EP 271: Our Take on Colorado Mule Deer and Draw Odds, LARP in the Park and a Trail Cam Giveaway!

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Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour.

Here we go. Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Josh coming at you as well as Juicebox. Are we going to call you Juicebox now? Juicebox or Gen Z? I like Gen Z. Yeah, seems like the office is torn. Does everybody know how he got the name Juicebox? Did we talk about that? Well, he's just sucking on a juicebox in the background. His videos are all front and center right on him. That's right. That's right. All over YouTube. Now he's the internet TikTok sensation. He's got Capri Suns. He's the old TikTok sensation. Speaking of which, Logan, they're having hearings as we speak. Don't bring that up. It's kind of deep. I had congressional. I had C-SPAN on in here. I was wondering what was going on. And Logan is on the clock figuring out if his life is now over. I know. I think my job kind of relies on TikTok, so I've got to make sure. We've got a Gen Z worried about TikTok.

And if they do away with it, that's going to be bad. It's going to be life-changing. I know. Does that mean he's done here? No. Is that what that means? No, you're not. That's why I'm watching the trials. So how is it? What are we up? Where are they at now? I don't know. The CEO of TikTok hasn't spoken yet, and that seems like that's the big centerpiece for today. Is to figure out if they know everything that we're doing? Yeah, security and whatnot, which. There is no security. Right. It's probably a little more last. Bronson, what were you saying? Bring that topic up when we were talking about. I was just spewing. Odd topics, and all of a sudden sudden sudden cop pops up on your phone. That happens on Instagram and stuff, too. And they're supposedly got whatever Facebook and Instagram are supposedly already sanctioned. What was it we were talking about the other day? LARPing.

What was the word? LARPing. Yes, LARPing. Oh, we did talk about LARPing. LARPers overtaken the. Whatever. Yeah. The castle. The castle downtown. Yeah. And then all of a sudden there was what? Swords and shields and stuff. You guys had LARPing at us. Next time, yeah. Next time we tried to update our. Yeah, nice. This was the same time we were doing the March Madness giveaway thing, and I tried to open it up to put that on Instagram. I had sponsored after sponsored ad of LARPing. But do you have TikTok on your phone? No. So that's my point. That's not. That's what I mean. It's nothing secure. That's right. Right? Facebook and Instagram want to act like they're being discriminated against, and TikTok isn't. Yeah. Bull. Bull. Bull. You guys do whatever you want. The security debate isn't about what they can listen to and what they can gain from you.

It's about if it can leave their system or not. So meta is Instagram and Facebook and whatever else Mark Zuckerberg owns. They can listen to you through your microphone. They track whatever you Google. They track whatever you look at on Instagram. Okay. And then they use that to show you stuff but only on their platforms. But TikTok is giving it out to other platforms. To bombard your junk email and everything. That's wrong. We've got. The other's okay. They are wrong too. They're all wrong. They're all wrong. You shouldn't listen. But we love playing jokes on it, and we've done it. We've done it in our family. And I think the LARPing thing, we didn't start that way, but it's a prime example. It is a prime example because LARPing never comes up ever. No. And it's never searched. We never talk about LARPing. We are not LARPers. Yes, exactly. The LARPer Josh. For the people.

Hey, should we tell everybody what a LARPer is? Well, yeah, I guess. Go ahead. But you're going to have ads like crazy. No, no. No, I'm not. I hope everybody listening to this, playing through their truck speakers. It's 10. It's got some LARPing ads. It is 1028 right now. We're all, before we get off this podcast, we're going to check our phones to see. If we have more ads for LARPing. Shields and swords and stuff. I don't know. Stands for live action role play. But it's the people that meet with swords. Is that what it is? Yes. Live action. Did you Google this? Oh, I know, but I didn't know what LARPing stood for. That's what it's called. How do you know that's what it stands for? These guys. Devin. Lord Bronson. Yeah. I like it. I like it. If you're. You would make a good LARPer. If your mission in life was that you missed out as a stunt double in the movie Braveheart, you're a LARPer.

Yeah, yeah. There you go. Right. So I didn't even know that's what it stood for. Live action role play. I didn't either until Devin. Devin and Wyatt had some interesting college. While you were over at the castle, we had a conversation about it. Devin and them, you know, used to watch, I guess, a little bit. But in kind of. They did? Saturday mornings. Watched LARPing? They gather. Who watched it? They're all over. Wyatt and Devin drove down there. I think they simply wished they could have been invited. They were watching LARPing? But I also thought about when they were in the heat of battle, they thought about flanking them. Dressing up and just coming in and going down. Could you imagine, Devin? Throwing a football helmet. Wyatt, what are you doing this morning? I don't know. I was thinking about going down to the city park. Grab your LARPer. Grab your LARP.

No, they were going to rush it and act like they were part of it and just crush people. Okay. It was not as a, I'm enthralled by what I'm watching. It was more like, I can't believe what I'm watching. Let's go get our own stuff and overtake this kingdom. Visiting with Wyatt and Devin makes me think that my college experience was less than stellar. Mine was blah. These guys have some stories. Yeah. Gen Z, how's your stories? Where are we at on your love life? Where are you at on things? I was just about to tell you about the time I got pelted by a powder balloon at a LARP event. You've been to a LARP event? Are you a LARP? No. A powder balloon? No. Full of the chalk? First off, I want to apologize to my fellow LARPer. I'm not a LARPer. What? Me and my friends would ditch class on Fridays and come over here to Panda Express and go eat it at the park right here. Oh, okay.

And so we're sitting there and they start LARPing and I stood up to walk over the trash can. They thought I was in their event. What? And some dude just pelts me with this pink balloon full of powder. And I'm like looking like what the heck just happened? What color? White? It was pink. No, like the powder was pink and I guess it was some kind of spell or something and you're dead. And I was like, well. It was like a grenade. Yeah. Lay down. Lay down and play dead. Well, I looked at him so confused. He immediately knew I wasn't a part of it. You're hit, dude. Tip over. You're hit. Waiting for me to react. I didn't know what the spell was. Minus 10 points. You didn't hit the dirt. That's a much better story than the love life. Holy cow. Little did I know somebody was caught up in the middle of a LARPing episode.

Don't walk to the trash can and throw away your Panda Express while there's LARP going on. You will be belted. I would pay money, honestly. I would pay Devin or Wyatt to dress up and just go rough. I would pay literal money. How much? Because they might do it. I'd pay them 50 bucks each if they did it. How about a box of shells? Oh, yeah. For some primers, Devin would do it. It'd be all in. You get a pound of H1000, Archibald would do about anything. Oh, he would. No question about it. All right. Well, Bronson, there's a lot going on. There's flooding going to happen. Well, yeah, it is. No. I took a trip over to Nevada and there's water and streams in places that have never had it before. It's kind of crazy. Pretty exciting. It is. Actually. For the desert country, it's going to be too much. If this doesn't start gradually melting and it all comes at once, it's going to be interesting

because we keep pushing any melting. We did have a couple of rain events that started the melting. I mean, we've already talked about maybe. Did we talk about the Panguitch Valley? That's. We talked about it a little bit. Got about six feet of. How's it looking? It's good now. And it got rained on though. And it frozen ground with a foot of snow that gets another inch or two of rain on it. Yeah. You guys had lakes. Yeah. Baseball field was a lake. We're talking about records potentially being broke or maybe have broke today. It's getting new. I mean, it's supposed to snow all week. We're talking about the heaviest snow water equivalent year in the history of Utah since they kept these records starting in 1980, I think it was. Yes. Right. But 82, 83, 84 was extreme. They were the highest. And we're cresting that. And prior to that, what was the highest?

They didn't keep these kind of records. They kept snow depth, but not snow water equivalent. Equivalent. Which we're pushing like what? 26 inches? Yeah. The record was 26. Of water. 26 inches of water. And we were like point, point, point. Standing water in the snow. Standing water. So if you took a 26 inch deep bucket of water, that's the equivalent of what's up there on some peak. And that's 20, 10 to 20 feet of snow. That's also like statewide. So I guarantee you there's probably some that are higher. Higher. These are averages of sites throughout the state. That's how they do say that Utah is now this. It's not like they have one spot. This is the only spot we ever measure. It's pretty rare to have a uniform south to north winter. We don't have those. A lot of times if northern Utah gets a good winter, we can be dry as a bone. Similar to what Idaho, parts of Idaho is dry right now.

Yeah. Yeah. You know. And I feel like a lot of the northern Utah storms, a lot of their storms are often drier. Where ours are coming from the south where it's got a lot of moisture and stuff coming from Mexico. More moisture. And a lot of that. So a lot of times ours. So it wouldn't surprise me. I haven't dove into them, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of these up on top of the mountain up here are probably more water than 26 on the bed. Utah, northern Utah wants the dry, fluffy snow for skiing. Yeah. That's what steers love. Fluffy. It's powder. We like the dense stuff that breaks your back to shovel. No, I mean. We like it, but we like it to melt fast as it goes. But apparently it's over because Devin summarized his snowblower, he said. No, winterized or whatever. Oh, he did. He called it summarized. I don't know. I don't know. He put some stable in it. He did.

And I'm like, Devin, it's first part of mid-March, Devin. And we've had Mother's Day storms here crush the place before. Yeah. Like, we got two months of potential snow. It's funny. But you watch. He's going to break the, that stable's going to be, you're going to have to put another quart of oil in that thing to get some real gas in it. It is weird, though. I'm kind of, I don't know, cautiously optimistic and slash nervous because, I mean, shoot, we've got deer that are, like, say, those Poncicon deer that are supposed to be starting to migrate back here in a couple weeks to summer range. And there's four feet of snow. Be stunned to grow. And it's not like it's 10,000 feet summer range. It's like 5,000 feet summer range. Is there any chance that it won't be a good out of growth year because it's too late of a spring? I think the deer will be okay. They grow late enough.

I'm starting to wonder about elk, honestly. Like, I don't know when the, like, their summer range is going to even open. Yeah, because just. Maybe opening day of the bow hunt. About the time they're fully grown. Just like on my commute back home. I mean, these deer here have had green grass for well over a month. You guys know that. But. You mean. But. All the tinsel you were watching as you're driving home. But driving home, like right now, you go in the evenings. It's a little bit green. There's a significant amount of deer have moved down. Like, they've come down down those flats. It's really, really green. And so. Just interesting behavior. There's a significant amount of deer down there, but there's no elk. So, the deer have already found what green grass is available in some of these areas. Elk's behavior a little bit more.

Well, not the Parties Canyon bunches, but a little bit more afraid of people. Yeah. They don't come right down in the backyards as much, but they have in northern Utah this year. But. Well. But they behaviorally don't do that like deer do. Just like that up there. There may not be some of the green grass like we're seeing here. Some of those higher elevation deer that winter up in some of that stuff up north. They're not on green grass yet. So, yeah, I could see it kind of impacting them. I think their southern deer, they're already on hitting green grass. Yeah. Growing. I like it. Yeah. I mean, they could be. Sealing off pedicles. They're getting fat. They're sealing off the blood. They're not growing yet. It's kind of exciting, actually. It's nice to have a little bit of a break. Obviously, we're not ecstatic about all the dead animals that are, you know.

Parts of Wyoming, northern Utah, northwest Colorado, I think, is getting crushed. Pretty tough. Trust. You guys are talking to landowners and outfitters up there, painting a pretty bleak picture. It is. And even the vehicle and train collisions and things like that that's going on in Wyoming because the deer and elk are coming to any dry ground, appearing dry ground. You've got a straight luge for 50 miles, a plowed road. That's their migration corridor. It's their new migration corridor. That's right. And even the, I mean, I'm hearing it, Bronson, you know a little bit, too. The trains are wreaking havoc. That's what I mean. Migration corridor, now you're in a luge effect and you can't get out. Yeah. It's 10 feet off the sides because some of those drifts are 20 feet deep. Could you imagine what a train, what it looks like if a train hits a hurt antelope? The hair.

I mean, you can't get that hair off of you for a while. I kind of want to watch it, but I don't. I'm not happy about it, but it'll still be interesting. You know how much graffiti, now the graffiti is the worst, the least of the problems on the side of the train car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is just sad. Because remember doing, did you ever go help with those antelope traps up on the park and you'd sit and wrestle those antelope? For literal years, all of a sudden you'd be sitting there driving around your truck and you'd look at this like antelope hair would work loose through the fibers of the coat. You're like, I think. Like a sliver that takes 30 days to work free. All of a sudden you're plucking an antelope. Ugh. A smell. Wire. It's a wire hair. Yeah. Oh. Anyway, kind of interesting. So yeah, there's a lot going on. We've got, of course, it's nice to have some water down here.

It's going to be a change. There's going to be big deer that have, that are going to pop out of the middle of nowhere. You know, you've got a lot of desert, arid places that have an older deer and they're going to reach their maximum potential for sure. It's, it's green. Two to 300% of normal. Yeah. 300% in parts of Nevada and Arizona. Even Utah. 300%. Seeing some high twos at times. Kind of, kind of fun. Kind of, you know, it's also, we talked about it this morning. I mean, these are the years that you put too much on your plate. You're so excited. The years we, we don't hunt just sheep, sheep, goats, and stags this year. Yeah. This is not a sheep, goat, and stag year. Sheep, goat, and stags happen on droughts. That's what you hug us. Focus on some deer applications this year. Yeah. So anyway, kind of exciting. I don't know.

So let's, guys, I just wonder if we shouldn't kind of crush Colorado a little bit. We've, not meaning positively, there's a, we're answering questions every day. Dozens and dozens of guys looking to figure out what to do in Colorado. And there's so many options. There's not a perfect answer in Colorado. You give guys four or five options, and there's another four or five if you really dig, you know. Well, and to that point, there is no, for every point level, there is no absolute best place. And I don't care if there's a 20-point tier that you're at. There's not a no-brainer best place.

You know what I'm trying to say? It feels like it's getting tougher and tougher to isolate the best options for each point level. It seems like it used to be a lot easier. We say, oh, 15, go here. Oh, 20, go here. Yeah. 10, go here. And, yeah, it's a little bit tricky now, I would say. Well, everything's just moderated. I'm sick of saying that word. But it's like, oh, the vent. You better look at that. What does that mean? Somebody's breaking into your place. It's probably a LARPer breaking into my house. Storming the castle. Lord Bronson's castle. You're going to have pink powder all over the place in your house here soon. It was canceled by somebody, so maybe a real 9mm went off to a LARPer. Yeah, some front door. Wow. I just was sent a video by a fellow friendly hunter. Anyway, he said, just a little spring runoff. Just put the output to 30,000 CFS coming off the lakes.

Going to get western here shortly. Well, that's what's crazy about all the little lakes around us. Well, the later we get, the closer we are to 60 degrees all of a sudden. Oh, 70. It turns summer like that. Yeah, 60, 70, 80. And that's where I'm saying I'm a little cautiously optimistic. We can't get a little bit more gradual. Yeah, we need a little bit of warm-up. Yeah. Because like you were saying, the Panguitch, there was still, over in Panguitch, there's three feet of frozen solid ground permafrost over there. So the ground hasn't even started to warm up a little bit for it to suck up. And if it all of a sudden starts melting, it's not going to go on the ground. And all these little reservoirs in southern Utah, Nevada, and I'm talking little. They're little. They're full and overflowing, and we haven't even had runoff. Oh, yeah. Just from rain.

Extra dikes and, you know, emergency dikes and things like that are being breached and crushed. And like there's a lot. There's already we're seeing. So anyway. My volume is off. Sorry for the interruption. But I'm waiting for the text from my wife that, hey, get over here. I just shot somebody. I don't know if she would. She would. She'd dump a dude for sure. Oh, especially if they touch the dogs.

Who knows? Who knows? We all have. You know what? I guess going back to Colorado, I remember, what, we look at two years ago, something when we were in here talking. What was the theme of the conversation then? Two years ago? Yeah. It was, we just need that good year. We haven't had that good year. And then it was, are the bucks up high? And we just, they haven't crawled out of the timber because of lack of snow? They are not there. Or they are not there. What's the determination? They're not there. They're not there. Not even. Yeah. They, they, they, not even a point of, you know, they, they want to maximize the resource and being able to utilization of it and be able to issue as many tags as they can. And then on top of curb and CWD, which takes out, basically in theory, you take out the older age or, you know what I mean? They've definitely done that. Yeah.

And I feel like, you know, pre-rut, rut, post-rut, whatever, winter range rifle hunting with lots and lots and lots and lots of tags. Just imagine what it would look like here in Nevada if we did that. You know, five to six deer seasons in Nevada. Archery, muzzle, or one, two, three rifles. Yeah. Second, third, fourth rifle. And maybe an early rifle in a few units in September. Yeah. I mean, you look like, you know, archery, muzzle, early rifles. And then second, third, and fourths. I mean, it's, it's an onslaught. Well, yeah. You think about just, just the unit that we had several tags for here in this office last year. We crushed it second season, third season, fourth season. We were all there. Max amount of days. You can say it. I mean. With good weather. And, and I think I was the only buck, the only one that saw a buck that was 170 plus, 180s. You know. And I love that unit. Yeah.

I know. Which it's. You wouldn't have loved it last year. No, probably not. It was brutal. It was. And that's. And I think that's just it. And we, so I, so what I was saying is we've covered, we covered, we were there for the entire month of November. One of us was there just about every day. And multiple units. Should we just say it? I mean. It don't matter. Yeah. Unit 22. Yeah. Yeah. Spent time there. Second, you, Bronson, you were there with your boy. Third, Devin was there. Fourth, Josh, you were there. Yeah. Pretty, pretty, it's pretty fun. And we still ended up, we still ended up with some big deer photos. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's not like it's all. It's all out of there as well. Maybe. Maybe. We had a couple. We had a couple. And then remember the one guy had a two teens. Yeah. I saw the one line. I mean. He showed me some pictures.

But for the number of deer you see, it was very disturbing. Lots of deer. And the miles. I mean, geez, you know, you talk about covering miles or whatever. I was doing 70, 80 miles a day on a side by side and stopping the glass every so often and just going and going. And we saw a lot of deer. There were still plenty of deer, plenty of bucks still. But trying to find one older than three years old. But that exact thing, idea happened everywhere. We were in the Alamosa Valley. And it was there too. It was everywhere. It doesn't matter if it's 68 or 79 or 62 or 22 or whatever it is, you know, 35s, 18s. 35 actually did pretty good. But it feels like it was rough everywhere statewide. And that's what we're kind of talking about. Yeah. I feel like, you know, we've hunted. I will. Sorry to interrupt. No. I was going to say, I do feel I'm getting less calls. I'm getting a lot of Colorado calls.

But it isn't like it was two years ago. And if you look at the points the last two years, a lot of units last year took almost the same points as they took the year before. Yeah. Which that point infusion, when these dates kicked late. When the dates kicked late, there was a. There's people, I think, that have burned their points. A lot of people have burned them. There's still people that haven't. I agree with that, though. It does feel like a little bit less. But it feels a little bit lighter, I think, because the top point has been knocked off. And rightfully so, you should have gone and hunted. And we're talking about it now. Like, where do you go? Just throw a dart. Make a good educated decision. Pick second, third, or fourth. And go give it heck. I mean, even us this year. Most of us don't have the points to draw what we would really want. So we're going to play the turn back tag.

Which is what? That's my point. What would you really want? I have two points. I mean, so I have. You mean how many points to each have? What would you really want? Well, something that's probably not there. Even if I could get it. Like, I'd take a 44 tag. But even a second takes 15, 15 points. So I'm not going to. It doesn't matter. I'd take a, you know, a solid third in a unit that has the potential. But most of those are taken low to mid-teens. The units I would really want to draw. Yeah. So you're going to have to try to find a landowner tag or try to play the turn back tag thing, like, all summer long, like we all do. Or just even accept a tag, you know. Like, there's things. And that's what ends up happening. Yeah. Meaning, even landowner tags. Like, it's not like we have the corner. Like, they change year to year.

Some of these landowners take them two or three years to draw a third season tag in their unit. And so, like, you have to take what you find and say, all right, I'm going to go there. And we do that. We've gone to, well, like, 22 last year with some of us. You know, finding tags or turnbacks or whatever. You take what you get and then just go make the best of it. That's what we're going to be doing this year. Unless you have a different plan, Carter, that I don't know about. If so, I'd like to know what it is. I'm trying to come up with one. Yeah. I don't know. That's the thing, everybody. It's really easy. Sometimes it's kind of funny. We'll talk to guys on the phone. And it's really easy to lay plans out for them. Oh, you're at two points. This is exactly what I would do. And then 14 more questions later, you're like, this guy's grinding me out. And I've already told him what to do.

You know what I mean? But then I put myself in his shoes and I'm like, yeah, I don't know what I would do. You know, personally, if I had two points, Browns, or if I'm sitting in your shoes, there's a lot of options. A lot of options. What are you going to do? You know? Points only. Right. But I mean, are you? Absolutely. Absolutely? Points only, yeah. Okay. There's nothing I want with two points. It's just, there's just not. Right. Not that I'm going to start my clock over on. Yeah. And the thing I saw, there were some good deer killed, just like you said. I mean, even flipping through our magazine, you're like, man, there's still good deer over there. Oh, yeah. But I think just the unit of, this is the unit to be and when. And some of those deer came out of units that are only taken a couple points. You know? Well, that's the problem with using a lot of points. We hunted Gunnison.

And, you know, the deer that were killed in Gunnison, some of the better bucks you could have killed in one or two point areas, 35, 36, 18s, whatever. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yep. It's easier. There's been a slight uptick in some areas we've seen that have had tag reductions. Slight. Yes. Slight. Improvements. Slight improvements. Yeah. Maybe unit 70 or something like that. You know, slight improvements. We've seen some tag cuts. See, we've got some tags in 35, 36. Some. Yep. There's still a ton of tags. But a slight relief of pressure is maybe allowing a few deer to grow up. That's what it feels like. And the good thing about it is, too, they do generally run high buck-dough ratios over there, which compared to, say, like a Utah, they run higher buck-dough ratios. Compared to our generals. Yes.

Better than our generals, which basically tells you there's more of an opportunity that a deer an older age-class buck could get by. The problem is they've been running these dates so low that a lot of those, that's when those mature bucks are vulnerable. So a lot of the bucks that have gone home with guys in the back of the truck the last couple of years are the mature top end. And so as long as, I feel like if those dates continue to run late like they are, that that's every year. They're going to take those mature ones off every time. Or the almost mature ones. Right. And so anyway, that's where the problem lies, really. There's still plenty of deer, plenty of bucks, but that top end mature buck is too Well, and people have to take one home, man. I mean, I'd take... That's... People have to. I just, even myself, like when I left, I was texting some guys just some bucks I was seeing

and... They were headed to dump them. And guys were like, what? If you do not come home with that deer, if I don't get a text, you're talking about like the last day. If I don't get a text at 435 tomorrow on the last day with that one, you have to picture that buck, I'm going to be mad, you know? I'm like, you know... You're like, I got to get out in the cold and look at the deer. I'm like, I can just drive home and not have to take care of something. And I'm like, yeah, he's a clean hair. I mean... Yeah, I mean, I had this deer. He was cool. He was... But I don't even think he was 170, but he like grew out and then like his twos almost touched. They were literally within an inch of touching at the top. Yeah. He's a cool, funky deer, but yeah. The only tempting quality about him is his twos about touched. And... What are you still talking about? Yeah. And it was just like...

It burned in his mind. Did he have two eye guards? He would have died. Yeah. But it was just like... And then you get down to this. But I think a lot of guys are like, I've paid good money to come over here. Oftentimes you're in it, $1,000 for non-resident to go over there for whatever food, gas, lodging, whatever. And so most guys feel like, I have to come home with something. You came home with memories. Yeah. I did. I did. And that's why you hunt anyway. Yeah. You don't hunt just to kill stuff. Did you guys roast a little Cornish game hen over there over a fire for Thanksgiving? No. Well, we actually had a Dutch oven full of mutton. Whoa. There you go. Yeah. So that was good. I underestimated you had Royce involved. Yeah. But I did. Actually, we had turkey dinner. I took, I mean, it was a bunch of pre-made type stuff and everything. Yeah. Throw it in the microwave and cook.

But yeah, we had, my dad and brother was with me, so I had to make sure they didn't miss their Thanksgiving. I feel like I want to just go unit by unit and crush this place and just give our feel. But I also...

Unit one. Top five. But you know, I just... Top five units in Colorado are... Anyway, I don't know. I do feel like we're way bridled. But a lot of it is we can't really tell where the next Giants are going to come from. Part of that is Gunnison. Unit 54 just crushed the place two years ago. You know, 2021 was incredible. Pounded many Giants. Lots of them. Last year just kind of... One. ...was there. That we know of. A little bit underachieved. But that's to be said with everywhere. There's almost never a unit. 44 maybe. 44... Look at the tag numbers are so low. It produces more consistent than anywhere just because there's no tags. It's fun. 44 is like... Let's set it aside. 44 is like talking about 13B in Arizona or say the Oaks or Henrys or Ponce or something like that. Let's just set it aside. It's one of those that... It's intangible. You can't... It's a non-issue. Yeah.

Can't go there. So the other units that are more, Wilkers call them, two to 15 point type units, it's like they never have a duplicate great year back to back. Right. They have a good year. The next year's flat. Well, 44 was unbelievable last year. Back to 40. And it's not... It can't be. They killed them all. It was the perfect case. I don't know. It was the perfect weather. It was pretty good the year before. Pretty decent the year before too. And it was better last year than the year before. So I don't know. If you didn't kill it 200 to 220, you feel like you failed. And that's not the case. Hunting is hunting. But with social media and everything, you see every single thing that even wanted to die. You know what I mean? Even looked big, you see it on social media. And so you feel like you're the only guy that didn't kill one. But 44 made that...

It made the whole state look good last year. And it wasn't. So I guess just as a random thing to throw out, if you are considering... I talked to a landowner that lives in Craig the other day. So up kind of in that northwest corner, you know, be... You may want to be a little careful up in some of that country. 3, 4, 5, 11, 2, 11. I mean, Wyatt would tell you to go there every year. 22. Who knows? You know, 22, 23, any of those up in that section up there. Because we did hear there was a lot of deep snow in Meeker that way too. We've been hearing that for like 6 weeks or 2 months. And it just kept coming. So it's been a long, relentless winter in that northwest corner. That's the only spot in Colorado I've talked to or heard from guys or whatever that said it's pretty bad. Gunnison's fine. But yeah. Talk to guys. Seems okay.

Everywhere else seems like a fairly normal to slightly above average winter, which is good. But that would be some of the only stuff up there that I would be a little concerned about. But then even then, it's going to be, you know, your fawns. A lot of it you're not going to see for a couple years anyway. But just deer numbers overall might be down. And if there were some older age class bucks in there, they could have died as well. No, they're talking antelope. They're talking elk even. I mean, it's... Yeah, it's all the species up there. We're getting... Don't you say they took the sheep off the winter range? Yeah. Tell us. He was just saying that they have sheep on winter ranges. Sheep can eat just about anything. So their winter ranges don't need to be amazing. And they... The snow got so deep up there that they had to bring them back.

And they were feeding like a semi-load of hay a week just to keep these sheep herds alive up there. And he said he's never seen it like that. Crazy. Well, just north of there in Wyoming, that red desert, that south-central part of Wyoming has been crushed probably the hardest too. We've all heard about southwest Wyoming and they've had their issue. But it's worse in that south-central Rollins type area. Anyway, if you looked at the proposed antelope numbers there, we're not going to talk about Wyoming yet. And we'll have it probably in detail to talk about the deer and antelope there maybe in a few weeks. Yeah, they're proposing major tag cuts. Yeah, major tag cuts for antelope in that part of the state. So anyway, but that's what we're hearing. You know, there are traditional places like the Eagle Valley, Eagle Vale, Gunnison. They're traditional little bit ice boxes for Colorado.

Gunnison's most known for that. But those deer are also born and bred to survive that. And it's not a catastrophic big winter there. It's not. It's an above normal winter, but it's not catastrophic. So we're not hearing, other than that northwest corner, not in order to where you want to draw the line. But I would also say that a lot of that part of the state in general too has a lot of mix of public and private land and high tag numbers. It's not normally, I'm not going to label them as trophy deer because they have a lot of tags, a lot of private land. And so it's not normally where we hunt, but a lot of people do hunt there on private land. Oh, there are a lot over there. A lot. And there's been some big bucks killed in some of that country over the years too. But it's not like you're saying. It's not like your trophy destination. Normally no. Yeah. That's right.

So I don't know, Bronson. I don't know.

We take pride in hunting a lot of different units across the state of Colorado and spreading our guys out, kids, wives, whatever. We've tried a lot of things and not afraid to just go figure something out. We've hunted units for the first time and been very fortunate. We've hunted some units for the first time and never want to go back to that unit either too. And that's kind of what Colorado always has been, but even more so now. Like there's no clear cut right or wrong for every point level. There's options. And just pick something and do it. That's the one thing I love about our minimum points query where we can go through and do a query of zero to two. And we always kick out to the side what it took to guarantee it. But generally it's a percentage with one point under. And you can go click that individual unit or hunt or whatever and look at it.

And it'll tell you exactly what the odds were last year. And I just, I love that about it. When I'm consulting, I always, this guy will be like, I have four points. So I'll do a query from, you know, one to four, one to five or whatever and say, okay, this is what it looks like you could get. And you could do all seasons. You could do just thirds, just seconds, just muzzles, just archery, whatever. And I just, man, it's so helpful to just, here's your options. And it's generally that long. You know what I mean? And I don't think we talk about it as much as we probably should. And a lot of guys I talk to on the phone don't realize they don't really utilize the website that we have. It's unbelievable. And things like that that we have. Most guys look at the magazine. I use it 30 times a day. Yeah. And they're like, well, I don't even see half the units on the magazine.

Well, we don't report that. But if you go online on our website. And so if you're looking at draw odds and those kind of things, if you're wanting to know maybe what's the best historical unit or what options I have, that's more like it. Yeah. Throw your points in and you'll see what options you have and then choose from there. And we're focused on a lot of our talk right here on deer, but the same thing goes for elk. You got elk points. You got five elk points and one archery elk hunt this year. Throw it in there. And there's a certain amount that we can print in a paper magazine every month. Everything's online. Antelope's a little different with now having non-resident quotas. It's going to be interesting this year. That's going to change it up a little bit. There haven't been a discrimination between resident and non-residents.

And frankly, non-residents have kind of dominated the draw because we have a lot of points and people do. You just save them to go. It's going to be harder. Yeah. You're just buying them because it's three bucks, nine bucks, whatever over the years. We did have Colorado. You're going to use yours. We're just buying that pretty fast. No, I'm going. Well, boldly. I forgot. I got to put that. Let me email myself real quick. I got to put that on my hunt schedule. Here we go. Right here on a hot mic. You never know what video cameras are around here. Keep that down between your legs somewhere. You might even have a video camera down there. Who knows? Logan, what have you laced this place with? Well, I can't see your password right now, so I think you're okay. How about why don't you just hand Adam and I your phone? We'll go ahead and add it to your schedule for you.

Anyway, I'm just saying, okay, I'm ready now. So, yeah, I'm just saying, you know, there was that quota changed, and then also for, you know, they changed some 35% non-resident down to 20. They did that new. For the future. Oh, yeah, the Ratchet, it used to be like set from 2006 or something, and we were getting a good ride for the last 14 years. The three-year average, yada, yada, yada, whatever. And they reset that to 2021, I think. So, there's new units, and we highlighted those in the magazine. New units that are going from last year, you got 35% of the tags went to non-residents. This year, there's going to be only 20%. In some cases. In some cases. So, it didn't affect widespread. It only has units that took, what, residents six-plus more as of a three-year average ending in 2021, right? Yep, three-year average ending in 2021, and then it'll update one year each year.

Every year after that. So, it's going to stay up, and it's going to be real interesting. There's talk, obviously, in Colorado. The commission's approved conceptually this 75% to 25% split for the future. Which would be across the board. But that's not going to affect this year's draw. There's things that have to ratify first and go into place. But, yeah. You can't say Colorado's not fair to non-residents. No, you can't. We can't. They are extremely fair to non-residents, in my mind. The downside is we all just wish there was giants for everybody. You know what I mean? And the rifle rut hunting. That's pretty cool. You know, right? I mean, so that's the trick is where are there a few deer slipping through? And that's what we're looking at these units saying, where are there some deer that are old? Older deer that are, for the time being, because it doesn't stay long.

We've picked a few units over the last five or six years, some of us. Yeah. And that window seems like in two to three years closes. Like, they're no longer. Well, and we've killed big deer in 22 and 21 and 61 and 35 and 44. And, I mean, you know, 68 and Gunnison. And, I mean, we've killed big deer in these units, but you feel like you killed the only one available that year. The breeder. And you now have to find a new place. The breeder. It never feels like you can just keep going back and having awesome hunts, even with land on our time. And I would say we rarely do individually go back to back the same year to the same place. Part of it is we are adaptive in our schedules. Sometimes, you know, a second maybe fits our schedule better than a third or something. Some years, you know, you're going to do something different. Whitetail hunt or something like that.

People are doing that this year. Hold on. Let me email myself. Yeah. There are some whitetail hunts that are going to happen. But our point is we have gone back to units often and maybe taken a family member because they got the points to draw now and all that. We're not doing that. But ourselves, I can't think the last time. Well, you killed a big buck in 43 how many years ago? No. I hunted there twice in a row. 2005 or 2006. Right. And how many times have you been back since? Never. And it's been pretty decent. And it was a 200-inch year. And it's been pretty decent. It just went from an easy to draw second choice or to not. And at the point, I had a bunch of points. But you have two points right now. I know, Jason. So there's options for you. Yeah. That's a great option for me. Thanks for the consultation. But I guess that's what I get from my membership at Epic Outdoors.

And you killed a big deer in six one year. How many times have you been back since? I took a kit back, but I haven't been back. And nor do you have any desire to go back. Those are the type of... But that's my point. Just like you in 22, the last probably really big deer. And I sent some people there here in the office last year. And they hate me now. Well, and I've been there with you that year. So I know how it was. It was even better that year. And that was... It was even better that year. And we've said that story. I don't want to go back to it. But like that pumpkin that smoked that deer out from under you. I mean, geez. I showed my boy that. I showed him all where it happened. Showed him the buck in the video when we were there this year. I said, this is right where it happened. It wasn't a giant. It was a 180-ish. 180 probably maxer. But it was well built pretty dear.

I'm calling it 190. No, come on. It was legit. No, it wasn't. Yeah, we're just... If it was, I would not even have called it on the radio. They're 300-pound block bodies out there. They're always bigger than you think. I got Jason down there to maybe video some excitement. Geez, I wouldn't have driven there for a little old four-point. No, you had a dead thought. I thought it was legit. I came. I said, hey, maybe get down here. Maybe I'm going to shoot a deer. Pedal down. Pedal down. And he got there within five minutes. And I said, too late. Gomer Piles shot it. And not that he's a bad guy. I'm just saying Gomer Piles, anybody we don't know. Just a guy, random guy out there. But remember when he was walking around trying to find it? No. He was just... I mean, walking and walking and walking. And we're like, that's how stuff happens. He's going to walk away and go kill an owl. Yeah.

You know? And we couldn't see it or we'd have helped him. We didn't know. All we did was hear the shot. The deer ran off. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway, kind of funny. But I guess my point is you smash a big deer up north. Then you... You know? And we're unit hopping. Oh, yeah. And I'm going to... This year, I have no idea. I mean, again, I'm in a different situation. When you're trying to get a turn back tag, you find out, you know, every week we try to get a different tag in our cart in that scenario. And landowner tags, it's going to be what my season looks like on first part of June. If it... This is kind of funny. Bronson, can I bring up another one? Sure. So you hunted like 25, 26. Oh, yeah. Didn't have great hunts. Oh, not decent hunts. But went back a lot.

That's my point. That was also a little bit different era. And you could draw second choices quite regularly at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're fourth a few times. Yeah. But, you know... But you knew it had the right genetics. Saw a big, big deer. Yeah. One deer. First year. And it had me hooked. And then it just wasn't ever like that. Perfect conditions. Really big deer. How big? 210, 15. Big. Jeez. Big deer. Fogged in. Snowed in. On a five-day hunt, you pray for snow until you get too much snow. So I'm like the maybe third morning or third evening of the hunt. And then the whole day four snowed whiteout the whole day. And the fifth morning, which is the last day of a fourth season, snowed until about noon or one. And I'm like, dude. And I'm just sitting up there. I had a bonfire. I'll show you the picture. It'll be a good picture for this podcast.

Show the bonfire for me and my buddies built just in a whiteout. Yeah. And we're 1,000, 1,500 yards away from the deer. But you got to see it first. And then, all right, I'm taking off, guys. You watch it. And finally, that evening, it broke. And I said, all right, I'll go ask for, I don't know, two, three hours. If it didn't show up on that ridge, I'm going to smoke a backup buck. And I ended up smoking a backup buck right at dark and had a crappy night all by yourself shooting a 300-pounder packed up in at dark in November all by yourself. Were you at like 10,000 feet? Had to cross a canyon? This was not that year. Oh. This was a different year. But there was a lot of snow and it was cold. And it was, that night sucked. Packing a whole deer out on my back, boned with all the clothes that you had. Because fourth season, you've got to have a lot in your pack. Yeah. Fourth's cold, man.

And then you have a lot of, and then you put a boned out deer, cape, head, anyway. I remember. But I haven't been back. And it's, I think that ran its course. There was also periods in life, and we've all been there. When you're already in life, whether I didn't want to pay, you know, a grand or two for landowner tag or I couldn't. Well, I think two is you knew in your mind it can happen. Like it did. Yeah. It did happen. You did see one. I've done it a lot. And so if you could get an affordable landowner tag or a second choice third or something, that was my plan. And now, you know, landowner tags are hard to find for each one. Really hard. So it's, you sometimes take what you can find and get. And the second choice tags are even harder to get and find and maintain points. And generally, I'm willing to accept, most of us, I think, here, we've been to Colorado

enough that I'm willing to accept not getting a second choice tag in the draw so that I have my turn back tag options all summer long and hopefully find a landowner tag. Yeah. And I think to expound upon that, if you have a tag in your name, you're not eligible to get one of the Wazoo turn backs. So if you get one as a second choice, you've got one attached to your name. You're not eligible. And add one to your cart and check it out. But you can, if you do draw it, you can do the, you know, a little pushback period. I call it the pushback period. Yeah. If you draw a tag as a second choice and you don't want it, you get about what? Well, you can actually do it 30 days prior and ask for a refund because you already gained a point. You know what I mean? Yep. You can do that and you gain your money. Yeah.

But you better do it well in advance of the first of August when the turn back tags start going on sale. Because it's got to get processed by Colorado. Right. And your account's got to be wiped clean and I do no longer have a deer tag and you can start buying them. But I was going to get one of those turn back tags come heck or high water. I even went over there and walked into an office and had the gal help me and I couldn't get one. They're hard. So we talk about it like that's our goal. No. But Wyatt got one. And it happens. It's very hard. But I mean, I'm willing to play that game and find hopefully a landowner tag that I send my price range and the unit I want comes up. That's my plan in Colorado. Well, I'd say even some of those you notice that you can get on a second choice. There's actually quite a few of those that'll go in the turn back list.

So if it comes down to it and you play it for a while and it comes down closer to the end of the hunt. You get that same tag. You could grab the same tag you could have drawn and just saved yourself a little bit of a turn back headache and all that. You can just kind of wait and try for a better tag. And then as the hunt comes closer, you say, okay, I'm going to try and take that tag. Well, and it's hard to believe that things change. So 25, 26, it's changed. Like you don't really want to go back. You know? Also, your knowledge has changed. You've learned a lot since then. I'm also getting older. So what I mean by that is you're in the same boat. Josh, maybe you're getting there. I don't want to squander another year in Colorado with something that has a 1% chance of me. Right. And 1% is probably too low.

You mean you don't want to take the meat wagon to a cluster of units with all the kids and wife and everything and come back with no meat in the meat wagon. You're in your life. You don't get back. You do it once. Josh, you and I did it. And that's what's funny. We talk about 22. You and I did that. Both of us. Yeah. Of course, you guys should have smashed a whitetail. Yes, we should have. And a big deer the last day. Yeah, and the big deer. And then I went back on your knowledge and the big deer wouldn't leave private. Yeah. You know? I think that's just it. We saw him for the literal 30 seconds that he was off. The doe left and came up and hooked around. And that's when I saw him and he was heading back, too, and gone on that chunk. Yeah. I just meant my being older. I've done a lot of the turn back. Second choice, third choice, just to be in Colorado. I had a second choice last year.

Well. I turned it back. Got a refund. Did you push it back? No. Or did you send it? No, I sent it back later because I was like, ehhh. I want to play the turn back. Yeah. He got a kill, though. I did. I loved it. I loved it. I beat the system. Yeah. It wasn't 100% on second choice. So I beat the system, you know. Anyway, but there you have it. So there's a lot. And there's just a lot of options. And things change. And that's, I guess, going back to things change is it's hard in our mind. You have units. I really have units. I love to hunt. Josh, you're watching it in some of the country that you've hunted. Yeah. Recently. And you've watched it change to be even tougher. Two to three years. And when I hunted it, it was way better than when you hunted it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Ten years prior. And I guess that's, I don't know.

I'm kind of getting the, I think the days of going into a new unit that you haven't scouted, you know, e-scouted or whatever, you just go in there, get some advice from friends or whoever that's hunted before and you go in there and kind of as you're scouting, you're hunting and the chance to run into a big buck, you know, is, it's always kind of used to be the case. So going to a new unit to hunt wasn't a biggest gamble as it is today, I feel like. You could go to a new unit and still kill a big deer with, with some blind luck, I guess you could say. And I feel like that's gone a little bit. So to me, I'm, I'm almost looking at it. My take on Colorado now is, you know, I've been to a few different units. I've been to as many, nowhere near as what you guys have had, but you know, we, we've collectively in the office been to a lot of different units and stuff.

But my, almost my take now is I might just end up trying to go back to a unit that I know. That you like. That I've been to. Yeah. That I like. I like the country, but I've also scouted it and learned it. I know where to go, where not to go. If the deer do this, if the weather does this. And just the confidence to keep after it. And just say, you know what? I'll take that tag and go back this year. Maybe there's not a giant there, but I know what those deer do there. And the, the odds of a big deer being there are probably just as good as any other unit. Yeah. And I'll just go and, but maybe I don't do it every year either now. You know, maybe like I was New Mexico looking at some stuff thinking maybe I just for go and do something weird and go to try and go to New Mexico on a deer during that timeframe instead of going over there this year and give it a break. I don't know.

It's hard not to try to be there, but it's hard to be as excited as maybe we once were to be there. And that, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like there's just good options and it's hard to sit out of Colorado. It really is. Yeah. But, but, but with some of the other things, I'm just praying that I do better in the draws in Utah and Nevada and Arizona this year than I have been doing. Yeah. Because I think those are the states I would really love to sink my teeth into if I can have some deer tags this year that I've been basically, you know, we joke last year, go north, go north, go north. The last couple of years and some of the Wyoming and Idaho's and we did that to some extent, some of us. Wyoming's not a figment of my, of my memory. Yeah. I was, I was basing my whole year around Wyoming. That's right. This year, 2023. Oh, I know. I was. It's not even. I was too.

It's not even a, it's not even a 1% option. And now we're so excited about these Southern states, but it's also, they're states that are very hard to draw tags in Nevada, Arizona. I mean, Utah. Extremely hard. New Mexico. If I'm talking really good deer tags in those four states are like as hard as any state to draw deer tag in. So the interesting thing about, I'm still hopeful and you, and Hey, it's always good to have hope. But the interesting thing about Nevada is a lot of times when you see these upticks in moisture, you have an incredible year looming. And now we're seeing, yeah, there's an incredible year looming, but man, I mean, I've, we've talked to the biologists at length and there's not a lot of deer on the landscape in, in a lot of the country. There's some of them, they admit two forties, two thirties, they are going to be legit. You know, they're going to be legit.

I'm interested to see how the two twenties turn out. Cause it's been so rough with the high tag numbers, the high youth tag numbers. They just pounded that unit. It is a factory. It's a deer factory, but, but you know, there's a numbers of old deer to just blossom this year. Right. So we have blossom three. What does that mean? What does that mean? We've got two and three year old blossoms. We've got little cheaters coming out the bases there. I mean, but we got big, burly, gnarly bases that are six and a half inchers. You know what I mean? I mean, what does that mean? And so it'll be interesting to see. I think some of the desert stuff that we don't even consider or most people doesn't even, don't even consider we'll have a few, you know, really, you know, good deer. But during those drought periods, the, the populations were knocked back even further than a normal desert unit has.

Cause the normal desert unit doesn't have that many, you know, that good of populations anyway. That's right. You know? And so what does this mean? What does this Chia pet year mean? Cause it's going to be a Chia pet. It's going to be a Chia pet year. Yes. But it's important to choose the right Chia pet. Chias. Pets. Pets. That can blossom. Okay. And so anyway, I don't know. It's going to be interesting to watch it play out.

It really is. And these things, we keep going back to the States that we have. It's mainly because we haven't had anything to talk about in those States other than. We keep trying. Right. And now we have something to talk about and we're excited about it. And, you know, we've talked about Colorado. It feels like, you know, year after year after year, it doesn't have the up and down change with some of the, you know, drought. It's a more of a uniformly better summer range state. It doesn't have as much desert country like these other States we're talking about. So don't see the ups and downs as much in antler development and stuff like that. And you have winter, winter effect. If anything, it's the only thing you really usually pay attention to. It feels like when Colorado has an uptick in quality, it's generally, you can look back and say, well, those tags were cut a hundred, a hundred.

Usually that's why. Yeah. I don't know. 44 is a unique 44, 35, 43. Those units are real unique in that if you catch the right weather on the right year, you know, there's, there's an abnormal number of, of good, solid big deer taken. And it feels like that happened in 35 and 44, 35, 36, 44, potentially a little bit in 43 type country. So, you know, there was a, there was a little uptick there. And then other, other areas across the state, it feels like the upticks that we saw are in relation to slight tag reductions. None of them slash tags like we would like to see. So usually we're like, you cannot not go to Colorado. You, every, you always go. And there's this excitement about going. It's just, when you drive on I-70 from Utah over and, and every other truck is from Utah or whatever, surrounding states, California, and you gas up and people come up and start talking to you.

I mean, it's, it's a, it's an excitement in the air. Yeah. Hunting season's about to begin. You know, people are excited to go to Colorado. I don't know that there's that feeling in the air at the moment. You know what I mean? And maybe it's just our office, but I, I feel, Bronson, you guys, and Josh, we talked to a lot of guys on the phone. It just feels a little, people are going to go because you're supposed to go. And it's fun. It is so fun. Well, oftentimes there's not a lot else going on right there. A lot of the other states or deer tags you have, things, hunts are over. So there's a good gap right there and kind of put a cherry on the top of your year, go to Colorado and end. A lot of guys, it's their last time for the season. That kind of thing. And it's great dates. Because most states don't hunt the rut with a rifle. Yeah, great dates to hunt deer.

I mean, there's no better place you really want to be. Just maybe you need to have moderated expectations a little bit now. Iowa whitetails, you don't want to be in Iowa? In a tree? I don't know.

No, not really? Okay. Well. Some years. I might be in a tree in Iowa. I don't know. We'll see. Not during the third. I'll be somewhere around in Colorado for sure lurking around. Anyway, kind of exciting, I guess. Is that kind of, do we feel like we covered it well, Bronson? We covered conceptually. It's really hard. If you're waiting to hear the best, the top, and all joking aside, the top five deer units in Colorado, good luck with that. Yeah, I don't know. It's more or less, I find myself consulting guys with these are the units you can draw. We can say what the top five are, but does it matter? I think that's where the preference point state, there's not even a random draw. No. Could you say that? Could you say the top five? I don't know. Do you want to take a stab at it? No. No. I was waiting because you said we could, so I was waiting. We could. I wanted to hear you.

I think we could. But I've, well, I mean.

I don't want to make anybody mad. Everybody hates it when we, you know, that's the one thing I think we have a little apprehension. We would crush these units and tell you what our thoughts are. But A, it goes out to free, to thousands, thousands, tens of thousands. And so it goes out for free. And then, and B, people are sensitive to us naming their specific unit and thinking that we're going to ruin it. And that's not our intention. Somehow we're supposed to say our personal units though. Or else we're jerks. So what? Don't be a jerk. Like we have. Like we have. A lot of today. Yeah, we have. So keep that in mind. And the good thing about Colorado too, if you have youth, youth hunters, I mean, shoot. You get a lot of guys complaining in Utah about not being able to get their kids a tag. And we're lucky because it's close to us.

You know, five, six hour drive, you can be deer hunting in later. And it's a good opportunity for youth and to get them applied over there, get them a tag. You can grab an elk tag while you're there on some of these units. It's relatively inexpensive compared to other states. And so I enjoy, I've enjoyed taking my kids over there and watching them shoot deer and just, cause they don't know. I mean, they're just, they're over there hunting. They're out of school. They're over there in the wall tent or whatever. They're, I mean, they're just, it's so much different for them. Yeah. They're loving it. And it's, it's pretty dang fun to see them going over there and starting their hunting careers and, and finding a four point buck for them to shoot. And they're just, they don't know the difference. They're loving it. That's what life's all about really. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's good.

And so I've had a lot of good memories there with them doing that kind of stuff. I feel like it's important too. It's like sometimes to, to pick units. Some guys are wanting to pick units that are limited entry for second and third on elk. You know what I mean? Because you're dealing with, you can pick these deer units and then you've got over the counter elk pressure. Yeah. Like crazy. And that's, there's some truth to that. There really is. But, but when you really boil it down, that's not very many units. No. Yeah. Yeah. You know, 40, 61, 210, 201. I mean, you're talking about, and yes, 66, 67 are, but they, they have quite a few tags third, second, third season for elk there. They're not, they're better than over the counter. They're not unlimited. But I mean, you start looking at 79. Yeah. Whatever. They're not, you know, 66, 67. Yeah. They're not that many really though. Right.

So, I mean, if you want to key in on them also, those units also take a lot of points to draw the deer in a lot of those units. They do. And some of them aren't worth it, you know. Yeah. Well, yeah. They take more than, more than they're worth waiting for just to hunt in a unit that has, you know, limited entry elk tags. Yeah. You like, like 61, you know, 15, 16 to draw third, 10 or 11 to draw second, 40. And a lot of guys wouldn't like 61. It's lower, lower densities, you know, it's big country. You're, you're an hour, hour and a half drive to get anywhere. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And people are like, what? Like, it's, it's hard for people to do that. Drive from a lot of other places you can drive around winter ranges and see a lot more deer than you can in 61. With ease. With ease. And 61's not. No. With ease. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

And it's partially white, you know, has, you know, top to bottom a lot of thick oak brush, pinion juniper and all that. And other units like 40 have some of that. Of course, you've got state line, you know, stuff to worry about on that unit too. Yeah. Deer trying to winter in Utah or on the Utah state line. Things like that. So. Yep. Anyway. Yeah. I don't know. You know, if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out. Of course, members here at Epic Outdoors would call in anytime and visit with us about things. And we can definitely throw you some options and, and whatnot. We talk to a lot of guys. We hear a lot of stories and then we have a lot of stories of our own and things we've experienced. So. Kind of, kind of awesome. Kind of. It's fun. It's fun. It's just, we wish there was, we wish there was giants. Like, like, you know, or, you know what I mean?

Just wish there was just next level deer. Yeah. You feel like you could. Anyway. I'm going to, we're going to make it happen. The genetics are so good in Colorado that that's what you go there today hoping for. Yeah. That a four or five year old deer there can be really something in Colorado. And, and when I say that, I mean, you know, one nineties. Yeah. Plus, it could be a really good deer. There's enough high country that deer could maybe get, get hide out in a little bit or, or private. Once they come down to, you know, a buck could get on the right private and they don't want to do a lot of hunting. And he could sit there all third, fourth season, whatever, and never get killed. So, you know, you could maybe run into him the next year or something. So there's still, there's still some places there for some of those deer to get mature because of those. All right.

Hey, we just want to take a quick break real quick and thank some of the sponsors of this podcast. Want to thank obviously Under Armour, kind of the title sponsor of our podcasts, makes great camouflage. We wear it all the time. Check those guys out at uahunt.com. Like working with them. Have a good relationship there. Also, I want to thank Blaine St. James with St. James Sporting Properties. He's got some great properties out there that he's got for sale and he specializes mainly in, you know, hunting and fishing type properties. So give him a call or look him up. Shoot him an email. His website is sjsportingproperties.com. Shoot him an email at info at sjsportingproperties.com. And look him up if that's something that you're interested in there. Also, I want to thank Chester and those guys at Phonescope. Make any kind of product you want for digiscoping.

Hooking up any kind of cell phone to the optics you want, GoPros, whatever.

Hit those guys up at phonescope.com. Customize whatever you want for whatever phone and optic you have. They can help you out so you can get ready to do some digiscoping this fall and summer when scouting season gets started. Also, I want to thank Kurt and those guys at Red Rock Precision. They make some really nice guns. Been using those for quite a few years. A lot of things have met their match with the end of a Red Rock Precision rifle. So give those guys a call as well. Look them up, redrockprecision.com. They can help you out and get your rifle built ready to go. Kill something this fall. Anyway, we'll continue on. Okay. Well, should we call somebody? Yeah, call somebody. I was looking for a picture to send to Logan. I'm wondering if we should call Clint just because he's fun to chew the fat. He's always thinking. He's always thinking. And he's got a plan. Come heck to high water.

And it's been long enough since you've called him on a hot mic that he might, and you've probably called him plenty of times since the last time, for normal stuff, he's not going to anticipate that this is on the podcast. Oh, he won't. We talk daily. He's not going to anticipate being on the podcast. So I don't know. Let's just get his take.

Maybe he's working and won't be able to answer. I don't think he works. Not a chance. What's up? Hey, welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast. What's up, Clint? Hey, Clint. Are you guys really that hard up for information?

You've ran out of content altogether? Is that what you're trying to say? Maybe we're calling just because we appreciate your friendship. Maybe it's not that we need information. Coming to the Fountain of Knowledge.

Fountain of Knowledge. Now you're just kissing up. Hey, so we just want to know what your opinion is. The State of the Nation address for Colorado, like what your opinion is for Colorado? I am not super high on Colorado right now. Okay. I love Colorado. I mean, I've been in Colorado every year for forever. I'm there on multiple seasons sometimes, helping friends, helping family. It's, I love Colorado. Like we all do. Different units. Like we all do. It's the deer mecca. I mean, it's, you're not going to go anywhere else. It's mule deer. It's awesome. Yeah. I don't think with what they've been doing with the current season structures, and I think they're just killing way too many of the older age class bucks out of there. Yeah. Historically, there's been a lot of private that's allowed a lot of bucks to escape.

And if you get a mild weather year, it's helped a lot of the mature bucks, but with the current setup, with the dates, and how many tags they're issuing, I mean, we're hunting, we're hunting mule deer the whole month of November, basically. That's, when I grew up, you don't hunt mule deer in November. That's, that's just, that's how you kill it. Can I get a hallelujah?

Yeah. We've said the same thing before we called you, Clint. So, and hey, we do not set up these calls. This is just a pure, if his, if his surprise wasn't evidence enough, this was not a planted phone call. This was just a Clint. It's not. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. We don't even know what you're doing right now. What are you doing? Somebody thought you might be working, but there's no way. Uh-uh. In between jobs? Yeah. I just looked at a job and got all wet and everything even. He's at the drive-thru. That's what that means.

In between jobs. But back to Colorado, though, unless they do some major changes, I don't, I see the quality getting worse. I don't see it. I'm not real happy with the future of Colorado right now. I'm not super happy where it's at right now. I'm not real happy with the direction that it seems to be going right now. Next question. Next question. Because we totally agree with that. It's hard to stay away from, though, at the same time. Are you going to try to still be in Colorado? Okay. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'll be there. Yeah, I'm not. As much as we all say, you do not hunt deer in November, where are we in November? With a deer tag. We're helping Colorado with their management program. Yeah. We're just doing what the wolves are doing. If we don't kill them, the wolves will. Yeah, somebody else will. I'm going to be over there. That's the old Utah mentality right there. I love it.

Well, I have noticed, though, the last few years in Colorado, there's more serious people in Colorado now. I remember a lot of the units that I hunt, you'd start to see less people after the opening weekend. I'm seeing more people that are grinding it out clear to the bitter end. I'm seeing more people that they just hit it harder. They're taking it serious. They're scouting more for it. And I think it's starting to take a little bit of a toll on the place. That's just what I'm seeing out there. Yep. Just a hard place to not try to be there because of the potential, because of the genetics, because, because, because. But you better temper expectations. It's just a good place to go hunt deer in another state. But it is not as much likely to meet your full expectations. There are a much smaller percentage of people that go there with a certain level of expectations.

A much higher percentage of those people are having their expectations not met anymore. It just feels that way. I want to kill a monster. Where am I going to do it, Clint? Yeah, good luck. I want to kill a monster. Yeah, a monster. 44. Okay. Next. What's the next option? Sorry. I know I can't get a 44 tax. Yeah, we already said. We did. Yeah. See, he's talking just like. We already said 44 is over here by itself. We're not talking about it. It's a non. It's a game preserve to me. Where am I going to go? Yeah. So, where are you going? 44 was good this year. Where am I going? Yeah. Let's talk about the type of unit. Whether, you know, because that's. What do you look for? I'm starting to get sweaty palms.

I'm trying to help him out. What type of unit do you look for, Clint?

I mean, you are a landowner in Colorado. Clint gets stuck. Clint gets stuck in a rut. He gets cranking on one particular area. I have places that I like to go. I get worked up about certain areas. I do think you're better off in Colorado if you can hunt one area more consistently than bouncing around into lots of different areas. I'll still bounce a little bit. It's usually helping other people. I've kind of started to focus in on certain units. But then when it doesn't pan out for you, you get really mad. And you start thinking maybe I've got to go. Every year you're so excited to go but really mad coming home. Yeah. Usually I'm mad when I come home. I had a great time. It was fun. But I, you know, I didn't shoot the 200-incher. And I know the guy that did shoot the 200-incher. And when I'm hunting right next to him. And he drove up the same road two and a half minutes before you did.

Or two and a half minutes after me. And they just happened to come over. Yeah. Yeah. It's frustration. That's Colorado, man. Well, it is. And people should curb their expectations on Colorado. If you're sitting on a grumble of points thinking you're going to have this super awesome hunt experience over there. I talk to a lot of people that I'm like, well, should I hunt it? Should I turn my tag back? And I'm like, well, go hunt it because I don't think it's going to get better. But it's going to be a grind. It's not going to. You might kill the buck of your lifetime. But I'm 90% sure you're not. Yep. That's right. Because some of the units I hunt, I know that there are five people that shot the buck of their lifetime. But I know there's like 395 people that have the pretty miserable grinder of a hunt. What is it about people that have to come home with a buck? They have to shoot one.

I don't have to shoot deer anymore. I know not you necessarily. But there's a lot of guys that do. I think the one that makes me more mad than anything is somebody that if you're getting down to the end, shoot a big three point. Okay. Shoot something with some bad genetics. Yeah. Don't shoot. Don't shoot a young 20 inch four by four just because it's a four point. Yeah. Shoot the three point. Please. Get those bad genes out of there. Like that muzzle litter buck I did the last day. It was a three by four. He's like 29 and a half. But Josh can talk about bad genes. The bad gene bucks sometimes are good gene bucks on Goodyear's. The same exact year. In Colorado, they'll really have super bad, like drought stricken antler deer. Some units can, but collectively I can get no. So your point is if it looks like a bad genetic deer, there's a good chance it is a bad genetic deer.

We're here in southern Utah. The big deer are three points on dry years. Yeah. On the ponds. You could go wipe out a bunch of big deer. There's a bunch of weird places. I think Colorado, more deer grow what they are pumping through their veins every year in terms of genetics. I agree. Potential. Then they're growing whatever the limited feed. Nevada. You could take a drought year and a management tag. They're all management bucks. Yes, exactly. Scary. So. Well, I think with moisture this year, I don't think most of Colorado is affected by drought as much. No. I don't know what winter kill is going to do this year. I do know that all of the western edge, anything that touches Utah, those states, those units over there that, you know, the 2, 21, 30, 61, 40, you know, 72. All those ones that touch the Utah border, I think on a good moisture year, they'll probably be better this year. Yep.

I had some of the locals say that about 10 and that. They are. They are. They are. A little lower elevation. They don't have 12,000 to 14,000 foot summer range for deer. Right. They don't have that summer range. And the drought's been hurting those units a lot the last few years. It's really, it's been tough. Yeah. When, you know, just dust, no feed. Yeah. And. Yeah. I don't know. Kind of fun. But I'm not talking to where I'm hunting. There are a few options out there this year. I don't. I reset my points. So I only got one point right now. So I'll be. Are you going to use your points or are you going to look for a turn back or what are you going to do? Turn back landowner. I put in for a unit that's something that I can sometimes get with one or two points. I doubt I'll get it. I'll play the turn back game. Last year, the turn back game, by the way, was brutal. It's a pretty competitive.

It's tough. Yeah. I used to plan on getting a few turn back tags anymore. I don't count on that as a strategy anymore. Well, now. You will not get one. You can get one, but it's a lottery now. Yeah. Your lottery chance. And it's because they've gone to a set time. Hey, here's when the tags are going online versus random throughout the day, Tuesday to Friday, you know. Yeah. Right. That used to be if you had a day around a computer and you could sit and watch it, something could pop up. Yeah. Just like Nevada used to do. Yeah. Same type, same principle. That used to be how. Nevada changed up their system. Now resident tags will be residents and non-residents will be non-residents. There'll be less non-residents giving it up, especially on light years. Yeah. So, darn it. Things change, Clint. We're tired of change. We want to go back to big bucks and tags for everybody.

I think those days are gone forever, my friend. I know. They're never going to. I don't know. I have my own little not-so-rosy outlook on the future of hunting, but I think that things will, this moisture this year should help things a lot. I think it'll jumpstart a lot of units. Yeah. But there might be some winter kill in some of northern Utah, Wyoming, Idaho. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. We look at the Wyoming snow equivalents, Josh. We looked at those and basically it's showing just over 100% in a lot of it. Yeah. So, it's interesting. You have major winter kill with just about average moisture, but I think it's timely. Some of it could have been, though, because those deer didn't come to the winter range in very good condition. Some of that part of the country was a little dry. Even northern Utah was drier than we were. They didn't get the monsoon stuff.

So, if they don't come to winter range in a normal winter, they could die. They're also a little bit different up there. They had an icebox of winter. So, their snow, they got just like northern Utah, just kept building and building and building and building and building where certain winters, you get, you know, warm-ups, you know, but you get 30 to 40 degree temperatures. You melt snow, you get back down to bare ground in between. That didn't seem like it ever happened in those parts this year. Southern Utah happens every year. That's why we bring it on in Southern Utah. We can almost, almost not winter kill deer down here. Our storms on winter ranges melt in between storms. You get a wet one that's raining, it melts off. So, anyway, a lot of differences in terms of how much moisture you got versus how much

it builds up with cold temperatures all winter long versus how much it melts in between every storm. Good point. So, Clint, you're one of the few that are going to hunt Wyoming this year. Really? Give me a positive spin on what you're thinking and give me a positive spin on what you're hoping for. This is the positive thing. If you're coming off a rough winter, I think a lot of the mature deer have the, fat reserves in the wherewithal to survive a rough winter. Okay. And so, when I am seeing deer, the chances of me seeing big deer are going to be greater. I'm not going to have to weed through as many younger, smaller deer. How about potentially also less of the tags that they issue for non-residents, maybe less of them will be major trophy hunters? Maybe. Maybe. Or do you think there's diehards that are going no matter what and just... Maybe. I think you might get a few less...

I think your serious trophy hunters are starting to realize that you need to take advantage of stuff now. Just hunt anyway. Just hunt anyway. Because it's not... Not wanting to wait four more years for it to come back. Right. I don't think... Yeah. So, like, if you had a bunch of points, I don't know if it's going to get better in the future. Yeah. And most of these places, the way they're managing them, you know, with the resident thing in, you know, G and H, they can hunt that as an over-the-counter.

And they get mad because there's still non-residents there, and they'll try and cut the non-resident tags some more, and they think that's going to make it a better hunt for them, but... Yeah, they're cutting 100 non-residents out of H. That's what they're proposing. Yeah, that's what they're proposing. And I don't know if that's based on winter kill or if that's just to feel like there's too many non-residents in there. That's a good question. That's just an excuse. It's scientific, I'm sure. Don't get us started. Hey, the OTC tags for residents are scientific.

Come on. There's a lot of non-resident hatred right now from a lot of different states. Everywhere. Everywhere. But there's some states that are way worse than others. Is that what you were just about to say? Well, yeah, some states are. Like Wyoming, you know. After I hear what's going on, I'm not much of a shed hunter myself, but part of me wants to say, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Reciprocity. Yeah, reciprocity. Reciprocity rules. I mean, it works with bobcat tags, everything. Bobcat tags in Nevada, does that tick you off a little bit? Well, yeah. Well, yeah. Non-residents can't get bobcat tags in Nevada, you know. We've got Nevada guys. Yeah, we've got Nevada organizations hitting us up for donations. It's just hard because you feel like there's just this anti-non-resident sentiment, you know. Shed hunting, bobcats, all that, you know. Yeah. And these are our little fights in our little world, but hey, we live 30, 40 miles from the line, so it's kind of hard. Right. And it feels like the residents should hunt anyway. Do whatever they want. I don't know. It is. It's hard. Well. Well, I've. Positive spin. I like your positive spin in Wyoming. I think too. Well, I think there'll still be some big deer in Wyoming this year. I don't think it might.

Where it's going to hurt, if you get any winter kill, it usually hurts it two or three years down the road. These hardcore guys are going to be hunting in Wyoming. Some of them that are really hardcore, that are the most verbal about how bad it is and how bad the winter kill is. I don't like winter loss. I don't. I don't like it. Because it does change something. It does change something, even like you're saying. If it's two or three or four years down the road, you see the fawns that would have been alive or gone, things like that. But I do think there's going to be some trophy deer taken. Yeah. Well, see, the downside is I feel like we're just barely starting to come off, recover from the last winter kill. Of 17, 16, 17. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just barely starting to get good again. And this is what happens.

You know, Colorado made their decision after, what, 07, 08, that they basically don't want to stockpile bucks anymore. Yeah. We're just going to – we're not going to let Mother Nature kill them. We're going to issue tags and kill them before. Make sure we don't have too big of an excess ever. Exactly. Ever. Which is a bummer. We're going to kill them all. Yeah. All right. Well, you got Bronson fired up. He even rode down on my sheet here. What did you write, Bronson? I'm back in on Wyoming. Clint convinced me. I'm back in. I'm back in. I was waffling. I'll admit I was waffling. But I also was optimistic I'd have some archery elk tag in Arizona, which I don't know why I thought that. That was a pipe dream. But I didn't. So I've got plenty of time to hunt the high country of Wyoming before they eliminate all non-resident hunting. I agree. I think you should do it. Are you going to do it?

Promise me. Not promising yet. But stuff can happen between now and May 31st. Yeah, well. You know, something can happen. The other thing that's going to happen, I don't know, in Colorado, Colorado's looking to switch to that 75-25 next year. It won't hit this year. But if that hits next year, that's going to change the allocation for non-residents a little bit. Some units, it actually would work out to be a better increase. Because some are already at 20 right now. So it depends on where you're looking at. I feel like Colorado's somewhat fair to non-residents. Yeah, that's generous. If it goes to that, it's still way generous. I'm still happy with it. You know, but just realize people are going to be whining about point creep again because their unit, they could get with two or three points. Now it's going to take four or five points.

Clint, what was your takeaway when they discussed the point banking?

I think they want to revisit it. I think it's probably point banking is complex. And I think it's just too hard for people to wrap their head around how it's going to work and how it's going to affect things and actually get everybody educated on the actual, you know, how you get to where you're going to get. If it takes four points to draw a tag and you have ten, you now have a tag and six. Or whatever. Five or something. And they can mix that up however they want, too, because there's a lot of different ways you can skin that cat. You know, how many points do you lose, you know. It is going to increase point creep, though, and that's the downside. That's the... It's nice to wipe a guy's points. It would. A lot of your mid-tier things, but it would also get people out of the point pool, too. So if I have ten points, I could go to two-point units lots of times.

Maybe it takes three or four points from me and you go back two or three times. Yeah, and I'm taking an opportunity from Adam who's got two points. Like, I'm actually making it tougher. The drawing on's tougher. But that guy with ten points is happy you're gone. Yeah. The other thing they could do is they could do, you know, averaging people together. No. No, they're not happy about that. They're not a lot of appetite for that there. No. Point boosting or group averaging. In fact, in most states, if it's a loophole, it gets shut down at some point. There's some places, like Nevada took a while. Arizona still hasn't gotten to that point. Nevada, you can do it. Your grandma has to use her tags. You can't just continue to point boost you the rest of her life. Yeah. You can't get your points back. Okay. All right, guy. Well, we'll let you kind of finish through the drive-through there.

Get your hot apple pie.

How's the water? The water? Yeah. You got plenty of water around where you're at. Are you guys all up there? Are you reviewing the videotapes from the 80s, 83, when Salt Lake was... It's snowing on me right now. And I spent Saturday over cleaning out a creek bottom for the city trying to get all the... They're getting ready for flooding. Get rid of the branches and brush and debris so they don't plug the culverts everywhere. Yep. They're cleaning everything out right now. They haven't had a good flood here for a while, so... Be a good clean-out. They're cleaning stuff out. They're getting ready. If you're not getting ready for flooding... You're too late. You need to start real quick. It's snowing right now, okay? It's got snow on the benches here. I mean, I'm here in Utah County, and it's snowing right now. Jeez.

I looked at the snow survey thing this morning, and we're in record territory, and I think after today, we'll probably break the snow... The all-time 80s. All-time 80s. We'll probably break that by tomorrow. I think it'll be broke for the state. Highest ever. And depending on how it comes down off the mountain and how fast it comes down, it could be rivers in Salt Lake. It could. You don't know. I mean, I remember... I was a kid when they had the rivers going down the middle of the road in Salt Lake. They had a sandbag, and they were just diverting water right down the roads. Hey, Clint, I was talking about this with these guys today. I grew up in southern Utah. So did Jason, but I was probably, well, roughly 10 years old in that year. But I remember... Do you remember when Highway 6 was closed because of the Billies Mountain thistle slide for, like, I don't know, a year or two? And I...

Yeah. Driving from southern Utah to Salt Lake, you know, you had to either go over through Salina on I-70 to Salina and up through and hit I-15 and up. Or we had to go just past Helper, go up to Duchesne and go clear up through, like, Hebron. And it was a chore just because that was a big deal. And I mean, I'm telling Devin and Wyatt this, and they weren't even born. I'm like, why am I even talking to you two guys? You weren't even alive. And I never... But it was a... I remember. I was like, Jason, do you remember that? And I'm like, I never left the town I'm all out. But... We ate Spam. Like, we pinched pennies. There was no reason to go to Salt Lake. I just remember I did it both ways, and my dad said, we'll never go the Duchesne way again. I don't remember why. It was just maybe too long. But it was like a five-hour trip. At 10 years old, Adam's analyzing routes.

Well, it was like a bad deal, man. I just remember this is a bad deal. Because when you're trapped in the backseat of a car and you're just getting yelled at, I don't know what, because they didn't tell you to put your seat, because we didn't wear seatbelts back then. We were in the back of a 72 Chev with a camper shell and that Aerof, that little donut between the slider window. Quit fighting with your brother and sister is all they would yell at you. Shut up. If I have to stop this car... It was a big deal for a long time. It was. I'd like to go research that. It had to take a year or two to get that going again. It was an engineering feat, because they started drilling that tunnel for the railroad, started tunneling on both sides. They started on both sides due to the interest of time, and they met it in the middle of a mountain. They started on both sides. Interesting.

It started going at the same time. But anyway... All right. Well, we've got a little history lesson here, so that's good. All right. Keep us posted. All right. How good is this? Talk to you later. All right. You got someone else? Thank you. Let's call Cody Dice real quick. He came over and was shed hunting, looking around here in southern Utah, northern Arizona, just to get out of the last few days. In Utah? Did you say Utah? Yeah. Well, he came right down through here, and then he spent a lot of time right here on the border. Okay. I would say that would be a safer answer than shed hunting. Well, he didn't shed hunt Utah. Okay. Just making sure. But he came through our country. Just making... I did not know where this was going. Well, he just... Yeah, I hit the ponts. There was nobody around. That was awesome. There was bone everywhere. All right. Hold on. So let's just call him.

Just visit about Colorado in general, see what he's got to say. Get the winners. He's just... Got us. Yeah. He's... Right? Wealth info. Just... What's going on?

Hello? Hey, what do you know? Oh, not enough. Did you make it home? I did. I told these guys you went on a little bit of a spree just to get out of the house. Stretched the legs. Got out of the house and that felt good. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Well, but none of my onyx pins helped you at all.

You know, it was a point of reference and that's a little bit of help, but not in the context of being able to get out and, you know, make bare fruit of it. So... A lot of moisture out here. No brown town points? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Gave him the best points. That's for sure. I gave you the best places I knew of.

It was probably the best time to give them up. Oh. So, what did you think? We're kind of in a mud hole over here. Yeah. You know, for me, without much... You know, I don't have much perspective otherwise, but far as I could tell from talking to everybody and what I observed is that it was kind of neat to observe... I don't know if it was a historic event, but definitely out of the ordinary for the last couple decades. And so, you know, I know that's exciting to a lot of people, getting that kind of moisture and, you know, that's probably the most significant part. But for me, personally, selfishly, it was the literal raining on my parade. Huh. You picked a bad weekend, but... Yeah. I told you, you better have tires, winch, chains, handymans, you know, 14 days of provisions inside the truck. Yeah. Well... Totally. What is...

When I got out, I found some big tracks and found good country and that felt good and that was a good place to start with the one day that I did get out there. What about back home? How's things there? We've been talking today quite a bit, just about Colorado in general. Yep. You know, deer hunting, application periods open, all that. Yep. And how are things in the Gunnison Basin in terms of normal or slightly above normal or anything? We want you to tell us something good. We just feel like things have changed the last... I knew you would. Well, we know, we've been talking to a lot of people about how Colorado is just a moderated state. It's got great potential, but the stuff's moderated. But I guess we've been talking about the northwest corner too. Yeah. That seems to be where things are definitely going to be seeing some antelope and deer, significant winter loss in places up there.

Not hearing too much about it at any other place significantly. So I want you to either echo that or speak to that at least as far as where you know in your part of Colorado. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you made a statement about a normal winter. And I think that's what we're having is a normal Gunnison winter. But based on, you know, the last several years, it would seem like it's above what the new normal has been. Yeah. But I think we're right where what I knew as an old Gunnison winter, you know, we're right in that realm. The difference, I think, is the snow that we get now is wetter. And it does set up. And obviously that can lead to issues for the critters. But I think we've got enough sunshine throughout the winter. And that snow is settled. That feed's still available. You know, their ability to move around is becoming limited as it continues to set up. And we get more snow.

You know, I think everybody's kind of on the edge of their seat here and in the, you know, the Eagle Valley wondering what's going to happen. And nothing's really shown yet. You know, there's been no express concerns by CPW that there needs to be any action taken. And I don't think anybody else is feeling that either. There's still good distribution. And it seems like, you know, it's obvious that there's feed available if they choose to utilize it. So, you know, I think we're in good shape at this point. But as a lot of people know, you really don't know until about now. And then as things start to carry on into spring, what your loss is going to be. So, you know, we're basically at the end of the reserves. And the deer came in to the winter good. We had a good summer, good fall.

I think I saw some of the biggest fat reserves on late season bucks that I'd probably seen in the last several years. So, I mean, that's exactly what you could hope for. And so that factored in, you know, I think we're teetering on potential higher than normal loss. But, you know, I think that would go back to the normal Gunnison winter and just not what we've been seeing in the last few years. So to speak to good news is, you know, I think we're not going to take a big hit. But unfortunately, I don't feel like we got a lot of super old deer that are vulnerable to this kind of weather, you know. So we got healthy middle-aged class deer that I think will be fine. Fonz, on the other hand, for the future, I think they're in good shape. We've had a lot. And, you know, we can afford some loss even though it's not desirable.

So I think no matter what happens, even if we bump up a little bit in our loss with the result of this average winter, we're still in good shape. Well, how do you feel? Just what's your gut feel on these season dates, obviously, and tag numbers? I mean, do you like these season dates? Do you think it's good? Well, you know, I'm the same as any reasonable human, I think, is that I like them for hunting them in the immediate. And what it does for my success personally or guiding. But for the overall health of deer and future of hunting and maintaining some older age class deer, I think that they're awful. Yeah. You know, and I would like to think that it's making an impact, particularly in the southwest region, based on my conversations with hunters, guides, and staff. That it's not good for our deer or elk curds for a lot of different reasons.

And so I am adamantly opposed to these dates for a number of reasons. Well, we've pretty much talked over ourselves and say the same thing. We feel that, you know, a few years ago when this, two, three years ago when this hit, you know, we were wary. Obviously, our eyeballs pop out of our heads. They were late as was. Yeah. And then even later. And then got even later. So the mule deer hunter in us all got way excited, of course, like you alluded. But the management or biologist or whatever, we know that they're just susceptible. We know how big bucks, you know, you don't see bucks all year long and now they're standing out there dumb. And that's, there's a consequence to that. And I think we're seeing, you know, even though they're not, you know, we've had monumental snows, but for a second, third and fourth and, you know, crushing. It's just collectively they're all adding up.

It's all adding up. And the deer that we hoped were just staying high in the timber or, you know, we're not seeing them because we're having mild years. I don't think that's, that's not happening. I think it's just not there in the numbers. We all want them or used to see them. They're just not. So. No, I, yeah, that's spot on. And I think, you know, what's been happening too is a lot of people look at the later end of it and the vulnerability, the conditions, that type of thing. But another aspect that I don't know that's being spoken to as much is what's been happening with our second season, which I think traditionally management wise has been kind of your opportunity season. What's happened is those dates have shifted into that pre-rut staging time. And I think that's where this would be in dear regards.

I think the elk are taking a hit later in the seasons because of their traditional habits. But speaking to deer specifically, I think that second season, people figured that out. And with those dates, they've capitalized on it. And I think it, you know, obviously a lot more tags. You got a broader range of people hunting and other, you know, and, and trophy hunters capitalizing on, on older age class deer that are coming into country. And so to me, that's probably been the biggest concern is, is that season, the tag numbers and the amount of harvest that has been happening there. You know, I think the later seasons, you know, they traditionally have good success rates anyway. Like you guys said with, with the already, what was already late dates, there was already high success there. So I don't think that's shifting much.

It's the second season to me where I think we're wiping out any older age class bucks that come into country. And then that mid range of the new up and comers is the next segment that we're taking out. And I think that's more detrimental than taking the top off every year, in my opinion. Well, and yeah, you're in some cases, not all, but if you look at the tag numbers, you're talking from second to third, double, triple, or even quadrupling the tag numbers on the second, because what was historically more of a mid October, let's call it the opportunity. Yeah. We used to be like the, let's say the 20th to the 30th of October, roughly is what it kind of always used to be. Now it's pushed a week later than that. And the, that's always depending on weather a little bit more of the time where the. You can issue more tags and not have all the tape. Yeah. In October. Right.

Where now they didn't really back off the tags in the second season. They kept the same mentality. No. They're never going to back off the tags. They kept the same mentality and just shifted it later and have a lot of time. It does feel like when we spent some time in Gunnison this year, it does feel like there's a lot of bucks that another year or two could be. It does feel like Gunnison could be good, you know, uh, it's at some point I feel like, I mean, like 55, for example, there was a lot of bucks that made it through. And you know what I mean? Cause there's not a lot of tags in, in, on the later season of 55. So, I mean, the, the future, the outlook looks good. It's just that they're so vulnerable and so easy to kill and easy to hunt. You know what I mean? And so. Yep. Definitely.

Well, and you know, I mean, if I could have a plug for, you know, encouraging folks, listeners, sportsmen, hunters, trophy hunters, meat hunters, whatever to, uh, get encouraged, getting in the conversation. The big game season structure is being, uh, discussed right now, uh, for the future. And I don't want to step out of bounds, but I feel like staff could use our support in the Southwest region in expressing that, although it's been fun and exciting to hunt these later dates. If we want to preserve the health and, uh, well-being of our, uh, deer and elk herds, we, we can't continue with these dates. And I think, uh, you know, I feel like with the, I hate to say it, but the game that wildlife management is these days, sportsmen really got to step up and speak up to this stuff. And they are open to engagement and through surveys and comments.

And, and I think this is where we really got to tune in and step up. We're losing ground fast, uh, in all aspects of hunting and wildlife management. And, um, you know, I think this would be one simple place that people could get engaged and, and speak up because, uh, we continue on this trend with these dates and, and I think we're going to be in big trouble. So do you have a, do you have an answer? I mean, is it even possible to split the elk and deer up? You know what I mean? It'd be nice to split them up and hunt deer earlier and not when they're so vulnerable, but I just don't know if that's even going to happen. I don't, I feel like it's not even possible. So then you got to cut back tags. You know what I mean? Right. Well, the best idea I heard, and I'll, I'll give Steve credit. Um, it's his idea. And that's a five, five day seasons. And so we shorten the seasons.

We keep tag numbers and opportunity out there. We do consider doing a deer only. We already have elk only. You know, I think there's a lot of ways we can get creative, but, you know, I just don't think that the, the, the agency is super receptive to that. You know, I think there's so much going on in this state in particular right now, uh, particularly with wolves that they are just jammed, uh, with stuff to do. And then there's just a resistance to being open to new, more robust ideas. Um, and, and I think they can do that because there's not enough people speaking out against it. But I certainly think there's creative ways to maintain opportunity and, uh, consistent and, uh, you know, the necessary harvest that's needed to maintain these healthy populations. But, uh, I, I think that's going to be a tough one and a, and a big commitment from a lot of people to, to make that happen.

So, you know, I mean, considering if we're just going to keep it down to the basics, I think a simple shift at the very least, a simple shift back to the old dates, uh, would be the first best move. Yeah. Well, and it, you're, you're dealing with the state that is the bread and butter is been the over the counter elk for so many years everywhere and concurrent deer and elk seasons. And they, they love it. That's Colorado. That's the, that's what you think of. And that's what's, they don't want to eliminate, but yeah, maybe, uh, they changed it up for elk, which is, it feels like they changed it up for elk. So that they'd, you know, come on private, the hunts from the first to the second. That's what it was for. But maybe go back and say, all right, the second season, you don't hunt deer the first five days. And the last four days is elk only. And the elk hunters probably like that.

And, and the deer, the deer, the deer hunters get their chance and, you know, or whatever it is, whether it's five or seven days, you know, just do some tweaks like that. Still have concurrent because it's nice, you know, to sometimes throw, throw a deer tag. You guys are residents, but, but even us, if we take our kids over there, grab a kid, a hundred dollar youth elk tag. And if you see a legal bull or, you know, whatever, but there's ways to do it, but it's time. Yeah. I think you're right. Like you hunt the first five days or something for deer only and call it a day. Yeah. And then they'll get the last four of the second or seven. And you're right. When you made mention that there's some elk only seasons, like the first, there's no, there's no deer on the O1R. You know what I mean? So to speak, generally speaking, statewide management plan. So anyway, interesting.

Those are interesting thoughts. Listen, something, something's got to give. Is there, do you know, Cody, like when they're taking, how long they're taking comment on this? Oh, shoot. I didn't mean to, didn't mean to pin you down just while we had you. First comment period might've closed this week. But it was really initial. I felt like, you know, they, they, they put out a survey and I wish I could tell you details. If I, if I dug a little bit, I could offer that up so that maybe folks could get a little bit more streamlined and, and, and connected there. But it doesn't take a lot of digging to get connected. If you just look at getting engaged with CPW on a five-year season structure. So anyways, the process is going to continue. I think, um, there's going to be more time for submitting ideas about alternatives. Okay. Uh, for, you know, potentially being creative.

I, I know there's been talks about, uh, potentially earlier deer, deer seasons, maybe even combining with the first season. I mean, uh, and a number of other things, but I think that's where we, you know, folks need to get organized and just throw some ideas out there. I think we're working with the commission now. Uh, I'll say this respectfully, that is a little less hunter oriented. And I don't think it's, it has anything to do with how much they care or all about money or all that. I think there's a little disconnect. And I think that's where sportsmen need to speak up and give some realistic, um, ideas for them to chew on and consider in their plan. Now you can't have expectations when it comes to that, but if you don't say anything, then they'll never know. Right.

So at least if they were in, if they were, if they were inundated with comments, uh, one way or another, at least they would know that there needs to be some change, whatever that may be. We're hungry for something to change. Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. Okay. All right. Well, I think that's all we got. You guys got anything else? All right. You got anything else, Cody? Appreciate the update. Well, you know, I can say just for the sake of, of, of, you know, people wanting to hear good news is that we're not catastrophic here. And I don't think in the Eagle Vale Valley either, um, you know, we're always going to have big deer. And I think if people are smart, they hunt now and don't wait for the next glory days, even though they might happen. So, you know, I say have high hopes, low expectations, get out and hunt and take advantage of the opportunities.

When you got them, Gunnison will always be a great place to hunt deer. There'll always be big deer here. And if you don't, you won't get them if you don't go. All right. I like it. Okay. Sounds good. All right, buddy. Okay. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Thanks. Have a good day. You bet. See you, bye. Bye.

There are no glory days coming up. Is there, I think we're seeing, you can see these slight little bumps we've been talking about. But, and use them now. You know, regarding the season structure stuff and some of the other surveys regarding Point Bank and all that, we all got random emails. I know there's some people that say, I never got that. Well, there's methodology to their survey methods. Yeah. Rather than have 400,000 people you're waiting to get back from, you do a random sample. And if it's truly a random sample, then it's somewhat applicable. That's what sampling does. That's what any survey does, polling or whatever. Yeah. But it looks like, yeah, this particular round of initial info gathering closed, what, the 15th of March? 15th looks like. But, I mean, if you remember, it was this wide for options.

And then stuff narrows and you have another round of comment and public courier. So there'll be another opportunity. And maybe we'll be a little better on it, too, and just realize that there just needs to be a lot of comments one way or another. And then that way they can feel like, yeah, the public's ready for change one way or another. We've got to do something, try something, change it up a little bit. And there's 100 opinions and options, if not more, many more probably. All right. Well, sounds good. Bronson, let's – Josh, let's give something away. Should we give something away? It's been a little while. You don't want to? Sure. We can't. Let's do it. Oh, all right. How do we want to do it? I don't know. I don't care. I just – I came up with that. You guys figure out what to give away. Well, that's – thanks. Let's give something away free. You guys take it away.

What do you want to give away? Let's do something. What do we got? We got a whole shipment of new cameras in. I mean, we could give away a couple of trail cameras.

Easy enough. No problem. What do you think? Should we do it? How are we going to do it, Logan? Logan's going, oh, geez. That is a great question. All right. We'll let you chew on it for a minute. Okay. Giveaway coming up then. Giveaway coming up. I was thinking we could make a few more calls, but I'm about wallowing out, guys. This has been a long podcast. It's been – We've almost been here two hours. Just put you in there. No, 44 minutes. Okay. I said almost. Plus a 10-minute. And we got another podcast in 53 minutes. Yeah, that's a good point. And we got to have lunch. Okay. Sounds good. How about this? Let's go – let's do – it's easy. Let's do another kind of a like and subscribe thing. Okay. Run with it. Let's do it. We've got some – we just got loaded up with a bunch of trail cameras, which I guess is just a plug for that. This year might be a good time to get some out.

And with a shorter season date and stuff, they're kind of – I don't know. It's nice. You've got to put out a lot of them. Yeah, you've got to put out a lot. Even more. More than ever. You know, last year I kind of switched to more cellular cameras because I didn't want to have to go back to the same spot. I mean, you just can't because it's like by the time, especially this year, it's going to be a little later. And so you're not going to be able to go back to the camera five and six and seven times or whatever to get it checked. If it's not doing anything for you, it was just out there. I don't know. So, yeah, we switched too much. Can we watch – like when people rate the podcast, can we see that? Can we see who does that? What we've done in the past. How about this?

Go – Subscribe and you have to subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. Okay. Screenshot your review and send that in a direct message. To one of the epic – Do it on epic underscore hunts. Instagram. Yeah, on our Instagram. Okay. Just go and give us a like. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast as well as leave a comment. I can't, I guess, tell you how many stars you should rate us as, but leave us a rating. Even I will say I wasn't a five star today. Even I will say. What do you mean? No. I'm just – You're a little off? Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. There's some days you feel like you nail it. Some days you don't. Bronson, you never admit it. Depending on how you feel we nailed this podcast. I'm comfortable where I'm at. I feel like the reason why is because you had water. Come on. I was ready for some more Bronson stories.

I think I'm starting to get hangry. That's all. That's all. It is. Me too. Well, let's give away – I feel like giving away a good chunk of them. I'm not talking one camera, Bronson. How – do you want to do like – Five of them. Five winners for 32? Five to one guy. Oh. I want a significant gift. You have to go out and make a – and rate the podcast. I think let's give five 32. Okay. And we'll do a random drawing amongst all the people that rate and review. And if there's 10 of them, there's one in 10 shot of freaking $700, $800, $900 items. There'll be more than 10 of them. Five of them. Yeah. That's a great prize. But it is a good – it is. When we've done that in the past, it's a – And we'll pay the shipping. So you're going to get five G-Max 32s. That's the best camera we have. For all intents and purposes, the one we use personally put a lot of them out on the landscape

in a short amount of time. And it's getting to be that season. You like it? Yeah, I like it. Leave a comment. Screenshot it. Screenshot your review, however many stars you think Adam did. This time. Give him some stars. Screenshot that and your comment. And DM us on epic underscore hunts and we'll just take your names from there. Okay. Put them in random. And do it by – this is going to come out when? This will come out today. And then what's tomorrow? Tomorrow's Friday. How long are you going to get Adam's comment? A review. I'd say do it by Sunday night. That's short. Like in four days? Yep. Well, people – well, dude, people are going to listen to it. All right. And then they're going to lay around and forget about it. That's fair. Or they're going to do it. Sunday night? Sunday night. Along with that, I know most of our viewers come from Apple Music, but Spotify only lets

you rate something once. So along with that, I say we include our YouTube podcast channel, Epic at Epic Outdoors. If you subscribe and leave a comment and a rating on that as well, get you into the contest. That's why all you Spotify's that already played this game with us once before and you're maxed out on your comments and rate and reviews. But you can only get one entry. That's why we need – In the hat? Yeah. That's why we need a Gen Z because he thinks of all these things that we're excluding people without even knowing – He likes to make it complicated. He wanted to throw in TikTok because that's on his mind. That's right. And that's not happening. It's a China-based company. I did want to throw in YouTube pretty bad because our YouTube podcast could use some love. That's where I know that I'm not a five today because I most of the time forget

that I'm even being videoed for these things. So I know I wasn't a five. I think that's why we're awful little. I didn't dress for success. I didn't dress for success. Well, and I used to – I like to do podcasts like this. It doesn't show well. And if we pass notes back and forth, it's to address something. And if this is affecting us, we're doing away with it. Yeah, that's right. You're taking away TikTok. You're taking away the cameras. What do I do here? I do plenty. You always have a job here. But sometimes if I want to – If I want to have – you want to have hands going wherever which way, gestures and stuff, I don't know. I want to be uninhibited. Right now, that's why you see me fold my arms and I'm like – Well, you see, I've been trying to sit up straight. I mean, and I hate that. He's bridled. I like – I like – Lord Bronson is bridled.

I don't want to feel like I'm in – yeah, my armor with my LARPing sword. I don't want to feel like I'm in it. It does feel – I'm going to thrust this PVC. And the more you try to whiteboard us – and it's not you personally, but John would be all about it – whiteboarding us and pretty soon you just take all the personality out. Grease, grease. Yeah. You don't want. Yeah. That's my goal here. Unit 35. All right. All right, everybody. Hey, March Madness kicks up again today. It does. Good luck to all your teams. Watch the brackets. Yeah, it's a pretty tight competition right now. Our top 15 people are within 40 points of each other. And, hey, they all start doubling. They get more points every round. So stuff can happen fast. You get on a little streak now. It's not like the first round. So good luck. Sweet 16 this weekend. Going to knock out a lot of people.

It really makes the game interesting. That's right. I only care about deer. So whatever you guys are talking about, it's fine with me. Pokemon. We're talking about it. All right. Let's go. Have a good weekend. We'd like to thank all of our sponsors here at Epic Outdoors. For top of the line hunting, clothing, and apparel in every environment, visit UnderArmor.com. We'd like to thank Under Armour for being our title sponsor and making this podcast happen. Visit our website, EpicOutdoors.com, for discount codes to Under Armour hunting apparel. Handcrafted, quality, precision rifles from start to finish. Red Rock Precision is one of our sponsors, and many of our staff uses Red Rock rifles. Visit RedRockPrecision.com to find out more. If you're in the market for a hunting property, our sponsor at St. James Sporting Properties specialize in premier hunting properties throughout the West.

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