Ep 267: Talkin' Mule Deer and Elk with Dax Mangus, UT Big Game Coordinator

Anything to do with Western big game.

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Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Josh Pollock coming at you from Southern Utah. This is going to be a pretty awesome episode. Before we get started though, we want to give you an update. We are doing the Devin's Deals, right guys? We're doing those Devin's Deals. Yep. You better get in here fast. You better call us 435-263-0777. If you want anything Vortex, call Devin. He'll make you a deal. And we're down to a few left is all. They've been blowing out. I'm afraid they're going to have to pull up another UPS truck. But hey, whatever. Flying at the door. Bring it. I like to see the brown truck once in a while. All right. Anyway, pretty awesome. We're excited. I don't know. It feels like spring, boys. It just feels good out there. Believe it or not, so when I left last night. It does. When I left last night, my car said 49 degrees. I know it kind of takes a minute.

But after I hit the freeway. Well, the heat radiates off the hood a little bit. But it said 46 going down the freeway. It feels good. I swear, I don't know whether it was just my mind playing tricks on me or not. I could start to see a hint of green at the base. No way. No. I urge you to take a drive. That's like Enoch. That's the land of milk and honey from what Devin says. Drive just past there. There was a hint of green at the base of the freeway grasses. It's the fake grass and greenery from some wedding that was occurring, and it flew off the truck, and it sprinkled out through the brush. There are still Christmas tree needles that blew all over the brush. It has nothing to do with the grass. It may cause a wreck, but I'm going to get a picture tonight. I mean, there is no green up. But anyway. It is probably the first time we broke 45 since about October 22nd. Oh, yeah.

I had a guy call from, like, North Dakota, and he says, it's the first day above zero. It feels good out there. Yeah. I was like, yeah. It's the first day it was. It felt good out there. Yeah. So I know. It's always worse than Cedar City. We are reminded by people all the time from Alaska and the Dakotas and Minnesota and Wisconsin. It is. Hey, we're spoiled. We like it above 40. I don't know what else to say. And there's people in Arizona that think we're too cold. Hey, it was 77 down there, the guy yesterday I talked to. And they've got real green up, Josh. They've got real green up.

Josh. Oh, whatever. All right. So anyway, today we're going to, this is like the second podcast in two days. It's like, it's pulling teeth to get a podcast done around here because we, it's just, quite frankly, it's busy. And they're hard to do. There's a lot. I mean, you're kind of exhausted when we get done with them. But anyway. This one's a goodie. This one is. We're going to have a lot of questions about what we're about to talk about today regarding Utah elk. That's right. Yeah. We're going to center this one all around Utah. So the application period is March 23rd to April 27th. But even with that, everybody's just excited about it. They're just excited. Utah came out online with all the, basically their application booklet. And then, of course, we've got it published in our magazine. It's out and about. And we're getting a lot of questions on it. People are just kind of preparing.

Utah is one of those. You can kind of tell when you can get drawn as well as they've got the random element to it as well. You can draw with zero points in the best areas. So anyway, there's a lot of excitement. We've got a lot of excitement here in the office. And so as such, we want to, you know, we've lined up old Dax Mangus here, big game, the big game coordinator here in Utah to visit with us. We're going to be giving him a call. Of course, Adam, Josh, you guys having a, you know, former career in the Utah game and fish, Utah fishing game, whatever, Department of Natural Resources have dealt with Dax in a variety of aspects and different situations. Adam, you as well, you know, dealing with, you know, being a former president of Utah FNAZ or the wild sheep organization here in Utah. And, of course, done that over the years as far as also just being, just living here.

And just being interested in it. Just taking up space and breathing. That's right. Yeah, that's right. So anyway. It's going to be a good conversation, I think. There's going to be a lot of questions. If you've had a chance to crack the magazine yet, there's been a lot of talk and hype and discussion about the Utah elk hunting structure, what that's going to look like. Obviously, the seasons have been switched. We'll get into that. We'll talk about why. Some age objectives have been dropped. And seasons shortened. And then also going to be some splits, you know, in terms of numbers of permits being shifted out of certain seasons, most notably the September hunt. So it's going to make a lot of strategy decisions hopefully clearer for you all when deciding how you're going to play in Utah. I still think it's going to be clear as mud at times.

Because, like you said, we've got where they're adjusting the ages, which means they're going to want to kill more elk. More tags. But then we've got new seasons. You know, a lot of these units have mid-rifle as well as a late-archery and then the short, early-rifle. And how does that affect ages and tag allocation? With the new change, you're going to be able to know permit numbers in early April, at least recommended permit numbers. So that's the biggest reason for that change right there is you're going to know if you zig one way thinking you're getting a bonus tag and they take it away on the proposal, now you can amend your application. You can do that for free in Utah. Don't have to – Plug and play. Yep. That's right. I was waiting for you to say it because that's your – No, it's not my thing. Thing. Anyway. But let's call Dax and let's dive into it.

Yeah, lots of moving parts, lots of skews, and who knows? There's intangibles. We're not going to be able to – we're not going to have the perfect answer here. So there's a lot of intangibles to think about, and everybody's got their own opinions. And will continue to have their own opinions, but Dax is the man behind the madness. Let's talk to him.

Hello? Hey, Dax. It's Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, and Josh Pollock. How are you? Good, good. How are you guys doing today? Doing good. I'm just wondering if you've got a monster. Have you got a drink? Because we're going to be talking about some stuff here. Oh, man. I saw the text you sent me with everything you wanted to talk about. So I got a big drink, and I charged my phone, and I've got three pages of notes. All right. Three pages. Maybe we just start going through your notes. We poked fun at Dax a little bit in text form just about what could be on the docket today and made him sweat a little bit of flashbacks from RAC meetings and some controversial subjects. But, hey, we're not going to be that hard on you. Dax, have you had any rough RAC meetings?

Oh, yeah. I've had a couple over the years. Yeah. Okay. Just wondering. Well, all right. This will be a breeze then today compared to that. But, well, we appreciate you taking time to be with us today. I think maybe before we've introduced you already as the big game coordinator for the state and want to just maybe have you spend a few minutes before we dive in to talk about some of the things we've got teed up with you today. Talk about yourself, your background, where you came from. You know, we've all known you working for the division for, you know, a number of years, 15 plus or 20, whatever it's been. I'm getting old. That means Dax is getting old. He was young. I remember when he was young. So, tee all that up. Where you from and where you been and how you got there? All right. Yeah. Oh, it's true. I do have known you guys for a long time. So, I'm a Utah native. I grew up in Utah.

I grew up in southern Utah in Santa Clara just there on the west side of St. George. And, you know, love southern Utah. I grew up, my dad, my dad loves to hunt. I think my dad loves to shoot more than he loves to hunt. My dad was always super into, you know, building rifles and reloading and all that type of stuff. And I grew up hunting and we loved it. But we were kind of your typical general season Utah deer hunters. Like, we'd go out, we'd hunt on the Pine Valley and we'd shoot like the first two point we saw. And I thought it was awesome. You know, when I was 14 or something, I was like, wow, this is the best. I love it. And so, I grew up doing that and loved it. And when I got in college and moved away from home, I started thinking, I found a big deer shed. And I held it up to all the little two points and three points we'd been shooting over the years.

And I was like, oh, I want to shoot a buck like this. So, when I started going to college, moved away from home, I started putting in for limited entry hunts and started getting a little more serious about hunter hunting. I still, I think I probably only identify as a trophy hunter. I'm not like killing 200 inch bucks every year or anything. But I love to hunt. It's important to know what you identify as, by the way. It's important to know what you identify as. I'm glad you're not killing 200 inches.

I can finally pass like the Forkeys and the yearlings. But I still have a hard time passing like a 24 inch, like 160, 170 buck. Those are like, those are my curse. I struggle with those. So, but I went to school at Utah State. Got a couple degrees in wildlife biology. I actually met Adam first. I was working for the BLM in Kanab. And Adam was the biologist on the Poncigot unit. And he kind of had like the dream job. And I talked with Adam about a sage grouse project down there that I was looking at potentially doing for a master's degree. And ultimately, I decided not to do the master's with the sage grouse down there. And I did a study looking at Elkhorn Deseret Ranch in northern Utah. And that was more aligned with what I was interested in and ended up being a really cool experience. It's the biggest, largest private ranch in Utah. And there were a ton of elk on there.

And it was a really cool place to study elk and work with wildlife. And from that, I ended up going to work for the division. And I was out in the northeastern region. I'd been in the northeastern region. I was out there for about 15 years. I was the biologist in the Bookcliffs unit. And then I was the biologist over, kind of like the lead biologist over that whole region. And then I became the big game coordinator just last year. I've only had that job for not quite a year now. Well, 15 years has flown by. I remember those days in Kanab. I was pretty green back then, too. So what I gathered out of that whole story was when you said dream job and sage grouse in the same sentence. They can't go in the same sentence. That's how you know you've got a true bio on the phone.

So we switched to something cool like elk because I always contended that if it doesn't have 200 inches of bone on its head, why don't we even worry about it? And I was shocked. I'm with you. Sage grouse. I identify with that. Sage grouse are cool. They live where deer live, too. So they overlap. And a lot of money for sage grouse gets used for deer projects, too. That's a good point. That's true. Anyway. But I just wasn't passionate about them. You know, they're a cool bird. Don't get me wrong. But maybe if they had little antlers or something, I'd think they were cooler. Well, that's good. You're a Utah native. You're now in, you know, obviously one of the lead positions within the state agency, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. And that's partly why we wanted to have you on here today so that we could talk, you know, about a few big game issues.

Maybe before we get into kind of what we really wanted to talk about today, which is a lot of the changes with the elk management plan and direction and the implications of seasons and tag numbers and splits and all that, which we'll get into a bunch in a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about the, I guess, the current status, you know, in Utah. We've recently, obviously, the agency's released a shed hunting closure until May 1st in response to, you know, a big winter that Utah hasn't seen for quite a while. Maybe just talk about briefly the decision, how that came to pass and reasons why. And I know there's a lot of people out there in some places that you feel like you've taken their firstborn child's been stripped from them out of their arms.

But talk about the difficulty of that decision, I guess, but then why it was made statewide versus not just maybe in the northern part of the state. And just talk with us about that briefly. Okay. Yeah. The last few weeks have been pretty wild. We're having a real winter. We've got, you know, 200% of normal snowpack in a lot of areas. I would say a lot of central and southern part of the state, it's actually a really positive thing. It's probably pretty good. We do have, you know, significant snow, but it's not super deep and super cold on our other deer winter ranges. So, you know, it's serious enough we're looking at it, but it's not. Generally, it's in a pretty good spot. Northern Utah, different story. We've got really deep snow and we've had some really cold temperatures on a few units.

And to the point where on a few of those units, we decided to go ahead and feed, do an emergency winter feeding. And we don't do that very often. A lot of sportsmen, you know, anytime it snows very much, they think we ought to feed. And they're passionate about deer, which is great. But there's some downsides to feeding. It can really increase disease risks. It can have a negative impact on, you know, on some of those critical winter ranges. It can change deer behavior and migration patterns. So we really look at it hard and take that stuff into consideration before we make a call to feed. But we hit that point. So in Ridge County, the cash unit. I know at times, you know, the Game and Fish doesn't, you know, generally don't want people out just randomly feeding animals either. Or hay bales or whatever.

Yeah, just because they're doing it doesn't mean, hey, everybody help us out and start chucking stuff out. Yeah, maybe talk about that. I mean, obviously deer have to learn how to digest some of that stuff and maybe even can't digest some of it. Maybe, I mean, what do you have to say to that as far as people out wanting to just feed deer in their backyard? Yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, people have the best intentions. They really want to help. And I love that people are passionate about deer. But deer have pretty specific digestive systems. And, you know, the bacteria in their gut that helps them to digest plant material is pretty specialized. And deer eat, they're pretty particular about what they eat. And so, you know, we've seen deer that died of starvation with bellies full of food, but it was the wrong kind of food.

Or maybe it was even a good food that deer like, but their digestive system didn't have an opportunity to adapt to it quick enough. And so it is pretty, it's pretty precarious when you feed deer to make sure you're feeding them the right things in the right quantities. And, you know, we generally discourage folks from feeding deer because of that reason and disease risk, some of that other stuff. And I know sometimes sportsmen see that and hear that and think, well, geez, the division doesn't care about deer. And the truth is we do care about deer and feeding deer is a tricky proposition. You got to do it just right. And even when we feed deer, we know we're probably still going to lose a lot of fawns. The fawns a lot of times are going to die anyways, no matter what we try to do.

But our focus is really can we keep those does alive, those adult does that are going to have babies and going to help us build this population back up. That's what our focus is, is trying to keep those does alive so we can have more babies and grow more deer.

Right on. That's awesome. Well, good. And then, of course, we've just come out of a drought. There's some things you can't control as a biologist. I'm sure you, you know, it just is what it is, right? We want to control everything. And coming out of a long drought spell and then all of a sudden we're dumped on by, you know, a load of, you know, snow and cold temperatures, like you said. It's just sometimes you wonder if you can't win. But anyway, we're grateful down here in southern Utah. So what's the feed mixture? Something like, let's say, some galas or some corn, pumpkins. I don't know. What do you feed those things? Come on. Dax, you don't even have to answer this if you don't want to. Go ahead, Dax. Dax, what do you got for us? I was just going to say, you know, we spent the last five years praying for moisture and now we got it, but we got it all at once. Yeah.

And because of that, you know, especially in northern Utah, you know, everyone's looking at these animals struggling in deep snow and, you know, deer antlers are starting to drop and folks are wanting to go pick them up. And this week has been pretty crazy. We've been watching it. We've been watching it, talking about it. We had some meetings. We had a meeting with folks from Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, New Mexico, and Arizona to talk about shed antler, you know, shed antler gathering, folks that hunt sheds in those states and what they do and how it's worked. And because it's been on the radar, especially since we started feeding, you know, folks are just thinking we got to do something about shed hunting. And we did an emergency shed antler gathering, shed hunting closure back in 2017.

And I don't know if you guys remember, we closed just some portions of the northern part of the state. And then a couple days later, we expanded it and closed the rest of the state because a bunch of folks from southern Utah got super concerned that everyone from northern Utah was going to go hunt sheds in their backyard. And since that happened in 2017, you know, Wyoming had some restrictions, some shed, you know, shed season dates and stuff in western Wyoming. They've expanded those. Colorado has shed seasons in western Colorado. Nevada has shed seasons in eastern Nevada. And so now at this point, if we don't close the season statewide, you're faced with, you know, potentially you're going to have, you know, all western Colorado, western Wyoming, northern Utah, and eastern Nevada in your backyard hunting antlers.

The popularity of shed hunting has just gotten huge to the point where in order to avoid that crazy swamping and having, you know, just having everybody in the one or two places that are still open, we made the decision to close it statewide. Crazy. Crazy. Well, before we dive into a little bit more, and this is going to, the bulk of our podcast is coming up, and I'm going to veer from the script just for a second, but maybe talk about the effects of drought, predation, not just feed, but predation, antler growth, fawn, you know, recruitment, things like that. Maybe just, maybe just briefly touch on that because you've dealt with it, Dax, you know, you've dealt with it for 10 years. Well, the last two or three years. Yeah, especially. Specifically, growing deer has been tough in Utah. Maybe just touch on that. Yeah.

Well, we have a really active deer survival study that we're working on in Utah. We've been working on for about the last 10 years, and we have a bunch of GPS collars out on deer. We have more collars on deer than any other state by far, and these GPS collars. Any 200 inchers? You watching any 200 inchers? They've already shown us. You know, we have a 200 incher collard in northern Utah, and he actually got harvested this year by a hunter. Jeez. That's terrible. Did you sight him? He had to have done something wrong, Dax. The funny thing is, the guy who killed him was like an old timer driving an old pickup. He was wearing suspenders. Classic. Love it. Wood stock. Ran into him. He had it loaded whole in the back of his truck, and it was skinned out up to the neck. You know, it wasn't saving the cape or anything. Got to the collar and didn't know what to do. Yeah, thanks.

Came to our office and said, what do I do with this? Oh, wow. That's awesome. All right. We'll keep going on the collaring and whatnot. Yeah. So we're following these deer every year in December, like before we really get into the winter. We catch a bunch of deer. We measure the weight of the fawns. We look at the body fat on the deer. We take a couple different measurements. It lets us estimate the body fat percentage. And one of the cool things we've learned is that, you know, we were always focused on doing habitat work on winter range because that's where they die. And one of the things we learned was if they don't come into the winter in good condition, it doesn't matter that much. Like if our deer come into the winter range fat with heavy fawns, their survival is going to be a lot higher, whether we have a severe winter or a light winter.

So we were learning that even though they die in the winter range, what happens in the summer matters maybe more than what happens in the winter. And so we're trying to focus on doing more habitat work on summer range and get animals, get them to the winter fat. And then some of that stuff that we can't control as much, you know, if we have a giant, you know, giant storms and big cold snaps, you know, biologists try hard, but there's some things we can't control. But a fat deer can weather the storm, so to speak, a little bit better. Yeah, I don't think any of them are gaining weight in the winter. Maybe on like our extreme southern units when they get like a cheap grass green up, but pretty much nowhere else in Utah are deer gaining weight in the winter.

So it's just a matter of, you know, can they come in heavy enough that even though they lose weight over the winter, they still can thrive. Josh says he's seen green up right here. I did. I want to get a picture. He said he saw green up, but we're just like, come on, we're not talking about your flower bed under the eave there at home. You know where Josh lives, Dax, and it's not, how should we say, it's not the, you know, banana belt of southern Utah, we'll just call it that. So he claims that last night driving home from Cedar City to that blessed valley, he saw green up. And we're just, we're really struggling. We're wondering what he had, A, what he had to drink, and B, whether he should have been driving. Quite frankly, he's a liar. Oh, man. I better get his eyes checked. Yeah. But he said he's going to document it tonight, so tomorrow we'll find out.

As a biologist, I wonder if he was even doing the accurate counts or what if he was seeing bucks and does and if any of it is accurate. Anything you ever do is accurate. He said there was a tinge, but maybe, hey, just before you leave town tonight, clean your windshield and then drive home. Now you guys know the true story while I was asked to leave. So anyway, Dax, well, back to just maybe tie up what we just talked about, about going into the winter well. I think if there's one hopeful silver lining going into this winter, which we're experiencing, you know, throughout all of Utah, but again, much more severe up north where it's been colder, longer, and deeper snows, is that our monsoons the last two years, our deer have been going into the winters really, really good. It was off the charts wet from July through, you know, let's call it October last year. 2022, yeah.

And, you know, from your standpoint, you know, I'm sure you would agree in that that hopefully is going to help. And you probably have exact figures, but that should hopefully minimize, you know, hopefully the losses we might see, unless things really take another turn for here in the next six weeks. Yep, yep. You're exactly right. So, unfortunately, our deer were not in quite as good a shape on some of those far northern units, like the Cache and, like, the south slope of the Uintas, which is where they're having some of the harder winters. But the rest of the state, the deer were fat, the fawns were heavy. I'm really optimistic that they're going to do well. One of the other cool things with this study, you know, we can look at things like that and kind of have an idea, you know, make some predictions about what kind of survival we're going to have, which is helpful and useful.

We love being able to have data that's current from the units where we're making recommendations rather than, you know, citing old studies done in Montana or Colorado when we're trying to figure out deer survival and that type of thing. So, it's been a game changer. One of the other parts of the study has been, you know, when an animal does die and the collar stops moving, it notifies us, you know, it sends an email from the satellites, and our biologists go out and respond on the ground. And on some areas, we found that we had more predation than we had previously thought. And so, we've changed our cougar management on a lot of units. We've converted a lot of units into predator management where there's essentially, you know, no quota on how many lions can be killed on those units. And we're using the data to do everything from direct, you know, how we plan our habitat treatments.

We look at the movement patterns to identify migration corridors and try to work with UDOT to get highways fenced in the right places and over, you know, crossing structures. And we've been using it to identify units where predation is more of a limiting factor than we previously thought. And we're making changes to how we harvest predators so we can try to grow more deer. And I know that lion management, that lion management, I mean, just from layman's terms and guys out on the ground, you know, in the field has worked. And in some cases, we're hearing about a number of, you know, big deer, which is what sticks in my mind, you know, versus other years and even general units. I'm not necessarily going to vet that all here on the podcast, but we can. I'd like to know what you're talking about. But anyway, pretty impressive. I want some photographic proof.

We're talking photographic proof in here. I'd like to see this. Hey, I'm not a liar. So pretty impressive. That's enough, Josh. Pretty impressive anyway. And maybe you've seen that as well. I mean, I'm sure you kill some lions, you know, in the short term, you're going to have less deer die. That's what's going to happen. Yeah. And it helps our populations that might be struggling to rebound quicker. You know, die-offs, having deer that die sometimes because of a hard winter, I don't know if there's anything you can do that's ever going to completely eliminate that from happening. But if we are doing the right habitat work and we're managing predators, they can bounce back quicker. So it's a great time to be working for a fishing game agency in some regard. It's really exciting.

It's the coolest information that's given us ability to do, you know, real-world on-the-ground management to try to grow deer. Things aren't perfect. We still have units that are struggling, but I feel like we have good information and we're doing the right things in the right spots to put ourselves in the best situation we can be in. Public scrutiny is always fun, too, right, Dax? Yeah.

We have a lot of passionate folks out there. You know, I have to remind myself sometimes if people didn't care, we wouldn't have jobs. If nobody cared, we wouldn't have jobs. So today's February 9th. Are you seeing major winter loss to this point? No. So not yet. I think, like I said, most parts of the state were in a pretty good spot. We have seen a few fawns die of malnutrition. They die first. They lose fawns first. We've seen just a few fawns die of malnutrition in, like, the extreme northern portion of the state. Like, Cache County, Ridge County, Summit County, Morgan County. Like, our higher elevation winter ranges where it's typically colder and we have deeper snow, we're seeing a few fawns start to die there. And that does correlate with other years when we've had bad winter loss on fawns, you know, unfortunately.

So I think we're going to see some fawn loss probably in those highest winter range, coldest parts of the state. The rest of the state, we're not seeing it yet. Well, and obviously the next six weeks we'll probably tell how severe that gets or how much worse it gets. You know, fortunately, we're in a slight warm-up. It's not the deep freeze it was. The daylight starts to get longer the longer we're getting into February and then March. So hopefully that minimizes things as well. But, yeah, I applaud you guys for, you know, like some of these tools. The coloring data has been great. You know, it's fun to follow along. There's a lot of different places you can follow on Instagram and different things like that and the DWR webpages themselves about some of that data. And just the ability to react much quicker back than a VHF caller back when Josh, you probably did with the…

Yeah, I started off. Big, great big antennas up on flying. Not me. I don't even know what that was. I don't even know what that was. I'm that old. I had VHF, and if you flew them once a month and got a mortality signal, you flew out and hopefully, you know, you could… Three months later, you could find it. Figure out what killed it, but it was a pile of bones. And, you know, it was just a whole lot different way to react now than some of this real-time GPS stuff that you can get out there. And a lot of times… 24, 48 hours. Find a, yeah, curled up fawn or a doe under a tree dead with no, you know, scavenging in some cases. Taking place. And so you can kind of chalk that up to, yeah, take a bone sample out of a femur or something and determine that. So, anyway, cool stuff. Yeah. A lot of great tools. So, well… Yep. No, it's great. Well, let's…

If you don't mind, I mean, you guys went through a… I don't want to call it a bloodbath, but a long process, I guess, of going through this elk management plan, which is always a… Whether it be elk, whether it be mule deer, those two seem to be kind of very hotly debated. You know, some of the other once-in-a-lifetime species, not as much. But those two, because it's what most big game hunters in Utah have a chance to hunt on a regular basis or have input in. When those management plans come up for renewal, there's a lot of input. And, of course, you guys have a big stakeholder group, a committee with broad-based constituents on that committee to bring forth a lot of proposals at the end result, which are proposals, I believe, that are then made to Utah Division of Wildlife, and then you guys maybe modify, tweak, or put them into real-life application.

But let's talk a little bit about that. Maybe not necessarily about the guts of how it was amended, but just let's talk about some of the highlights of this new change moving forward for this next five or ten years. And then when we get to those specifics, we'll talk about, all right, what's the implementation going to look like in terms of some of these bigger changes? You know, at least in even my lifetime for an old duffer, you know, there are some bigger changes. Back from when Jason and I first, you know, they first started drawing five limit entry elk tags here and ten there. It was like, well, just let them hunt right in the rut. That's cool. Let them put them right in the rut. And it just, frankly, that's honestly how it started, and they never got moved. And then archery hunts got put right before that whenever we could add a few permits and muzzleloaders right after that.

And then some late rifles after that. And we've outgrown it. And it just kind of created that from that system. And we're 20, 30 years now, you know, into a system that I realized a lot of people have points and invested into it. But it was kind of set up, you know, not to maximize opportunity without affecting quality from the very start if you're going to hunt all of every day in September. But talk a little bit about that. And then, yeah, let's get into the highlights of what you guys, what's changed for 2023. Okay. Yeah. There was a lot of stuff. You know, one of the things we spent a lot of time on was general seasonal hunting in Utah. And I'll just tell you what changed there pretty quickly. But that was a big driver and was a big part of a lot of discussions just because our general season, any bull permits, they were just selling out quicker and quicker and quicker every year.

You know, just a few years ago, you could buy them, you know, even a month or so before the hunt started. And then after COVID, it just flipped a switch and they would sell out in a few hours. So that was one of the big changes we did with general season, our general season hunting units. We added a few units that were previously limited entry units or part portions of limited entry units into our general season, any bull hunt. And we split the rifle hunt on that any bull hunt into two hunts. Instead of one 13-day hunt, it's two seven-day hunts. The first hunt has a quota on it that's a little less than what we used to have. And then the second hunt, there's no quota. So it's an unlimited over-the-counter rifle tag, but I think success rates are going to be super low. It's designed to be an opportunity hunt rather than like a quality type hunting experience.

So that's probably the big change to general season stuff. We still have a spike hunt that overlaps on our limited entry units that we manage for, you know, bigger branch antler bulls, older branch antler bulls. But that's probably the big change for general season. So for limited entry, and you touched on it, you know, the big thing that everyone wanted was, you know, rut dates. What are we going to do with the rut? We do more rifle rut hunting in Utah than any other state. You know, there's a hunter, too, here and there in some of the other states. You know, if you're like in the Jarbridge in Nevada or up in like the Frank Church in Idaho or something or, you know, a few special draw units in a couple states where they have, you know, a September rifle rut hunt.

But in Utah, we had, you know, September rifle rut hunting, and it was a substantial percentage of our overall output on our limited entry units. And we had it pretty much on every unit. And we spent a lot of nights in that committee, you know, saying, do we keep doing this? And there was a lot of arguments, you know, and there's different perspectives on it. Some folks were like, you know, well, the system's been this way for 20, 30 years. A lot of people have a lot of points. This is what they want. You know, and then other folks were like, well, this isn't right. If we, you know, hunted elk with a bow in September the way the good Lord intended, we could give way more tags. And everything in between. Ultimately, what we ended up doing was something of a compromise. So we extended the limited entry archery elk hunt. It starts four days later, but it ends four days later.

So four more days kind of into that peak rut time frame. And then that rifle hunt, we still have a September rifle rut hunt. But instead of a nine-day hunt, it's a five-day hunt. So, and it's only five days, but we were looking at the harvest data. And about three-quarters of the hunters harvest within five days. So, and the folks who aren't harvesting, I would imagine a lot of those are folks who have opportunities to harvest, but they're just maybe being really selective. So it's a five-day rifle rut hunt now. The archery hunt has more rut dates in it. And then we changed our weapon splits, too. So it's kind of a compounding effect there. Now, those early rifle hunts will only be 10% of the overall limited entry permits we give on a unit. So 25% of the permits will be for archery, 15% for muzzleloader. And that's not a change from what we've done in the past.

And then 3% are the multi-season, where the folks that draw those, they can hunt all of the available seasons on the unit. And then that other chunk of tags, so 10% of the overall permits will be for the early rifle. 30% will be for a mid-rifle hunt. It takes place kind of in early October. And then 17% will be for that late rifle hunt that we've had that on a lot of units for a lot of years. A lot of units didn't have the mid-season hunt. And we've added that mid-season hunt to almost all of our limited entry units now. And then what's the remaining balance that's going to the late archery? So the late archery hunt is kind of like a kind of experimental, maybe I'll call it. And it's kind of a little one-off thing. Again, we made the commitment in the plan that we're going to start with a really small number of permits,

like 1% of the number of permits available for the whole unit, with a minimum of 5. So on most units, we're going to recommend 5 permits. So 4 residents, 1 non-resident. Yeah. Gotcha. And the only hunts that will have more than 5, I think, will be like the Manti and the Wasap. It's 1% of the available permits for the unit, with a minimum of 5. And those are like add-on permits. They're not part of the other percentages and breakouts of permits. This late archery, it's a couple weeks in early December. They're kind of an add-on experimental type hunt. Gotcha. Well, yeah, and that, so you've gone to, you know, so you've, when I say you, the state of Utah, this is obviously a collaborative proposal that then went in front of the regional advisory councils and ultimately the wildlife board and, you know, now is, was approved and ratified and in place for 2023 applications.

So you've got the archery hunt, a 5-day early rifle, I believe 12-day muzzleloader hunt followed right after that, a very short break of a few days. And then I think October 7th, you've got a, you know, a mid-season rifle hunt. And then what, early October, or sorry, early November, you've got the traditional 10th to 18th or whatever it is. November 11 to 19. 11 to 19, late rifle hunt. And then the late archery. December 2nd to the 17th. Yeah. So, and that's interesting because initially when they were talking about it, everybody was talking about it. There's just rumors that you could give a couple hundred tags on some units and not do a lot of damage on that late archery. And quite frankly, people were a little nervous. Those elk can be vulnerable in some of the units and it could be a pretty incredible opportunity really in some of the units.

And some of the units that'd be tough to kill and help, you know. Yeah. But to put people's mind at ease, it's going to be a very, like you said, it's almost experimental. They're easing into it. Get a few years of data before you know whether, hey, this is truly something we can add even more opportunity of and have very little effect on the resource or not. Or like, well, it's 100% kill and it's additive. It's not just kind of, you know, people out there chasing elk with sticks and snow and not killing anything. So you'll learn something. There is a lot of season. It does make, it does, there's a lot of seasons. There's no question about it. Yeah.

No, and you're exactly right that we left a, kind of left a door open for ourselves in the plan that if that hunt works well, you know, if it's, if it's well received by sportsmen even and has low success rates and we can increase permit numbers without having a major impact on, on what we're trying to do with kind of our other standard seasons, then we could, we can increase permits in the future. But we want to get, get a little data on it and see how it works, see how it's received. And then at that point, you know, make a decision. Maybe on some units it could work really good and maybe on some units it won't work well. So we're just going to kind of dip our toe in the water and see what happens and then, you know, make additional follow-up recommendations after we get some info.

So one other thing I wanted to bring up as well is the age objectives were altered slightly in the plan as well. Could you go over those three age objective categories now? I believe, you know, and what they went from to what they are now. I know the very highest age objective got lowered, I believe, a full year and may have the biggest impact. But could you go through those age objectives for each unit and what an age objective means, what we're talking about? And even with slight adjustments in the age objective, that could mean quite a difference in tag numbers, quite a difference, you know, because to drop a full year might be pretty significant. It is, yeah. So in the old plan, you know, how we were managing before, we had a four and a half to five age objective.

And what that age objective is, is we have successful hunters send in the two bottom front incisors from their bull and we cut them at the lab. And the age of, like counting growth rings on a tree, when they have a period of nutritional stress, they put down a ring, a growth ring inside that tooth. And so the cementum annuli, and so we'll send the teeth in from successful hunters, folks who draw a tag or given a little envelope and we ask them to send us in teeth. So we get those ages to the lab and they tell us how old the bull is. It's pretty darn accurate. And then we look at the average age of harvested bulls and that's, you know, that's what we shoot for when we're given permit numbers. If we're below our target or our objective, you know, we'll cut permits. If we're above that, we'll increase permits.

So in the past, in the old plan, we had units that were managed for four and a half to five, units that were managed for five and a half to six, six and a half to seven, and seven and a half to eight. We had those four age classes. We looked at those and looked at how it was working, what it was doing. The four and a half to five units were not working very well. Our age data was kind of all over the map. Success rates were low. People weren't super happy. We actually got rid of the four and a half to five units. So we converted some of those to any bull. And then the remaining ones, we bumped them up into the five and a half to six. The five and a half to six, though, that seems to be kind of a sweet spot where there still are some really good bulls available. But it also lets us give a pretty decent amount of opportunity. Like the Manti unit, Wasatch unit, Fish Lake.

You know, those are like the three big ones that have like really large populations. We managed those to that five and a half to six objective. And not everyone kills a giant bull, but there's always a few good ones available for guys that really put in the time and the work or get a little bit lucky. And then and we left that one alone. The five and a half to six, we left alone. And then the seven and a half to eight, which was our oldest age objective, we lowered it a full year. And that included like some of our, you know, the premium units, you know, Beaver, Pavant, Boulder, San Juan, you know, the roadless area, the book cliff. Some of those some of those units are, you know, pretty known for producing big bulls. I think they will still produce some really good bulls. But by by lowering that age objective a year, it does a couple of things.

It's going to allow us to have more a more productive elk herd on those units. And it's going to allow us to give more permits to bulls in order to have your average age be, you know, seven and a half to eight on bulls. You have to carry a giant surplus of bulls in your population.

Most bulls. And this is pretty interesting. We looked at this big study over 5000 elk that were scored. Boone and Crockett score and age taken on them over a 20 year period from Montana to Arizona and all in between there. And the average bull scores 320 and it's there by seven, you know, by six and a half. It's like 90 percent there. And by seven years old, it's it's a 320 bull, which is kind of interesting. Like the average average guy in North America is 510 or something. You know, the average bull elk scores about 320. And that's at their prime. You're figuring prime is seven. Yep. Prime is seven. Yep. And there's exceptions. There they're definitely are like individual animals that sometimes grow more after that age. But generally, on average, most bulls are about as big as they're going to be by six or seven. And that is about 320.

So, you know, a 400 inch bull is a is a real exception to the average. And and for every 400 inch bull, there's probably like a 260 bull out there, too. So, you know, kind of on the opposite end of that spectrum. That prime. Yeah. That prime is 260. I see. Yeah. Yeah. The bit, you know, a 10 year old bull or something. And I know guys that have shot those bulls that, you know, they told it didn't break. And it was, you know, eight, nine, 10, 12 years old and didn't break 300. And that bull probably never broke 300 in its entire life. You know, like, no, you know, no matter how much more I eat or how much older I get, I'm not going to get any taller than the six foot two I am right now. So, you know, and those bulls can hit up against that same kind of a threshold.

So so when we manage for really age class bulls, what it really means is we're building up a giant surplus of bulls in this population so that hunters can be really selective and select those really big bulls. And then just generally you end up with the age will go up a little bit. But if we cut the age objective by a year, we ran through all the data, looked through all the numbers. You could increase permits by as much as 50 percent. If you have a stable population. So by cutting one year, you know, if we had a unit where we gave 100 bull tags and we cut the age by one year, you know, theoretically, you have 150 bull tags and meet the new age objective. That's a year lower. Wow. So and it's it's it's it's pretty linear. So on the on that we raised we lowered the seven and a half to eight to six and a half to seven.

And then we lowered the six and a half to seven to six to six and a half. So just a half year there. So on those units, we could potentially increase permits 25 percent. And on the the units that are now going to be a six and a half to seven, we could potentially increase permits by 50 percent. We're not going to do that all at once. We're going to, you know, we're going to we'll be recommended increases on units where where we're meeting or exceeding those age objectives. But we're not going to do like 50 percent in one year. But with the new mid season, so to speak, you know, I mean, obviously you've done it a little bit, say, Wasatch or whatever. You kind of have an idea of what the harvest would be. But you're I mean, you are you're lowering them.

But then you're also kind of having to guesstimate basically what your percentage harvest would be on these other seasons, a five day early rifle, the longer archery. And so there's a lot of moving parts into obtaining this new, which, like you said, you're you're kind of easing into it. And you'll be able to tell more as a year or two. You get a year or two under your belt of this new season structure. Yeah. And that was the idea is that kind of all these different parts will work together to allow us to still. And one of the kind of the themes from from this committee and this plan revision was can we increase opportunity and still maintain quality? We still want there to be good bulls out there, but we're going to we're going to push our hunters to where maybe they can't be quite as selective.

I think our success rates will still be pretty high, but they maybe won't be able to be quite as selective. So we're hoping we can we can still have good success. There'll still be some really great top end bulls available on all the different units. But hunters are going to have to work a little harder or come in a little more prepared or maybe they're going to hire a guide. You know that they're going to have to probably put a little more effort into getting some of those top end bulls, but they'll still be there. So the idea is to increase opportunity and maintain quality.

Well, yeah, so you've got lowering. Well, except for the lowest, the five and a half to six, that didn't change. But the mid one lowered by a half a year on average and the upper one lowered by a year. Then you have the shifting of the bulk of the rifle tags from the heart of September. Now you've got only 10 percent of them. So on a hundred tag unit, 10 total early rifle tags, the rest of the rifle shift to October and November. So it's going to be there's going to be it's going to be really interesting to see. You know, the idea is to maximize opportunity without dramatically whatever that word dramatically really means and is interpreted as is going to have a lot of different meanings to different people. But without dramatically compromising quality of bull hunting or elk hunting in general.

Some people, though, that 320 bull steps out, doesn't matter what unit, they'll shoot it every time. And other people have waited 26 years and they wanted one of those, quote, old seven and a half to eight year old units. They are going to have a decision to make now. Now you're going with very few permits in the early September hunt. Or are you going to pick up a bow? Or are you going to pick up a bow or, you know, what's your motivation or multi-season on a on a three percent of the six to six to six and a half year old unit? Maybe you're going to switch to multi-season so you can hunt for four months and hopefully still have a marriage when you're done with all that. Or not. It depends on the marriage. But there's a lot of things to weigh out. This is a this is a and we've talked about it in our in our February magazine.

But it's there's going to be a lot of unknowns, I guess, a little bit on what drawing odds this does to drawing odds. I mean, I can speculate and tell you right now that early September rifle hunts are going to be terrible. They were they were terrible. They're going to be really bad. And in most cases, Dax, a lot of cases you're going to have maybe one non-resident permit, which I've had a lot of lawn residents ask me about that, because if you're having, you know, five to ten total permits there, you're probably going to be one in many cases. And that goes random. And it's a random tag. So there's those are real. You don't just look at last year and say it took 25 years to draw. I'm going to I got 26 this year. I'm going to draw it. You've got to understand.

That's why we're talking with you today, because these these hunt tables and our odds and last what happened last year to a large extent. Irrelevant to a degree. Yeah, maybe the archery you could say is similar somewhat comparable. Even the muzzleloader, I would contend, because it's now a 12 day chunk in the in the rut. Josh, what do you think that it's more desirable than a five day rifle hunt for a lot of people? Yeah, especially where it's still a modern muzzleloader for guys. You know, I talking to guys at the expo, I'm getting a feel that there's going to be some guys that are going to bail on that early rifle and more lean more towards a muzzleloader. And it's funny, like you said, with the archery odds. I also talked to some guys and I told them, they said, well, what do you think? Can I draw the muzzleloader? Can I draw this? And I said, well, really, you don't know.

But I bet you could draw the archery with that. And and yeah, I can shoot a bow. I can shoot a bow. But mentally, it's hard to go when you've waited 20 years thinking you're going to have an early rifle hunt in the rut. And now I really have to mentally go push through an archery hunt to try and kill a bull. A lot of guys aren't willing to do that. And guys with 20 plus points aren't as young as they once were. Right. You know. And most of them could have already had an archery tag had they wanted it in the past or they wouldn't have 20 plus points in most units. That's 100 percent right. But the positive is, is you do have that extra four days and the, you know, right and closer to the mid rut. So long season and you go first. So a lot to weigh out here. Dax. And one thing. One. Well, go ahead. One thing. Well, I was just thinking, you know, people are similar to this Wyoming.

I mean, everybody's going to rush to make something happen this year. People are nervous. Dax, Adam, Josh, people are nervous that this is the last of the good years in Utah because there's so many seasons on paper. They're just scared. They just they're scared. You guys have reduced the ages. Skews everywhere. Skews everywhere. Hunts everywhere. Kids, women and children flying about everywhere. You know, and people are just nervous. Right. And and I don't know if that's necessarily the case, but there there's people are nervous. Feels like, you know, I could say one thing I always loved this time of year. You guys are probably getting your age data back. Dax right now. I always love to go through the big bulls that were killed in the state that year and just go look and see how old they were. The age thing doesn't doesn't bother me.

Them dropping those older age classes down just a little. So you went and compared so-and-so's bull. Yes. To the age of so-and-so's. I would do it every year. And I would. Can I go do that? No. No. No. Josh. As a biologist, I can't do it now. So what did you find? What did you find? I would say 99 percent of the giant bulls that were killed were seven-year-old bulls. Just like what he's talking about. I mean, some of these. A few of them were six. Known named. Six to eight. Usually not nine or ten or twelve. No. No. Hardly ever. Known named bulls were seven-year-old. The named bulls. Yeah. The special bulls. Six, seven, eight. That's where you're biggest bulls. And it surprised you how many of them are only six. Six or seven. Yeah. But I know these guys in Nevada picking up sheds. They picked up four or five or six sets of 400-inch sets that one bull threw over the course of his life.

You know, now he's 12 years old or whatever. So, like you said, Dax, it may continue to be that big and maybe there's a length of, quote, his prime being four years beyond seven or whatever. And there's also differences, I think, across state lines. I mean, Nevada, as a general rule, has lower statewide elk numbers than we do. So, from a resource consumption standpoint, I mean, they got maybe more to go around for elk in places than, like, Utah. A lot of ours are at objective or above objective. And so, you got areas with low, low elk numbers in certain places. Not all Nevada's like that. But I would say densities has something to do with that as well. Places versus stuff where it's over objective. And, yeah, you can't just keep growing more elk. When you grow more elk on top of more elk, usually there's not as much to go around.

I've always heard that 320 was the number, but I guess I'm starting to believe it. I don't know if I believed it before. You know. Over 5,000 elk over two decades that were scored and aged, and the average bull was right at 320. So, it's a pretty big sample size. This isn't like 10 bulls scored on one ranch or something. We're talking 5,000 bulls over two decades. Yeah. Pretty crazy. Well, and I guess one thing that, and this gets into the reason, rationale, why Utah moved its application season or application period from March 23rd to April 27th. It seems like perfect timing. I know you, and we got it even when I worked for the state. People wanted, they wanted to know what permits they were giving. And if they ever got cut and cut a bonus tag or something crazy got dropped, they would have amended their application had they known that was going to happen.

Well, now you're going to be able to do that. Now it's going to take some vigilance on the part of everybody this year. And maybe we'll get into that, Dax. When you anticipate, I believe it was posted maybe early April sometime that the proposed permit numbers would be out. To be able to analyze those through the month of April, I know there's going to be some public meetings and there could be some adjustments and all that. But what we're talking about now, you're going to be able to, you know, see what's proposed and see, add that other layer of information before you have to pull the trigger and apply by April 27th. Yeah, you know, you made a great point. There's a lot of changes. There's a lot of new stuff. There's a lot. It's going to be a little wild for a couple of years until everything sorts itself out and we can kind of wrap our heads around it again.

But I really think this is a good thing. I'm really excited about this new timeline where folks are going to be able to at least see proposed numbers before they make a decision. One of the things that's tricky that we're always trying to balance is we want to use the best available data and information, the most current stuff we have when we make hunt recommendations. And we've got antlilus hunts that go into January. We've got guys that are doing elk survey flights right now. We're still waiting on tooth age data from some of the bulls on the late hunts. And, you know, we've got our buck to doe ratio information compiled and stuff, but we're trying to get all these different pieces of data together so we can make the best possible recommendation. And it takes time. It takes a minute to get all that information from all those different sources.

And so, you know, we've got to balance that with everyone who wants to be able to put in early and know their results and plan their vacation and all that. And so it's a little tricky. I feel like we're getting better. It still might not be perfect, but we're getting better with this new timeline. What we're going to recommend will come out the first week of April. So the first week of April, like the presentations will be available on our website, the tables with the proposed permit numbers. You know, that's all going to come out the first week of April. So second and third weeks of April, we'll have public meetings, you know, in the five different regions of the state. And then the first week of May is when the board, the wildlife board will meet and decide. So their final decision will be made after the draw closes.

But typically by the time we've gone through, you know, those different regional meetings, if there's a big appetite to make major changes, you typically know about it by then. There might be a change or two in the board. You never know when we do have a board that sometimes makes a big changes at the last minute sometimes. But but at least you'll have a better idea of what you've had in the past when you had to submit an application before the proposals even came out. Well, and my suspicion is now that the Wildlife Board knows that there's even more eyeballs on the proposed permit recommendations and they go through the rack. If there's not, like you said, some compelling, overwhelming shift to, hey, we can't do this there or this there or whatever.

They're not just going to, you know, make some wild recommendation after the deadline's closed as much now. Because that has that defeats the purpose of kind of what what has been the intended, you know, rationale for moving the application period later. So anyway, I know why the board can do what they want. Of course, it has the ultimate say. But I think with that April 27th deadline, then meeting them meeting a few days after that, it would have to be something that's like incredibly compelling for whatever reason to totally deviate at that point. That's right. Away from something that's been already vetted. Here's the cheat code. Watch the Southern Region RAC meeting. That's right. Southern and Southeastern. That's right. Southern and Southeastern. I don't know. If it goes through as presented, you're good. Yeah, that's probably a good point, you know, maybe the Southeastern too.

But anyway, well. Should we dive into one more thing? Well, go ahead. Yeah. Well, yeah. If you were changing gears, then I was going to ask him one more question real fast. On elk. Yeah. Okay, go. On elk. So just so everybody's clear, Dax, let's take a hypothetical 100 unit that is going to have 100 elk tags, a big, bold unit. It's going to have one. Let's go through the math of these seasons. We're going to ignore the late archery. We're going to see there's five tags there. So there's going to be. Three to the multi. Yep. Three tags to multi. Ten tags to the early rifle. Is that right? 25 archery. And then 15 tags would go to the muzzle. And what does that leave left? 30 to the mid rifle. And is it about. And then 20, 25 to the late. Or 17 to the late rifle. 17 to the late rifle. And 30. To the mid rifle. So by far the bulk of the rifle permits. Right at the end of the rut.

Over half of the rifle tags are in that October hunt. Over the half of the rifle. October. Yeah. Right at the end of the rut. Right there. Did we? One of the things you guys brought up was like non-residents and how this might affect them. And if you're. If non-residents are looking at early rifle hunts. There. It probably. You know. It's a bummer. But overall. You know. A rising tide lifts all boats. You know. If we. If we're able to give more permits. Because of these weapons split changes. Age class changes. Season date changes. You know. Non-residents will still get about 10% of our permits. That's what we. That's what we do. That hasn't changed. And so. You know. The mid-season hunt might be the place to look for non-residents that are looking for a rifle hunt. It's. You're. You're post rut. Probably. Most years. And there'll be spike hunters. Potentially.

General season spike hunters on top of you. But spike hunters. I would say by. By Monday afternoon. Like. Three. Four. Some of them have gone home. And. And it is a long hunt. It's a 13 day hunt. 13 day rifle hunt. So the mid-season. Might be. Might be one to look hard at. It's harder. But. Yeah. There might be one to look. It's a long season. You're right. And I think the only real. It is kind of a tail end rut. Post rut. But it's a tail end. The number one consideration. And you know that Dax. Is you got to realize. There's going to be. Spike. Spiking in some case. Cow elk hunters. During. During that hunt. It is not going to be just. 30 elk hunters. You know. On a unit in October. By yourself. So that's the number one thing. To keep in mind. So. Yep. Pretty interesting. So one thing I was wondering. They're talking about some technology restrictions. And of course.

Vetting all that out. And thinking about that. And of course. If we limited. Muzzle loaders. You know. Josh mentioned it earlier. Of course. Right now. We can use modern muzzle loaders. Multiple power scopes. We can dial. Turrets. Whatever you want to do. For the most part. With a few restrictions. Maybe. They can't use smokeless powder. Things like that. But anyway. I guess that would have an effect. I mean. If that were to pass down the road. Which maybe for 2024. Maybe. Of course. That would. That would have an effect. On harvest rates. And. Maybe even draw odds. You know. Possibly. Obviously. People. Not everybody can use open sites. And so. Anyway. Just kind of wondering. Your feeling on that. Or. Or how far down the road. They are on that. And any considerations. You could share with us. Yeah. So we. We had a committee. That sat down. And tried to. Work on. Something like.

Making some. Some legal definitions. For some. Weapon types. That were more restrictive. Than what we currently have. And. We took that around. Last fall. Along with. The out plan. And it kind of. Blew up on us. It was kind of a mess. And we had a lot of. Negative feedback. From the regional advisory. Councils. And from the wildlife board. And so that committee. Has reconvened. And they're still working. Through exactly. What they're going to recommend. But they're. There does seem to be. A lot of appetite. For making changes. Taking scopes. Off muzzle loaders. Is probably one of the big ones. There seems to be. At least a pretty vocal. Group of folks. That really think. That we should move. In that direction. You know. From the division standpoint. Looking at. Success rates. I don't know. If it'll change. Success rates. That much. We looked at. Our general season. Deer success rates.

From. You know. Prior to having muzzle loader scopes. And. And then now. With muzzle loader scopes. And. There wasn't a huge change. In success rates. When we. Corrected the data. Looking. Looking at success rates. On other weapon types too. Maybe a three or four percent difference. In success rate. I was wondering though. Maybe. I think we could still use. One power scopes though. Right? Yeah. Yeah. We could. Red dots. Red dots. Red dots. Or one power. Red dots. Red dots versus multiple power. I could see. Not being a huge change. But if we did straight up. Open sites. It might be a difference. Open sites. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. So. So that. That's something. At this point. That committee's still meeting. There. There's not a. I don't know. What recommendation. I don't know for sure. What's going to come out. But that's one that. That's on the table.

And there's a lot of discussion about. If it does come out. You know. It wouldn't be for this. This fall. You know. Obviously it'd be. Starting in 2024. And there. Everything's. And everything's on the table. I mean. We're talking muzzleloaders. But everything. Whether it be two-way radios. Whether it be. Yep. Whatever. Scopes on rifles. Whatever. Everything's on the table. Right? Yes. Yep. There's been. Yeah. Two-way radios. Muzzleloaders. More talk about. Drones. You know. And all. And all. Different kinds of technology. A bunch of stuff. I've never even heard of before. That I guess. You know. Folks are. Folks are. Interested in. So yeah. There's a. A big. It's another committee. You know. That's comprised of. Folks from a lot of different. You know. Different constituencies. Different interest groups. And. But there's a lot of. There's a lot of. Passionate folks.

That want to see some changes. There with technology. Well. Just to reemphasize this. Dax said it. But. Any of those changes. Would not take effect. Until at least 2024. This is. This is. Committees going through. Right now. It's not like they're going to. Make some proposals. This spring and summer. And by this year's. Falls hunts. Everything goes into effect. It's not going to affect. This. This falls hunts. Right? That. We're not. We're not going to. You know. We're not going to. Have somebody put in for a muzzleloader hunt. Thinking they can use a variable power scope. And then. After they draw the tag. We say never mind. You have to use open sites. No. We're not going to do that. I dare you to try. Because it'll get ugly for some people. But yeah. That's just one of them. Make that. I've had people call. Because they've heard this going in the background.

And they know that the application booklet comes out now. The field regulation comes out in May or June. Whenever it is. And they're worried if that changes. Like no. That's not. That's not how the timeline works. So just making that clarification. Yeah. There's a possibility they might change something. Like you can't use. You know. Artificial intelligence assisted glassing technology. Something like that is possible. Could change. But they're not going to. They're not going to change your weapon type out. From under you in the middle. You know. In the middle of the application period. We're not going to pull the rug out from folks. Or pull a bait and switch on them. We're not going to do that. Hey Dax. When's the expo results coming out? Well. He probably doesn't know that. You know what. I am not involved in that at all. Yeah. Our licensees do all that. I'm not going to apply.

They don't let me anywhere near any of that stuff. Well. It doesn't hurt asking. We're just kind of excited. All right. Okay. Well. Anything else that we didn't cover that you feel is noteworthy. Specific. I guess. To the elk plan. Which I know we took a lot of time going over. These were. I guess. The real. Implications. Of some of the changes in that plan. That people are most. Interested in. Is it's. It's normally the time. Everybody's supplying for Utah. Right now in February. So. It's natural. Everybody's kind of amped up. And talking about it. But they've got a little over a month. Before they can do that. But. Is there anything we haven't covered. You feel like it's noteworthy. Or. Does that kind of. Nail the biggest stuff. At least in your mind. I. I think we got most of the. The biggest changes. I. I think. The main take home message. From the whole process. Was.

We wanted folks to be able to hunt elk. More often. But we also still wanted. To have good quality bulls. And so that's what. This whole plan was focused on. How can we let folks. Hunt a little bit more often. But also still have. Some quality bulls. And I. I feel pretty good about. A lot of the different strategies. We came up with. And I. I hope it can help us. Do that. Because I'd. I'd like to hunt elk more. And I'd still like to be able to hunt. Big bulls. And I think that's what most people. When we did a survey. People want. More. Bigger bulls. More often. In all the units. And when they draw. They want to be the only one out there. With the tag. Yeah. What's wrong with that? Dax. Come on. You've got the keys. Man. We want to hunt 200 inches. By ourselves. Every year. Yeah. That sounds good. Doesn't it? We're working on it. But some of the things we get asked to do.

Are pretty hard to deliver on. Yeah. Well. We really appreciate your time Dax. I know you're. You're always busy. But it's nice of you to take some time. To go over with us. I think it's. It's important. Especially this year. Because of everything. All the moving parts. Like we've discussed. So. Thanks a lot. We'll have you on again. At some other point. I guess. With. Something else. We appreciate it. Okay. Thanks you guys. Appreciate you. You bet. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. Bye. I've got a question for you Jason. Hypothetical. If you had. Come on. If you had. Why me? Well. If you had elk points right now. Which you don't. No. I'm not going to answer your question. No. I'm not going to say where. But would you. Let's say. If you had zero elk points. Let's say you drew. A deer tag. And went to zero. So you're. All of these skews. That we've been talking about. Are at your disposal now.

So I drew a deer tag. Would you put in. And you say this. Because. As residents. I have to choose. I can't do deer now. Yeah. But we can't do. I have deer points. Yeah. Are you putting in for a December. With zero points. A December archery elk. Just. Well. With only five tags. I'm a little bummed actually. I thought. The draw odds are going to be terrible. I thought. Didn't you. I mean. I should have followed. I had an opportunity. But I. I'm glad to hear. Because we all know a few units. We think they're going to be super vulnerable. Well. There's been people throw out. Hey. You guys should. 200 tags. Generate a bunch of revenue. And not hurt the elk. And that's just not true. No. It's not true. People are. Because Logan here is going to win three or four of them. Before he gets one. Well. Logan. Do you want to speak up? Then you're going to. It's not true Jason. Tell him.

Tell him I'm a liar. Okay. Yeah. You're a liar. Good. You and Josh. You and Josh both. Yeah. I've already been called it. Why not? Throw it around. But I do. I'm like you Adam. I like thinking. And Josh. You've. You've echoed. I mean. You've said it yourself. Some of your favorite units would be extremely affected. I've seen the late rifle hunt effect units though. Oh yeah. You know. It strictly. It moved elk from winter ranges. Those first couple years on some of these units. Those guys were hunting bulls that have been down there just chilling all winter long. And guys whacking 370 bulls off the highway. Because the bulls are just up there eating mahogany. We scored. We had one scored here. It netted book. Yeah. In the 380s. Gross. And was a late rifle. Yeah. You know. So when you add a whole new season. You know. Something like that. You might uncover something.

You didn't realize that. Well and you've had units like Wasatch. Remember the Wasatch when they tried to just have a uniform percentage of per net numbers on all units. And the Wasatch didn't work good on the late rifle. They crushed a lot of bulls in November. So they backed off. And that's when I think that mid season was born a lot more. For a unit like that. And they had a very. Kind of a unique split. Yeah. For. Of rifle permits. Put a lot more room in October. Very few then. And that same premise. Some of those units like that on the front. You get a bunch of snow. I mean. They could be vulnerable there. Even though they're on steep flat. But their oak brush mountain sides. Classable. And elks. Stick out like plywood. You know. Out there. You've got those school buses. Like Mount Dutton was one of those. That we had. You know. We looked at that one and we're starting to manage it.

And it historically had. The late rifle hunt had the oldest age. If you just looked at individual hunts. It always came in. You know. You'd have an average age of five and a half to six. Across all the hunts. And then the late hunt would be eight. Crazy. Because you're killing bulls that are coming from the boulder. The Monroe. Beaver. The beaver. That are all later. Or excuse me. An older age class unit. Those bulls are wintering on the Dutton. And so those bulls are getting killed. And so then. At the same time. Sportsmen were getting. Sportsmen were getting. A little fired up about it. Because you have a bull that makes it. You know. Adam's under the boulder a lot. He knows how thick and flat that is. Yeah. You know. A bull can survive up there. And then he goes. And turns into a big yellow school bus. Right. Where it's burnt. Right. Nothing around it. And guys are killing bulls.

That had kind of made the hunts. And they were hoping next year. Maybe he'll be in there. And so they. There are some of those units. I know Dutton's one of those. That actually gives a lower percentage. Of rifle permits. In the late rifle. The late. Compared to the. Because it's an incredible late hunt. Yeah. Quite frankly. Super glassable. Trophy wise. Yeah. Trophy wise. Super glassable. It's not easy. No. But elk are easier to find there. That's why I mean trophy wise. Some people hate it. Yeah. Monroe and boulder bulls load up on there. And so. There's some vulnerability that they. They've made it. And then all of a sudden they don't. Yeah. So there may be some of that stuff. That these. And the percentages we talked about. May get shifted a little bit. You can see a few tweaking. And some subtle things on that. Yeah. But I think the. The immovable parts.

Are probably the archery percentage. The early rifle percentage. The muzzle loader. And probably that October. Is probably immovable. Yeah. But then you may get some units. That they actually pull a few more. From the November rifle. And push into October. Even because of what we discussed. But those are. Those are far more the exception. It'll be interesting. I think even the October 7th hunt. Like. That bull I killed. You know out here. Muzzle. Right. Muzzle. Yeah. And he came in. Like. You know. We had him on truck. Back in the day. And I mean. He would start rutting. Like September 23rd. Yeah. So. You know. By October 7th. He's probably still looking around for a minute. I just think that. Might be. Well. And like. In some of these units. Than a guy thinks. We've cautioned people. To remember. That that occurs. During the general season spike hunt. But. But like Dax alluded.

That midseason rifle hunt. Is October 7th. To the 19th. How many spike hunters. Are crushing that thing. For 12. 13 years. They don't. They're weekend warriors. For the most part. I mean. The first three days. Is going to be. It's just to. Make. Make you aware. You're going to show up. And there's going to be. Orange everywhere. And you're going to be wondering. What did I miss? Well. They're all hunting spikes. Yeah. Yeah. And some of the units. There's also a midseason. Rifle deer hunt. An early season. You know. That's going on there too. So you'll have some deer hunters. To contend with. Yeah. You got that. What they call an early rifle. Yeah. A couple days in. What is that? Let me see. When does that open up here? Early rifle general deer. Yeah. It usually falls on like the Wednesday. So you can see an uptick. Of guys come in on that Wednesday. That opens on the 11th this year.

So you've got the 7th to the 10th. You've got four days. Yeah. And then you've got some deer hunters. Showing up. So there's a few units. With those midseason deer. You know. Not a lot. You know. But. But there are some. Just something to think about. There could be a lot of guys out. And you've waited that long. You're not going to have it yourself. They're obviously not going to be. Chasing the same bulls as you are. But you know. But they're hunting the same elk. Well. Same thing during the archery. You've got general archery. You've got general muskling. You've got. I mean. It's just bringing up to people's awareness. Because that's a brand new hunt. That's never existed. That's right. And you just look at it on. It dates alone. And you're thinking. Well. That's not bad. And then you just got to remember. There's other hunts going on. Yeah.

But the biggest portion of guys that hunt general season spike elk on a year rifle. Yeah. Yeah. And they're probably hunting the first three to five days. And they're done. And the second weekend. Yes. They'll hunt the weekends. And that's it. Good stuff. A lot of good stuff. All right. Well. Everybody. Epic Outdoors here. Coming at you. Southern Utah. We produce a monthly publication. December through June. Talk about all the western states. Drawings. Kill percentages. Our comments on the units. You can see all the changes. And things that we talk about. In our February 2023 issue. February issue. Of Epic Outdoors. Contains New Mexico. Oregon. Utah. A little bit on the Nevada Guide Draw. If you have any questions. Give us a holler. If you want to join. Go to epicoutdoors.com. You can join on there. It's $150 a year. Gives you unlimited help. In whatever it is you need. Western Big Game.

So. A lot of other member benefits as well. I won't. Won't spew them at the moment. But. Anyway. You can go check it out on epicoutdoors.com. Well. And if you haven't joined our service. And it's a time to do it. I mean. It's. This is. You've still got time to get the January. February. February magazines out. As we've alluded. We've broken down Utah already in the February magazine. We had all of this information that was passed and approved. Before we went to print. So you have that. To make your informed decisions on. On Utah. And that is in the February magazine. If you want to join. We've got an epic member hunt giveaway going on right now. Where you can either join or refer somebody that joins and get their name in the hat for either stone sheep. Alaska mountain goat. Nevada elk hunt. Nevada deer hunt. New Mexico elk hunt. Or Utah deer hunt. Or an optics package. So.

Keep that all in mind. You can either join online at epicoutdoors.com. Or give us a call. Like Jason said. 435-263-0777. All right. Everybody. Good luck. Go out. Find some green up. Snow's melting. It's spring. Spring time. Right, Josh? Yeah. Birds are doing what birds do in the spring. Yeah. Come on. Don't touch a shed. All right. Yeah. Thank you.