EP 233: The Changing Landscape of Hunting the West

How we manage elk and hunt elk in Utah is coming up for review. Elk hunting strategy. So we had those kind of changes to where biologists were able to manage on a smaller scale on a herd level. Anything to do with western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Josh and Wyatt. Chris, you're at the keyboard. That's right. How you doing, boss? I'm good. All right. You guys doing good? Mm-hmm. Glorious. It's glorious. We had a deadline passed this week and it's always a little refreshing when that happens. We get a magazine done and New Mexico deadlines in the rearview mirror. That was a hefty couple days. Yeah. That was a... Hey, but I got to say we killed it. We did. Huh? We did. No issues whatsoever. Everybody's applied. And April, about said March, but the April mags at the printer. Yeah, it is. EMAG's hot and live. By the time you're listening to this, it'll be online. So go have a check and gander. I think I've got a sneak peek. Oh, yeah. Well, what do you mean? Well, I've seen EMAG.

For two weeks, we've been buried up through our nose in it. That's a sneak peek. Well, anyway. I've been reading some stories. Yeah. The EMAG. Yeah. It's awesome. I'll bet you know what's in it. Yeah. I kind of have a feeling. Anyway. Sun's shining. I think it turned off really good. And by the way, the sun is shining. How about that? Kicked into daylight savings. Got a little bit more time in the evening. Speaking of daylight savings time, Jason. Well, yeah. I'm hoping it goes away. The U.S. Senate voted to extinguish the back and forth twice a year of daylight savings. Yeah. Oh. The House has to pass it, and then it's going to go on to Crazy Joe's desk. So, I just want your opinion. He can't even do that right, Bronson. He can't even do that right. If he did. Let's just say he did. It'd be the best thing that his administration will do in four years. Yeah. And you know what it's called?

How sad is that? You know what it's called? I looked it up. What is it? What's it called? Literally. The bill is called the Sunshine Protection Act. Are you kidding me? Come on. 100% looked it up. Come on. The Sunshine Protection Act. They probably think we get an extra hour of sunlight on our solar panels or something. And forevermore. We'll have to pay homage to the freaking dams. Charge electric cars quicker for that extra hour. That's what it's called. But hey, come on. I just want to know, if you're in favor of it, does that mean you're in favor of that decision that Crazy Joe would be signing? I am in favor of the decision, but I'm not in favor of Crazy Joe, nor his people, nor anybody associated with him, nor his family, nor his friends. Hunter? Hunter? Hunter might be Hunter. I don't know. Hey, did you? Hey, by the way. Oh, he's getting sanctioned. He's getting sanctioned.

Other than Hunter's a bad A name. I am going to admit that. But having said that, did you hear that the New York Times actually admitted that that is a valid laptop, and it is his? They finally acknowledged the laptop is real, and it's his. Did you see that? No, but I heard he got sanctioned by Russia, him, and Hillary, and everybody. They're just putting them back on them. Some weird sanctions. What? All right. All right. Well, anyway. Wyatt. Keep going. Glad you can join us. Yeah, I just snuck in here. I have no idea what we're talking about here. We just barely. We just barely. Well, the Daylight Savings Bill. It's called the Sunshine Protection Act, and if it gets passed, I mean, it's done. I was trying to get Jason to say that, yeah, he would be grateful for Joe Biden. Come on. I was waiting for that to come out of his lips because then Chris could use the sound point

and we could use it forever. I could have it over his head. Grateful for Joe Biden. I'm grateful for it for the fact that we wouldn't have to fall behind because I know last year I was in Nevada when that took place, and I was so messed up, and I found myself hiking in the dark two hours before I needed to, and I was so confused. I didn't know what time it was. Well, we've learned how to work around that. Yes, we did. You taught me that. You showed up, yes. You leave it on Utah time. Never move when you, because we hunt too close to Arizona and Utah and Nevada right here. Depending on the cell tower you're getting, you don't know what time it is. Yeah. Overnight in the camp trailer, it'll swap, and then your alarm goes off at different times. You know what I mean? It'll swap which time it's on. So we just learned you've got to lock it down. Yeah.

So I kept sitting there on this ridge like, okay, here it comes. No. Anyway, it was a lonely few hours on the mountain just waiting for the light to come. I swear there's been deer saved because people have been swift. Oh, I could see it. I've had many hunters be an hour late in the fall. Anyway, quite interesting. But yeah, no, not a fan of the Biden administration. Okay. Do we need to, I wouldn't mind diving a little further into that. No, all I was looking for was sound bite, and I didn't get it. So let's move on. Not grateful for them. Although, so the evenings, there's daylight. There is. When we walk out, generally speaking, all winter, and it's been a long winter. Yeah. We walk out. We get here, it's dark. We walk out, it's dark. That's gotten old. Well, and that's some rationale behind it that it doesn't get light until later in the morning,

but it stays light longer in the evening, and something to do with, yeah, using electricity. Heart attacks. Weird stuff. It started in the war years. Heart attacks go through the roof around daylight. Same thing. And yeah, they do. For what? Never heard that. Because people, it's stressful. It's hard on people. It was crazy. There were a couple weeks, well, about a month, January, where during the week, I wouldn't even see my house at dark. I would leave it dark and get back at dark, and it was just kind of weird. Like two days out of the week, I get to see my yard in the light. What's the sunshine? Vitamin K or D, one of them? You didn't get any of that. No. Vitamin D, right? D, I think. There's a bunch of construction going on on that road to my house right there, and they'd been starting way early in the morning out there at the track.

It was a couple weeks where we had enough daylight at 6 a.m. to start Monday morning, come rolling through. He was climbing up on that track, go to start it. I'm like, you got an hour or so until you get rolling there. Yeah. You know, one thing about the Biden administration, I still haven't got a federal refund. Can you believe that? I still haven't got a federal refund. I guess there's millions of people that haven't gotten me yet. Oh? From last year? Have you written your letter? From last year? Have you written your? Well, no. Who am I going to write? Your pill process. Dear Uncle Joe. No, I think Hunter's taking care of that. Yeah, I'm sure he is. I'm sure he is. Right in between the white lines. Probably on his laptop. So anyway, I'm just saying. Somebody owes me some money. Maybe when they fire up that laptop, they'll see your tax return. There you go.

You'll see one made out to Jason Carter, and he'll forge your name, and you can have him for some federal fraud. Okay. I find it interesting that tax deadline's coming up for the next year, and I haven't even got paid from the last year. Okay. And this has never happened my whole life, except for with the Biden administration. Right? So Clinton treated you right? Is that what you're trying to say? Well, good grief. I'm trying to put words into this guy's mouth. So Obama treated me right. Well, Wyatt, hey, we talked about what a good week it was to get the magazine done, New Mexico done. I'm sure you're happy in that department, right? Hey, real quick. What? Before we leave the politics.

We did have a Dem draw an awesome tag in Nevada. Right? Right. Yes, yes. And we've had an exchange, and he's actually a good guy. I want all the Dems out there that are hunters just to know that I still like you, and we do have members that are Dems. Hope you kill good stuff and send your stories and stuff. But he did say, hey, just don't tell the guy that I'm a gun-toting liberal. That's no problem. I won't tell him. He's a podcast listener, too. He is, and he's a good guy. I want a little shout-out without saying his name. Yep. Anyway. Unless you want to say his name. All right. Go ahead. Let's move on. I'm done with politics. Let's do it. Wyatt worried me a little bit this week, because we get New Mexico in, and we're all excited or happy. Everybody's optimistic. There's another state in that hasn't rejected you that. Who knows where he's going?

And then Wyatt opens up a fortune cookie. Oh. Did he really? How does he, does he think about these things? You lay awake at night thinking about these things. When I have a magazine week, and we get up at bad hours in the morning for so long, and then you don't need to, and you want to sleep in, but you can't, these are the random thoughts that come into my head. Thoughts like this. But the thoughts was, hey, do you ever get a bad fortune in a fortune cookie? It's all rainbows and sunshine. We brought that up. Sunshine. Yeah. Can't remember a bad one. No. Other than Wyatt's was empty. Yeah. That's a bad omen. That's a bad omen. Wyatt broke the cookie open. New Mexico deadline day. Yes, I know. We were just in a hustle. Devin was there checking stuff, and I'm like, hey, I'm just going to run and grab lunch. Want me to grab you something?

Run over to Panda Express, come back to the office here, eat my meal. Waiting for a nice crack. Waiting to eat that fortune cookie. Break it open. Nothing. There's nothing in it. Yeah. Not even a blank piece of paper. Devin gets some great one. I can't remember what it was now. I wish I could. He shouted across the office. Success is in your future. Yes, something like that. I had nothing. And then I had to submit my New Mexico application. Here's your lucky numbers, and there's like 14 of them. Exactly. That would be Devin. Wyatt just took the rest of the day off. Wyatt went right into New Mexico, withdrew his applications, and were like, they're keeping my money. I'm not drawn. I'm going to get my money back. Devin's had all his New Mexico hunt codes on him. Yeah. Those are the units Devin put in for. Congratulations. It looks like you're going to be hunting mutton. Could you imagine?

Wow. Curdy horn creatures are in your future. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Speaking of New Mexico, I don't know what TV show or late night show this is, but isn't there something that's like the best thing I heard all day or best thing I heard all week? I had one of those moments this week from Carter's Lips. What do you mean? Well. Come on. Bronson, we better come prepared from now on. The next day. You better be on your A game. So the deadline was what? Tuesday? What was the day? Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday at 5 o'clock. Kind of a weird deadline, but yeah. End of the work day. You're done. 16th. 16th. The next day. So the 17th at 4 o'clock. So 23 hours after New Mexico's deadline. Carter, the best thing I heard all week was Carter's of destiny. He's complaining. I wish New Mexico would just get on with it and get the draw around. Run the draw.

23 hours after the deadline. Run the draw. Run the draw. I wish I'd just get with it and run the draw. Well, what's wrong with that? Let's run the draw. That's the best thing I heard all week. All the apps are in. What you should do is just run the draw, right? It's computerized. All the apps are in. Run the freaking draw. If I fell unapplied, punish him later. Not a big deal. Take his tag. Reallocate it. Whatever you want to do. I don't know. What are they doing between hour one and 14 weeks later? Just tell me. And day 30. Whatever it is. I mean, we should have them 505, right? I don't get it. 5x5, 505. Now tell me, wasn't there Bronson? There was a state. What was it? Was it a raffle? There was a raffle or something that ran. The draw deadline was like, let's say, 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. And at 7, wasn't it the Arizona Super Raffle? I think it's still a couple days. Arizona Super Raffle.

I don't know. I mean, the next hour they ran. I promise. Me bringing this up. You guys don't need to bring ammunition. It was just the best thing I heard all day. That's all I was saying about it. Run the draw. Everybody. Whoever's listening, run the draw. 23 hours is too long for a car. You know, people would say that to us, too, when we give away our hunts. Yeah. But you realize we do let it. Not just computer online. There's a lot. We still do paper apps. Here. You know what I mean? I mean, people can submit their tickets through the mail. Can't do that in these states. So I just think there's no excuse with a computerized draw. All right. What else you got, Bronson? You got some yellow paper? No. Well, it's full of writing. Let's get into some real, I guess maybe real topics. Meat and taters? Those are just. Meat and taters? Food for thoughts. Yeah.

So really, I guess there's been a lot of change coming up. Yeah. Your food storage, meat and taters. Well. You've been filling up your food storage, Bronson. What have you been buying? A little of this and a little of that. Uh-huh. Really? It's like my backpack meals. I don't like the same thing. For days. When you're gone for seven to ten days on a backpack trip, you need variety in your pack because you just crave weird things, different things. If you have, if you have, if you're your buddy Kip and you have mac and cheese every day. Well, okay. So we're going to have to tee this up a little better. But basically, with the world being a little bit of an unrest, Bronson's been somewhat nervous. No. I'm not. Hey, we get to do this to him. I'm not one bit nervous. He did it to us. He did it to us. I'm not one bit nervous.

And so there's a case lot sale down at the local grocery store, which means there's cases of spaghettios and vegetables and peaches, stuff like that. Fianna sausage. And so. I don't buy those. So I go down. I'm like casing out the case lot sale. Okay. When John and I, you know, buy a few things. Hey, just want to point out who was there first. Me and you. Okay. Okay. But I was just making sure because I knew by the time you got there, if I were to go after you, there wouldn't be anything left. No. I just had a few things on. Robinson goes in there and four hours later. No. Departs the store. I was gone within 30 minutes. It was very strategic. Just a few things. Cubic E items. So some of them may have done some other things. Yeah. Like what? The same stuff you have. Powdered what? No. Water. Oh. So, yeah. We got some epic tanks. Epictanks.com. Well, no. Don't go to that website.

It doesn't exist. Well, it might. But it might not be anything related to us. It needs to be ours. It's not us. You're thinking we're going to do another business. No. I'm just. I mean, if we want it, everybody wants it. I don't want it. I don't want to have a trucking company. No, I don't. It's kind of interesting just with all the unrest. Y'all out there ought to probably buy a few things because those shelves may be empty at some point. That's all. So, Bronson, he took it next level. 14 days later. I told my wife, you got me for seven days. But if it takes longer than that, we'll perish. Because I'm not going to linger on this for weeks and months. I did. This week, last week, came and went, and you were still buying this. Well, you go to take care of a few things. Like, there may or may not be people that clean all the propane tanks out at Walmart. And there's no limit. You found out.

There's no limit on green propane tanks. They all went in the back of your truck. So, if somebody else did that to you before you got there, you naturally have to go back a week later to see if they got it. So, a little bit lingers. But I am 99% done. And I am sitting back and just thinking about my assortment right now. So, were we or were we not sitting at lunch and you get a notification from Walmart.com? Did this happen or not? A notification. Possibly. A notification saying what? What did it say? I'm going to tee this up, though. Pancake batter's on sale. I hate going in to any grocery store. I hate going in and going up and down. I hate shopping. I don't blame you. My wife, for the last year or two, she uses the Walmart app. So, you can go online, order all of it, and then schedule when you want to pick it up. And they have it ready and you pull up outside.

They walk it out and you try it. And it's amazing. It's a life changer. It is. Try it. No. I don't shop much. Okay. I got a good wife. Well, if you have your wife do it, you'll have her more around the house so that she can be there preparing the food that she's picking up for you. Okay. Well, she does a great job. But moving right along. Moving right along. That's all it was. What notification did you get when we were sitting in the Mexican, we were sitting in Mexican having Mexican food. She put the app on my phone because when I go guiding and hunting, one thing I hate when I'm ready to leave. I think it's so funny how we can't get to the point, but go ahead. As I got this app. So, when you get an app, what do they do? Now they got what? Every layer of communication. Yeah. Email, phone number, texting. Yeah.

So, I can't go throughout a day now without blinging my phone about mac and cheese or Vienna sausage or whatever is available by the palate. Anything you happen to talk about, your phone picks it up and puts it back into your feed. That's right. So, okay. So, fast forward. We're sitting there. So, yeah.

Pancake batter that you've longed for. You actually put an alert that if this pancake batter comes on for sale to alert you and you went and bought how many did you buy? This is how that app works. If you look at something and look at it and they can tell you're plugging and playing and you don't buy, the next day you get a thing that says you might want to buy this. It's about out of stock. Is that what happened? I had one this morning, too. For what? For some kind of potatoes. What was it? Oh, so you're looking at potatoes. Some funny shows. I'm a meat and potatoes guy. Is that powdered? I've got lots. Was it powdered? No. What was it? They were dehydrated sliced. Was it dehydrated? Okay. So, anyway. I mean, what? What guy with pride at all is getting notifications from powdered potatoes?

Do you want to eat straight meat or straight mac and cheese or do you need some variety on your plate? I don't know. I was going to say. Because ask him what's in his. Yeah, what's in yours? You've got grains of wheat. You've got whole kernels of wheat. What are you going to do with that when you're hungry? I don't know and that's a contention I have with Jenna. If something happens to her, I will die. You're going to have all these buckets on wheat, right? You're going to make cracked wheat. Have you ever thrown a handful of wheat in your mouth and started to crush? I have. What is it? You have to taste out the matati. It sucks in all the moisture and it bloats. And you choke. So, anyway. So, I don't want all wheat. I want a variety. I've been looking for a matati. Are they called a matati? That's what this morning. What happened this morning?

We're sitting here at 9 o'clock and all of a sudden Jason's like, everybody get in the truck where we find ourselves out hiking around looking for something for him to grind his wheat. Matati. And we found it. Yeah, we found a giant. We found a great spot. And Josh is like, Jason, if something happens to Jenna, bring your wheat up here, grind it, and do something good with it. I'm telling you right now. There was a tent. There was clothes. Somebody had already started that process for you. We had to go take a few. I don't know how this got onto me because I don't have notifications ringing my phone for random food items. Just Toyota trucks. Oh, now that's manly. So, Bronson, aren't we asked to provide it for our families? Okay. But we also think about water, right? And you have 55 gallon drums of water in case you need them. So do you. I have a couple. Okay.

But we decide that's not enough and it's not easy to get the water out because there's not any... Spigots. Spigots and stuff. And so what happens? Josh, why don't you go ahead? Well, that's where I was. That was the EpicTaste.com. There I was at my desk. Yeah, I was at my desk. And all of a sudden it was like, I hear some rumbling through the window. Jason. Next thing I know, Josh, get your truck. Meet me at Highway 20 in the morning, 715. You're going to Salt Lake. There's some Epic tanks waiting for pickup. Right? So here we go. Maybe plus or minus 10 of them. 250 gallon tanks. But hey, everybody got one in this room. I don't want to show up. And our point is, is if we want it, somebody else wants it and nobody sells them down here. So why don't we get more? I just want to quit thinking about anything that I don't have. That's all. So did you, yes or no, buy a generator or two?

I bought one. I've heard those phone calls taking place the last few days. It's as if a draw deadline's coming up. It's so important. It's the most important. I don't want to say the making model I bought because they're almost to be off the shelves. That's my point. So what have you found out? And this is a serious note. Okay. The Hondas, the Companion 2200 or the regular 2200 that you parallel together with the Companion. To make 4400. Are not on the shelves right now. And I found out why.

Because the great state of, what's it called? California. The Golden State. Oh. Is it the Golden State? California. I think it is. They have an emissions law that now is in effect that you've got to have a certain something on that apparatus as it runs that it doesn't pollute their air. Oh, yeah. So. And it needs a sticker to say that this is equipped with that. This is equipped with it. Or the ones that are not have a sticker that says these are not legal for use in California. And they're out of stickers. And so all the other 49 states are waiting to get generators that have their proper stickers put on. So they're out of stock. Wow. Wow. That's the world we live in. And so we have five in Southern Utah. No. We had zero. I bought a different one. Oh. So you bought a different one. I ended up buying a big one. They upsold you. They upsold you. Yeah. Because what do you want?

You want what's right in front of you. Oh, I get it. I get it. And I don't have to parallel something together now if I don't want it. How about the one you have? How about the one you have? I don't. I like it. I didn't go out and buy another one. So the other thing is what's interesting. These COVID times. And I think this brings us into the hunting side of COVID. Changing. The change. The changing of times and the angry people. Okay. So I go. We go. And we renew our registrations for our vehicles. Guess what comes? Registration. With no sticker. With no sticker. And on that says put this letter in your glove box. We ran out of stickers. Are out of stock in stickers. And so this will serve as proof that you're registered and you're good to go. Did you get one of those? No. My wife tried to get her vehicle registered the other day and told me the same thing. There's no way.

The stickers are out. How are you out of stickers? Yeah. How are you out of stickers? Well, they either came from Russia, China, or Ukraine. I mean, there's no stickers. Or the glue that's used to put on the back is built in most of these countries. You cannot get a sticker. So your plate shows out of date, expired, whatever. And you get pulled over and then you got to. I think so. Just another reason for them to pull you over and check for. Do you think the inventory specialist that's ordering those, you think they still have a job? I don't know. When do you foresee? Let's say they got fired. Who would they replace them with? I don't know. Honestly, there's nobody out there to hire, dude. I did read that Utah has the lowest unemployment rate ever. It went down, again, 2.1%. I wonder why. What do you think it is? If you want a job, you can have one. It's everywhere.

Everybody's needing work. How about I didn't even know we had a Chick-fil-A here in Cedar City until Wyatt told me he visits the campus pretty regularly. I think Pollock's on the front end up today. I was drugged there. I started to walk through the doors, and I was starting to go into having convulsions. I'm like, I'm back here. I'm back here. I told myself I'd never be back here. I get letters from SUU. There you are, getting a PhD. Yeah. Chick-fil-A is good food. It is good. That's why I can't believe I didn't know there was. They have one on the campus of Southern Utah University where we live here in our town, but it's inside the student center. It's like the only place in town, so it's kind of looks weird. We got grown dudes. Every old construction worker down there on campus.

I feel it's like it's my alumni duty to go down there because I get pamphlets from them saying, hey, donate. Be a good alum. I'm like, I paid you enough money for the misery that I spent there for 16 years of college that I went there for my four-year degree. You got young kids. You can just drive up to the door and kick them out. They don't even know as far as I know unless they're just holding out on you. Yeah. We're going to have a family meeting about it tonight. Josh, tell us all. The amount of skinny jeans and man buns. Oh, come on. I couldn't stay in there longer. The chicken there ain't worth it. No, I couldn't stay in there long enough. So let's move into the COVID environment that's ticked everybody off. And now all these states are changing. Everybody's on edge. Well, and if the state's not willing to change, it goes straight to the legislature.

Or it goes to a citizens group that then, yeah, petition legislature, however. Alaska. Yeah, that. And then you've got Wyoming. Colorado's looking to change. And you've got Montana made some big changes to their system. We should go through them one by one and just talk about them. But it's a lot of unrest, I guess. Maybe. Where do you want to start? Which one do you want to start about? Wyoming? Yeah. The 90-10? Yeah, that's happened. And so the others are potentially going to happen. But yeah, start in on that. Yeah. The legislature passed a law for the Big Five, which I think is kind of interesting. They lumped grizzly bears into sheep, moose, goat, and bison, even though we've still not ever been able to hunt grizzly bears, even though they've done a draw and got weeks before the hunt and it got challenged. But anyway, it used to be about 20, 25% of those tags went to non-residents.

And now, God approved, it's just going to be 10. And that's kind of monumental. It cuts the non-resident tags in over half. And by the time you split it between a preference draw and a random draw. 75% preference, 25% random. If there's no random, if there's not enough for a random, there is no random. There's a lot of states that will do random first. Or at least they'll allocate at least one random. I think for moose, there's only five or six random tags in the whole state right now in the current system, let alone cut it to next year. So this is going to change things dramatically. Who knows, the deer elk and antelope could happen down the road. Well, they're talking next year. Changes commissioner tags. But this doesn't take effect until 2023. So whatever you've got in the draw this year, you better hope you draw it.

And it's going to make a head scratcher for applying for sheep and moose in the no-man-land point situation. The current system is not even going to be worth it, Bronson. $150 a point and the points get you nothing unless you're one of the 22-point type guys. Plus, you're just going to be in no-man's land. I hope, honestly, I hope it really hurts their budget. I'm so tired. You get wore out fighting. And not being able to hunt without an outfitter in the wilderness areas. Just little things like that. At some point when they all add up, you just start getting ticked. Yeah, I guess in every state, generally a 10% thing is somewhat normal. Palatable. In a state. But when you have a well-established point system like that, it makes it really tough. And then of the 10% of the tags that you're going to give us a non-resident, let's see, how many? Half the oak tags in the state are less.

Maybe we can even go hunt on our own on public land. Well, on top of that, out of our quota, they take the non-resident landowner tags out of our quota. Yeah. You know what I mean? So they give 16% of the oak tags to non-residents. But then out of that, some of them go to non-resident landowners. Currently, there's a lot of elk tags that you have 0% chance to draw if you don't have max points. You know? So the quotas are so... The pies on elk, they're split four ways, regular and special and preference and random. It's like... So then you divide all of these different cookie jars up on top of preference points. 75% go to preference. You don't even get a random shot. At times, it says, we put in there, no tag. And that's under the current system, not the new one. So that's a big change. It's going to affect things.

I pray for all y'all that have 21, 2, 3 points for sheep and moose that you can draw. And not all of you are going to, unfortunately. It's going to be rough. It is what it is. We've had guys call up with 18 plus points, 18, 19, 20, that are like, really? And like, yeah, really? That's where it's at. And all of those points are for nothing. And things change. I'm not saying that a state shouldn't be able to change a little bit. But it is like they have no regard for non-residents at all. At least make it to where the points give you another name in the hat. And I hear that may happen down the road. But for right now, those, you know, any points you have don't help you in the random draw. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, and there's other states. There's some rummings. I got messages. We both did emails from New Mexico.

There's a push down there to have all sheep tags be reserved for residents of the state. And because of the interpretation of their, you know, 84-10-6 rule, they've had to make the kind of the hunt code for all desert sheep be, what, 204 and Rockies 201. And everything's kind of subquotas are under there. Yeah. And that's how they're able to, quote, meet the guidelines of, you know, two to three tags in each pool. But now if they do it within each hunt. And if they do it by each hunt code, you can't round down because there's like one or two or three tags. And so. Every tag will go to residents. So that's maybe coming down the pipe. You've got, you know, the Montana, the 900-20 big cluster. And Eastern Montana of Elk has been broken up for this year. You maybe read about that in our recent magazine.

There's still some bigger clusters and chunks, but it's not dominant the whole eastern side of the state anymore. Draw that 900 series and hunt and bounce around all over however you want. You're going to be more defined where you're at. Going to be interesting to see some of the dry gods. Can't jump in on the generals at times. Yeah. Depending on the unit. If you draw an archery tag out there, you can't go hunt a general over here as well. So that probably doesn't affect too much as us as non-residents, as residents, I would imagine. You know, I'd imagine residents, if they draw that, they want to hunt a special area and then they can still hunt their general over here. It's going to. I'd like to hear from some residents on that. Maybe we'll call Bernsey or something in a week or a couple of days. Yeah. Visit with him. He's usually pretty candid about things.

And I think, too, Colorado's looking at making some changes. It just feels like, and I guess Josh said it best today, it just feels like COVID has had a lasting effect on everyone even now. Did you guys hear? I mean, the mask mandate's been lifted in a lot of places and going to be continued to be lifted over the next few weeks. But having said all that, didn't you have to fly? Didn't you guys? Your wife? Oh, the airlines are still having it. But didn't they say here in a couple of weeks they're going to lift it? Yeah. That's what I heard. I heard they're supposed to. So anyway, but we're still angry, and it feels like everybody, there's so much unrest out there. They even, Idaho just went through the legislature about lighted knocks. You know what I mean? And you would think, couldn't you do that in a commission meeting? I mean, come on. Well, Utah, take Utah.

Some of Utah's changes recently to some of the guide and outfitter accompanying rules are there. You can't be more than two guides per hunter and things like that. And what it constitutes, how you can get paid for even finding an animal. You've got to be a licensed guide and be one of the, you know. So there's a lot of things that have gone above the heads of wildlife boards. And then there's been wildlife boards have round twos of meetings. You know, trail camera incident in Utah is the one thing which passed again. So there's going to be no trail cameras for the purpose of hunting after August 1st. Yeah. Much, very much like Nevada. Yeah. Yeah. So. And the people in Nevada actually like it. Like for the most part, you hear positive. What I can't believe is there's not Arizona. You don't hear the gnashing of teeth as much. I know a lot of the residents absolutely hate it.

So I'm not saying there's nobody that, but it just feels like they took cameras away all together. You know what I mean? Kind of crazy. But so much change so fast. And I think part of it, A, you got this COVID environment, but B, we've, we talked about the technology on that podcast recently, the last podcast, the guys out of Colorado. And a lot of those things that we talked about pertain to all the Western states. And so just kind of wondering what your thoughts are. I think, I think a lot of times you see it. It's a, I feel like with wildlife management, we have something when we try and manage it, we want it to be that way forever. And it just, it's not, and it's never going to be. That was one thing I always kind of struggled with as a biologist was I always tried to want to manage, I guess, for the lean years, potential for a lean year in case.

And, but then on the other hand, you're being told, no, you know, we don't want to have potential waste. If there's going to be animals harvested and such, we want them going home with a person and not just dying out on the range and stuff. And so it's hard to figure out how to manage to. And I think a lot of it right now comes down to, we've had some terrible droughts since 2018. You know, we've had a few high spots here and there, but very, very few. So what's happened is buck doe ratios generally have come down. Deer populations, just numbers in general, your fondo ratios, everything like that are down significantly. And so we all see that. And now we all have a thought or a feeling that the sky is falling. And so now I feel like a lot of, a lot of decisions are being made. Big knee jerk reactions. Yeah. Knee jerk reactions. Irrational.

We've got to change it now or things are going to be done forever as you know it. And I look back to many, many years. We've talked about it before, but I look back through the mid early nineties and stuff. We had a bad winter in 92, 93 and you know, 95, 96, 97 range. When I first started hunting and buck doe ratios were in the tank. They're very actually better now than what they were then, even though we're going down and, and we rebounded, you know, we had good years. And, and I'm not saying we can't just sit back and, you know, let mother nature take care of it, but she, you know, it's, it's kind of a, we're at that mercy, I guess. And I feel like sometimes we need to make sure we manage, but knee jerk reactions are kind of, it's crazy. And I think that's what COVID's brought on is we're just so sick of everything else that, and then everybody, there's a sense of entitlement.

There's a sense that, um, change.org needs to happen with everything, you know, and, uh, and there is a lot of change that needs to happen in a lot of different ways. But, and it's one of those things, it's okay. If you guys aren't going to do it, then we're going to do it and we're going to force it on you. And it's tough. I'm going to fix it, try to fix everything. And I think I could see where some of that happens. Cause you, you go through the RAC process. It's here in Utah. We have a RAC process, regional advisory council in all the different regions and people voice their opinions and opinions. You know what we all say about opinions. There's hundreds and hundreds and thousands of them. And so then they all go up to the main meeting and, and at times they may or may not be listened to at the main meeting.

And there may be need to be 14 workshops and three years later, no change happens. And then you've got people that are passionate about it at the legislature level that are like, we're just tired of not seeing change and they can make some change. And so they, they do, they take it upon themselves and do it. And so you've got at times wildlife being managed and rules and regulations being made over, you know, uh, by one or two people at the highest level. Um, but I don't blame them to a degree because they, they sit and watch no change happen because opinions by thousands. They get in the way of everybody, you know, I can see the frustration. And you come off a couple of years of bad drought and you, I mean bad and we're angry and our deer herds are suffering. And so we're on edge, you know, versus three or 45 years of milk and honey.

And, you know, the greatest thing ever was that we, uh, you know, whatever, whatever minor change happened, we can pin it on that that worked when really it was, you know, a lot of times weather related, which it is. Well, and there were some changes. I look at Utah and what, 2012 when we went to the unit by unit thing, and I think that was significant and for Utah's deer, it helped tremendously. We also came off of, so we went down to controlling. I remember when I was a game warden, you would see weekends, Southern Utah would be annihilated with people. You know, I remember going up there specifically one year on top of there's that stretch of was a big flat on top of Beaver mountain. You know, I'd go up there and check that. And I remember I looked the year before they made the whole, cause archery hunt, you used to be able to do it statewide, um, for the archery hunt.

And I remember going up there and I looked back and I had, I had checked like 200 and something licenses opening day of the archery hunt, um, in 2011, I think it was. And then in 2012, they went back and they, they significantly, you know, broke up all these units and cut permits and all that. And it was, it went down to that year. It was like 80 or something like that, you know, pretty significant. And so there's some changes like that, that I'm not saying all changes are bad. That was a great change. And I think Utah's deer herds helped. So we had those kinds of changes to where biologists were able to manage on a smaller scale on a herd level, rather than a region wide level, you could control where hunters went better. So I think it went well. Then we had really, you know, 14, 15, 16, 17. We had some pretty wet years, some good deer numbers.

Deer were taking, I mean, they were taken off. Deer numbers were climbing really good deer. The tags were up. Everything was good. That was the milk and honey. And then here comes 2018. Yeah. And then 2019, 2020, we didn't have monsoons. We rely heavily on the monsoons for, for a lot of moisture. The wildlife rely on them heavily and we didn't have those. And we just haven't been able to recover since. You know, we're hoping this year, a little bright spot that we're hoping this is. I'm contending that these terrible drought years have brought the overall average so much lower that now when they say it's at a hundred percent, it's tainted by the bad, the last five to 10 years of bad drought a year. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I don't know how we're at a hundred percent where we're down here. Yeah. Well, Josh, we're actually at 50% since basically January. Yeah.

But when you look at that, it's from October 1 until now. The water year. And we had an incredible fall. Yeah. Yeah. It's just hard. When we say a hundred in Utah, that usually means you still can't see over the curb in your street. You got so much snow. Yeah. I'm used to stuff like that. The old days. Yeah. We don't even need a, really need to have a contract for snow removal here at the office. I've used my blade once in two years in Cedar City. Yeah. On my snow or four wheeler. So kind of crazy. I think there's a lot of good points. What? Can you? No, I think we covered a lot of it. A couple other changes. We might've skipped over that Montana preference point deal that they just come out with too. A little outfitter allocated point there. We covered that in the publication. Did we? We did in the publication. I knew that was on the podcast.

I didn't know if we talked about it before I got in here. Go ahead. Dive in. Anyway, so guys that are applying with an outfitter for that general licensing now, they are, get one guaranteed preference point, I guess. They can buy it. A hundred dollars plus their one for the year, which would get them more into a forced draw situation. Especially if you have one right now, they are going to make you apply. If you didn't apply last year and you got points, you're going to lose them. You got to play in consecutive years or you lose them. But yeah. And the other thing to keep in mind is Montana is one of those states on the preference point. You actually get the point going before the draw happens. Yeah, going into the drawing. So if you've got one, you buy your regular one. And if you're going to go guide it, you buy that one.

So you're going to draw a three, which is the new ceiling on that. So you're probably going to get it, guarantee. It's a way to, you know, if you're playing with zero right now, you can go into two by buying if you're going to go outfitted. And you have to be outfitted on elk and deer if you get a general deer and elk combo. You can't do unguided on one and guided on the other. The draw odds are actually better with zero. So if you're going in and you didn't play the point game, you could, you know, your drawing odds are better than, say, with one. With one, you're kind of, so just kind of, you need to look at it and decide, do you really want to go this year? Do you want to have a small chance of going this year? And then you would load up next year. The crazy thing about that is they give 75% of their tags to the highest point holders in the preference. We're talking the general combos.

And the other 25% randomly, but specifically to random people with zero points, not randomly. You got to have zero. So if you have one last year, we all saw it. We're like, geez, your odds were bad. And how are they, you know, twice as good with zero? That's why you had fewer people with zero because we're trained, right? When you apply. Oh yeah. Buy the point. So you buy the point. You actually go to one before the draw actually even happens. So you're not in the zero point pool at all that year. The guys that apply and opt out of the preference had better, better odds than getting guys with one point last year. So kind of screwy. Yeah. But like you said, yeah, there's a lot coming. We haven't even finished. Well, we're two thirds through the States this year, four out of the six mags. And we've had a lot to talk about already.

And if we opt out of that preference point, you don't get a chance to buy it in the summertime. That's right. Yeah. You got one application period to either apply or get a point. You can't apply and then decide in the summer, I should have bought the point and go buy it. You can't do that. Which is crazy. Don't they want to make money? I know. I mean, good grief. You know, you're going to allow us to play the game, extract the most you can out of us. I don't know. That's what most states do. I do have a little work board session, kind of an agenda that's going on here in Utah. And it was kind of to, you know, to shed a little light on what's coming down the pipes and what all of these states are up against. And Josh, you kind of enlightened us on this, that some of these things, some of the different topics, they've got a technology committee.

They're going to talk about, you know, what to tackle. I mean, and that's the one thing. I think these states are, we're pretty aggressive. We got social media. If hunters are ticked, they're pretty aggressive. And they're on it. And then all of these commissioners, the people on board members, Game and Fish, they have emails. They have cell phones. And people are willing to throw them out there to the world. And so they're now answering to the call of checking on technology, dealing with all of the different changes, coming up with changes and things we haven't even heard of. But anyway, they're going to tackle some things on, you know, the technology, scopes on muzzle loaders, hunting with all three weapon types. Obviously, that means dedicated hunter here in Utah. Yeah. You know, going to address that.

I mean, they're going to talk about, you know, some of the different, they were talking about Josh and Adam and Wyatt. We obviously talked about the forked horn potential, right? Of coming up with a forked horn. Yearling. They said yearling. A yearling. A yearling. A two-point. What if you shoot a two-year-old two-point? They take it from you? I don't know. That's what I mean. I mean, it's the same, but even the idea of it, and like my point to you guys was, and you guys, Wyatt and I are on the non-biology side of the office, okay? You guys are the gamey side. But in your minds, like, does spike elk hunt, does spike elk hunts work? Would this forked horn work? Well, Idaho's done a little bit of it, and I haven't seen amazing things from it. But they do it in the area that unit is also an extreme limited entry unit, you know? Right. Like, unit 40 comes to mind. That's right.

One that's managed for quality. Yeah. And it's a way to allow the locals, whatever, to hunt your backyard unit, but you can only shoot a forked horn. Right. Now- General. With a general tag. Well, in this case- But why shoot all the forkies? On our generals, we got 70- What's a- I'd like to know the breakdown. I bet it's like 75% of the bucks. Or maybe that's too high. But 50 to 75 are yearling bucks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's easily 70. On a general season unit, for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, if that's what's there, why do you have to pair off and have hunts that are only for that one, that's really what's there anyway. I think for kids. They were talking about youth- The big cause. That's the big cause. But what happens is you put- Now they're forced- You're forcing pressure. It's like these general areas.

We would have good places within the general areas because you could hunt the whole region, right? For southern region. You could hunt the whole side. Now we're going to pick, you know, X amount on Pine Valley, X amount on Zion, X amount on Southwest Desert. And so now we're going to put all this pressure on forkies. These certain people can only hunt forkies. So I think it's going to put an inordinate pressure on forkies. It does. And you can't pass them because what are you passing? One that forks a little deeper than the other? I mean, what are you really passing? You're not. So crush one, move on. Instead of, I'm going to pass a forky and hunt for a baby. And what does that look like? Well, Adam, you know what we really don't want to do? We're not going to give that many tags. And so it's actually not going to be that bad.

But we're going to get back into being easy to draw or over the counter and able to have families to be able to camp together and things. I mean, that's my point. You're going to hear all of these things. But is that proper management? Just tell me. You guys are the experts. Would you be in favor of that? No. No? I don't think so. And I think even on the spike-only stuff, we've seen, I know that's contributed to some of our demise, if you can use this, not too strong a word, but of our top-end elk units was that we now allow spike hunting for 10-plus years. We're eliminating a lot of yearling bulls every year off these units that now can't recruit to older bulls. Because let's face it, if they get through that first year of life, that's their most vulnerable time from a predator spectrum. And they're dumb. You know, they're goofy. Yearling elk and spikes are goofy.

If they can live through that first year, raghorns and that, from two to six or seven, they're not even looked at by people on most of these limited entry units, right? Two to five-year-old bulls for the most part. So they grow up and we get a lot of bulls. But, you know, the other thing about that is there's other states that do it. They do it on a few, like Oregon does some in their spike on the units. But I don't think they're the epitome of amazing management. No, and they draw a set number of them, right? No, and they're not. It's not 20, 18, or 20,000 of them and hunt wherever you want and lack the control. You could all go to San Juan. Every one of those could go on the Pavon. Well, we talked about places like Penguich Lake. Why don't we have a bunch more branch tags? You know what I mean? Why? Why is that? I think that's possible.

It's basically they don't manage for bull-cow ratios on our limited entry units. It's just an age. But at the same time, too, there is excess opportunity there to harvest with some bulls because you don't need that many bulls in a population to keep that population growing. And the reason why they're doing it is because our structure is in the rut. And if you give extra tags, you're going to wipe out the quality. So then let's kill the spikes. I think the point isn't the spikes or branches. I think we need to address the seasons. Now you look at, I'm a little bit nervous now if we're talking about drought stuff. Now you think about if we have low calf-cow ratios, you know, your calf survival is down on a particular year. Say you're in the 30%. Your population isn't growing, whether that's cows, bulls, you know, whether they're little bulls or little cows, whatever.

Or your population is not going to be growing. Well, if then you only have, say, 30%, 30% survival, only, you know, 50% of those are bulls going in. And then you're killing 30% of those. 30% of the 50 that went in that year. You're going to see some years down the road. That two-year-old bull recruitment number is really small. Because there are a few of them born and survived. Then you hunt them as spikes. Then what are they actually recruiting into the big bulls population? And in layman's terms, they're seeing that in their surveys, right, that are occurring right now. They're seeing that. Yep. And so I think it has the potential now to where seven years down the road on a unit that's managed for a seven-year-old age class, you're going to have an age class missing potentially. You're going to see that.

And so I think the whole reason why they do this bike hunt here in Utah is strictly for a social event. So seven years down the road, you're just saying basically where the UN is. You know what I mean? Like they're just general. There's nothing out there. There's going to be an influx this year. I think there's going to be a pile of cows that are having calves. The calves are going to be great. They're going to funnel back in. So it's not going to be the end of the demise. But I think that over time, that effect can affect the whole herd. Well, this whole statewide elk plan is one of the topics on there too, right, Carl? Yeah, that's right. The whole Utah, how we manage elk and hunt elk in Utah is coming up for review. Elk hunting strategy. Which sets for five years? I think it's a five-year plan. Yeah, it's a five-year plan.

But I think sometimes it's natural to make adjustments under the current plan and to try to minimize the amount of change that may or may not take place. And I feel like it's time to revamp the entire thing and start with the freaking roots. Start with our seasons. And then come down and then let it trickle down and properly manage. Instead of keep band-aiding this. Okay, the spike was a little aggressive here. It's not as aggressive here. We need to add over here. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it all boils down to hunting everything in the rut with all weapon types. I mean, in my mind. It does. And they could issue a significant amount more of tags if they went and moved the archery season into where our rifle season or muzzleloader season are now. And they could do that. And then you wouldn't have to feel like you have to kill excess bulls having more spike tags

because you'd be able to still harvest them at that point. So I... And harvest branch bulls later on in the year when they're less vulnerable and you might still have some good bulls. I don't know. I mean, it's... Yeah, it's just like... It's hard because Utah started. The way they started hunting them was elk are brand new. Oh, we can now... Here's five tags on a unit. Or here's 10 tags. And we always... Oh, let five... Let them hunt them right in the rut. We only... It's the first time we've had it. They started that way and we've been 25 plus years into it on all these... Maintaining that program. And then it went from five to 10 to 20 to... Oh, now we have an archery. Now we have a muzzle. And so the rifle hunt always was in the center of the rut. So now archery's before, muzzle's right after. Now we'll do late in November and... Okay, now our populations are here.

And how do we keep the quality? Well, let's issue spike tags in a different season date. So we don't kill big bulls. We're just killing bulls. So we can still have big bulls with early rifle hunts. Man, we're slicing that pie so many times. Trying to... Trying to manage under a 25-year-old system. When it was new, when we had transplanted elk, and here's five tags on the sandworm. Or 10. And spike hunters now, they're more driven than anybody I've ever seen. Oh, dude. Have you seen the cow hunters in Colorado? No. I mean, they'll take jeeps, chains, winches. Oh, yeah. 14 in a row, we're going cow elk. And I mean, and they are... Them guys know how to jeep. Going in deep. They'll go in deep. If you want to go through some gear and truck equipment, they're the guys to ask. It's not about the antler. It's about cow meat and friendships and jeeps. I mean, it's amazing.

And I think that's the thing. You know, a lot of this stuff with Utah, you hear a lot of complaints. And I do secretly inside have to laugh, and it used to really bother me, actually, significantly as a biologist. Just you'd get a guy complaining out the left side of his mouth that deer herds are terrible. We need more mature bucks. And then on the right side of his mouth, he's screaming up and down because my kid can't get a deer tag. How come? I'm never going to be able to teach my kid how to hunt unless he has a deer tag. He's going to be a gamer his whole life. But the dad can give up his tag to the kid. They can both go hunt. There's a mentoring system. He can't do that. He can't do that because he wants to kill a big buck. Oh, he wants to kill a buck himself. It used to bother me. And honestly, inside, we need to decide one thing or the other.

Basically, our general season units aren't managed for quality. We all want that, and I want that. But what needs to basically happen, it's all just controlled by permit numbers. And you know what? I remember when I was a kid, there were a lot of different things. I used to get a BB gun, and my dad would drape me around in the mountains, you know, and I didn't always have a tag and things like that. And I don't necessarily think a kid always has to hunt every year a deer to get into hunting. Ashley thinks she needs to hunt every year. Wow. No. No. She wants to go state to state to state and drop out of school. I don't know where she gets that. Something tells me that since she's the youngest and she's the only girl, she's going to get her way. Well, I'm trying to figure out how to kill her a 200-incher. All right. Well, I'm just teasing. I'm not.

But I think there's a lot of things, you know, they're talking. So we have point systems for dedicated hunter, general. We have limited entry draw. This is in regards to mule deer. And that's going to be considered. And it probably does need to be considered. But I guess my point, and I think, Adam, you made a great point. We started out one way. We started out with general deer. Every family was fed on general deer. You bought them at the store. You didn't draw in the 90s, 80s. Yeah, it made memories. Everybody's got the pictures of deer camp. This is where my family camps. This is what we do. And they killed giants. And they did. And it's just a different era. Josh, you made a great point. Everybody wants to keep it the same. And why can't we have it just the way it was 25, 35 years ago? And it'll never go back to that. Gunnison guys, they made that point.

Gunnison was amazing, 2003 through 2006. Most amazing thing ever. Dear heaven. And it'll never go back to that. Ever. And so, anyway, there's a lot of change, potential change. A lot of discussion coming down the pipe. And all of these things are on the table. And I think they do need to be considered and looked at. And it feels like it needs a major flushing. And to now manage for elk populations of this, not when we had 20, you know. Yeah. When you had brand new elk curds everywhere. And they were the novelty. They were. I remember, you know. I don't know. You hunted the sows growing up. So did I. It was a general bull unit. Yeah. But I lived over on the ball hose. Remember, I was the human trail camera. Yeah. Swaying in the top of the baspen. But I grew up on the balls on the San Juan. And I remember the first elk I saw in like the mid-80s.

And it was just like the most amazing thing I've ever seen. First one. And then they brought more. And they introduced about 200, 250 of them from Hardwood Ranch. And started hunting five. And then that was going on all over. Penguins. Southwest. They did transplants at night. So nobody knew how many elk were coming. Was there? Tell me. Not on San Juan. My dad worked for the Game and Fish. There were some things said about that. Oh, not on San Juan specifically. That was a. I'm just saying in general. Oh, yeah. When we're trying to spread out the elk. Well, I wasn't here. But let's just put it this way. I've heard some stories. Okay. Of course, Wyatt and I on our side of the office. The non-game side. We don't hear the stories. We're not privy to that. Some nighttime smash and grabs. Yeah, that happened. Horse trailers. There may be a horse trailer parked at Highway 20 and 89.

I don't know where it needs to go. But it's going to be. That's right. Back in the good days. Weren't those? Those were good days. They were. They were. I mean. And that's what I think, too. You think about a lot of guys talk about the heyday of Utah elk. And that's just what had happened. I think that was almost a mistake in a way. You know, we. A lot of elk got moved around. And elk management wasn't really known or how to do it. And so there were a lot of elk put in places. And then there were ages set. So you had all these units. The Manti. The Nebo. All these units. Even some. All these places where they were managed. They weren't hunted. And so you had a big influx. There wasn't spike hunts. You had a significant influx of bulls. All sizes and ages of bulls. It was the same thing that happened in Gunnison that we're talking about. That's what. And almost the same time. 2003 to 8.

Wasn't that the best ever Utah elk were, Wyatt? Yeah. 2,000. 3 to 9. How many 400 inches did you put your hands on, Wyatt? I mean, there was double digits being killed a year. I mean, I was too young at that point in time. But there was a lot. But it was the. I missed the heyday kind of. I was right at the tail end of it. Yeah. But that's one. But that same thing. You're right. It ripened. We didn't have plans. We had high age objectives. We're letting elk grow. Only killing five or ten of them on a unit. Pretty soon we're like, whoa, we got big stuff everywhere. We rewrote the record. Yeah. Between Arizona and Utah, there was nobody keeping up. A little bit. By accident, a little bit. Yeah. Just like Gunnison. Oh, we're going to cut tags, go unit by unit. We slashed them. What did they say? 90% from what they thought they were selling. Because those are best guesses.

Because general is general. Yeah. And so they, oh, we think we're selling this money that hunt the Gunnison base. Let's cut them by 90%. Whoa. In four or five years, it was nirvana, like they said. I still don't understand. Josh, you made a great point. We don't. We're scared to waste the resource. And so we over-harvest a little all the time. Let a little go to waste. I like these old animals. Who cares if a little bit go to waste? Natural. They don't. It's not going to happen. My old man always said it best. Nothing goes to waste. Coyotes eat them. The ravens, crows. I don't want to lie. Shed hunters get enjoyment out of picking up a big old deadhead every now and again. But I think that's what I see. Let them find them. Bind them back from Game of Fish. I don't know. Whatever. I think that's what stems on a lot of this, though.

Because there's a lot of kids, honestly, in Utah that grew up, probably just a little bit younger than Wyatt, that saw the tail end of that. And that's what they thought elk hunting was like for eternity in Utah. And it wasn't. It was, as Bob Ross called it, a happy accident, I think. You watched PBS painting shows? I remember when I was a kid. How do you know about PBS painting shows? Because when I was laying on my couch and Sesame Street got over and Bob Ross came on next, I was too lazy to watch. Because I had to walk up. I didn't get TV. I had to walk up. Yeah, I had to walk up. I didn't have TV. I didn't have TV. Yeah. I didn't. I had stompers and shovels. That's why he still doesn't watch TV. When I start talking about a commercial, did you see this commercial? He doesn't even know. Jenna won't let me. She won't let me. Really? I hear it's a waste.

I was too lazy to get up and have to walk over to turn the dial. So I watched Bob Ross sometimes. What was his saying? There's nothing wrong with Bob Ross, though. Exactly. There's a lot wrong with him. I mean, it was a good time watching him paint happy little trees. I mean, the guy was amazing. He was talented. There's no mistakes. Just happy accidents. A white guy with an afro, that's something you just got to see. All right. So let's bring it up. Anyway, so what I'm saying is, so then we had this big spike in Utah of the glory days of elk. Everybody wants to go back to that. But look at the amount of changes that have happened since then. It's not possible. It's not physically possible with what's going on right now with management in the state. Not possible. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying with the way management has changed now, I think Utah manages elk in a

lot of good ways. Where we have units that are more permits, less permits, different age classes, it just sucks that if it's your unit that you want to be an A7-year-old and it's a three-year-old, that sucks. And you've been waiting for 25 years and still haven't gotten your turn. And I'm going to have an opinion. I'm going to go to my rack, and my rack's going to go to the board. And try changing it now when you're the guy with 25 points that hasn't had his turn. Then I'm going to go to the legislature. I'm going to make something change. That's how it happens. That's exactly how it happens. Kind of interesting. Aren't you a locally elected state delegate? May or may not be. Let's move on. I don't know what to move on to, though. Change is hard, and change is coming at us fast. And I want to say it. I want to say it out loud. Do we have the right answers? No. Who's we?

Us here in this room. No. No. And are we going to be ticked at parts of the things that may change? That have been changed, yeah. Okay. And is everybody, no matter what change occurs, you're going to see a major gnashing of teeth here in the state of Utah. No matter what. And the problem with change is you don't know what it's going to do until after the change. And normally with wildlife, several years after. That's why I think you change and then let the dust clear. And then if we need to take technology a little deeper, let's do it again. And let the dust clear. But the problem is we may just go full bore, change it all, and then change the landscape of hunting altogether here in the state. That's right. I don't know. That's where it's hard. Point systems, management strategies, seasons, everything's on the table.

Well, yeah, people view a point system like an investment, and unfortunately it is not linked to your social security number in your bank account like a 401k where it is actually your money. Like, it is a point system you've been buying into. I mean. Doesn't guarantee me something special at the end? No. Burn them. You mean it's possible that we have the economy crashes and my 401k now is worthless? Yeah. Is that what you're saying? That happens too. Right? That does. That's the real world. Stuff can change. And it's unfortunate, but there's, man, there's a lot of people that, and we're on the topic of Colorado now, so how many calls you get with 15 to 20 point guys and they want to, I'm time to hunt a 200-inch or find them and you cash in my points and you're just like, whoa, wow. Yeah, that doesn't equate to that. It doesn't, you can't expect that. Here's a couple of good options. Yeah.

The playing field's different in Colorado right now. By the way, getting a tag is just getting started. Yeah. You know, that's a pretty big feat. Unless you're Josh and you walk in and 15 minutes later you drive away with a buck in your truck. Of course, Bronson, you did that on elk in 27 for archery. Rolled in 45 minutes later, threw a 355, pulled in the back of your truck and drove away. Did you even spend a night in the unit? I drove from my house, went down there, killed an elk, took care of it all by myself and drove home and was home in round trip 23 hours. And now, do we not just hear Bronson complaining about all the bad quality everywhere and that he can't roll in in 45 minutes? No, I don't. I know. I sit. Just teasing. I take those and the other ones average out. The tags you eat, I still have a 10-day average on killing an elk, even with a 15-minute hunt.

Some of them take me two weeks or I hunt two weeks and don't kill. Well, there's a Nevada tag that's not punched. That's right. I threw it away because I don't want to look at it. Did you throw it away? No, you didn't. I don't know. It's somewhere. I keep tags. I have tags. Scrapbook of memories. I have tags from 1980s. They're pretty cool. Oh, I do too. The ones you used to buy over the counter. Yeah. They hand wrote your stuff on there. Yeah. Those were the good days. Anyway, I don't know. Well, Bronson, why don't you... Well, one more change that was coming up. You know, it's probably by the time you listen to this podcast, it's probably too late to voice your opinion, but this is up in Alaska. The Federal Subsistence Board is moving to shut down parts of Alaska up in Units 23 and 26, not for non-residents, but for non-local Alaska residents and non-residents as well,

to hunting for caribou and moose in game management units 23 and 26, you know, just claiming there's a shortage of moose and caribou in these areas. They assert, I'll read this, the council's particularly concerned about the effect that transporters and non-local hunters, keep in mind, that can be people from Anchorage because nowhere's close to Kotzebue in Alaska. Nowhere. Everywhere is a... Russia. Of course, they want that back. The Arctic Circle. They want that back. Yeah. Should we dive right back into politics? No. Okay, go ahead. Keep going. I think we purchased it. They're afraid that they're having an impact, the transporters and all that are happening, and non-local hunters impacting the migration to caribou. I believe that transporter activity in 23 and 26 may be delaying the caribou migration.

Council hopes that this request would reduce the aircraft traffic, creating an easier path for migrating caribou. Well, there's a lot of evidence on there. I don't have time to read at all about the current status of the Western Arctic caribou herd, you know, estimated 188,000, and how many, you know, are getting killed by non-local Alaska residents, which is on average about 212 caribou. 212. Yes, 212. So, just ways that, again, boards or governments or agencies or, you know, people that have maybe different agendas that you're not always reading about in a PETA, yep, news release or something like that, are trying to shut down. So, this could affect, yeah, not only non-residents from going up there, you know, they've already shut down non-resident hunting moose there. I mean, that's where Aaron hunted, Aaron and I have drawn up there.

But we're talking about Alaska residents that are non-subsistence hunters, which, you know, you have to live within, I don't remember what the geographical limitation is, but they have subsistence hunting that you can hunt in certain places up there, like for sheep and other things like that, even in Rangleson, Alaska National Park. The crazy part. This is just, this is Alaska, the most unchartered, unpopulated place in the world, and we're talking about, oh, we've got to limit stuff. Is that a call in? Did I just say Joe Bonney? Oh, Hunter. Hey, Hunter, what's up? How's it? How's it? How's the recovery? Maybe they're calling about your refund. We got your check. How's the Parmesan? All right. Well, anyway, keep going. I mean, dude, hey, hey, if you're, if you like Parmesan, you better buy it off the shelf because it might not be on there and that would be a life-changing experience.

What if you couldn't find Parmesan? And you were addicted to it. He's addicted to it. What's a line of Parmesan go for it? He's addicted to it. Hey, whatever it takes. Whatever to keep going. Well, Bart Bronson, I think part of this, there's... No, but I'm just bringing up this point is it's a big deal to Alaska residents. Huge deal. It's also a big deal for people that want to go up there as either self-guided or even guided caribou or moose hunters. But our point is, it doesn't matter if it's Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Alaska, very remote northern Alaska. You could see this happening, honestly, in Oregon and Washington where you've got some of these rams being taken any time of the year, giants, giants under the guise of subsistence. Subsistence, Native American harvest, yeah. And nobody talks about it because it's taboo, you know, but it's really frustrating to run

a management program in some of these units when you're having this take place. Yeah. In elk, in Oregon, there's some significant problems and frustrations on the part of game managers. All right, keep going. No, that's it. I just wanted to talk about that. That's another example. It's probably all the ones that I scratched down. There's more others. And by the time this podcast airs or in two weeks, we'll be talking about something else that'll be probably front burner somewhere. Happy stuff. I hope so. I hope I get a fortune cookie with something in it. I just want, it's always positive. And so I just don't want it to be empty. Yeah. If it's empty, that's the only negative. Kind of ruined your day, didn't it? It did, yeah. It took an effect. One thing I want to see. Especially on a deadline day. He was looking for an omen. That's what I needed.

I want to circle back to Wyatt because he's been, A, you can't get a word in edgewise with us three. We're sorry, Wyatt. But Wyatt, you made a good point. In going back to Utah elk, you made a good point. As you, it's hard to see the change. You actually like the rut. You like hunting the rut. And I was just wondering with the change that is on the table. You know, we talked about maybe there's an option to keep some of those rut hunts and maybe rotate them through like Arizona does. Where you would rotate units. Like, we would have some early muzzle or early rifle hunts in very limited quantities and allow people to apply for the once-in-a-lifetime amazing elk experience here in Utah that they always dreamt of. You know what I mean? And so maybe there's some, maybe there's a happy medium on all of that and not just changing everything blanket overnight. You know what I mean?

I would agree with a fix like that. I think there could be a lot of change. I think the spike units could be rotated too. Shut one down for a year. Let an age class of bulls. Yeah. So you don't have the same age class every year on one unit. Maybe tag cuts is the only answer to that too. Who knows? That's what Pollock said. Is he kind of trying to try it and see what happens? But I think why it makes good points on that is we've had aggressive discussions in our office is, well, maybe there is a happy medium. So somebody like, for example, like Nevada, they have, you know, the 161, 164, 170s elk That has an early rifle rut. And it's very tough to draw. High elevation. You want to hunt up. You don't want to go up there in November. No. And stuff. I mean, do an early hunt up on table. Yeah. Right. But they allow that for the people that want that experience. Right. But it's tough to draw.

And you get to choose. Right. I get to choose. That would be my choice here in Utah. I get to choose that early rifle or muzzle rut that has 10 total tags. Versus. Five total tags. Versus 50 or 100 in November or whatever. Yeah. October, November, whatever. And so, you know, there's probably something along those lines. And I think, I think that was, you know, when you brought that up and I thought, yeah, there's, there's validity to that. Just like what you're saying. Maybe you rotate the spike. Maybe we don't have to eliminate it altogether. Maybe, maybe there's a way to continue to allow some of these bulls to live past, past two. And I think it's good too. And I think there's room for it. I just know a lot of agencies don't like a buffet of things as, as per se, you know, or to change things. You know, they like to be able to print out a book for two years.

They like to not have changes like that all the time going around because then hunters get confused. And they don't know which unit can I hunt this year? What unit can I not? You know? And so to me, I'm just like, well, if a guy wants to hunt, he can read the book and educate himself better. But honestly, most guys want to get their deer tag off the shelf and go get grandpa's rifle and go out and just shoot whatever they want. I guess I want to finish the biology portion by saying we don't have all the answers. We know everybody's going to be mad. We're going to be mad. But we have opinions. We actually don't like change either. But for the better of the species, for the betterment of the species, I think. We're going to let some things go in certain cases, you know, that maybe would have a real impact. That's probably the best way to put it. Because things are tougher.

We talked about the drought. We talked about current conditions, especially with deer. Man, they need to get it. They need a reprieve. They got to get. But you can't beat it. I think like Josh said, you cannot beat a drought. No. You can't beat it. You can't beat it. You can cut tags to nothing. Go try doing it in Nevada the last two years. Can you hunt harder and still get it out? No. A couple people, like out of tens of thousands. Well, and one's in our magazine. This issue we're talking about. Van Healy smashed a 205 four point. Very rare, but shows that it can happen. What would that deer have been in what year? 206. No. 216? 220? Plus or minus? Yeah. Not minus. Pretty legit. Little props out there to Van Healy and the crew. But anyway, just, you know, anyway. Awesome. But having said that, you're right. It's, you cannot beat a drought no matter what. You got to roll with it.

Look at the strip. The droughts are bad. Look at it. I mean, you just cannot beat it. And I know for a lot of you that live out east that read our magazine and read annually and we start talking about the impact. It's really hard to understand until you see it firsthand and see how animals that live on a landscape that don't have any kind of, you know, consistent moisture. And obviously there's no, most of them have zero foreign feed. Like, you know, a lot of the white tar world, they have either food plots or crops, standing crops, whatever. These don't. And they have a really hard time eking out a living. And body maintenance comes first. Survival comes first. And when they're having a hard time just surviving, antlers are way on the back burner. Which I think, I think the good Lord should have made antlers come first. All right. Well, we want to throw a shout out to St. James.

Blaine St. James Properties. You can get a hold of them. Info at sjsportingproperties.com. Super good people. As always, you all know we're really good friends with Blaine. I think he kills too many big mule deer. But having said that, if you're looking to buy or sell properties, he's the guy. He knows from a hunter's perspective what you may be looking for. He also understands the tag allocation systems, the landowner tags that you may or may not be entitled to as a property owner. And that goes into, you know, the value of the property. You may, some properties you can't get tags on, some you can. And I think Blaine understands all of that and the intricacies there and the systems and whatnot. So, anyway, anybody that's interested in selling or buying properties, give Blaine a holler. His phone number is 877-354-7247. He's got people that work under him as well. Very good company.

We've worked with him for years and trust him. If I had some money, I'd be going through Blaine. I think it's real funny that you've... I spent it all on food storage. No, I'm not talking about it, but you're calling somebody out for killing too many big mule deer, Carter. Well... I really think that's ironic. Save some of the rest of us. No, that's the way it is in the entitled world today. It's all about me. I don't care. The rest of y'all, don't kill one. That's called... Leave more for me. That pot calling the kettle really, really black. That's what I'm hearing. But, anyway... Pots and kettles, here we go. That's right. All right, want to give it also a shout out to Cheston Davis and the folks at Phone Scope and Pyro Putty. Been great supporters of ours here at Epic Outdoors. It's getting to be that time. Spring's starting to come here. Scouting will be here within a few months.

And if you got a new phone or you broke your last phone scope case or whatever, or just need to upgrade, or you upgraded your spotting scope or binals and you need something that will work where you're digiscoping, give him a call or check him out at phonescope.com, spelled P-H-O-N-E-S-K-O-P-E.com. Also, makers of Pyro Putty, which if you use a promotion code at checkout, you get a 10% discount. That promo code is EPIC, E-P-I-C, EPIC10, at pyroputty.com, P-Y-R-O-P-U-T-T-Y.com. Bronson, I got a question for you. What is so special about that pancake batter that you had to have an alert on your phone and you bought freaking boxes and dang near a pallet of it? What is so cool about that? I just want to know. Chris, first off, I'm assuming this gets cut. No, it's not getting cut. But if it doesn't, here we go. Ten years. It lasts ten years. Yes, that's right. And I'm done thinking about it.

If you get pancake mix in a bag or a box, it lasts about 18 months to two years. Because you got what? Oils in there? And what gets in the boxes? Weevils.

Weevils. Weevils. Okay. So that's what we're talking about. Okay. Go ahead, Josh. Also known as protein. Cook it. Eat them. One other question. You don't boil pancakes. Do you have any other current alerts on your phone? No. What products are you missing? That wasn't even an alert. It wasn't even an alert. Okay, Josh, go ahead. I didn't say let me know when I can bike. I don't believe it. I was sitting there and an alert came on your phone. It's just interesting. Go ahead, Josh. Yeah, we just want to thank Hoyt Archery as well. Starting to maybe see one of those trickle in.

Yeah. Archibald got his new one in the middle the other day. He did. He did. It's almost time to start shooting. RX-7. Spring. Get serious. Get serious. Get Hoyt. Get serious. Get one. No, go to Hoyt.com. They really do have some awesome bows. I'm kind of waiting on one of those myself. Hopefully it comes in sometime soon. We've got a stack of them coming in because we all need them. If you weren't 6'5", 2'35", and chiseled, you could get the smaller one like Archibald got there and started. Need a big, big buckskin. Yeah, holding lineup this year with the RX-7. Pretty awesome carbon bow. What were you hearing about that? We got the 5's last year, all of us, and now you're hearing from your buddies that are big-time shooters that maybe we should have won this year. Wyatt looks at our bows like they were made in 1980. We should have won that RX-7. I kind of feel like that now.

I mean, I can't believe one year would make a difference, but apparently it does in the archery world. I mean, you've got guys that haven't even shot their RX-5 that are just trading them in blindly because of what the reviews are like. Exactly. Crazy. Right on. Okay. Let's keep moving forward, boys. We also want to thank Vortex for all our optics needs, I guess. Probably got a Bronson bundle coming up. Yeah, Bronson bundle coming up with Vortex there. Vortex, phenomenal optics, summer scouting coming up. Pretty awesome. Vortex makes a lot of great products. We cover them, and we actually have them here in the office. We've got stacks of them. That's the Bronson bundle. But back to Vortex. We've got all the razor and what else? Viper, spotting scopes, diamond, but whatever you want. We've got 18 power binyls, 12 power razors. 18s, 12s, HDs, UHDs. Rifle scopes.

We've got one of those brand new rifle scopes we just got. LHTs. LHTs, 4.5 to 22x50s. That came out about, I don't want to say, within the last year, nine months to a year. We got like a handful, five or six in, sold them real quick. What I think is funny is we haven't got them back, and we got them back in. Mills are the way to go from what I hear, and I have one, and I love it. But we can't give the mills away at times. Everybody's born and raised on the MOA. Huh? Well, some people's brains think differently, Carter. Mills are like lined up in increments of one, one through ten. Pretty easy. All right. Well, anyway. It's just all unit of measure. It's whatever your brain starts to wrap its head around. We all started at yards. We had to kind of leave that behind and go a certain way. These new range finders, you just plug it in, and it just tells you.

It spits out a number, a number's a number. That's right. Whether it's a mill or a number of way. Most people don't even know what that is. That's right. What's that unit of measure? It's a unit of measure. Just trying to think of it that way. All right. Well, anyway. We also have Zeiss. Oh, yeah. We have stacks of Swarro, stacks of Zeiss. Yeah. We've got all the Swarro NLs in stock except for the 12s, and we're making major headway. We don't got too many people left on a waiting list for those. And we have 10x42s, 10x32s, 8s on the shelf. Also, all the range finder binals, whether it be the Zeiss Victory RFs, Leica 3200.coms, Swarro 10x42 EO range TAs. What about that new scope, Carter? You got one to try out, too, but we got a couple of the Zeiss. You're talking the Harpia? The Zeiss Harpias in stock. Oh, yeah. So the Harpia, I hate to say it out loud. I'm going to say it out loud.

We were looking up on the mountain, and there was a deck railing, and there were slats. How many slats? I don't know how many, but you could see them with perfection out of the Harpia. Josh, you looked through the Swarro. What did you see? There were, I think, some slats there. That's my point. The Harpia was unbelievable. It was a crisp scope. You know, one thing, too, it's got that fine focus adjustment on it, too. And that might be part of it, I wonder. So that could be some of it. But it's got, but it was so clear. It was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. I just couldn't believe the quality, and I thought somebody in the office ought to have one. So anyway, we do have a couple of those on the shelf, Bronson. They've been really hard to get for months and months and months.

I'm going to cut a deal for the first guy that calls in with a Discover card, because I haven't seen one of those for a while. I love that number six. Yeah. It starts with a six. If you have a Visa, a MasterCard, American Express, talk to me, we'll do a deal. If you use Discover, talk to Carter. And I'm going to cut you a deal. Okay. For having a Discover. You've got to support them. You never know. Do you have stock in Discover? No, but I'm just saying, with all the talk of change of currencies and things, I think we ought to support Discover a little bit, because they're the least thought of species. We're not taking crypto. Cash is king. If you have cash, call me. I'll take you. I'll take you. Whatever. Whatever. Yeah, that's true. You, me, and Uncle Ben will get along just fine. All right. Well, let's call it a date. It's Friday afternoon.

In the words of the late Bob Ross, there's an artist hidden in the bottom of every one of us. Come on. I don't remember that saying. Well, all right. We'll leave it on that note. Have a great weekend, everybody. 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 will 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.