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 out 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 real raw about that right now. So Bronson golfs. 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've 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 eight.

Well... I do. Carter was going to chest. I might have got here and John and Jason fired me. I mean, chest. I got to be here on time. No, no, you might get a pink slip, but it ain't going to 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 thinking?

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. I don't know. 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, John. 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. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's our Chris. Yeah. 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 2022. What do you think? Let's give him a call. All right. Jack. Jack. What are you doing? What? Oh.

Trying to catch up with a week. Oh. I thought you weren't 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 Robb 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 going to lie. We like Bronson. Bronson went on there. How many years ago did you apply for 2022? It 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 reigning 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 $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, $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 $400 or $500 on Bronson alone. No, don't do that. I like it. 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 is he's worried about it. 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. But the problem is he can see what we do and we can't see what he does. That's right. He's got the reason. 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 going to do what I'm going to do no matter what. And I'm coming down into some of that country you like is my first choice 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. It's going to be a harder draw, but there's less competition. So I'm truly going to start there.

And then I'm skipping right over Tonopah and going towards Northern Washoe. And 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. Yeah. With low tag numbers, but. 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. Yeah. 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 H-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've got some older H-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 is second driest. But you make 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?

Like, we've all been affected. And you can't control the weather. Like, you just try to be as reactive as you can. And, you know, you guys, I know, I've seen, you know, went from 10,000, you know, sheep on the landscape or over 10 to just over eight, it seems like, right? In the last, what, three years or something. And 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 managed 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. And we actually had a couple 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, and his wife smashed basically a 180-incher. Yeah. You know? Yeah. 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. 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. And if we run into those situations, we're going to communicate with those honors and make sure they have informed decisions to make. Yeah.

Well, that's pretty awesome. And then one of the things people are talking about, too, is it's interesting stuff on the deer tags. Some of the deer tags in some of our favorite country and maybe the most notable trophy producing units as of the last five years or whatever, 10 years, maybe even longer, is kind of a slash in tags 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. 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. Correct.

14, 15, 06s, 07, some of them 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 the Sierras like that central Nevada stuff and that 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've 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've 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.

And 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. 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. And 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. And 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. Gee, wow. I watched them use it a couple times. I was lucky enough to get it on video once, just out of a cell phone. Jeez. When you see that occurring and a learned behavior by a wild animal for something like that, you know that things are pretty drastic. Better fix something. They need it. Instead of fixing broken pites 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. 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 Big Horn Sheep in his mid-80s. And just 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 big horn 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. And 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 resources 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. And if we're not going to, if we're going to 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.

And 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 bighorn sheep. 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 source herds 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 keep put the rabbit back in the box. It's out. Now you're never, the muddies are dirty forevermore. So, yeah, we appreciate that as sportsmen 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. And 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 it solves some of your problems. You're going to have to, you know, you're still having new hunts and things like that, but overall, it hopefully solves some of your short-term problems for, you know, 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. It's just, it cranks them out. So, we appreciate it, and we're recipients of it as a state here, but that, you know, we're, 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, 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, it, 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.

Right, man, you, you tags, you just be even higher than they are. Yep. Well, it's pretty, pretty awesome. There's a lot of, like Adam was talking about, you know, you as well, as far as the different species across the state. Um, just incredible opportunities from sheep to elk. Elk are, elk are doing great. I mean, obviously, you know, there's not that many tags, especially considering, you know, non-resident tags, but, but the quality is just, is off the charts and doing very well. 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, a, a, a gentleman and a, and his wife, and they both smashed like 86 inchers. And it's just, just incredible the opportunity for, for antelope across your state.

We, we did see, you know, in our checkout summaries, we, we asked for, uh, horn length on antelope. And, and we did see, uh, a reduction of the 15 inch and longer, uh, 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're 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, the length of the antelope horn, right? So it's, it's not, I mean, you got to kind of take it with a grain of salt.

But you figure that every, 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. But 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, from guys we talked to, but, you know. Definitely so. But definitely population numbers too in many places are down. You were seeing that in your proposed, your proposed, uh, proposed tag reductions. Is your commission meeting what? Today? When is that? It's, it's, uh, tomorrow and Saturday. The quotas will be done Saturday. Uh, so the next couple of days, uh, between end of application period, commission meeting, uh, getting ready to pull off the draw. These are the two weeks around here. We, we really don't sleep much. Yeah.

Uh, as, as you're aware, we, we have people in the office seven to seven, seven days a week to answer phone calls to, to help people get into the system or, or get their, uh, hunter safety validated. If they're a new hunter in Nevada, they do have to have their hunter safety card in. Uh, when we get down to those last couple of days, it's not seven to seven. It's seven to nine, seven to 11, seven to midnight. If the phones are ringing, we stay. Yeah. And we're here Sunday and, and it's not picked up by Calcumite. Uh, we want you to talk to our staff. Uh, we bring people in, whether it's from game fisheries, uh, diversity, uh, our conservation education staff, even, even, uh, 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, and, uh, we make sure you're talking to 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, I gotta tell you, I don't feel like I could pick up the phone and talk to somebody most in most instances. Most of them, it's a vendor and it's 14 layers of, of press four, press one, press zero, you know, got a, you know, high call volumes, you know, long expected wait time at 30 minutes. I mean, it's just, it's just brutal. We, we don't have wait times. Uh, what, what a wait time means to us is throw two more people on the phones. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. That's pretty, pretty awesome. Customer service oriented. Well, and it is coming, you know, going through that sequence of events here. Yeah. You've got your commission meeting, approving quotas.

That's, 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, um, to get your applications in. And then you guys have kind of ramped up the expectation and whatnot over the last several years. We want to know, we want to know the next day we're going to get our results on the 11th, right? But why can't we do that? I'm going to tell you exactly why we don't do that. And, uh, I think you have felt the pain and I don't mean to pick on other people, but, uh, Idaho has had some bad draw data get out. Uh, Montana recently had some bad draw data get out. Right. We, we're, we're doing test draws right now with, uh, last year's numbers, this year's business rules. We do three, four test draws before the application period's done. Uh, partly, partly changed. 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 get people that should be in waiting periods. Were they able to apply? Did they, if they had 14 bonus points last year, do they have 15 this year? Because they didn't, they were on six. We validate the heck out of it. We have a team that validates and that, and that team comes from multiple, three different divisions within the agency. Your sequence of draw, when you add the one horn, you know, management. Exactly. You, you, you, you, you, you now after the ram. Yeah. And all those. Which I like that. You adjusted that. So we got the sequence of draw figured out and things like that. 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, 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, we kind of joke, you know, about the 11th. Jason wants the 11th. Well, except the 12th. But, 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 state we deal with all Western states and we realize there's some that, that we don't, 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 her down within about 10 days is what your goal has been the last, I want to say two, three years, whenever you went to that.

May 20th, midnight madness. Yeah. It always used to be, Hey, the Friday going into Memorial weekend. And now it's earlier than that. And that's 10 days, 10 days from the deadline is, is what your target is. That's what you're shooting for. And you've been able to meet that, um, the last few years and announce, yeah, the whole late night, midnight madness, you know, 10, 10 to midnight or whatever. Everybody's staying up. And 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, uh, not tell people under, under promise and over deliver. Okay. What's the, okay, let's tell us. So, but I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you last year, uh, the year before we went midnight and we, we advertised midnight madness and, and we got them out right about midnight last year.

Uh, we felt comfortable with where our validation was at and, uh, we got it out probably about 10 o'clock. Yeah. Uh, I was down. Yeah. Yeah. 10 o'clock Nevada time. I was down, I was down in, uh, Tonopah building the guzzler with QU last year when we let the results out on a Friday. Uh, we're targeting, uh, this year was how validation went last year. Uh, we might just have to stay up a little bit later doing validation the night before. Uh, but we're targeting that 6 PM time. On the 20th. Instead of midnight madness, I think we're going to go with, uh, let the adventures begin and, and, and new jingle. Let people play. Let them have a barbecue. And that's, 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, that's exactly what we want to get to.

It used to come out Friday afternoon of Memorial day weekend. And, and we had taxidermist shops. We had other people. They would have barbecues at their place and, and basically have a watch party for, for the draw results. And we kind of took that away from them, uh, throwing it out at midnight, but we're going to get back to that. I think it's a great family event that's great event with your, your friends and midnight's a little late to be doing that. Way too late for me. Yeah. I like the 6 PM thought 6 PM, your time, seven mine. And I'm in bed by 30 minutes. That's about right. That's about right. Yeah. But I think, you know, as well as I do, you get to write tag, you don't go to bed. Oh yeah. I hope I don't sleep. I challenge you. I challenge you to keep me up all night. I challenge you. We'll do it. 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 because he won't let us sleep. They're all going to get texted and jingled all night long, you know? So, so tell us a little bit about, so when, 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 in the hat. It's available for this year, California for the first time. Yeah, California Bighorns, you added to 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. 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. Yeah. 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. You 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 Cali 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 Adam, 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 on, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I try to convince Jason of that too, to just do points only. And that if I draw, he can come along with me and have just as much fun. Well, and I'm telling Adam to apply his wife and children for points only so they don't

compete with him and I, you know, but I just, 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 or what you do. It just depends. I do. But, but I also remember I got to take them. So, I mean, I, that's what I was talking about earlier about reining in my wild outlying flyers units and for deer. And, you know, any sheep tag is pretty much a gift, you know, as a non-resident. So, I mean, I, 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, I kind of been, be a little bit more picky about the units I personally apply for versus some of them, but that haven't. And, and it's from a drawing on standpoint, a little bit of an angle, but, but Hey, yeah, they draw something. Yeah. It's, it's all good. It's going to be awesome.

They also have Jack some, like some raffle tags, a dream tag option. That would be something totally separate, you know, so. So anyway, Nevada, NV dream tag.org and they can go apply there and you got, you know, ways yet, you know, June 30th is the deadline for that. And so. Definitely show. So for now we have the PIW tags, which is available for non-residents on mule deer. You're given, seems like three of those. And then you got the silver state tags for the different species and then the regular draw tags as well. And the silver state doesn't have preference or bonus points attached. And anyway, so kind of, kind of gives you some, a 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 horn ran hunt. We do have a number of one horn rams.

You guys chase enough sheep in our state. You see them. They're never harvested.

They grow old that way. Look at that. They grow old. And, and yeah, I think it's another opportunity we're giving our sportsmen. And there, 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, 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, if I could apply for it, I would be, Carter. Yeah. And if you're not going to, you know, if you're not going to, if it's not going to take my points, what's the hurt? What does it hurt to be into that? 10 or 15 bucks.

Some people were saying, and, and, you know, that they were saying, well, you couldn't do both or whatnot. And it's just not the case. And so. No, you, you can definitely put in for both. And if you draw the one horn ram, that means you didn't draw your, your regular ram, because the regular ram would have disqualified you for your one horn. So. Just a little disappointed. There's not a non-resident option there, but Jack, I'm not going to blame you, but you're the only person that we can. You're just on the phone. Grab a hold of. You're just on the phone right now. So. 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, the one thing we noticed is you did unit, unit, neighboring unit grouping. So it's not like you're just stuck in one unit. But 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. 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 saw a thing. It had to be 185 on the one side. And it was unbelievable. It was. It was. We doubled it. And this was like. That one side was doubled. It was like three years ago. Two, three years ago. It was not like. Yeah. Very long ago. 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.

So it gets 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 common. In the mud. It's places where you have lots of rams. And, you know, starts a sinusitis. They start banging their horns against stuff. 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. One of our coolest, the Fister Twister ram that we were in on. He was about ready to lose one side. Yeah. We killed a giant ram. He wouldn't have made it another year with that horn. But the. 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. Mm-hmm. I believe there was nine tags on that.

And seven were successful last year. Yeah. 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 archery ram tag, they're probably going to be pretty efficient with a boat. Well, that, they're targeting it 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. You know? So maybe we can hope as non-residents too that maybe that grows into an opportunity for us in the near future. Well, at least you 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 ram situation. Also, so we've got that. Yeah, we've got that. And then, obviously, the one horn we'll look at. But then, too, I know your goats. So you guys had incredible surveys and whatnot offering, like, you know, 14 total tags, 12 and 102. Yeah. 121 combo. At some point, you know. That's a good sign. 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. Well. At one point, they were able to apply, and they just got parked on their goat points. And 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 the commission will look at it. I know it's in the commission's hands. It's, you know, 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-resident. We're, we're, it's just nice for us to know that that's potentially coming down the pipe. They're on the radar. Yeah, it's on the radar. And then same thing with the Rockies. It seems like, you know, some of the Rockies there and the Rubies seem to be doing good. And, you know, that's another thing. There's, there are some good things happening, even in this, you know, drought era, so to speak. We're, we're doing good on the, 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. So. Well, the Rubies will see a Rocky tag again this year. Yeah. And it's, it's not in the draw for residents or non-residents. 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 resident 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. 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, and he was in the military and he got orders to go someplace else. And in Nevada, if you get military orders to go someplace else, you can turn that tag in and defer it. And 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. And we harvested a tremendous ram. And not long after we harvested that ram, there was a die off in East Humboldts and the Rubies. And we lost both those populations. And not been hunted since, right? Yeah. Nobody's hunted since. That deferred tag never got 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 we've talked to him and he's excited. And we have room for one tag in the Rubies. And 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. Yeah. Yeah. So that's fine. So that's fine. So that's fine. somebody that says we we should have put that out for the general public but they won't say it out loud i don't think they'll say it out loud no yeah no yeah if you do it out loud you're going to get chastised because that if the guy put it off because it's just not convenient this year i'm i'm going to turn it back and get my points back that's completely different than a yeah i cannot hunt i'm leaving serving my country i'm serving my country overseas or wherever he

went and i can't do it and uh catastrophically that winter the sheep die off and haven't been hunted for 13 years since so it's just uh pretty neat pretty admirable you guys are doing that and i look forward to seeing how how it does you know what i'm looking forward to jack i'm looking forward to first come first serve i'm i'm i'm not good i don't have good odds of drawing i i never i don't i'm not a lucky guy adam adam's kind of lucky he beats really long odds he gets 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 i can tell you i really am surprised we made it this far in this conversation without talking about first i thought that was going to believe it'd be a well it's fun it was neat you guys i didn't even want to bring it up i

don't want to want to eliminate the competition well but it was pretty competitive last year and and i guess just to quickly summarize the program these are tags we're talking about that gets surrendered by people for whatever reason with any reason within any reason not you know moving on from the military and they get all their points not deferred but yeah you turn it in uh within 14 days of the start of the individual season they're turning the tag for 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 uh time off work scout hire a guide all that so let's just throw them on the internet and uh we'll sell them as first come first serve they take your points but basically you guys pre 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 is archery antelope hunt was what the first thing that started and then then rifle rifle antelope archery deer and then into the muzzle loaders 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 um so yeah you're gonna do it again this year and can you talk about any like changes that you guys are for sure gonna have yet are you still putting the final touches on i ended up getting an archery deer yeah i mean oh i got 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 it was a drought year it was a

drought year a lot of people turn some deer tags especially and had i i don't know i hunted a great buck i did i hunted a great buck but 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 the alternates and and it definitely didn't and it was largely taken up by residents it sounded like to me yeah we changed our our workflow uh 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 the alternate it's still alive and well

still doing its job and those are for people that you turn them you call them 15 days or greater before the hunt you call those you go to that first come first serve comes in you can turn your tag back in up to the day before the season and then but and if you do that within that 14 day window that's getting too tight and they then they'll go up on first come first serve on first come first serve we did 987 unique tags okay we had 1033 sales uh 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 turned it in and we know a guy that did that i know one guy but anyway not me or jay but hey and now i'll take their money whatever they're checking to see if it was legit and how it worked and if they went one one click 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 guide in four days and they say i'm going to turn this back in so anyway whatever or yeah and and on on the breakdown 173 horns longer near antelope uh two junior tags 560 meal deer tags uh buck tags uh 102 bull elk tags uh 21 spike tags seven nelson desert bighorn sheep tags were sold to that and two u tags and one of those u tags happened to be mine i i had a u tag and it just wasn't fitting into my schedule i had other oh you other hunts going on i turned it in i it wasn't hunts that i had myself but when somebody else sitting on a ram tag uh i'd rather go hunt a ram was a good friend of mine and go hunt my own use so i wanted to make sure that that that fulfilled somebody else's need to get into the field and do you have the it worked out worked out for everybody well that's and do you have the breakdown

it was almost a thousand 987 unique tax um i don't know why it's important but resident non-resident was it like 70 or 80 percent went to residence 80 84 percent were returned by residents uh

873 and then 276 were purchased by non-residents so 26 percent of the total tags that were purchased through first come first serve were purchased by non-residents but 73 or 757 of them uh were purchased by 75 75 25 of the of the roughly thousand first come first serve 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 it's just whoever was there's no there's no quotas based a resident tag turned in doesn't go to a resident could go to anybody and a non-resident tag turned in could go to anybody so anyway but the residents got the lion's share so anyway that makes sense well i think it was i mean i think it was a great program well and and yeah you had 900 or a thousand tags that that either got people hunting or they actually help you accomplish management objectives because the hunters actually went to

field and harvested animals and did whatever but um anything that that you know it's going to change for this year that you want even want to get into is that still the final touches get coming on that process yeah and how did you like the program overall uh with 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 and uh the way that our system works you can detect when people start using bots or auto clickers and and different ways to to try to game the system and we actually uh pulled some people down on their accounts and uh had conversations with them that if that type of activity continued to occur we'd pull them down again and and uh we're making some uh there were some changes the commission put into place uh 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 there's computer programs ours out there that are hunters and i'm sure somebody can yeah develop that some people will say oh jason and adam have an advantage because they sit at their desk all day and and sit on the computer all day so they can see it and i run a backhoe and 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 and i know a lot of people that bought them at three and four or five in the morning that i wasn't away correct that four so there's different ways to have advantages and disadvantages uh but we're going to do everything we can to keep that that system whole and 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 and uh if it if it gets out of control we'll just suspend the whole system it a fair honest process is more important than getting these tags out just the tags you could just boot them from the system altogether ban them for five years you know or whatever uh so yeah if you want a personal phone call from jack try to try to take advantage of endow yeah yeah yeah it's funny you call them personally right like you're you're no no they it worked different than that we when we decided we were going to start suspending some people uh they said well we need a suspension code to put on the uh 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 you 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 in at calc my 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 uh did elected not to call me but uh elected to stay uh offer or well try to email me other things so this will be something 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 uh when all that's ratified and and determined any 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 you go the other thing is it goes on for like four months because i mean there's sheep tags getting turned back in the end of november jack i mean deer deer seasons 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 i can tell you uh

roughly 14 15 days before the archery adam and i've been wanting to have a browser open already it's going to occur before that because it's early we may have somebody that draws a cow elk tag in 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 elect to electronically return your tag in that saving day window and if you don't have alternates to give it to yeah then you're like we're stuck we got this already 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 it'll start happening real i can't tell you exactly when because we don't know when the first tag is going to

get returned it's eligible because they don't have an alternate and to be an alternate 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 oh six one as their first choice that selected to be an alternate so we had a bull elk tag go in the second draw because somebody turned in something that nobody had marked as all so even though there's an alternate option is on choices two through five really it's your first choice yeah it's your first choice home yeah well another reason is i think if somebody doesn't draws the silver state desert or cali and they don't want it that's that starts july first so it could happen in june you could get a first you imagine a first serve governor tag yeah i'd

like it i dare some i don't know all right well good stuff we're excited about it um some of the key the key dates would be may 10th is our application deadline this is this upcoming tuesday um 11 p.m may 10th uh pacific time yeah so anyway and then uh may 20th we're looking at a what'd you call it again jack for uh let the adventure begin let the adventure begin maverick maverick and now are you guys copycat and maverick do they even have maverick gas stations you guys have maverick gas stations out there yeah we we copied uh uh uh yesterday on may the force be with you we copycat okay okay i don't know who that's who who drums up who who drums up those sayings jack i'm sure i'm sure we weren't the first one to call something midnight madness i'm sure other other people maybe some basketball teams in nsa or something yeah so anyway that's uh anyway may 10th

may 20th upcoming dates that we're really excited about uh anything else you want to talk about real quick about nevada what you guys got going on there no it just uh we're just trying to stay ahead of it and we're just praying for rain just like everybody else did you guys get through uh some of those black bears that never did hibernate uh given given given lake tahoe residents heck i i can tell you uh even though we're dry right now we had a fantastic december yeah and that that snow that pretty much the whole state got in december put the bears down this year uh 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 out they just behave you're not claiming those bears that's what i was wondering is how how's he doing i don't know hank didn't have our ear tag in it so we don't know anything about this i can i

know what position uh jack played in football he was a punter he's punting this one oh i like looks down there good in the california side at the tahoe keys that's that we were watching the news there yeah they had that made the news in utah and then we saw yeah what a mama and like three or four cubs woke up and under the cabin that's been scratching all winter and the lady was wondering what some gal could hear them all under there well anyway kind of fun well well appreciate your time jack you're always good to you know we jab a little foam but you're more importantly you're a good uh ambassador for your state as deputy director and uh 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 uh 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 everybody to get your apps in by uh tuesday the 10th 10th may 10th and and and i can tell you if you guys anybody listening has any questions just look at your magazine i i got that in the mail and 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 uh yeah any questions give adam or i 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 uh we'll be talking soon probably probably may 20th for adam about 6 6 30 pacific time yeah something

with uh 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 epic outdoors.com or call 435-263-0777 um