere where there's lots of sagebrush and rocks. Okay. Well, we were talking. Chris kind of made us do this podcast on how to learn new units. And since you've learned a few of them, and they get to be frustrating at times. And we've talked about our frustrations learning new units. What steps are you going through up there to learn some stuff? There's a lot of trial and error. Like, wonder where this two-track goes. Oh, it went for two miles and did it in a lava flow. Now I've got to turn right around and go right back. There's a lot of that. You're going to replace ball joints every other day? I think of that every day. I'm like, well, I wonder what the next thing to go wrong on my truck is going to be. But, you know, I just. You got the extended warranty. You got the extended warranty. I got that. But I don't know.

There's probably stuff going to happen that is not covered by that. But anyway, you can't think about that. You just got to drive it. Do you ever think about the price of gas or you just keep filling up as many times as you can? Yeah, I like a full tank. So I just top it off every night. What do you do? I mean, what do you do? Well, we've talked about Onyx and learning how to use it and those base maps or whatever you use. Learning all the layers, the burns. Grab your paper maps from the Epic Map Center and then calling the bios, cognitive member draw. And then physically seeing the units and reading the country, desert versus high country, all the migrations. And then what are you looking for right now? You're in thick sage. Like, how do you know you're in good country or bad country? And what are you doing to learn some of the crazy country you're in, you know?

Well, this time of year, we're in late October, and we just got done crushing this, you know, to the north of here, 10, 20 miles. They got 18 to 24 inches of snow. So what I'm anticipating is that that's enough to start having more deer show up in some of the high desert areas where I'm at now. Because to go home to high country, A, you can't hardly get to some of that country anymore. So I'm just waiting in hunting areas where deer should be showing up. So it's kind of that transition period to their winter ranges. And it's, yeah, some places I'm seeing tons of deer. In some, there's none showing up here. But even within the same unit and the same elevational plane. So that's probably a lot of, like, local knowledge would have saved me some of that. But, hey, the way I look about it, I'm one corner in the road from staring at a buck that's going to make me jump out, grab my gun.

And all of a sudden, I'm calling you guys with a little bit different story. And that's honestly what I'm doing right now. But, yeah, so a lot of historical data from talking to biologists and other hunters, where deer show up to. And this maybe can translate to Colorado on that, too, with some of their coverages that they have on the maps that we sell and things like that. Where's your mule deer concentration area and critical winter ranges and things like that? And if you're there at the right time that all the environmental factors have come into play to make the deer want and go and be there, then you're probably going to be in a pretty decent spot. Now, if it's too hot, too dry and all that, you're probably, you know, barking up the wrong tree.

But I'm hunting the last five days here, this season, five or six days, in areas that are, you know, high, you know, lava rock filled, sage and bitter brush. It's endless glassing. I mean, you just can't glass it all. Like 100 miles. Like 100 miles. Like you just can't glass it all. So you've got to kind of go faster than I'm normally going. Like if I was in this area and I knew a buck was summering and living here, we would sit there from daylight till 10 in the morning and glass and then, all right, we'll be back in the morning or the evening. That's just not, you don't have enough time to do all that in this country to hit it that, that strong, you know. You don't. You've got to move country, find where deer aren't and where they are and where they are. You know, Idaho is a little bit like northern Nevada in places.

Like I've seen a lot of, a lot of bucks, nose and does, lip curl and does already. It's as early as the 20, 21st of October and the last four or five days. So that's a good sign. It's just, you know, I've got to see a buck begin to go shoot. Well, let's, let's just say maybe you do finish up up there. I wonder if you could, would you maybe want to swing down through Nevada for a couple of days and just use your glass? Josh needs help. Josh wants help. Possibly. Possibly. Possibly. If you finish up in the next 24 to 48 hours, Josh needs help. You guys are going to realize by the time I finish up here, I'll have been gone for 13 days up here. So like, like. No, you're coming back. You're coming to southern Utah. We'll get 15% out of your day out of you then. I do have to go to the office to make sure you guys haven't packed my stuff up and my name plate still on my desk. Oh, no.

Nobody wants your desk, boss. That, that work stays right there. Okay. So, are you guys on the way to Nevada? I thought you guys were going to go to your way. We're just trying to, trying to decide. Trying to bolster up the, trying to bolster up the ball. When does a guy, when does a guy go? And how, and you only have so much energy in your soul. And you want to make sure, this is what I run up against is, let's say there's a, let's say, Bronson, there's a lot of these, in Nevada. You got October 5th to November 5th, whatever. You can burn up all the energy in your soul the first 10 days when really the last 10 days are the best if you don't have a buck pre-scouted. Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, and same thing with the Utah General. We have some big bucks occasionally here. You've got a, you know, an X amount of seasons. Call it a nine-day season.

You can burn up all the energy in your soul and the last day is the best day and you're freaking done. You're spent and done. And then you're supposed to, after you're spent, you're then supposed to go and give it your all in Nevada for another four or five days. And then you're spent and then you're supposed to drive to Colorado and give it your all for another nine days. Second, third, and fourth. Turn around and have the patience to take your kids. I've got kids, wives, children.

You should say the word wife. Wife. I mean wife. We live in Utah, but it is a wife. Just one wife. Ah, wife. So, yeah, just trying to get a lucky break, you know. That's basically it. Seeing good numbers of deer, I think, in parts of the unit. I'm seeing the first deer that are showing up into this lower elevation, maybe just today. You know, it did have a crushing rain for about 48 hours up here. So, it was really not a couple of days that was, you know, really productive. Good migration. So, they're coming. You could only stay on good roads. You couldn't get off the main good gravel roads and all that for a couple of days. It was just sloppy. And it's, you know, it's going to gradually get better from that standpoint. We're out in the middle of it right now. I'm out in the middle of it. Is there any orange left on the truck? Oh, yeah. There's plenty.

But there's plenty of brown all over it. Yeah. I gave it up. You got in my truck the other day when we went to lunch and you're like, oh, geez, this one's been worked. I just, I gave up on keeping the paint, you know. Yeah. And there's more, there's more mud every road. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, so. Well, what I think is interesting is that country you're in, there's a lot of country that there's not a single deer in five miles. There's not even a single deer. And why does that happen? It doesn't look any different than this. It doesn't look a whole lot different. Yeah. I was up here this week. My boy had an elk tag. He drew an elk tag. And, you know, so we're somewhat overlapping in areas. I mean, in all honesty, we could see either, either, either or where we were hunting, either elk or deer. But we were seeing way more deer there than we were elk.

And I don't, it's just whatever reason we said to get, you know, he had a filth four-day weekend basically to find him a bull and kill one. And he drove up with a buddy. Yeah, his buddy. The first time I've given him keys is say drive seven hours to another day. In a nice, good truck with 37s on there. Yeah, he brought my ZR2. He brought it up there. Oh, he brought the ZR2. I thought he had the power wagon. Okay. Well, I pulled it up here with the trailer and side-by-side just so it had a little bit. And so he brought it up. And I knew with this storm coming, there was going to be two days if the floor were not going to be good. So first day, nothing. Second day, I said, we got to find an elk today. And, you know, we got a big storm coming. And just luckily I glassed up these two bulls. And they were batted like mule deer. And anyway, we got in on them. It was windy.

And I said, well, the one's broken up. And he had about 300 or 400 feet of balentine wrapped around his bull's bases of his antlers. The one bull did. And it was a mess. We know where he summered. Yeah. I don't know where he came from. Either north or south, about 20 or 30 miles. That was where I know. Jeez. Because that's the nearest agriculture area that he could have come from. But anyway. But the other bull was not broke up at all. And I said, well, you know, you might want to get over here. I found some elk. And he was crapping because he hadn't seen one. And as soon as he started, he says, oh, yeah, I'm going to shoot that thing. And it was like 3 or 4 o'clock on the end of the second evening. And I'm like, yeah, you probably will because the next two days are not going to be good. Anyway. It was fun. But to your point, yeah, you know, you can see either.

But a lot of it doesn't look a whole lot different than everything else. But for whatever reason, you know, the locals up here and that just have known where stuff happens and where stuff doesn't happen as much. And, you know, you just try to glean as much of that information for as many people as you can talk to. And then you've got to just get out and ground truth it for yourself. And then every year up here on some of these units to have some of these migrations go on is a little bit different. Plus or minus 5 to probably 15 days. And some years it does get good by the 31st. And other years, you know, it does. And so hopefully we've got a few good days left at the end of the week. We'll see. Well, if you're like us, when you learn new units right at the very end of it, you're like, all right, let me have a do-over the last 10 days and I'll do some damage.

I think that almost every time. And then it's hard to draw or get attacked for the same exact area again is the problem. Like I've had several that if I could go back and redo Wyoming L come to mind, you know, some others that if I could have the knowledge that I learned on that hunt by the time the hunt's over and just redo it, I think I'd be able to have a good effect. That's what we're doing, just trying to gain it. And in the meantime, sometimes you get a lucky break when you're just figuring something out. You've got to be out there trying. Okay. Well, if you bust a ball joint, you've got your in-reach and the SOS button. Yeah. I hope I don't have to use it. You're in the middle of nowhere. Yep. I am. On a high wind, it's cold north wind today. It's cold. It's completely different after that storm got out of here. It feels cold. Yeah. But anyway, I guess that's what you're asked for.

It's going to get good. It's going to get good. All right. All right. We'll let you get back out there. Okay. Good luck. Okay. All right. Talk to you later. Well, another thing I was going to say is when you're using your GPS system, whatever it is, let's call it Onyx, whatever, your old standard GPS, don't be afraid to hit waypoints. I'm all the time, I'm pivoting this thing and figuring out, okay, that knob, I wish I was glassing on. Maybe tomorrow morning I'd glass on it and I'd find it on the Topo version, see the ridge coming out, mark it, and hit it with a pair of binos, you know, the little waypoint, the way they do now, customize them. And then Josh and I always were hitting, and John, Chris, the tracking. And we're always tracking our way out. So, like, at four in the morning, I'm following that track. I don't have to remember all the different turns. It's not my backyard.

I can get there. I'll be on that glassing knob at the crack of daylight, not after I can see it and I hike up on it. And now I'm past prime time. So, I think, don't be afraid to mark things. And then I'm deleting things. If it turns out to suck, I'm deleting it so it doesn't clog me up. And, you know what I mean, cause me to, so just use it often. If you see a deer, sometimes, like, I'm even, I was up in Wyoming, I'm marking where I'm seeing deer. And then you can always look at the date on the waypoint, and I mark it as a deer. And then you can look at the date and say, I obviously saw a deer at this point in time, and da-da-da, crossing this road in the desert. What's he doing out in the desert in October 15th? You know what I mean? Yep. Which happened. And so, anyway, there's just some things like that, I think. Don't be afraid to, it's your onyx. It's yours.

And utilize the crap out of it, and mark it, mark it, mark it, and constantly be thinking, where are you going to be glassing? Middle of the day, Josh, nothing's going on. Or, Chris, nothing's going on. When you're driving around, you're looking where you're going to be at prime time, so you're not wasting time at prime time. One thing I do that dovetails with what you're saying about marking is I'll take my laptop, and at night, I'll double check with, like, the points that I've marked with Google Earth. And so, I'll look, and I'll say, okay, there's this area that I want to glass. I can't see it very well from where I am now, and there's not enough time to get anywhere. Or, I'll look and try to find glassing knobs, mark those, then go into Google Earth and, you know, do the ground view, see if I can really see the area from that point.

If I can't, you know, I might mark three on the ridge, and then decide, okay, that, you know, that specific point, I can see that area that I want to. And I've gone to those points off Google Earth without ever have seen them in the dark. Yeah. And sit there, and daylight comes up, and you're like, yeah, Google Earth was right. That's pretty legit. Yeah. Because you can point it. You can get down on the ground on Google Earth and at least tell what you can see or what you can't, because there might be another hill that's blocking, you know, the area you wanted to glass. And you can tell that from Google Earth at night. There's so much more to it. There's wallows. You can see an elk wallow, you know, middle of October. That's going to do you no good, because they're not going to use it, but it would be great for an early archery hunt or whatever.

And so there's just, there's always taking in data when you're in a unit on, and then utilizing what will help you for that particular hunt and that particular species. So I don't know how else you quantify it. There's one other thing we kind of glossed over a little bit. We talked a lot about talking to the biologist, and then we talked about member experience program. For those that are either new listeners or not members, the member experience program basically, if you're a member of Epic Outdoors for $100 a year, you get all of our services and the magazine, and you can call and talk to us about specific units anytime. But also that member experience list is built for if you draw a tag, you call in, tell us you drew the tag, and then we'll send you a list of other guys who have hunted it in the past.

And those units that take, you know, five to 30 years, usually people will give you tons and tons of great information on that. I used it in my New Mexico hunt, called people, and I mean, they gave me water holes. This is where I killed my bull type thing. And you frequently hear that. And so that service alone is worth your $100 if you draw a tag. Yeah. And I can flat out tell you, you can be a biologist, a game warden, whatever, all day long over a unit. But really until you've put your feet on the ground and you've actually hunted it, that information is just as valuable as what a biologist can tell you. Because a lot of times they don't get the chance to hunt their units, and you look at it a lot different.

And one of the things I always try to do when I was a biologist was to try and get a tag for that unit to hunt it for something, you know, just so that I could say, okay, I've actually hunted this. Because it is a little bit different when you're trying to hunt something as to when you're just managing. Well, you're doing an aerial survey in December, and you're like, there's a bunch of deer. But when you're in the field in October, you can understand what the hunters are crying about. Yeah. And my experience from a sheep unit is, you know, in a helicopter in December, and I'm in a helicopter in December, and you're trying to hunt it in September. You know? And there's a big difference there. Well, some of those units you were over, those aren't even in that unit in September. Right. Exactly. You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, maybe they winter there.

So, yeah, having talking to another hunter, even if it was a completely different year, just having their perspective and what they learned is very valuable. So I would definitely use that as a tool. Don't be scared. Go out and do stuff. It's better to be in the field. So go out and do stuff and learn and just start doing it. If you haven't been doing it, if you are doing it, you know what we're talking about. So grab your maps. Figure out how to use the tools that you do have. Use them to the best of your ability. Epic Maps, Onyx, Base Maps, Google Earth, whatever. Use member experience programs. Talk to biologists, game wardens. Talk to people in the field even if they don't want to talk to you, Chris. And then you've got to wrap your arms around the unit. Learn the entire unit inside and out. I try to drive every freaking road, even if it's half a road.

And whatever, that's what trucks are for and four-wheelers and side-by-sides. And don't be afraid to take extra gear. Sometimes I throw backpacking equipment in and it never gets used multiple times. And sometimes I'm glad I brought an extra four-wheel. Do I need a four-wheeler? No, but it's good to have one. Maybe you do. Maybe that's the one thing. A lot of times I'll put a four-wheeler on one end of a ridge, drive around to the other end, and hike the top back to the bike, and then drive around to my truck, load it in, and do it again. So I'm not covering the same country twice. I do a lot of that. I don't know when I'm going to need it, but sometimes you want it, right? And so just have it available. Just don't be lazy. Load the freaking bike. Don't be cheap. Put a lot of gas in your truck and get after it. You know what I mean? It only comes one time a year.

It's what we think about all year round. So figure out what, you know, wrap your arms around the unit, and then, you know, just talk to a lot of people and figure out what looks deary to you, elk country, antelope country, whatever, and then just start honing in and figuring it out. And just do it. Don't be scared. Make lots of waypoints notes. Keep track of the water and glass and knobs. Who knows? You've got to use all the tools in the toolbox. Chris, you've got a smile on your face. What are you thinking? You've talked to more people than I give you credit for. I was just thinking about where in the world I'm going to hunt next week. You need a couple pointers. Because, Chris, you're going to a unit nobody knows better than you. No. But things change. Things change. Different year. I have faith in you. Trying to figure out where to start. I'm not even concerned. I'm more concerned.

You're going to come out with a 240 and I'm going to come out with a 40. That would be nice. I'm going to a unit I've never been to. I'm going to a unit I've never been to. My wife's going to a unit she's never been to. I'm tired of learning new units. See, I went. But I love learning new units. For the last two years I've been going to new units. Or maybe the last three years. The last three years. Gone to new units. And, yeah. I'll have learned five new units this year. But I've sucked in all of them.

I don't know what to say. That's how I feel about the last three years. There's something to be said for having the confidence and going back and the history we're talking about. Whether even if it's your own history. Your own history, the better. I know for a fact this unit can do it. I'm struggling these last few days, but I'm not giving up. I know for a fact it can do it. There's something to be said for the history. I think we underestimate the value of knowing history of areas. Which is why people are so interested when there's a big animal killed. Where was he killed? Well, why don't Gary's dead? No, I do care. I want to know where every big dead buck was from. And there's history. Genetic history. Feed. There's conditions in that unit that created this animal. What is it? Or was that just truly one in a million never going to happen again? And sometimes there are those.

There was a couple of bucks in New Mexico I'm thinking about. Never should have produced the animal they did. And no name or unit. And hasn't ever since. But that's kind of rare. Usually there's a trend going on. Maybe it's under managed, underutilized, whatever. And Game and Fish could issue more tags than they are. But they don't realize it. And all of a sudden we have an abnormal number of five, six, seven year old bucks. I don't know. Maybe it's a burn like Josh is talking about. And light winter conditions in Wyoming for four years in a row. Whatever.

I want to know where every big buck that died lived. And so anyway, I do care even if it's dead. Anything else, guys? That's kind of a wrap up real quick. Can you think of anything else, Josh? You look like crap. You look wall around. I talked way too much is the problem. I like it. All right, everybody. Let's throw out to a couple of our sponsors. One way to support us is join. Get your membership. And we're going to be announcing our giveaway. You mean our sponsors is us? Yeah, that's one. A little shout out to Epic Outdoors. A little shout out to Epic Outdoors. We appreciate them guys for everything. Keep going. They give me all my information. They give me all the tools in the tool bag. Keep going, John. And, yeah, our other sponsors that help so we can put on these podcasts and give it to you for free. We've got Rugged Ridge Outdoor Gear, and that's ruggedridgeoutdoorgear.com.

And I think on the last podcast I mentioned I used their bipods with the extensions. It was phenomenal on my last hunt. Loved it. And Chris even took it from me. I'm still borrowing them. Shameless plug. Still borrowing them for my notes. I need to get that back. When's your next hunt? Hey, wait. I think there's a couple windows, so you can use it and then give it to me. This is what causes brothers to never speak to each other again. Borrowing stuff for long periods of time. I'll give you the ruggedridgeoutdoorgear.com.

Ruggedridgeoutdoorgear.com, Chris. I'll sell you a set. Call them 541-526-1820. I paid full price. Worth every penny. See, I had the first generation of that bipod, and John has the second generation. Yeah. And the second generation is pretty awesome. I'm going to upgrade. Are you? That's pretty awesome. Well, that'd be good. Then John could get his stuff back.

Hey, you know, sometimes we share around here. All right. Well, yeah, we do appreciate them. Good people they are. I also want to throw a little shout out to Stealth Cam. Of course, we sell them, so it's easy to promote them. We sell the Stealth Cam here at Epic Outdoors. They're awesome. We've got an ad in here for the Fusion, which is the cellular simplified. We also have many different solar panels, Josh. Yeah. We've got solar panels. They were really hard to come by. Right. I've got one running on one now. It's kind of funny. I went in and had two different cell cameras, put fresh batteries in them, everything. I put a solar panel on one and not on the other one. The one goes to red when it gets really cold now. It's getting some snow. It's about to die, and then it'll kind of revive itself a little bit and go back to green. With the batteries. When it gets warm. Yeah.

And the solar powered one. Never goes red. It's always full. Come on. Come on. It shows the battery on the camera is full. It shows the battery on the solar panel is full. It's going to take pictures all winter. So it's going to be a good test for it. Well, I was backpacking and came across a couple of cellulars, and I was like, going to have to do it. I've done the cellulars, but I haven't done the solar panel. Oh, so you came across solar panels. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. If they're service, it would be the way to go because you can delete pictures from your phone, so you don't have to even worry about going in and changing the car. Change all your settings and everything. Yeah. So you can literally just have it up there all year. So anyway, go check them out. Stealthchem.com. GSMoutdoors.com. We sell them if you need them. Sold a few today, actually. Do we do? Oh, yeah. In stock.

Yeah. We do. Call us at 435-263-0777. Ask for John or Josh or Jason or Chris. All right. And then I also want to throw a little shout out to Vortex. We appreciate them as well. We sell them as well. It's got a lot in stock. Got a huge order, actually. Just threw in a huge order and got a ton coming. And anyway, Vortex, they have incredible products. We sell everything that they make. I know from rifle scopes to what are you going to say, John? I do have to give a shout out to their VIP warranty. I just, let's see, three weeks ago. You drug some behind a four-wheeler? I had two pairs, one pair of 12s, one pair of 10s.

Anyway, something was wrong. Yeah. They got drugged or thrown. Yeah. Kids used them. Yeah. So the 12s, they totally fixed, sent them back. The 10s, they just replaced. Come on. Brand new. Brand new. Way better than the ones I sent in. So, I mean, it's got like a carrying case. They're known for the best warranty in the business. No question about it. Free. And it says it right here on their ad. VIP warranty. My buddy that I'm going to Colorado with, he had a pair and he's like, they're messed up. This was six weeks ago, right? Our hunt's coming up. And he said, should I send them in or should I wait? And I said, send them in. He sent them in and within two weeks, they were back fixed. Come on. Wow. And Vortex is pretty incredible on their warranty stuff. There's nobody with a better warranty that I know of. So, anyway, check them out. Vortex.

They've got, of course, this ad's talking about the Razor HDL-HT. We got some, a bunch of those in. We got them in stock. So, anything you need from binoculars, spot and scopes, rifle scopes, give us a holler. You can go check out their website. Vortex. I don't know. What is it? Vortex.com? Yeah. And then I think just more than anybody. Vortex Optics.com. Vortex Optics.com. So, more than anybody else, they understand hunters. You know, they're focused on hunting a lot. And, like, when I sent mine in, they asked, when's your next hunt? When do you need them? And, yeah, we'll get them back before that. So, by the way, we have some Fury 5000s. That's the binocular, the 10x42 with the range finder inside. ABS. Yeah. With the ballistics. Yeah. It's the ballistics. And they're extremely hard to come by. We have member pricing on those. You probably should call us.

We got a few sets in, and those ones have been ordered for 11 months. Yeah. Something like that. So, anyway, extremely hard to get products. We've got them. Give us a call, and we'll sell them to you. Really good value on those. Oh. I mean, for what they are. Let's call it dirt cheap, John. Yeah. Just dirt cheap. You want a range finder binocular? What that binocular does. I mean, with having that ballistics and stuff, that's amazing. I'm going from memory, but it's under 1500. So, anyway, give us a holler. All right. Enough of that. About Hoyt. We love them. Hoyt bows are incredible. Unbelievable. Best bows I've shot. I love my bow. So, you're not taking it from me. I don't even want to trade up, even if it's within a Hoyt this year. So, anyway, you might check them out. Super good people. You know, based out of here in Utah. So, it can't be that bad. Right?

I mean, there's certain places I'd question them, but I'm not here in Utah. All right. Anyway, that's all I got for you. Anybody else want to throw a shout out to anything? We do have John did the EpicOutdoors.com. I think that's a great shout out if you want to do it again. Yeah. Join at EpicOutdoors.com. Okay. That was weird. Hey, everybody. EpicOutdoors.com for 100 bucks a year. We have a monthly publication December through June. We have a monthly, the remaining part of the year because we like to be in the field where we should be. And so, it's nine issues a year. Talks about all the Western big game hunting. Gives you drawing odds, kill percentages, best units, and just everything you need to know. We hook you up with hunts. We're a booking agency. We hook you up with tags. Hook you up with gear, optics, whatever it is to be successful here in Western big game.

We don't have any aspirations to discuss fishing or up and gain burnout. We do all of those things at times. Haven't been to Africa, may someday, but here at EpicOutdoors.com, we're very focused only on Western big game. That's all we do. It's all we want to do and want to be the best at work. I think one of the biggest deals is, you know, for 100 bucks, you join, you remember, you get all the benefits, and you listen to us on the podcast. Just, you ever want to just call and say, hey, how do I do X? I've never been to Wyoming. Where should I start? I have five points in Colorado. I'm looking between, you know, these two units. What do you think? I had both of those calls today. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll talk to you. Unlimited. I'm sitting here yesterday, and I heard John take a call on a unit that he's been to several

times, and he sat there, and I just listened to the conversation, and it's a unit I've been to as well. So, but I thought, that guy got more than 100 bucks. Got more than $100 worth of information from one call. Maybe even made you slightly edgy.

Knowing Chris the way I know him. In there giving him the throat slap. Stop. Stop talking.

No, it was, and that's the kind of information you get. You call somebody that does this for a living. That's right. So, yeah. We don't hold back. Back in the day, I was told, you don't hold any secrets, you're in the business. And I don't know. We're entitled to one or two secrets. Well, one or two. But not true. Tell me. I help a lot of people, John. Tell me I'm wrong. But I also think, I thought, you know, I'll probably go back to that unit someday. I'm not hunting it this year. But that information is really good information. It might change next year. Or when I go back, it might be a little bit different. Well, I want to go back to this sharing of info. I really appreciate it when somebody calls me back and updates me with the new info. Okay? I went there. I didn't see Jack. But by the way, I did see a freaking giant over here. It helps so much, right? And I appreciate it.

And I'm writing down, like I write down a guy's name, so-and-so. I gave him too much info. Call him and see how he did. And I call him. Hey, how did you do? I had a guy last year that I was very specific on, go to this place. This is where I would go. If I had the tag, this is where I would go. Well, I end up seeing all these pictures of him. He killed a giant buck. But he never called me back. So I'm like, I wish I'd, like, I just wish I knew. But you want to know. And you kind of deserve to know. You helped him, and you're very specific. And sometimes I feel like they owe it to you. So, anyway. That's the way I, I don't know. I just feel like it's a token of appreciation to call him back and let him know how you did. And, you know, you helped me out. I went there. I didn't see much, but I did kill this other buck, and I went over here. Or, you know what?

You put me spot on, dude, and I freaking killed a giant. All right, everybody. That's about it. Go out. Kill something. Feed the family. Make mama happy. Make mama happy.