EP 226: Making Your Hunting Dreams a Reality

There's actually a human being on this end that they can talk to. Points equal options in draws. For state drawing odds, maybe why or why not to apply for that state. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter here along with the whole Epic crew. In fact, Chris, we got the whole board loaded. Loaded. There's not one more freaking channel. We're maxed out. We need a new board. We're not getting smaller here at Epic Outdoors. Anyway, we're coming at you here from Southern Utah. Chris, why don't you kind of itemize what your thoughts were on today's podcast. So there's a lot of guys, and especially last week I got a message from a guy that said, Hey, I just discovered your podcast. I can't believe I've been missing this. But he had no idea of what we actually do other than the podcast. Didn't know anything about our service, the magazine, membership, any of that. So I told him, Hey, we do have a membership. And he looked into it and said, I can't believe this. I'm going to join. Jeez.

So we don't really want to hard sell ourself, but you basically are thinking we should tell the world what it is. Well, there's just a lot of people out there that are listeners of the podcast that don't really know what we actually do and why we have this podcast. Well, we have it because we have a lot of fun and we have a lot of stories and cool guests on here. But then it also kind of enlightens people on what we do here at Epic Outdoors. Bronson, do you want to start us off? I know you've got some good ideas. Huh? Wow. Pass the mic, I guess. Well, I mean. Yeah, sure. Well, we'll dive right into it. We talk about it in the podcast, snippets here and there. But so hopefully for you that are, those of you that are members of Epic Outdoors, this isn't too boring. You hopefully will learn something. We'll talk about some other things later on. They'll be for everybody.

But for maybe some of you that are just diehard or even casual listeners to the podcast only and that's your exposure to us and our application or hunting the West philosophy or whatever, this is kind of geared to try to give an overview of how our $100 a year membership to Epic Outdoors can give you a lot more tools at your disposal in planning Western hunting applications, trips, and hunts that you end up drawing or securing tags on. So let's just start right there. Yeah, our basic membership and there's not any other level. It's $100 a year. We don't have gold, silver, bronze, platinum, diamond, bronze, turquoise. We don't have any other levels. We have one. It's $100 a year. And, you know, that's a membership. And with that has a membership of the magazine. We get nine magazines a year. They're monthly from December through June.

They're monthly then because the states are coming out rapidly that time of year with brand new regulations, brand new application periods opening up. We have to cover that monthly or we're going to be behind. There's no use us going to print ahead of time with last year's information hoping nothing changes or, you know, too late and you can't get it to use it to apply. So we have to have current regs in our hand, approved by commissions, and we incorporate that into our final print of the magazine so that you get it in a time of the way to be able to make uniform decisions there. But let's talk about, I guess, the magazine is a hub and what's in it and things like that and how it can use it to, you know, tailor it to your individuals, I guess.

I think if there ever was a time to do it, as far as time of year roughly, now is the absolute best time, you know, because right now is application season is just opening up and getting everywhere. If you start now, you're going to get every state that we cover in depth and you're not going to miss something and say, man, I wish I would have done that or I'm going to have to wait until next year to do that, you know. Now, if there ever was a time, it's now to do it. Yeah, and we're going to get these in your mailbox before the application deadline so you have plenty of time to do your research there. In that magazine, we're going to cover state drawing odds, maybe why or why not to apply for that state, costs for that state. Talk a little bit about the rules and regulations of applying for that state to help guys with their application needs. Yeah, it's got stories in it.

You know, we publish stories from our members and that too, but it's the first six months of the year, there's a lot of tables in there. There's a lot of numbers. There's harvest statistics. There's drawing odds. There's percent private land. There's, you know, sizes of rams or moose or goats or whatever. Lots of data we can get in. And then we have our personal take on the unit. And five years maybe of drawing odds trends and things like that in the magazine. Now, a lot of what you'll see in the magazine, we also have online. And so we'll maybe talk online a little bit later as a whole. But that stuff is something you can view either e-mag online or drawing odds independently online for a unit maybe we didn't cover if we didn't cover it in the magazine.

But that state, when we boil it down, it is a – we give our representation of the better areas to hunt, you know, all species within that state. We cover everything open from a non-durant perspective. You know, I talked to a guy yesterday. I think one of the things that our membership does that a lot of guys probably don't use, I would think, or that they don't think of is there's actually a human being on this end that they can talk to. You know, I talked to a guy, sounded like he had just retired. He's got actually quite a few points built up. And now he wants to start, but he doesn't really know. He just knew he was supposed to be getting some points and what to be doing, but he had no idea. And he called. He was just calling to buy some optics. But in talking, he was kind of like, yeah, I'm glad you guys do this because I've never dared call. This is not what I do.

And he's like, I can't believe you guys are – I can't believe you just talk to me like this. You know, he was surprised that it wasn't – he said, I've looked online and I read stuff online. And I think there's a lot of those kind of platforms or areas. You can get a lot of information online. But talking to a living, breathing human being that can tell you how to help them and what they – maybe the direction they need to be going is something that our service has that I feel like we pride ourselves on. And, you know, it's not just, yeah, you can look online, but call us and talk to a human, the human that writes these magazines, the human that researches these magazines. That's a big deal. And this guy said, I've done a lot of looking online, reading a lot of magazines. But now after talking to someone, he's going to call back and talk more.

But after talking to someone, he's like, it came full circle. And now all this information that I've been reading, it now makes sense to me by talking to someone. What's cool about that guy is you said he called having a lot of points but not having a lot of information and needed to use the information. Usually we're getting guys that are saying, okay, now I'm ready to visit with you and I've never applied before. I had a guy yesterday. He's like, well, I've been a member for a year and a half and I haven't applied yet. You know, and I'm like, okay, well, you need to do it. Like now's the time. You wait another five years, we have this conversation or another year and a half, five years, whatever it may be. He's that much further behind. And so I think there's a little apprehension to A, guys that have never hunted out west, but then also just not knowing what we do.

Even the guys that live out here that do it all the time. If you learn one thing, it's worth a hundred bucks. I mean, if you learn one significant thing, you know what I mean? What do we pay to go learn stuff and just take seconds? I would like to add that for the membership, it doesn't matter if you've never hunted a day in your life or if you've hunted your whole life. There's things you will learn. You're going to learn things that are well worth it. Yeah. Yeah. I think Josh is on to kind of what makes us different. It's that personal touch. I mean, you hear us on the podcast. You've got, if you're a member, you've got a direct line to talk about your specific individual situation, what you're interested in hunting, how many points you have for specific things. And I wanted to just bring up a couple of fan letters here real quick to kind of illustrate how our, what our members feel.

This one's from Steve Jones. He says, Did you just pull out the ones that were addressed to you personally? Yes. This one's actually for you. So he says, thanks. I'm really digging you guys so much better than other services. I called Epic the other day and got a human Jason to answer my questions right away. Never would that this never would have happened with any other service. Keep it up. Please pass it on. And then another one talking about kind of the human touch in, in our, in everything we do. And this one had to do with optics. He says, hello, Epic team. Just wanted to thank you for the excellent service I received in buying a couple of trail cameras from you boys. From the quick and detailed email response from Josh to the order over the phone with Adam and shipment that took less than 24 hours from your location to mine.

Keep up the good work and I'll continue to do business with you moving forward. That's some pretty fast shipping in a COVID environment. Yeah, that's Burt Richards. Of course, it's excellent service. Well, on our end. One thing to add. But the shipping is amazing. I think it goes without saying, hopefully. But we're all used to when your dishwasher or something else in your house breaks and you call customer service, you get somebody that English is their second language. And here at Epic Outdoors, English is all of our first language. So we're here. I don't know, Chris. So anyway, I think, were you going to jump in, Wyatt? Go ahead. No, I just said we just kind of touched on the magazine. I didn't have anything. Well, and I think, too, Bronson, I think you brought it up or one of you guys brought it up about the e-mag.

Everything we're talking about on monthly, I think, Wyatt, you mentioned it comes in the mailbox, right? It comes in the mailbox, and I like a print mag. I'm old school. But there's also an e-mag. We got an e-mag up right now. We won't get a print mag for another week and a half just with mail delay and everything that goes on with that. So anyway, you do have the e-mag option, and that's $100. Like Bronson said, there's no different levels from $25 to $150 or whatever it may be. It's straight up $100. You get the e-mag. You get a print mag. You have the online tools. Of course, you can call in and get the consulting. And we can tell you it's hard to put everything in writing. When we, Adam and I and the guys here, when we're building a publication and we're going through, you really, John, John's restricting us nonstop, telling us to cut stuff. John. 146 pages, whatever.

Yeah, and Adam and I are like, geez, you know. So you can only do so much. And so when you call in, then that's when we can elaborate. Well, I've heard about this buck. I heard about this buck. I heard about this buck or bulls or rams or whatever it may be and different, you know, factors that may play into why units are good right now and why they're not or why we're concerned. Weather patterns. Lots of stuff that goes in that it's hard to put in print. Yeah. And probably one last thing to maybe emphasize with, if you listen to the podcast, you might find yourself from time to time when we start breaking down a state or species within a state and where to apply. And our personal take on unit X versus Y and Z. We stop a little bit short of that on the podcast. And there's a reason for that. I mean, podcasts up to this point have been completely free.

Anybody in the world can listen to them. But it wouldn't be right, fair, whatever the right word is for us to just regurgitate everything from the magazine and read it on the podcast and have the people that are members of our service, that pay for the service, that call in and consult with us and how to pick their best units or whatnot, to just have us read everything on the podcast. So kind of why I mentioned maybe we do members only just so we could talk freely. Right. Just yeah. But we haven't done that yet. But I've had guys say that they could go and apply from what we talk about. And I'm like, geez, what are we talking about? Are we saying too much? Yeah, maybe occasionally.

But I guess I just want you to know there's a whole lot more detail in covering every Western state in detail with regulations, deadlines, recommendations, unit descriptions, historical data broke down in one place. Easy to read at your doorstep or on your computer wherever you go every month prior to the deadline. So that's the hub of the membership. And then there's a whole lot of other, I guess, going into the consulting itself. We've talked a lot about it here and having a live person, a live human like Jason Carter to talk to or Wyatt Bowles, Devin Archibald, Josh Pollock, Adam Bronson, John Peterson, Chris Peterson, any of us here. Or if you're a licensed application service member. People need to call Chris more often. Yeah. The kid hunts a ton and he does not talk about it. I get some calls. People call Chris more often. He's a wealth of information. John too.

These guys are our art department. They do a heck of a job. They're also first class hunters. John used to tease it. Now we're the B string or whatever. You know what I mean? The B team. Yeah, the B team. You and Kurt and everybody. That's BS. You guys have killed some amazing critters in any way. I just think we ought to. Still got a scar on my head from your elk the other day. Yeah. Adam, you were gone, I think. He ran into my elk. Oh, he bent down under it and then jerked up and it freaking, I don't know. It fell off the wall, I think. No, it didn't. Now you're worrying me. You would be here, man. You'd have been crushed. It got me woozy. He called an attorney. I don't know. He's going to sue somebody. I was like, dude, look in the mirror. All right. So anyway, I think Bronson, I did publish a photo of me and you. You were in one of the photos in 2006. I was in 05.

And I couldn't find one older because they were 110 film. Not even 35 millimeter probably. Maybe a Polaroid. Remember those Polaroids? Black and white before that. So it wasn't print worthy. So that was the best print worthy one possible that we could find. Probably one of the first pictures we've ever took together. And it's just proof that we've been around a little while. 20, 25, 30 years, whatever. My wife was like, you were kind of on a roll. You were digging through some old archives for a couple of days, trying to find the right one or two to include in the January publication and sending me a few of what I thought. And my wife was loving getting them because she forgot about them, or most of them might have too. Well, there's one of you at the desk. And you did not allow us to use it. At least you're like, if you guys use that, there's going to be problems.

And I was like, it goes perfectly. It did. It did. But it was just the one of me at a desk. It looked very staged is what I didn't like about it. Like, hey, I'm at my desk, and I've got tons of papers at my disposal, and I'm here crunching numbers. I think it looked like you were in your happy spot to me. You were big smile. I'm right in the middle of numbers. Crushing a publication back in like 05. Yeah, it looked like I was 30 years old. I don't know. Well, you were. It looked like you were. 32, probably. How old were you in 2005? Yeah, about that. Well, at least you looked the part. Anyway, so I think that's part of it, too, is the years that we've all got together here at the table, multiple consultants. And we all have our own areas of expertise. You know, you're grinding away at whitetail stuff right now, and blacktails, and all kinds of stuff, doing constant research on stuff.

And, you know, whereas some of the rest of us are doing brown bears and whatever else, you know, mule deer, elk, stuff like that. Yeah, most definitely. And I think it kind of is very important to the business to have guys that are specialized, different backgrounds, looking into different things all the time and talking about the synergy here at the office. We're always talking about different things and learning from one another. It's a great place to work, too. We're always happy to be here and happy to talk to guys. So it's always a good experience, too, when you're talking to somebody that enjoys what they're doing and enjoys what they're talking about. Yeah. And I feel like we're always learning. Like, what I like here is everybody needs to make money in life. You guys, you know, we all are working. This is our professional environment. But it's also what we love to do.

Like, we live for it. And so we're constantly just grabbing everything we can. And there's not a minute wasted here, even though the girls up front would say different. They think we waste all kinds of time. But it's all for learning and just, you know, figuring out what each other's learned and adding on to that. So, anyway. My most favorite part of the morning is when he comes walking in. Who's he? That would be you.

And you hear what species he's going to be hunting next. What do you mean? Wyatt caught me on an archery blacktail above freaking Timberliner or something. He talked me into that one, too. You did? Yeah. Been looking at Alaska a little bit, doing the high country Sitka blacktail up there. He wants to do a high country one. On POW? Okay. A little bit different. I must have not given him the right vibe because then he went to you after he was done with it. Who'd you go to first? No, I talked to both of you about it at the same time. Don't want to go solo. No, just kidding. And then he books a whitetail hunt. And I tried to invite myself and he wasn't having any of that. That's not true. The guy's last opening just closed. That's right. He's like, yeah, that'd be great, Jason. Maybe we have to do it in 2027. Who are you going with? I can't remember. What do you mean? You wrote the check.

What do you mean? There's a whole file on this guy somewhere. That's not true. I'm not withholding information. Back to Josh's point, it is kind of fun to see what Jason or somebody else comes to on a Monday morning or Thursday morning, whatever. And what's on there in front of their brain. And we got to be looking at this because stuff's coming out of left field. It's because we're all thinking about different, new, unique, or maybe sometimes old things that we haven't done, just haven't done for a while. We're going back to something we haven't done for a while. So we all have a lot of different interests that we get each other fired up about. And there's a lot of years of experience to tap into here. The most unique thing probably about the crew that we have here at Epic Outdoors is that. The diversity and the multitude of years that we all have collectively doing exactly what we do.

And that's writing about, researching about, and hunting the western United States. And that's where we're sticking. That's where we're staying. We're not deviating from that. Right now, anyway. All right. I'm just teasing. We're not deviating from that. Never have, never will. John? I just wanted to pull out and give a specific example to a very specific demographic. Let's say you're in your 20s. You've only hunted your home state, but you're passionate. And your life is going to change. You're going to keep growing in your career. You're going right now. Funds might be tight, but in your 30s, in your 40s, you're going to have more money. If you don't prepare right now for hunts in your 30s and your 40s, you're going to be way behind, and you're not going to go on those quality hunts that you would have gone on.

So we're here to help you foresee that and tell you exactly what you can do right now to apply as much as you can to start building points, to start doing one or two hunts out of state while you're young and just start learning stuff. Young and newlywed in a small family? Yeah. That's when there's some constraints. But you guys have credit card schemes that totally helped you throughout your life. Jana hates those. I'm proud of it. When Arizona started that point system for deer, I was in college, and I freaking got out my credit card and applied to Clint and I. I mean, I thought it was money well spent. Zero percent credit cards and switched them up. I think she would agree nowadays. But back then, it was a struggle. You know, when you're newly met, that's what I think your point is, John, is your funds will change. Your spendable income is going to increase.

It's only going to get better and better and better. And when you're in that moment, though, you don't believe it. You feel like you're going to be broke for the rest of your life. Yeah. You know, and it's hard to imagine yourself 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road. And if you would have just stayed in your little box and hunted General Utah and never got a point outside in Colorado or some other states where it was important, then you're stuck. And when your spendable income increases, you don't have any points to really capitalize on that. And your goal should be, if you're passionate about hunting like we are, your goal is over time, you build up your portfolio, you start applying in different states, and every year you're going to draw, or nearly every year, a quality hunt. If you don't, then you're going to draw a quality hunt every 5 years, every 10 years, or 15, or whatever it is.

But you're not going to have that plan where if you're doing multiple states, you're spreading out your applications to where it makes sense, you're going to be going on quality hunts eventually almost every year. I've got something on my mind I want to bring up. I'm not sure what the response will be. But spendable income. I've been thinking about spendable income, and I've been thinking about Josh's sugar mama.

Josh. I didn't know where this was going. Your spendable income has increased quite significantly after you got married. We don't need to talk about that. Maybe I spend her money that she doesn't know she has sometimes. All right. You're the man in the house. It's for the kids. I'm the man in the house. Bring your check. It's for the kids. Bring your check. Walk away. No, you know, that's honestly, though, that is it. I think about myself personally. I was a podcast consumer for several years. You know, I would listen to it as I was driving out in the middle of nowhere. And honestly, I would feel overwhelmed when a lot of times you guys would talk about things, Montana this way, and it would just go over my head. I think I can't even start. I'm so far behind, whatever. But little did I know if I would have signed up for a membership, because that's what I did before I worked here.

Signed up as a member and started to become more than just a listener in that way. Started to digest that information and actually go ahead and use it. And I was behind by the time I did that. And naturally, I had to. You know, when you're going to school and you're just trying to survive, sometimes the last thing you're thinking about is a hunt in Arizona somewhere or something like that. It's not even a reality. Yeah. It doesn't even seem like it's something that's attainable. But the thing is, I knew I was missing out on some opportunities that there are mild opportunities where you could have been grabbing a point here or there for an amount that wasn't that much. You know, amount that you spend on a tank of gas right now just to get somewhere. Save up for a little bit here and there and use it to your advantage.

And I think that's one thing that an actual membership can do for you is help to bring that overwhelming feeling of I'm never going to be able to do what I want because I can't afford it. It can bring it into you. You can start making a plan and say, OK, I know at some point I'm going to because generally now most of us and people that have a spouse that works. And when you're living on one income, 20 years old, trying to go to school or working and just trying to get a job, whatever. And then you get someone that doubles your income that helps you can pay for things. And I tease you about Sugar Mama, but quite frankly, we all have one. All of our wives work pretty well. You know what I mean? And so I'm just teasing. Let's talk about Wyatt's wife. Wyatt's Sugar Mama. We're still trying to figure out if she asks. I'm not sure they have co-mingling of funds.

She's smarter than that. We're not even sure she's a nurse. We're still talking about that a lot. We did have that conversation. We're not sure what she does. We were trying to go to some questions to ask her to see if she could see. Because he just says, he just knows she leaves town for three to four days a week to work. Have you ever been to a work environment? No, never been to work. Never seen her at work. Have you been to a work party? No. Wyatt, certain. These are the things that show up on like a Dateline exclusive down the road. These are valid questions. I have seen her get dressed in her scrubs and take off. So what? You can buy scrubs on Amazon. Yeah, that's true. Halloween comes every year. People have outfits, bro. Cardi, we're just teasing. Don't hit us all. I do have a few questions for her. We can cold call her. She's sleeping right now, probably. She says she's sleeping.

She says she's sleeping. I told Wyatt to test it. She works at a different hospital a couple hours away, roughly. That when he believes she's at work, he needs to go within the vicinity of there, fake a heart attack, and get taken into the hospital and see if she even is there. Because it's a small enough hospital. Something big like that, she would probably come in. I'd just walk in. Yeah, I would avoid it. Where's my wife? Or just cut your finger and have a bunch of blood coming up. I'd avoid an ambulance, Bill. I'd just walk in there. A small enough hospital, I could probably just open the front door and see everybody that's inside. Where's my wife? What's her name? I've actually been there. Nope, we don't have one here. Anyway. We digress. Josh, didn't want to tease you about your sugar mama because we all have gals at work, and they're awesome. We have good wives. But you're right.

Your income does double. In fact, when Jan and I were going to school, I mean, she graduated before me, and all I see is all this debt, kind of from getting points. And paying for school, and you know how guys are. We live at the very edge, doing everything we can. And she was a waitress, and she was bringing home cash. I mean, and I'm thinking, how many shifts can you get? She's done with school. And anyway, it changed our life to get married. I mean, it did. It was not just doubled our income. She tripled or quadrupled it, and we could breathe a little bit. So anyway, I guess our point of that, and we're not talking to, you know, guys that haven't been married yet. We're talking to everybody in general. As life goes on, hopefully things get a little bit better and job situations change. Try to foresee the ability to do a little bit more in the future if that's what you want to do.

Try to add a little bit more at another state or something to your portfolio in anticipation that, you know, as a few points accumulate and things hopefully change a little bit further down the road, you've got options. Points equal options in draws. I like that. That's right. 100%. Let's talk. Chris, do you want to jump in a little bit? Maybe talk about member experience. Member experience. So one of the things you can't replace is a personal experience in a unit. If you've never been there, you want to talk to somebody who has been there. And that's one of the benefits of being a member is we have a list of people within this program of member experience who have been to these units, and they sign up in member experience, and you have the ability to call someone who's been to your unit in the past,

and you can ask them direct questions, and you can get firsthand info from someone who has recently been to the unit you have drawn. It's nice to even just know the motel. I have guys all the time, well, what motel did you stay at? Well, no, we did an Airbnb. What don't you want to stay at? Yeah, exactly. And the guys that are in this program have signed up for the program, basically. They're willing to share information. In return, they can call and get information from other people. This gets emailed from our gals here at the office. They're super good about it. They get it out basically the same day. It's pretty amazing. And you can kind of, like Chris says, visit with guys. Like, hey, am I better to use a camp tent or a wall tent or a pup tent or a backpack or stay in a motel or whatever? Or a four-wheeler.

Or, I mean, on and on to what portion of the unit do you see more gaming of them? And then some of us have people that tell us where 200 inches are, John. Yeah, I've used this extensively. I mean, from pins on here's where I cut my bowl. Guys have been super good. Yeah. Super good. And, yeah, just they're willing. They got a lot of good information. And they're not going to go back in the near future. Yeah. And that's what it is. It's usually units where it's hard to get a tag. It's not every year you're going back. So you're helping another guy out because you're not going to be there. That's right. Well, let's see. Devin, how about Epic Approved Outfitters? Epic Approved Outfitters. We work with a couple hundred outfitters all over the western United States, Alaska, Canada, Mexico. A lot of draw tags as well. Guaranteed tags. I mean, you name it. Western big game outfitters.

It's a big game. Lots of them. It feels like Bronson, I mean, it feels like 300 or 400. It seems like we work with a lot of good guys. Stacked. And emphasis on that. Yeah. This is a program that we feel when we give you an outfitter to consider booking your hunt with. If you've drawn a tag or if you're looking to book a hunt with somebody with a guaranteed tag. Whether it be a lower 48 deer elk antelope, you know, guaranteed landing or outfitter tag. Or you want to go Mexico or Canada or Alaska with just a hunt that you need to book an outfitter on. We feel our representative, they represent us. When we give an outfitter out, their extension of us to some extent. We value that. We value our reputation, our credibility as a source of info that you guys can trust. When you call that we've vetted, that we have experience with these guys.

We send clients to them on a repeated basis and get continual feedback from them, the clients. And the outfitters both. Not just, you know, somebody that says, hey, I got open hunts. Can you help me sell them? That doesn't work that easy. That's not what we're interested in. We value our reputation as a credible source of good, valuable outfitter information in this case. And so, yeah. Devin kind of is the head of that within our organization. He's the first point of contact. And then he disseminates that information as he picks up a new outfitter or gets new openings from outfitters. He keeps all of us apprised of that. And we have, obviously, a database system for able to give out referrals and things like that. But this is something that we take seriously. Many of us in this room, you know, have been guides or outfitters ourselves over the years.

So we understand what it's like to be the hunter and the guide or outfitter on the side of things and know what to expect or what we feel like a hunt should look like and feel like and how much preparation and time and professionalism goes into it. Dang near every one of us have been guided guys. But I think, too, you know, just to kind of add on to what you were saying is we can't control every scenario and every situation. Sometimes a personality will clash. We're not saying it's 100% you are going to have the hunt of your lifetime. But these are definitely guys that have good reputations that have, you know, guided our clients on multiple great hunts, great experiences. And then, you know, let's face it. Out there, there's some guys that aren't really, you know, meant for customer service and the hunting industry. But continue to make a living in it.

And we kind of steer clear of those guys. And we know who they are. And continuing to learn as well. And like you said, pick up guys and whatnot where it makes sense. Oh, yeah. It's a small world out there. We hear about a lot. And one of my favorite things is feedback from members or anyone, really. I mean, if you've had a good hunt, bad hunt, whatever, I mean, that helps me. It helps, you know, it's great to hear from guys, especially members. I love those phone calls. Yeah. And I think the guide industry, it's not typical of most industries. I would say, and you guys can correct me on the percentages, but maybe 30% of guides are good. And there's 70% that are bad and doing a bad job. And they just, they just. I don't know about the percentage. But it seems like. You know what I mean? There's a large percentage of guys. People don't get divorced.

If you go off of his Instagram feed, he's posting photos from three years ago. And you think. That's most out there. He's awesome, you know. And you book and you don't know. But we know. We know that the guy's having problems and he's getting sued by, you know, his old business partner. And, you know, things aren't good. Maybe a fraction or two. Lingering out there. And the way things are, as of now, there's so much demand. The best of the best are booked. And the guys that have never been booked, they're booked solid too. Hey, how about that guy today that's booked out to 2026? Yeah. 2026. I mean, come on. On a draw tag. On a draw tag. 100% draw tag. General Wyoming draw tag. Jeez. So there's a lot of demand. So. What I would say, yeah, I don't know the percentage, John, the 70-30 principle. But a couple of bad, really bad outfitters that are shysters gets everybody on edge at

everywhere. And that's true. It's just like in some other, you know, business. A contractor, something else that just underperforms, under delivers, robs, steals, cheats, whatever. A bad experience of an outfitter can leave you a bad taste in the mouth. So we're trying to minimize that. There's weather. There's tough weather conditions on your hunt. Personality. There's bad antler growth. There's sometimes personality, things like that. But we. Horse wreck. Yeah. Lightning boat. The lightning boat that sends your pack string running. I mean, there's things like that to go on. But we're talking about, you know, the 80-90% of the things that you can hopefully control within a hunt. The preparation. Professionalism. Interaction with the hunter. The good gear. You know. Well thought out. I think of what makes a good outfitter. And we don't. We're pretty well done with this.

But I think what makes a good outfitter is guys that have the ability to control the variables they can control. You can control the food. You can control the gear. You can control to a degree which subguides you hire. You can control if you're overbooked or not. You know what I mean? There's some things you can control. There's some things you can't control. All right. Do you want to read a couple? Just for instance, Devin, I think you have one or two testimonials. Oh, yeah. We have dozens of these that come in. This was just the other day. It says, hello, Devin. This is a letter from an Epic member that requested a hunt last year. And we sent him to one of our outfitters. And this is what he says. So my apologies as this message is long overdue. I would like to provide you a sincere thank you for your efforts in helping me find a New Mexico elk hunt with my dad.

You couldn't have found a better fit for the needs of our hunt and my dad's physical limitations as a 70-year-old hunter. The outfitter is incredible. It exceeded our expectations in every way possible. Their guides were true pros, knew the area exceptionally well, had done their homework, worked their tails off. The setup at camp felt like you were just like at home. So really not a bad thing I can say. So thank you. Our hunt created memories of a lifetime as I was able to shoot my first bull and my father was able to shoot his last bull. It was a humbling experience to see my dad push through physical and mental hurdles to end up with an incredible animal to show for his efforts. I owe you a huge thank you. Cannot overstate how much I appreciate your help. I'll send a few pictures. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. That makes it worth it right there. Love hearing that. Well, all right.

So let's dive in maybe to our license application service. Why? Okay. So another part of our business here is an application service. We have very competitive pricing with that in the industry. Our pricing is $50 a state for up to two species, $100 a state for three species or more. $500 is where that scale maxes out. So $500 basically for unlimited applications. We cover most western states' applications there. We like to take pride in keeping our service more personable. Jason, Adam, and I go through those applications. And with our clients, we handpick every unit. You're not just thrown in for the same unit as everybody else just because that was a good unit. We try to tailor that to everybody's needs. It's one of the things that's pretty unique about us. I think the best thing to compare that to is you've got a financial advisor sometimes or a tax accountant that does your taxes.

We take care of your hunting life. We take care of your hunting applications. We make sure that you're going in the right direction. You don't miss a deadline. A lot of times you're just busy. It's stuff you could do on your own. I could do my own taxes not as well as my accountant does. John, you don't have time. I don't have time either. You're overbooked as it is. It's true. And so if you're running a business, you're just going like crazy, sometimes you can still give us your input. We'll do exactly what you want. But we get your stuff done and you don't even have to think about it. Well, it is just like the tax world. Things change year to year. For example, Wyoming made a huge change recently where if you don't apply or get your point during the summer, you don't get a point. A lot of guys missed out on that. Things like that a lot of guys missed out on.

But if you had someone like us doing your applications, you'll never miss that. That's right. You said you don't have time to do your apps. I'll do your apps. I'll take care of it. No. You just said.

There's different tax accounts. There's some that live on the edge. There's some that are very conservative. You're saying I'm a daredevil? No, I like to be the daredevil. I like to. Well, I'll be a daredevil for you. I'd love to use your points is what I'm trying to say. I eat so many tags, I'm like, I'm a little too risky. That's all I'm saying. I'm a little too risky. I might need your help. I need somebody that's a little more conservative that says, no, that's not going to work. All right. I would just tease you. With my own applications. I'll do it, but I get to go do laps on everything. And I'll shoot your sloppy seconds. You want a point boost? Still. You're going to have to talk to Jana because she paid for a lot of those points.

Especially in the beginning. Back in the waitressing days. She could use some. She could use some. She could use Oregon.

I heard they have nice hunts in Texas. Yeah, if you find yourself missing deadlines or not having enough time to research the unit to apply as the deadline's approaching, so you find yourself just applying points only or for only the very best unit in the state, then okay, and ends up in an unsuccessful app. And you want somebody that has more time and puts a little bit more thought into it because of your life, your schedule, work, whatever, consider giving us a call and having us do your applications. You know, we, again, it's the same guys doing the research, writing the magazine, as the guys that are picking your units and, you know, getting that done. So we'd love to help you out. Like Wyatt said, $500 maximum. All the state tag fees, everything like that, are paid by you and come right to you if you're a draw.

You still have all the latitude in the world to go self-guided or with an outfitter like we just talked about with Devin or any of us. But again, I don't want it to come off that we're doing a hard sell on the app service. Honestly, don't care. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. The guys that are listening that aren't even a member, you should at least do the membership. We are hard selling that. That's a no-brainer. Once you get a little more comfortable with this, if you decide you don't have the time, then jump in on the license app service. But at least start to get yourself some points and we can help you do that through the regular membership, $100 a year. All right, well, let's jump in. Maybe, John, the Epic Hunt optics giveaways or Adam, jump on in. Yeah, John, that's a good tee for you.

The hunt giveaways that we have, in fact, this is one of those periods of time right now. We have one of those periods going on. Yeah, just extra incentive to join right now. You get a free ticket into one of six. We kind of dream hunts of a lifetime type deal. Don't have to wait until 2026. We've booked these outfitters, most of them two to three years in advance. We bought these hunts. And, I mean, you've got a doll sheep that is just amazing. We've gotten some of our members that are coming back from these hunts that they've won from us. And just amazing. You had a guy, actually, just interject real quick. You had a guy, Ryan Jones, won the Desert Sheep Hunt. He was in constant contact. He bought some optics from us. I mean, just, you know, his friends tease him, you don't even know how to spell sheep. It was his first sheep, you know. Yeah, he wins a Desert Sheep Hunt.

He wins a Desert. You don't even know what you have. From us last June, right? He won it from us in June. Yeah, you don't even know what you have. He knows what he has. He's a good guy, well-versed in hunting. Anyway, super, super awesome guy. Well, he kept us posted on WhatsApp from Mexico. I mean, when he was in the truck, he called us with Roberto. And then, anyway, and they talked to us and whatnot. And then, when they were in the field, he was updating us. And then, he sends this text with all the photos, killed a 175-incher freaking stud. Obviously, fair chase, all low fence. Adam, you've been on the ranch. It's legit. Anybody who wants to book a hunt, sure, give us a holler. But, anyway, he said, thank you so much for the opportunity, quadruple exclamation. Can't describe how cool this was and how grateful I am. I'm like, we definitely need you to write a story.

And he says, I'll sit down when I get home and write a good one. It's the least I can do. Anyway, and he had a good year. He killed a big old deer out of Colorado and a few things. And so, the conversation kept going. But he was just on fire. And it's just, again, kind of nice. Kind of like, Devin, your guy that replied to you and thanked you. It's just, we get a lot of that. It's just so fun to give away hunts. Who's going to complain, right? We give away a free hunt. But, having said that, we take pride in the hunts we're giving away. We want people to kill big stuff or have a hunt of their lifetime. We've sent guys that haven't been successful. Out here in Nevada, deer. But the guy loved it. Had multiple opportunities. Couldn't say enough good. You know what I mean? Learned a ton from the outfitter about archery hunting and stuff. So, anyway, just fun.

And I'm not going to go through every hunt that we've got going right now. We might do that later sometime. But giant, moose, elk, deer, lions. And if you want to. So, John, the guys that are listening that aren't a member, they can get a free ticket into one of these hunts by joining. By joining. And then, of course, they can buy a ticket package or refer friends and get more tickets into the hunts that we're offering. Right? Yep. That's right. Go to epicoutdoors.com. You can join on there. You can also dive into the membership drive, you know, with additional tickets right there online as well. Yep. Just do it now. We're doing it now until February and draws it into February. So, join now. Get all the magazines. And that's an extra bonus. You can win the hunt of a lifetime. I like it. All right, Josh. Do you want to take it away on the epic optics?

Yeah, that's something that a lot of guys do or don't know is that we'd have a plethora of optics in a room back there. I like that. The thing that's, I think, good or unique about the optics that we sell, this is all stuff that we use, have used, family members use. I mean, we have pretty intimate knowledge about how a lot of this stuff works. And we're not going to sell something that we don't believe in. And so, have a lot of great products. You know, this last year has been tough to get products. But you guys have done an amazing job of staying up on orders and getting stuff in. I know, I don't know how many phone calls I've gotten where guys are saying, geez, you guys have that? You're the 50th person I've called, you know. And, yeah, we have six of them, you know, because you guys were really proactive and pretty on it with your ordering. Yeah.

We're not afraid to have some inventory in this COVID environment. It used to be you could have just-in-time inventory, and that worked. But the last couple years. We learned a few months into COVID, you've got to start thinking differently. And the mid-long-term optics ordering approach came in. We have a – I think it's a daily conversation with we need to order something, and we need to order this, and we need to order it now. And we're thinking two to three months ahead of time. I like that from you guys, you know, Devin, Wyatt, Josh, you guys, everybody's involved in it and saying – nobody wants to answer a phone call and say we don't have it. Nobody wants to do that. Yeah. You know, and so we're all, hey, maybe we should grab that. Hey, maybe we should get that. And we're very aggressive, not afraid to add to the stack of inventory because we know guys are going to want them. Right.

And it's like I said, when you have questions about something, even if you're just calling to inquire, you know, like I said, we've used this equipment in one fashion or another. And we put it to the test and a lot of stuff that we've used just this year alone, you know, and feel like we back this stuff and we would want to sell it to you because we want you to have the same success we did. Devin, we got lucky when we hired you. We hired you for a lot of different reasons but not even really knowing we were going to dive into the optics world. Yeah. You came from the optics world, so to speak. Yeah, partially for sure. You want to dive into that a little bit? Well, when we first – well, one thing is knowing the, you know, the right people at the companies, the optics companies is great. And they're friends. Well, you knew these guys when we were having meetings. You knew these guys.

Yeah, we've been in the trenches together in many little shooting events and things across the country. And then with rifles and rifle scopes, that's – I never thought I'd be digging into that again. Well, what's funny is Adam and I were like, Devin could be the optics point man. Devin's like, nope, nope, nope, nope. And now he wants every optics call.

That's a stretch. He's got a lot of knowledge, of course. And, of course, like Josh talked about, a lot of this stuff that we use, it comes natural. We've used a lot of these products. I'm looking at all the lines that we carry, and I have something of every one of them in my house, every single one. Zeiss, Leica, Vortex, Swarovski, Six Hour, Stealth Cup. Actually, I don't have the new Revit rangefinder yet, so I take that back. I don't. Josh has snagged that, and he won't let us borrow. But everybody – everything else I have. But I do have tripods. In one form or another. I do have tripods. I do have their tripods. Up there. Hey, good point. Never mind. I have it. So there's stuff that we use, and that's why we want to carry it. They're not just stuff that, hey, we can sell it and make a buck. There's stuff that we believe in, stuff that we use.

There's a wide variety of uses for optics in the West, and there's a wide variety of price points for optics for kids, adults, very casual hunters, or guys that hunt very seriously, you know, in multiple states. And everybody needs something a little bit different for that. I think whether you're spot and stalk or you're a blind hunter, we have something for you. And I think what I like about our optics is it's nice that we have a price point that is standardized. You can't call Adam and get a different price than me or Wyatt or Devin. You know what I mean? It's not the flavor of the day. I need to make a sale today. There's none of that. It is member-friendly pricing. You're a member here at Epic Outdoors. You can pay for that in one purchase easily. On some of these bigger items with your member pricing, that pays for membership for a couple years. That's right. Or five.

So consider that when you're next optics purchase. Give us a call if you're looking at buying something. That alone might be well worth your savings to join Epic Outdoors. That's 100%. All right. Well, I'm done. Are you? Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I do what I think about Epic Outdoors. A, I think we have a lot of great synergy with the consultants here. I think we love what we do. We're heavily vested. This is everyone's passion here. Nobody was hired just for a 40-hour work week. You guys live for it. We all live for it. And that's what I like. I think that reeks within the work that we put out and whatnot and the customer service that we offer. So I know. I'm biased. I mean, I'm part of the team here. But having said that, it's the truth. I don't lie, Bronson. All right. I agree. Yeah. Hardly.

I think our focus is on helping each member be as successful as they can because that's what we love. We love to get those stories back, see their success. So if you call in, we're not thinking about, oh, how can I kill something bigger? We're thinking about in that moment, how can I help this guy do better? Let's call it a day, guys. Are we good? Yeah. We're good. Good new year. New year. About upon us, but it's time to start applying. Yeah. Buy, buy, buy. At Epic Outdoors, we help you reach your hunting dreams. Whether it's helping you to develop a long-term application strategy or finding the perfect outfitter for your next hunt. As a member of Epic Outdoors, you'll also receive the Epic Outdoors magazine and have access to the best hunting consultants in the industry, online tools, and more. To join Epic Outdoors, visit epicoutdoors.com or call 435-263-0777.