EP 238: Talking Nevada with Jack Robb

A lot of deadlines coming up, dude. Kind of get what's going on over in Nevada. They've got a lot of options over there. Last year, there was some tremendous fear taken. Anything to do with Western big game. Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, John Peterson coming at you from Southern Utah. It's warm right now, but it's supposed to be cold, Bronson. It's getting down to about 32, which they want to kick you off the golf course, it sounds like, unless it's 40. At 40. Seems wrong. Let's change the subject. I'm a little off about that right now. So, Bronson golfs and the guy... You can let people golf all winter long, crushing the greens and everything else, but by heck, if it drops below 40 degrees when something starts turning green, they got armed marshals there.

And they had to come up and talk to Bronson and tell him, hey, when nobody's here, and the facilities are locked, that means we're closed. Bronson's finishing up, packing up everything in the truck and driving away. Had to make it to work by 8. Well, I do. Carter was gonna chase. I might have got here, and John and Jason fired me. I mean, chase. I gotta be here on time. No, no, you might get a pink slip, but it ain't gonna be a firing. We might ride him up, right, John? We might ride him up. But to your point, it is spring weather. It's 81 day, and the next day it's 50. It is. It's hot out there. I was out there plugging and playing with the, you know, with the side-by-side, trying to get it ready for the weekend. And Bronson, you know, we both about broke a sweat trying to get it serviced and unloading and loading.

It's that time of year, starting to get gear ready. But it's also a lot of deadlines coming up due. A lot of happenings in May. Deadlines due, results coming out, and one of those is the Silver State, Nevada. I wonder if they really have a lot of silver in Nevada. What are you, pretty sure that's why they got their name, Carter. Maybe it's probably originally a lot of silver. I don't know. Who knows? It's not the Copper State or Gold, but it's Silver. I wonder if there was ever a Silver Rush, like the Gold Rush. Is there ever a Silver Rush? I have no idea. Wee, wee, silver. They'd Google for that. I don't know. We need to Google that. Chris was here, he'd Google it. Yeah. John, you're a poor replacement unless you start Googling. I know. On the fly. Like those other, like Joe Rogan's got that kid that Googles stuff, man, like immediately. Does he?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's our Chris. Chris does that, and he'll start reading about something right there just 20 seconds after we talk about it. But anyway. Well, we got the following Joe has. I mean, at least half, don't you think? Yeah, at least half. All right, well, anyway. Well, Bronson, I think we should call Jack Robb. We always like to give him a hard time this time of year. And kind of get what's going on over in Nevada. They've got a lot of options over there. And, you know, it's a great state to apply. We've never missed a year, as long as I can remember. And maybe we just kind of check it out, see what the options are for the country. What do you think? Give him a call.

Jack? What are you doing?

Trying to catch up with the week. Weren't you supposed to get off of an airplane earlier today? I woke up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, spent an hour and a half in Denver today, and been in my office for about the past hour and a half. Wow. Well, what were you doing out there? Is it something we can talk about, or no? Was it Nevada-related, or was it Jack Rob related? No, it was Nevada-related. I truly believe we have the best draw system out of everybody, and the best license and application system. It is awesome, I'm not gonna lie. We like Bronson. Bronson went on there. How many years ago did you apply for 2022? Feels like 14 years ago. I was on there again this morning, Jack. I mean, my priority, I get hungry, I want every tag you can give me. And then, by the time deadline comes on the 10th, I realized my appetite was sometimes a little bigger.

I've got my wife, kids, all that, and I'm reining in the wild choices just a little bit. Women and children, left and right, and he's applying, which is kind of nice. It's a $15 hunting license fee for a non-resident youth. How cool is that? It's to get those kids addicted to coming here. Get the parents addicted to get their sons and daughters in and build those points up, too. Well, it's a no-brainer from 12 to 18. I mean, a $15 license is a lot cheaper than the adult.

So, then Adam's on there this morning, and he's already making adjustments on his choices free of charge. You need to charge people for that, Jack. No, you don't. No, you don't, Jack. You don't. You'd make another four or five hundred bucks on Bronson alone. No, don't do that. I like that. Yeah, I got on the connectivity on the airplane and started planning on my deer choices. I'm still not done, I don't think. Yeah, so you just, you wake up ornery certain days, and you're like, I don't want to go get my butt kicked out. I thought you weren't deviating from Tonopah. Yeah. But remember, you get five choices, so it's what goes along with Tonopah, as he's worried about. Hey, I truly, in the past, I don't think I've ever disclosed exactly what I was doing talking to you two. Well, or else you were lying. But yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

The problem is, he can see what we do, and we can't see what he does. That's right. He's got the rules. You know, to be honest with you, I could see what you do, but I don't. You don't care. You don't care. No, I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do no matter what, and I'm coming down into some of that country you like as my first choice. Yeah. Down in Lincoln County. Lincoln County. 24, 23, 22, 13. Yeah, I'm starting there. The tag numbers are down, but that's some of the appeal to me is less competition. Yeah. It's gonna be a harder draw. Yeah. But there's less competition, so I'm truly gonna start I'm skipping right over Tonopah and going towards northern Washoe. With the same thought process, I'm putting in three areas up around northern Washoe. Just the tag numbers have been down so low the past few years. I know there's older H-class bucks on the landscape.

It's going to be a tough draw with low tag numbers. Well, this may date you, this may date you, and we're good enough friends, we can do that. But, do you remember when the Sheldon was good for mule deer? Clear up that 033 country? Like, that was the place to go. 015 had that late hunt. Antelope and deer. Yeah, and they were incredible. And then it's been forgotten about, and you're telling me you're considering going back. He didn't say 033. I don't think... No, he didn't say that, but I mean, whether it be 12, 14, whatever. All that. Some of those numbers are in there. Hey, everybody. The genetics are there, and you two know that the genetics are there. And with the low tag numbers that are being put out, we have older age class bucks on the landscape. It proved out in a couple of those areas last year there were some tremendous deer taken.

So, I don't have any first-hand knowledge of what's there. I did spend nine days up there on a California big orange sheep hunt. Didn't run into any bucks that would make me want to go back on that sheep hunt, but just knowing how low the tag numbers have been, and I think we got some older age class deer up there, and I'd love to go chase them. You might look a long time in between seeing deer. The numbers are down, but with that big area, it's got to hide some of them that we can go chase. That's one thing we like about Nevada is when you get a tag in Nevada in general, you guys in general manage fairly conservatively when you compare your state to across all the other states in the West in terms of tag numbers. And part of that has to do with habitat. I mean, you are the driest state in the nation, I believe. I think that's true. I think Utah's second driest.

So, you, but you make, makes great stuff with what you have, habitat-wise, all that. There's a good balance of opportunity, but also quality on almost every species. Deer, elk, antelope, I mean, all three of those, when they're on, they're as good as anywhere. And then, of course, your sheep, you have more sheep tags than anywhere, you know, California, and desert, and even a few Rockies. So, I mean, when you get a tag in Nevada, that's what we like. You got something in general. You got something you really want to sink your teeth into. So, we're always excited about Nevada just because, hey. That's what we like. Yeah, and it's nice to be out there with very few people. And that's the one thing, Jack, you mentioned, and you have seen with this drought, who hasn't been affected, right? We've all been affected. You can't control the weather. You just try to be as reactive as you can.

I know I've seen, went from 10,000 sheep on the landscape, or over 10, to just over 8, it seems like, in the last, what, three years or something. So, it just shows you how hard this drought can be, but at the same time, you still have tons of sheep, you still have great quality, and you are reacting. The department's doing a good job at reacting to that and trying to manage for that. And of course, you've been doing water projects recently, you know, as of just a few weeks ago, if not sooner, more recent. Yes, we were at 10,000 desert sheep, just deserts. And it's coming down, and some of our management strategy is to bring it down. We just, with the prolonged drought, you guys see it in Lake Powell, we see it in Lake Mead.

We see it on the landscape. We see it in our guzzlers, flying over 100,000 gallons worth of water into guzzlers last year, building new guzzlers this year, trying to accommodate some. We actually had a couple of sheep areas that we flew prior to the season in 282, 283, 286, that country. And we were worried about the numbers we saw on survey, and we contacted our hunters and said, Hey guys, it's not looking good out there. We did see a couple decent rams, but you might want to consider turning that tag back in because we don't think there's enough animals on the landscape. And we had hunters turn their tags back in, and we held those tags. We didn't let them go to an alternate. We didn't let them go first come, first serve, or anything like that. A couple of the guys that took that chance and went hunting, they killed tremendous rams.

Oh, there was one. I talked to a guy, his wife smashed basically a 180-incher. Yeah. You know, and got that particular letter from you. And yeah, it wasn't easy. It was tough finding sheep, but ended up with an absolute giant. And that's the chance you take, but if five people took that same chance, and there was only one of those, It paid off for one person, but it wasn't going to pay off for five. Right. Right. So, one person took the chance, it paid off. The rest of them, if they all took that same chance, they would have burned a lot of points, and we would have had disappointed customers. And we want to make sure that when you do draw one of those coveted tags, that you burn a lot of bonus points and have a lot of dreams about, that you get what you're after. Yeah.

If we run into those situations, we're going to communicate with those owners and make sure they have informed decisions to make. Yeah. Well, that's pretty awesome. And then, you know, one of the things people are talking about, too, is, and it's just kind of, it's interesting stuff on the deer tags. Some of the deer tags in these, you know, some of our favorite country, and maybe the most, you know, notable trophy potential, trophy producing units as of the last five years or whatever, ten years, you know, maybe even longer, you know, is kind of a slash in tags, you know, in regards to obviously resulting from prolonged drought and whatnot. But like you said, it's going to provide an incredible opportunity for those that draw. And I know we're still applying. You know, it is going to be tough to draw, but man, what an incredible experience they'll have.

It's going to be a good year to get a tag. It truly is. With the lower numbers, we do have, if you're in Washoe County through Central Nevada, And down into southeast Nevada, our numbers are down. And our tag numbers reflect that. But that country up there around Tuscarora, Wells, Ilko, that stuff north of I-80, east of Battle Mountain, those weather systems don't come through the Sierras. They primarily come through that Oregon country. So, they have had some different precipitation up there. They're still drier than normal, but it's not as bad as the rest of the state. So, if we look at our sage hen numbers, we look at our bobcat numbers, we look at our antelope, deer, elk numbers, that northeast portion of the state is fairly stable on tags, and even some increased tags in a couple of those areas.

Seems like Area 10, the 101 to 109 increased, 14, 15, 06s, 07s, just looks like increases up there, which is kind of a good sign, too. But those weather patterns, they do come through the state differently. They don't come across as areas like that central Nevada stuff and the southern Nevada stuff. It comes in higher down through Oregon, and they're not as bad as the rest of the state. Yeah. What else you been working on here recently? Front burner stuff, Jack, within the department. I know you were, like Jason alluded, out on some guzzler projects for sheep here in the last week or two, but I mean, without talking about the obvious, hey, the draw's upon you in application season, that's coming to an end this next Tuesday, but what are the things you got on the front burner that you've kind of been working on as a department?

Well, a lot of it has to do with habitat and water. It really does. I was down in Valley of Fire State Park two weekends ago building a guzzler. That's where we fly a lot of our waters right out of Valley of Fire State Park. And we just can't continue to hit that same habitat with limited water resources. So, we're trying to spread that out. We put another guzzler down there, actually tapped off the water system from Valley of Fire State Park. It's not a guzzler that we plan on keeping in use every year, year in and out. It's kind of an emergency valve. It's something we can turn on and off with the system that we can drain out. It's going to be a heck of an addition. When I was down there in the Valley of Fire, we probably saw 25 rams. A lot of them were older H-class rams, no boomers, but just purdy rams.

Actually, they're hurting for water bad enough down there, and they've been educated how to get to water. I actually picked up a video of, in the group roof's campground, a ram going over to a drinking fountain and smacking it with his horns. He actually broke the drinking fountain to start a leak so he could get a drink. Hey, well, they got the head, Gary. Might as well use it. I watched him use it a couple times. I was lucky enough to get it on video once, just out of a cell phone. But when you see that occurring, and a learned behavior by a wild animal for something like that, you know that things are pretty drastic. They better fix something. They need it. Instead of fixing broken pints and over and over. Now, the park people have probably been blaming campers for doing that, and now they've got proof it wasn't them.

Yes, and I'm going to tell you the second part of that story of building that guzzler down there. It was named after Eddie Pribble and the Pribble crew. And Eddie Pribble is one of the founding members of the Fraternian Desert Bighorn Sheep in his mid-80s. And he's done more for wildlife in the state of Nevada than anybody I know. Probably been on, between building guzzlers and guzzler rebuilds, over 200 guzzler projects for big game, and primarily bighorn sheep and his boys and grandsons. And that project was named after him, and it was, my boys came down because of our friendship with Eddie Pribble and the Pribble family. It was one of those special times to be able to take tribute to somebody that's given so much of their life to the betterment of wildlife resource in Nevada. How cool is that? That's awesome. Yep.

Well, good. So, part of this you were saying is, you know, maybe with this drought and the drought conditions we've got, as you said, it's kind of a planned thing to take some of the animals off the landscape and to maybe to reduce population so you can, you know, so that you don't have to provide so much water in it. And if we're not gonna, if we're gonna be in a drought, that's kind of the nature of the beast. You can't have as many animals on a regular basis on the landscape. And so, have you adjusted, you know, some of the objectives, the population objectives and whatnot in some of these different units? We're at 268, where we just built that guzzler. We're really trying to bring that population down through yew hunts, through heavy ram harvest.

But like I said, there's a lot of old age class rams in there. But something else, and not just the state of Utah, but everybody that relies on desert bighorn sheep to repopulate or grow their existing herds, the muddies are still a clean population, and no disease is what I'm meeting. And we're going to take some sheep out of the muddies here this summer, and they're going to go to Utah, in an area that has a high fence around it. And it's going to become a nursery herd for Utah and pretty much any other western state that needs clean sheep in the future. The way that it's set up, it's not going to be like a farm. It's big enough that it's almost free-ranging, but they're going to be protected from predation and from possible disease contact. And we're just going to have a place that's an insurance policy with cooperation with our sheep and the state of Utah funding the project.

It's going to be a heck of an asset for everybody going forward. We really look forward to those opportunities to cooperate with other states. Some of our sportsmen have actually called me and said, I can't believe as hard as I work on those projects and stuff, you're giving our sheep away. And the only reason we have Rockies here is because other sportsmen and other agencies have given us the Rockies, our elk, a lot of our antelope, our California It's the generosity of others that allow us to have the opportunities we do here in Nevada. So, it's just our turn again to fill in and give some animals to another state. But what comes around goes around, and we may be looking for animals out of that exact enclosure years down the road to repopulate an area that we lost because of disease. Well, and with sheep, you know, more than any other, it's hard to say that.

You can't just stockpile them, and you know, you guys have done a great job in your own state of moving them to about everywhere you can suitably have them that doesn't have threat of, you know, contact with any kind of domestics or too close to town. And there's places that already do have some of those in existence that you can't use as sorcerers and things like that. So, it's a harder concept for some people to understand. We spend so much time to grow and build sheep, and as fragile and as valuable as they are, why do we just give them away?

Well, sometimes you're doing the best thing for that herd by keeping it productive, having turnover in that herd, reducing densities so you don't saturate the landscape so far that now they're just being displaced and wandering out into more fringe habitat. And that's when you're going to have the likelihood of them interacting with backyard sheep and goats or something else that then you've got a catastrophic, you know... A true waste. You know, you can't put the rabbit back in the box. It's out. Now, the muddies are dirty forevermore. So, yeah, we appreciate that. As Sportsman of Utah, it's not the first time. Jason and I have both been involved in transplants and picking up sheep from you guys and bringing them to our state. We've had several herds, you know, and most of those have been all now met, met their objectives.

So, yeah, this nursery herd that's been used in other states, and this is a big enough enclosure that, in time, after several years, if all goes as planned, they'll be able to then just take the surplus every year as a source herd for whether it be within Utah or, yeah, like you alluded, maybe in other states. So, appreciate you guys being able to do that, and hopefully solve some of your problems. You're still having ewe hunts and things like that, but overall, it hopefully solves some of your short-term problems for habitat degradation and overuse in places and water dependency and all that. These big, because the muddies have had the density unlike anywhere I've seen in my life, in terms of sheep. No, Jason. Last time we were doing the transplant, it was out of the muddies. Like, the muddies is a factory. Oh yeah, it's just, it cranks them out.

So, we appreciate it, and we're recipients of it as a state here. But, you know, the big sheep take the big picture to see kind of, you know, the past, present, and future. Because it's, you know, what you got in front of you right now is just no guarantee with sheep. It's kind of a cool program, too, to augment that, you know, and to get that started and cranking and, I don't know. It's kind of, it's not like we're taking your sheep and killing them. We're taking them and then, and it's working, you know, developing a new project, so to speak. So.

And we used, you know, everybody thought we were just transplanting sheep in the past to grow more herds. That was half of the equation. Another half was we had populations that were getting to densities that they scared us for being susceptible to disease. So, we used trap and transplant as a release valve to bring numbers down in areas. And if we didn't have this opportunity to give sheep to Utah, you would see our tag numbers higher in that unit. Yeah, man, you tags, you just beaming how they are. Yep. Well, it's pretty awesome. There's a lot of, like Adam was talking about, and you as well, as far as the different species across the state. Just incredible opportunities from sheep to elk. Elk are doing great. I mean, obviously, you know, there's not that many tags, especially considering, you know, non-resident tags, but the quality is just off the charts and doing

And then antelope as well, you know, kind of, you know, maybe even somewhat the forgotten species, but I can't believe the quality of antelope coming out of the state of Nevada. Last year, we actually knew of a gentleman and his wife, and they both smashed like 86 inchers. And it's just incredible, the opportunity for antelope across your state. We did see, in our checkout summaries, we asked for horn length on antelope, and we did see a reduction of the 15 inch and longer antelope being checked in, or, you know, not checked in, but harvest report on them. But there are still just tremendous antelope, and I know people that hunt Montana, Wyoming, and Utah for antelope, and they just smile when they draw a Nevada antelope tag. They were like, you guys know how to grow a big antelope. Well, and I think part of that, when you're seeing those reports, it's not like they're

getting scored by Boone and Crockett scores. You're having guys arbitrarily tell you what, how, you know, the length of the antelope horn, right? Correct. So, it's not, I mean, you got to kind of take it with a grain of salt. Well, you figure that every year, the same cross-section of people are doing the same way and bias every year. So, you kind of compare it as apples and apples. I'm telling you, we knew, I mean, Wyatt and Devin killed great antelope last year. It was kind of a good year, I mean, from guys we talked to, but, you know. Definitely so. But definitely population numbers, too, in many places are down. We're seeing that in your proposed tag reductions. Is your commission meeting, what, tomorrow? When is that?

It's tomorrow and Saturday. The quotas will be done Saturday, so the next couple days. Between end of application period, commission meeting, getting ready to pull off the draw, these are the two weeks around here we really don't sleep much. As you're aware, we have people in the office seven to seven, seven days a week to answer phone calls to help people get into the system or get their hunter safety validated. If they're a new hunter in Nevada, they do have to have their hunter safety card in. When we get down to those last couple days, it's not seven to seven, it's seven to nine, seven to eleven, seven to midnight. If the phones are ringing, we stay.

Yeah. And we're here Sunday, and it's not picked up by Kalkami. We want you talking to our staff. We bring people in, whether it's from game, fisheries, diversity, our conservation education staff, even some of the staff in the director's office and fiscal that have done the phones in the past. They all take a turn getting on the phones, and we make sure you're talking to a Nevada person so you're getting up to date and accurate information. Not that it's inaccurate coming from our vendor, they're a great vendor, but we want you talking to somebody in Nevada. Well, that's pretty cool because we deal with a lot of states, and I got to tell you, I don't feel like I could pick up the phone and talk to somebody in most instances.

Most of them, it's a vendor. It's 14 layers of press 4, press 1, press 0, you know, got a high call volumes, expected wait time at 30 minutes. I mean, it's just brutal. We don't have wait times. What a wait time means to us is throw two more people on the phones. Yeah. I like it. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Customer service oriented. Well, it is going through that sequence of events here. Yeah, you've got your commission meeting, approving quotas. They're probably doing other things, but as far as what we're talking about today, they're ratifying the quotas, and then your draw deadline is Tuesday the 10th to get your applications in. And then you guys have kind of ramped up the expectation and whatnot over the last several years of a quick turnaround. We want to know the next day. We're going to get our results on the 11th, right? Why can't we do that?

I'm going to tell you exactly why we don't do that. I think you have felt the pain, and I don't mean to pick on other people, but Idaho's had some bad draw a day to get out. Montana recently had some bad draw a day to get out. We're doing test draws right now with last year's numbers, this year's business rules. We do three, four test draws before the application period's done. What changed? I mean, you just use the same programming, can't we? You do, but your business rules change, your season dates change, bonus points for people change. You got people that should be in waiting periods. Were they able to apply? If they had 14 bonus points last year, do they have 15 this year because they were on six? We validate the heck out of it. We have a team that validates, and that team comes from multiple, three different divisions within the agency.

Your sequence of draw, when you add the one horn, management. Exactly. You are now after the ram, and all those types. Which I like that. You adjusted that, so we got the sequence of drafts figured out, and things like that. Yeah, so there's just so much stuff to look at, and it's our top priority to make sure when we tell somebody they did or didn't have a tag, that we don't have to send them a letter or email saying, gee, we made a mistake. You know, I'm not going to say we're going to be ball-proof, but we're going to go the extra mile to ensure that we're putting out accurate information. Well, and it's much appreciated. We kind of joke about the 11th. Jason wants the 11th. We'll accept the 12th.

But hey, when you talk about the volume of application that you guys take in, and it's a big state. I mean, there's some other states. We deal with all Western states, and we realize there's some that aren't near as popular for whatever reason, from a non-resident perspective. Nevada is one of those. It's super popular. So, for you to turn it down within about 10 days is what your goal's been the last, I want to say, two, three years.

May 20th, Midnight Madness. Yeah, it always used to be, hey, the Friday going into Memorial Weekend. Now, it's earlier than that, and it's 10 days from the deadline is what your target is. That's what you're shooting for, and you've been able to meet that the last few years and announce, yeah, the whole late-night, midnight madness, you know, 10 to midnight or whatever. Everybody's staying up. Are we having a midnight madness, or is it going to be a little earlier when people can celebrate till midnight? Well, I always like to... Not tell people? Under promise and over deliver. Okay, what's... Okay, let's tell us. So, I'm gonna tell you, last year, the year before we went midnight, and we advertised Midnight Madness, and we got them out right about midnight. Last year, we felt comfortable with where our validation was at, and we got it out probably about 10 o'clock.

Yeah, 10 o'clock Nevada, Tom. I was down in Tonopah building the guzzler with QE last year when we left our results out on a Friday. We're targeting this year with how validation went last year, and we might just have to stay up a little bit later doing validation the night before. But we're targeting that 6 p.m. time. On the 20th? So, instead of Midnight Madness, I think we're going to go with Let the Adventures Begin. Whoa! New jingle. Let people play... Let them have a barbecue. Yes, that's our goal. It's almost like going to be a happy hour if it's like six o'clock for everybody getting off work on a Friday. It's like happy hour. Six o'clock somewhere. Well, that's exactly what we want to get to. It used to come out Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend.

And we had taxidermist shops, we had other people, they would have barbecues at their place and basically have a watch party for the draw results. And we kind of took that away from them, throwing it out at midnight. But we're going to get back to that. I think it's a great family event, a great event with your friends. And midnight's a little late to be doing that. Oh, way too late for me. Yeah, I like the 6 p.m. thought. 6 p.m. your time, 7 mine, and I'm in bed by 30 minutes after that. That's about right. That's about right. Yeah, but I think you know as well as I do, you get the right tag, you don't go to bed. Oh, yeah. I hope I don't sleep. I challenge you to keep me up all night, Jack. Let me challenge you. We'll do our best. Tell Colcom I dare him to keep me up all night. If Adam's up all night, the rest of us are up all night. He won't let us sleep.

They're all gonna get texted and jingled all night long, you know. So, tell us a little bit about, so, during the regular application period, we can apply for the silver state tags. That's kind of an additional thing. It's like a governor-type tag. We get basically an August 1 opener for most species, and, you know, everybody just gets one name in the hat, right? So, we can apply, you can add that to your application list there. One name and a hat, it's available for this year, California for the first time. Yeah, California Bighorns, you had to do it. California, we switched from the PIW over to a Silver State. We historically hadn't had a Silver State tag in that category, due to the fact that we don't have the resource. And when you throw a Heritage Auction tag, a Dream tag, and a PIW tag, that was three specialty tags. Well, and the PIW was available to the residents only. It was.

And with the Silver State, we all can apply. It's open. So, it did allow more people in, but it also extended that season. With the PIW, it was the same tag as everybody else. September 1. You just got to hunt where you wanted. But there were some restrictions even on that, because we didn't want to harvest too many out of a particular unit. So, restrictions on...it wasn't really a statewide tag. There was restrictions on it. But I think having that tag that has a little earlier start time is a more coveted tag, and it would be just you and the heritage auction tag holder out there pursuing sheep that time of year. When you don't have competition, they are a special opportunity. So, we did switch that over this year. One of those is exactly what I'm referring to about keeping me up on that right there.

So, now those would, I mean, geez. The only thing is, is now you've got, what, four months to wait. I mean, you can hunt literally anywhere in the state from August 1 to the end of the year for, you could give one of those for deer, elk, antelope, desert, and cali. I don't remember if it is on sheep. Desert might be cali. I can't remember. July, isn't it? July 1 on Cowley and Desert. And Adam, I'm glad you bring that up. You say it would keep you up if you got one of those, but I think you would keep you up if your wife got one or your kids got one or somebody even in your office got one that would keep you up. And that's what I try to continue to talk about in Nevada. Our hunting opportunities, compared to other states, are very limited because we don't have the resource, and we try to keep a colder resource on the landscape.

So, out of my brother and my two boys and I, if we can draw one tag, that gets us in the field. We will scout it. We will wear one tag out between four of us. We don't anymore. We really don't want four tags in a year. If we can get one or two between four or five of us, that fills our need, and it spreads the wealth out a little bit, and it's basically a team family event. Gotcha. And that's how we hunt Nevada. It's not like other states where everybody, you're on your own, you may have one hunt, buddy. Yeah. Yeah, well, and I try to convince Jason of that, too, to just do points only, that if I draw, he can come along with me and have just as much fun. Well, and I'm telling Adam to play his wife and children for points only so they don't compete with him and I. Exactly.

I just want to know if you put your wife and kids into the same units you do or you try to limit your own competition with what you do. It just depends. I do, but I also remember I got to take them. So, I mean, that's what I was talking about earlier about reining in my wild outlying flyers units for deer. You know, any sheep tag is pretty much a gift, you know, as a non-resident. So, I mean, I do apply them for a few different years. I've been fortunate enough, Jason, too. Jason's killed two desert sheep in his life. I've killed one, so I kind of be a little bit more picky about the units I personally apply for versus some of them that haven't, and it's from a drawing-on standpoint, a little bit of an angle. But, hey, yeah, they draw something, it's all good. That would be awesome. They also have, Jack, some raffle tags, the DreamTag option. That would be something totally separate.

Different deadline. Anyway, Nevada, NVDreamTag.org, and they can go apply there, and you got ways yet. June 30th is the deadline for that. Definitely so. So, for now, we have the PIW tags, which is available for non-residents on mule deer. You're given, it seems like three of those, and then you got the Silver State tags for the different species, And the regular draw tags as well, and the Silver State doesn't have preference or bonus points attached. And anyway, so, kind of gives you some wide variety of opportunity there in Nevada. Yes, and like I said, the California Silver State tag desk new this year. Something else new this year, I'm sure you guys saw it, for residents, is the one-horned ram hunt. We do have a number of one-horned rams. You guys are chasing sheep in our state. You see them. They're never harvested. They grow old that way. Look at them that way.

They grow old, and I think it's another opportunity we're giving our sportsmen. It's going to be a management hunt, just like a depredation hunt. There will be no bonus points for it. It's going to be once-in-a-lifetime. And you guys could apply for both, regular and the management? Yes, and that management hunt will be taken even after you. I think it's going to go ram you and then that management hunt because we always take our management hunts last. Yeah, so it doesn't hurt you if you're a resident and you're fine shooting a one horn ram, which I mean, trust me, I've seen plenty of big rams. Hey, if I could apply for it, I would be, Carter. Yeah, and if you're not going to, you know, if it's not going to take my points, what does it hurt to be into that? Some people were saying, you know, that they were saying, well, you couldn't do both or whatnot, and it's just not the case.

No, you can definitely put in for both, and if you draw the one-horn ram, that means you didn't draw your regular ram, because the regular ram would have disqualified you for your one-horn. Just a little disappointed there's not a non-resident option there, but Jack, I'm not going to blame you, I'm going to blame you, but you're the only person we can grab a hold of. You're just on the phone right now. We're going to look at success rate on that. It's going to be a tough hunt because you guys know that sometimes finding a ram is difficult, but finding that one-horn ram can be extremely difficult. Well, give us a tag. We'll see how it goes.

The one thing we noticed is you did unit, neighboring unit grouping. So, it's not like you're just stuck in one unit. It was many times two, three, four units that were all neighboring. And so, a lot of room to roam to be able to spread out, family, friends, try to find something. Well, in Bronson, one of the biggest rams you ever saw was one horn. I can still remember. And it goes back to... He called me and says, geez, I smashed this ram. I think it had to be 185 on the one side, and it was unbelievable. It was amazing. And this was like three years ago, two, three years ago. It was not like very long ago. Yeah. Yeah, it was special. And it's in one of these unit groupings. Absolutely. So, it usually is the older age class rams that end up that way. It's not the young rams that end up that way.

Yeah, they get sinusitis over the years, and then pretty soon one takes a fall. And hey, I've seen them with both of them that way pretty commonly. In the mud, it's places where you have lots of rams and, you know, it starts a sinusitis. They start banging their horns. Then they get a crack in there, and then it gets infected, and then it's banging it harder, and then they fight other rams, and pretty soon one busts off. And those units, it feels like we have high ram numbers is where I've seen them. One of our coolest, the Fister Twister ram that we were in on. He was about ready to lose one side. We killed a giant ram that he wouldn't have made another year with that. But, well, go ahead. The other thing that was new last year that's of interest to you guys is the archery ram hunt that we put in.

I believe there was nine tags on that, and seven were successful last year. And that success rate kind of surprised me, but then when you think about it, if somebody's sitting on points and they're throwing in an archery ram tag, they're probably going to be pretty efficient with a boat. Well, that, they're targeting, like, yeah, I want that, or, yeah, playing the odds or whatever. And in general, you're doing it on units where you have decent to high sheep numbers. They're not usually on units where you've got really scarce numbers and, hey, we're going to go give a guy the worst hunt of his life. So, maybe we can hope as an on-residents, too, that maybe that grows into an opportunity for us in the near future. Well, at least a tag. Seems like we're being discriminated. We're not, Brady. We're being discriminated against here, Jack.

I can tell you it's not an opportunity this year, but I can tell you it's definitely being looked at as an opportunity for next year for the non-residents to get into that archery. Also, so we've got that, and then obviously the one-horn we'll look at, but then too, I know your goats, you guys had incredible surveys and whatnot offering like, you know, 14 total tags, 12 and 102, 121 combo. At some point, you know, that's a good sign for us. We, I can tell you, I feel bad for that right now because I know we do have non-residents sitting on goat points. At one point, they were able to apply and they just got parked on their goat points. Then we do have people that were residents in the state that moved out of state that are sitting on goat points. Well, and 10% of the, I know, the 10, the 12 being issued in one unit alone would, you know, warrant a non-resident tag, but maybe

Maybe the commissioner will look at it. I know it's in the commission's hands. It's the commissioners that make that decision. Well, we didn't set that season, so there's nothing we can do for it this year. But if I could rewind and go back to the commission meeting in the end of January, we would have pushed harder to have a non-rest. Well, it's just nice for us to know that that's potentially coming down the pipe. They're on the radar. It's on the radar, and then same thing with the Rockies. It seems like some of the Rockies there and the Rubies seem to be doing good, and that's another thing. There are some good things happening, even in this drought era, so to speak. We're doing good on the goats. We really are. And the Rockies are coming back a little bit. Right. There's a potential down the road that we dive into that, too, at some point.

Well, the rubies will see a Rocky tag again this year. And it's not in the draw for resinous or non-resinous, and I'll tell you how that came about. Kind of a cool story. It is. It's a cool story, and we didn't talk a lot about it just because there wasn't even a resin tag in the draw. Yeah, tell us. You're going to give one, and tell us the circumstance of how you're going to ward it. How did you award it? Well, it was 2009, I believe. The Rockies were doing great in the Rubies and East Humboldts, and they were killing some just tremendous rounds, mid-190 rounds. And we had a young gentleman draw a Rocky tag, and he was in the military, and he got orders We had the military orders to go someplace else. In Nevada, if you get military orders to go someplace else, you can turn that tag in and defer it.

He turned it in and deferred it, and I actually got to go on the hunt from the gentleman that picked it up as a return tag. We harvested a tremendous ram, and not long after we harvested that ram, there was a die-off in the East Humboldts and the Rupees, and we lost both those populations. It's been hunted since, right? Yeah, nobody's hunted since. That deferred tag never got an issue. 13 years, basically 12 or 13 years deferred. I mean, I don't know if I've ever heard something like this, but it's pretty awesome. Well, that kid drew it, and he deferred it until the next time it became available. Yeah. And... That's this year. We've talked to him, and he's excited, and we have room for one tag in the rubies. So, we're going to hopefully have a hunter in there pursuing rams this year, and maybe next year we'll have another tag. We'll have to wait and see.

But when somebody defers a tag because they're doing something for our country, we owe them everything we can to make them home in the end. I love that. We may have somebody that says we should have put that out for the general public, but I can tell you. They won't say it out loud. I don't think they'll say it out loud. Yeah, if you do it out loud, you're going to get chastised. If the guy put it off because it's just not convenient this year, I'm going to turn it back and get my points back. That's completely different than a, I cannot hunt, I'm leaving the country. I'm going overseas or wherever he went, and I can't do it. And, catastrophically, that winter, the sheep die off and haven't been hunted for 13 years since. So, it's just pretty neat, pretty admirable you guys are doing that. And I look forward to seeing how it does. You know what I'm looking forward to, Jack?

I'm looking forward to first come, first serve. I'm not good. I don't have good odds of drawing. I'm not a lucky guy. Adam's kind of lucky. He beats really long odds. He has terrible luck at one and two odds. He has terrible luck there, but one and 150 plus he does well on. But quite frankly, I'm looking forward to the first come, first serve. I can tell you, I really am surprised we made it this far in this conversation without talking about first come, first serve. I thought that was going to be a leader. Well, it's fun. It was neat, you guys. I didn't even want to bring it up. I don't want to eliminate the competition. Well, but it was pretty competitive last year, and I guess just to quickly summarize the program, these are tags we're talking about that get surrendered by people for whatever reason. Any reason. Within any reason. With any reason. Moving on from the military reason.

And they get all their points back. Not deferred, but yeah, turn it in. Within 14 days of the start of the individual season, they're turning the tag forward. Once you get within that time frame, you guys were finding, hey, there's just a hard time getting it turned around and reallocated to anybody that actually wants it when they haven't had time to prepare, time off work, scout, hire a guide, all that. So, let's just throw them on the internet, and we'll sell them as first come, first serve. They take your points. But basically, you guys created a website last year where you just had to watch that like a hawk. And, you know, tags, you know, you had little peaks all throughout the fall as archery antelope hunt was what, the first thing that started. And then rifle antelope, archery deer, and then into the muzzleloaders and rifles, and then elk.

And, you know, it just kind of had different phases all throughout the year as you got within those 14-day windows of hunt openings. And then, so yeah, you're going to do it again this year. And can you talk about any, like, changes that you guys are for sure going to have yet? Are you still putting the final touches on them? They ended up getting an archery deer. Yeah. I mean, it was... Oh, I got a tag for myself for an elk, and I got my antelope for my boy. I mean, and it was one of those, we played it, and just, you know, it was a drought year. It was a drought year. A lot of people turn some deer tags, especially back last year. And had I... I don't know. I hunted a great buck. I did. I hunted a great buck. But what a great system. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna give you some numbers on that. And people think that first come, first serve replaced all.

And it definitely didn't. And it was largely taken up by residents, it sounded like to me. Yeah, we changed our workflow through the application process because in 2019, we only had 40,000 people apply for alternates. And then in 2020, 52,000, we changed our workflow, and we had 112,000 alternate applications. So, in 2020, we put out 545 alternate tags. In 2021, the same year as we implemented First Come, First Serve, we had 669 alternate tags go out. So, that went up even, yeah. The alternate, it's still alive and well and doing its job. And those are for people that you call them 15 days or greater before the hunt. You call those. Correct. And then the first come, first serve comes in. You can turn your tag back in up to the day before the season. And if you do that within that 14-day window, that's getting too tight, and then they'll go up on first come, first serve.

On first come, first serve, we did 987 unique tags. We had 1,033 sales. We sold some tags twice. Somebody would go in and buy it, and then go, oh boy, I don't have the time. So, they'd turn it in, and we'd sell it again. We know a guy that did that. I know one guy that did that. But anyway. Not me or Jason. But hey, Indow will take their money. Whatever. Maybe they're checking to see if it was legit, and how it worked, and it went one click too far. One step too far. Well, they bought it, and then you have a little bit of buyer's remorse. Or you realize, yeah, maybe they can't find a guy in four days, and they say, I'm going to turn this back in. So, anyway, whatever. Reason.

Yeah, and on the breakdown, 173 horns long and an ear antelope, two junior tags, 560 mule deer tags, buck tags, 102 bull elk tags, 21 spike tags, seven Nelson desert beehorn sheep tags were sold to that, and two ewe tags. And one of those U-tags happened to be mine. I had a U-tag, and it just wasn't fitting into my schedule. I had other hunts going on. I turned it in. It wasn't hunts that I had myself, but when somebody else is sitting on a ram tag, I'd rather go hunt a ram with a good friend of mine than to go hunt my own U. So, I wanted to make sure that fulfilled somebody else's need to get into the field. It worked out for everybody. Well, that's—and do you have the breakdown? It was almost $1,000, 987 unique tags. I don't know why it's important, but resident, non-resident breakdown. Was it like 70 or 80 percent went to residents?

84% were returned by residents, 873, and then 276 were purchased by non-residents. So, 26% of the total tags that were purchased through First Come, First Serve were purchased by non-residents, but 73 or 757 of them were purchased by residents. 75.25 of the roughly 1,000 first come first sub. So, 75.25. So, a little bit higher than the natural draw split that is a 90-10-ish. But they technically could go to anybody. But it's just whoever was looking at the mouse, I guess. There's no quotas based. A resident tag turned in doesn't go to a resident, it could go to anybody. And a non-resident tag turned in could go to anybody. So, anyway. Correct. But the resident's got the lion's share. So, anyway, that makes sense. Well, I think it was a great program.

Well, and yeah, you had 1,000 tags that either got people hunting or they actually helped you accomplish management objectives because the hunters actually went to field and harvested animals and did whatever. But anything that you know it's going to change for this year that you want to even want to get into, is that still the final touches coming on that process? Yeah, and how did you like the program overall? The program was a great success. It did everything we wanted to. We did see some people trying to get in and game the system, and the way that our system works, you can detect when people start using bots or auto-clickers and different ways to try to game the system. And we actually pulled some people down on their accounts and had conversations with them that if that type of activity continued to occur, we'd pull them down again.

And we're making some, there were some changes the commission put into place. We're going to make some regulation changes to ensure it's a fair process. That's, above all, we want a fair process. Well, yeah, and there's computer programs out there that are hunters, and I'm sure somebody can, yeah, develop that. Some people will say, well, Jason and Adam have an advantage because they sit at their desk all day and sit on the computer all day so they can see it. And I run a backhoe, and I don't have a computer, but that same guy that runs a backhoe, he might go to work at 4.30 in the morning and be up when you guys are still asleep. I know a lot of people that bought them at 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning that I wasn't away. Correct. I guarantee that.

So, there's different ways to have advantages and disadvantages, but we're going to do everything we can to keep that system whole, and we're working with the commission. If we do see that somebody's gaming away, we're going to pull their accounts down, and if we see them try to help other people game it, we're going to pull those accounts down. And if it gets out of control, we'll just suspend the whole system. A fair, honest process is more important than getting these tags out. You could just boot them from the system altogether, ban them for five years, or whatever. So, yeah, if you want a personal phone call from Jack, try to take advantage of Endow.

You called them personally, right? Like, you're... No, it worked different than that. When we decided we were going to start suspending some people, they said, well, we need a suspension code to put on the account. So, when they get in, they'll know that they're suspended. I said, well, put on there, just like your bank card, when something happens on your bank card, suspicious activity has been recognized in your account, please call. And the only number they had to call wasn't the front desk or wasn't somebody at Kalkami or somebody in our licensing office. It was my cell number. So, I got to talk to quite a few of them. Some of them elected not to call me, but elected to stay off or try to email me other things.

So, this will be something that will take into effect basically the end of July because you've got, you know, again, I think archery antelope and archery deer are some of the first kickoffs of this, but the details will be ironed out. That'll be, I'm sure, shared via email through when all that's ratified and determined, any changes how you're actually going to implement it. But cool program. It's, hey, it's another chance late in the summer. It isn't easy for everybody, but hey, you know, the other thing is it goes on for like four months because, I mean,

I mean, there's sheep tags getting turned back in the end of November, Jack. I mean... Deer season's in December. That's what I mean. So, it starts the end of July, but it goes a long time, and so, yeah, maybe we're in the... I can guarantee from about September on, I wasn't around playing this game at all last year. What date does it open up? Do you remember? Well... It's going... Last year, we had an opening date because it was the first year, and we already... I can tell you... Roughly 14, 15 days before the archery... Adam and I have been wanting to have a... We don't have a browser open already. It's going to occur before that because we may have somebody that draws a cow elk tag in the first draw. Yeah. And do we have the seven days electronic return? We don't print the tags anymore and send them to you.

You can electronically return your tag in that saving day window. And if you don't have alternates to give it to you, Then you're like, we already know this one's ready to go. We could do that, but in that seven-day window, they will go into the second draw. But as soon as that second draw goes, and we don't have alternates for some of that stuff, it'll start happening. I can't tell you exactly when, because we don't know when the first tag is going to get returned that's eligible because they don't have an alternate. And to qualify for an alternate, somebody has to have it as their first choice. We had a bull elk tag go on the second draw last year, because nobody had, I think it was 061 as their first choice that selected to be an alternate. So, we had a bull elk tag go on the second draw, because somebody turned in something that nobody had marked as alternate.

So, even though there's an alternate option on choices two through five, really, it's your first choice. Yeah. It's your first choice. Yeah. Well, another reason is I think if somebody draws the Silver State Desert or Cali, and they don't want it, that starts July 1st, so it could happen in June. You could get a first-come, first-served Silver State. Can you imagine a first-come, first-served Governor tag? Yeah, I'd like it. I'd dare somebody to try that. I don't know. All right. Well, good stuff. We're excited about it. Some of the key dates would be May 10th is our application deadline. This is this upcoming Tuesday, 11 p.m., May 10th. Pacific time. Yeah, so anyway, and then May 20th, we're looking at a, what'd you call it again, Jack? Let the adventure begin. Let the adventure begin. Maverick, Maverick. Are you guys copycatting Maverick?

Do they even have Maverick gas stations? Do you guys have Maverick gas stations out there? Yeah, we copied, yesterday on May the 4th Be With You, we copied Star Wars. Okay, okay. I don't know who that's...who drums up those sayings, Jack? I'm sure we weren't the first one to call something Midnight Madness. I'm sure other people went. Maybe some basketball teams in NCAA or something. Yeah, so anyway, that's...anyway, May 10th, May 20th, upcoming dates that we're really excited about. Anything else you want to talk about real quick about Nevada, what you guys got going on there? No, it just...we're just trying to stay ahead We're just praying for rain, just like everybody else. Did you guys get through some of those black bears that never did hibernate? Given Lake Tahoe residents heck? I can tell you, even though we're dry right now, we had a fantastic December. Yeah.

And that snow that pretty much the whole state got in December put the bears down this year. There was a couple on the lake that we share with Cal, but those on the California side, we'll let Hank the Tank stay on in California. They just behave differently. You're not claiming those bears. That's what I was wondering. How's he doing? I don't know. Hank didn't have our ear tag in it, so we don't know anything about Hank. I know what position Jack played in football. He was a punter. He's punting this from the California. He doesn't want to. Oh. Hank looks down there good in the California side at the Tahoe Keys. I like how you heard that. We were watching the news there. Yeah, that made the news in Utah, and then we saw, yeah, what, a mama and like three or four cubs woke up under the cabin. It's been scratching all winter, and the lady was wondering what the noise was.

Some gal could hear them all winter under there. Anyway, got a fun. Well, appreciate your time, Jack. You're always good to, you know, we jab a little foam, but more importantly, you're a good ambassador for your state as deputy director in Nevada Department of Wildlife, and you're a big hunter yourself and sportsman, and we appreciate your coming on with us today just to kind of hit some of the highlights of your state. And it's crunch time, and it's one of the last big remaining big states, multi-species states remaining for the draws. So, I encourage our listeners and everybody to get your apps in by Tuesday the 10th. 10th, May 10th.

And I can tell you, if you guys, anybody listening has any questions, just look at your magazine. I got that in the mail. I read it again, and you guys are spot on with what you put out. So, I really appreciate you guys putting out that type of good information. You bet. We appreciate it. Thank you. And yeah, any questions, give Adam or I a call here at Epic Outdoors, 435-263-0777. Of course, we publish a monthly publication this time of year covering all the state's draws. And so, anyway, we appreciate you, Jack. Thanks for your support as well. And we'll be talking soon, probably May 20th for Adam, about 630 Pacific time. Yeah, something like that. Yep. Let me know how it goes. Yeah. All right. All right. Okay. Hey, thanks guys. You bet. Bye.

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.