EP 281: The 2023 Mule Deer Outlook and Heart Break Stories with Robby Denning

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Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Here we are. How you doing? Good, buddy. Is the record button on? Yeah, it's going. Oh my gosh, you didn't even give me any time. You don't need any time. You do this for a living. We're good. Oh, a living, dude. Yeah, I've done like 11 podcasts on my own in my whole life. Yeah, but you have the gift of gab. And that is amazing. That's all you need, boss. That's all you need. Yeah, well, thank you very much, man. I appreciate it. Man, this came together fast. I was just thinking about you this morning, and I thought, man, I should reach out to him. I get so many people that want us to do this. Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm glad you did, and you hit me. I mean, you know, you hit me on a good positive morning. Whatever. That's all I could say. And I think, you know, we do a few of these podcasts, right? And they're taxing.

I mean, you know, you want it to come across right. You want to remember everything. And we usually don't have much for notes and just shoot from the hip. And so they're taxing. But, you know, I mean, you make it easy, Robbie. You're a great host. And it's fun to visit, fun to talk, you know, just to chat and have stories. I don't like dead time on the air, and you don't allow for that. And you're always chattering, and I like it. Well, thank you, dude. Thank you. And I like your sense of humor. And I got a few things here today. We need to poke some fun at a natural-born hunter here, man. And I'll get into it later, dude, but I think we're losing him. So I'm going to have you help me out. Hobbs is a good dude. He just – he's passionate. And, you know, I mean, there's – I think it kind of shines through. He's got a huge passion for deer and whatnot. And he's done very well in the field.

He's killed some great bucks, and we could all learn from him. So anyway, I like him. Oh, yeah, big time, man. Big time. Me too. So, hey, so we'll replay this on your channel and my channel. I've got a little intro here. Can I just go ahead and start with that? Yeah, run with it. Let's go. Okay, here we go. Hey, Rock Sliders. Welcome to the Rockcast. I've been fortunate to have been invited on nearly 60 podcasts over the years, but there is one episode with one particular host that stands out. I get more requests to do a part two of that episode than any other I've ever done. And today I have him on the Rockcast. If the number of 200-inch bucks taken is the measure of success, you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who's taken more. Rifle, muzzleloader, or bow, he's done it all, and in just about every western state. And he's one of the nicest and hardest-working guys in the industry.

While all us buck hunters want to be him, when you've scouted up a good buck, he's the last guy on the planet you want to see in the unit. Welcome to Jason Carter. Jeez. I don't know if I'm going to have to cut that out on our podcast. Already recorded, buddy. Got it on my end right here. I got the equipment, too. Jeez. Jeez. Well, I appreciate it, Robbie. You know, it's quite a privilege to be visiting with you today about big deer. And, of course, I know you don't hunt elk, so I know I don't even have to think about elk stories. And so that's good. Dude, you're a little behind on the podcast. I actually shot my first elk in 25 years last year, but it was a cow. What podcast did I miss? I listened to all of them. Oh, dude, we put it on the Rockcast here a few weeks ago. I think it was called Elk vs. Neal Dare.

Oh, I saw the headlines, and I just skipped by it because you said something about elk. And I was like, I already know the answer. Elk vs. Milder. I already know what he's going to say. And so I didn't listen. I'll have to go listen. Well, I've come to the point that I'm seeing so many elk everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere I hunt. I know some places they're down. But for the most part, I mean, they're over-objective in like 60%, 70% of our units up here. I'm going to start whacking a few cows. And, you know, like I always eat my bucks. I love them. I love venison. But, you know, when the freezer's getting down, you know, I lower my standards. And I'm thinking, you know what? I should shoot some of these cow elk. So that's what I did last year, and I'm happy I did it. Dropped a bomb on a mom. Well, that's good. It's fine. And they actually eat better. So you're good.

Dude, we could do a whole podcast on that too, man. I'm not going to agree with you on that. I think bucks are better. All right. Well, that's fine. That's fine. I actually, I killed a moose up there in the northern panhandle up there in your state. And that's probably the best eating thing I've ever had. Yeah, I wouldn't argue with that. They are really good. I remember when you got that moose. Like 10, 15 years ago? Yeah, it was getting in the way of a deer hunt. Actually, that Arizona deer. And I drew it. It was a two-week season. Remember when they started those November two-weekers? And I was like, oh, this is a way I could maybe snag a moose tag real quick. And then you get all excited, right? And then you apply. And then you're like, dude, be careful what you wish for. Because what if you draw it? Sure enough, I draw it. And in November, what are we supposed to be doing?

We're supposed to be hunting rut and mule deer, which is your favorite. And I'm up there hunting moose out of the rut. You know, like, what am I doing? But anyway, it turned out good. It was fine. It was good. Well, hey, dude, you bring up a good point. We were talking about Travis Hobbs, you know, natural-born hunter. Dude, I think we're losing him. What do you mean? Dude, he's been applying for antelope tags all over the place. He's totally going down the rabbit hole, sending the antelope pictures and stats. And dude, when I go to his house, the Epic Magazine, dude, he's on the antelope page. And dude, this is why I know it's getting bad. Because the other day, I heard him correct himself. And dude, he said, oh, sorry, I said antelope. I meant to say pronghorn. There you go. It's like, oh, dude, he's gone. He's got some respect for him now somehow. I don't know.

Well, truck chasers are kind of fun to hunt. And they're, you know, everybody's got to kill a few of them and whatnot. And I think as you grow older, I mean, they're pretty darn fun to hunt. They are. And so I don't blame him. These guys like to tease me that I'm this antelope connoisseur. When, you know, Bronson's the one that's killed all the big ones. And Devin and Wyatt have both killed basically booners. And, you know, so these guys, they have a bit of affection for them. But a lot of it is just because there's lots of game. It's an easy, fun hunt with you, your family, kids, whatever. And as you know, these big deer, we've been in a long old, let's call it a drought. I'm not talking about weather. I'm just talking about big deer in general have been hard to come by for the last, you know, 10 years plus. And so then, you know, your eyes start to wander a little bit.

You start needing to, you know, knock down a few other critters. And so anyway, they fill the void here and there. And the more you get to, you know, learn about them and hunt them and whatnot a little more, they do gain your respect a bit. And some of these guys that are good at killing big ones, I mean, man, my hat's off to them. They're hard to judge. Oh, yeah, they're cool, dude. And I think they eat good, too. But, you know, you were talking about your moose and being, you know, kind of distracted up on a moose hunt in November. Now Travis in September, which is a great time to hunt muleys. Dude, he's going to be off chasing antelope. And, you know, I was going to text you his number and have you have a little talk with him. I'm afraid you're going to pull him over to the antelope side. I'm going to talk to you. Him and I text here and there, so I've got it.

And I'll have to give him some grief. But he has not mentioned anything about that. But I'm good with it. Hey, if we can get him off getting excited about antelope, why maybe there's another big deer or two that will live. You know what I mean? You know, you got a point there. I didn't really think about it that way. You know, the guy smacks two bucks over 220 in one year. He's probably getting a little bored with a big deer and he should give him a break. Yeah. I just don't want him to get too cocky. We'll just let him, you know, hunt and judge antelope for a minute. And you and I will go out and, you know, knock down a monster this year, which I'm pretty excited about this year, really. Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. In fact, talking about this year, there was something I wanted to get out to everybody on the rock slide. And I'm sure a lot of people already know about it.

I know a lot of them listen to your podcast, but your whole newly matters thing you got going over at Epic. Yeah. We're super excited about it. And it's not something to, you know, to convince guys not to go hunting. It's nothing to do with that. It's just when everything's against deer, it feels like everything wants to kill them. Okay. You and I want to kill them. Coyotes want to kill them. Lions want to kill them. Bears want to kill them. They're somewhat weak, so to speak. They don't do well coexisting with humans like maybe a whitetail does. They're sensitive to drought. They're sensitive to winter kill. I mean, it just feels like, you know, everything's against them. And so, you know, and then you got the game and fish departments who've largely generated a good portion of their revenue off of selling deer tags. Somewhat apathetic to decrease tags where needed and whatnot.

And so, it just feels like everything's against them. When everything's against them and you have an extreme winter like you guys have. And, you know, of course, southern Wyoming and northern Colorado and places like that. It just kind of made sense because we're on the end of an extreme drought period here. And then when you guys get hammered too, it was like, man. And then I think part of it was, and I don't want to say fighting with the game and fish, but just having a difference of opinion with the game and fish on tag numbers and quotas. You know, it just said, well, what else, what can we do? Like, what can we do? Well, we could, you know, the tags that are issued, you could, if you really cared about quality and having a mature buck on the landscape. An average buck being a fairly mature buck. I mean, that's defined differently by all of us, right?

But we could eat tags instead of just knocking one down to make sure we filled a tag and, you know, notched our man card and went home. And I think you'd be shocked at how that resonates with people. It's just, you know, as we go to Colorado, you don't want to come home without one. I don't want to come home without one. Or if I go to Idaho or if I go to Wyoming or even my home state and I draw some special tag, even these general tags considered pretty special anymore with, you know, taking, you know, four to six points or whatever it is to draw them. And you start saying, well, you know, I don't want to eat that tag and I don't blame you. I don't want to eat them either. But, and they don't taste good, by the way. But you end up, you know, it's kind of better if it's, if you're going to knock them down and go, geez, why did I do that?

This just gives you an extra incentive to think twice. That's all it is. Just think twice. If you don't want to knock one down, there's honor in it. And send it in. And, you know, there's going to be, there is already a grundle of prizes. We've had them, of course, anybody that's following the Muleys Matters Instagram page, why we're, we're posting up some of the different prizes that are actually not just spoken that they're going to be available, that are actually arriving here at the office. And again, Robbie, like it says nothing to do with profit, revenue, Epic Outdoors. Although we started it, it's going to cost us money. It's already going to cost us. Adam and I and John are each putting $500 cash in. It's costing us optics. We threw in a fierce firearm. Because we're a dealer, we did it. Not necessarily fierce.

Although John's a good dude, and I'm sure we'd throw one in here at the end. So we have a couple of them. Hoyt, same thing. We, it's Arbo that we threw in. And so, anyway, it's just something we can do. It's fun. We like giving stuff away. And, and it just, it just, I don't know, it drives home a little bit of a thought process of, of, hey, maybe, maybe just think twice. That's all, you know. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, I listen to you guys' podcast frequently. And when I heard, first heard you talking about it, of course, you know, I'm getting other guys saying, hey, man, are you going to shoot a deer this year? You know, this isn't a good year to shoot a deer. I'm like, man, I've eaten like eight or nine deer tags since 2000. Believe me, I, I eat plenty of tags. I'm not going to go eat one on purpose. Right. And then I heard you guys talking about that.

I kind of thought it was along the same theme until I really listened to you. And then when, when you sold me on it was when you were saying, look, we're, if you want to get the meat, that's what hunting's all about. You know, we're not telling you not to do that. But what you just said a second ago, if you're, if you're just going to knock one down and then if you're honest with yourself, regret it, like, oh, I should have held out or I shouldn't have shot him. Well, this is the year to not do that. And so for the people that are not sure what this whole newly matters thing is and tell me if I explain it wrong, but at the end of the year, if you send your unpunched tag in and, and make sure you cut the unit out of it or black it out. Cause that's actually what Jason's trying to do to scan and all those into his files. I get it, but Robbie, I get it. Okay. All right.

So this is a whole nother subject, but keep going, finish it out. Anyways, you send your tag in and then Epic is going to do a drawing. And like, I didn't listen to your podcast for a few weeks. And at first it sounded like it was just a few knickknacks here and there. And then the next time I listened and it's optics and bows and then I'm waiting for a Ford truck or something. Maybe, maybe Logan's cash. Well, there, well, and, and you got to be careful with that because you know, but, but we're old school, like whatever, you know, Robbie, if you were to pull five bills out of your pocket and give it to somebody, is that so wrong? And so, you know, you got to be careful with cash prizes, but yeah, it's there.

And, and I've even got since, since, I mean, even stuff that's not posted yet, individuals, really good dudes in the industry that are, that are like, Hey, I want to throw in a stone glacier backpack and sending a gift card in because you want to custom belt or you want to custom, customize that pack. Like, so he's throwing a gift card in, I mean, just stuff like that. Like, yeah, it's just cool. Everybody wants to throw a little something at it. I mean, it's a feel good moment. It's something we can't do a lot. Game agencies can do way more than we can. Right. I mean, we can, we can, you and I can kill coyotes, kill lions, whatever. And then, and then just have some respect for the resource, I guess, is, is all. And, and understand that it, you know, it is a resource that I always called it a, I always called it a renewable resource. Right. I mean, they make more deer every day. Right.

And, and, and, uh, you know, the last 10, 15 years, uh, I mean, it is renewable, but there might be a, a little caveat to it. And, and, um, because it's not feeling so renewable when you've, when you go through major long, uh, drought spells and, and dealing with winter kill IQ. It's, it's, yeah, yeah, they are. It is a renewable resource and, and the, and the, and deer in most of these areas will come back, but it's, it's a little bit of a slow process. That makes sense. Yeah. And that's why I thought it was kind of a, and even if it's just a novel idea, even if it's just a fun thing to do, get people thinking about it. Um, you know, I brought up the whole cow elk thing. I did a whole podcast on it a couple of weeks ago that, man, if you really need the meat, there's a, there is a lot of elk over objective in a lot of states. Just to just name a state.

There's probably places that the cow tags are over objective. Excuse me. The cow elk are over objective. The tags aren't that hard to get, you know, non-residents are having a hard time getting tags right now. Yet some of these antlerless hunts are, they're just giving them away. And so now I think, I think it's great. Even if we don't make a big difference, if it gets, if it gets a few guys thinking about, Hey, do I really need to shoot a two point on a year? There's hardly any two points or a three point or whatever. And they're, and let's just face it. I mean, I hunt for the meat in the sense of I eat everything. I shoot everything. I don't give it away, share a little bit with friends, but you know, we consume it, but I can't really say I'm hunting for the meat. And so if, if there's a year to, to, to let a few bucks walk, it's, it's this year. It really is.

So, so anyways, we're going to help you out, dude. And, and, and, and, you know, Ryan Avery's on his bear hunt right now and he doesn't know this, but we're going to send you a check too. We want to get in on this. I just got to wait until he gets home, make sure it's okay that he skips the truck payment this month because his money's going down to Epic. So. Well, we appreciate it. That's awesome. Yeah. And we'll definitely, we'll, we'll put, push the rock slide, rock cast, however it is you, you'd like to. I mean, there's gotta be, we want it to be good for everybody. Right. And it, and it doesn't, it doesn't hurt us to, to, to shout out a few great companies out there that are supporting the cause and easy to do, easy to work with good people. So we appreciate it. You bet. So everybody go over to Instagram, look for the Muley Matters and follow them, follow the Epic Outdoors. It's fun.

If you shoot a buck, don't feel guilty. It's okay. That's not what this is about. But Hey, if the end of the year, you got a tag or two that aren't punched, send it in. You might draw some great prizes. And this, this would be a good year to skip, skip a buck if, if you could. Yeah. You know, I was also talking to my wife the other night after I listened to that podcast. I'm like, you know, at the end of the school year, you know, the, we're not buying the kids lunches anymore. We just usually give them that money for allowances. But I said, you know, I think this year take a hit for the team. We're going to send that money down to Epic Outdoors too for Muley Matters. I haven't told the kids yet, dude, but, but, you know, it's, you know, we're going to get behind you on this. Well, we appreciate it. Well, and maybe you think of some piece of gear that you love or whatever.

And, and we do a gift certificate or even, you know, buy a piece of gear like that. If it doesn't have to be customized and send it down. I mean, that probably goes a little, it's, ah, it's just a little more personal from Robbie. Right. And then say a cash price. So yeah, think on that. And if there's some incredible piece of gear that's helped you kill a few big deer over the years, that's, that's within reason, you know, we'd love to, love to showcase that and give it away. All right, man. That sounds good. You guys keep plugging away on that. Now, when's the drawing? So we're going to actually, you know, the deadline's going to be basically the end of November, December 1. We're going to, you know, gather up all the tags and go from there. And you're going to see a raffle bin of all colors, all types of paper. I mean, all the different states. We've got the states on the website.

Actually, Logan, Logan's sitting here with me. Logan, is your mic on? Yeah. Right on. Tell them how they can find us on the website. So if you go to our regular website, epicoutdoors.com, we have a little slider right there with a couple of our opportunities for the summer hunt giveaway. And also the Muleys Matter website. Or you can go to epicoutdoors.com backslash mm-home. And if you're interested in what tags are eligible, if you're going to be able to put in for it this year, go to the How to Enter page. Got a list of the different categories we're going to be drawing for and the tags and tag types that are eligible for those drawings. And we also have a page with all of our sponsors and the prizes that they've donated. And it gets updated every day. More and more people add on. So as we got started, we were really just concentrating in specific hard-hit areas.

And then we had people reaching out all the time saying, hey, what about over here in northern Nevada? We've had a tough winter. And what about over here? And what about, you know, New Mexico's had a long-term drought. And so we were like, okay, we do need to encompass more. So we had a little brainstorming session based off of comments and feedback. By the way, we look at all the feedback and comments on Instagram, whether it be direct message or out there on the posts. And so anyway, took that all into consideration and kind of customized it and come up with a formal plan. And we're going to, Robbie, we're going to do it every year. Like, we're not going to just stop it this year. Oh, really? Yeah, it's going to be a yearly thing. We're going to do it yearly. And December 1 at the end of the year.

And, you know, it's because there's going to, mule deer are going to struggle until the day we die, Robbie, in certain areas, right? And so it's just, what else can we do when we're, let's go back to the fighting with Game and Fish. I don't really want to call it a fight, just a difference of opinion. And they've got 14 other things that they're looking at. One of them's including a budget. Things like that that you and I don't have to think about too much. But with that, what can we do if they're not going to reduce tags the way we think they need to? I mean, they've got some reductions up in northern Utah with an 80% loss in some areas. And you're just like, I guess those numbers just don't jive. How do we encourage guys not to just harvest to harvest? And, man, I mean, there's nobody who likes to fill a tag more than I do. And so I get it.

And I'm all about, just like you said, I'm all about everybody out in the field and doing it. And harvesting whatever it is that they can or they want or that they've earned or whatever it is. I mean, we all hunt for different reasons. And I'm like you. I eat it. But like you said, if I didn't punch this tag, would I really go hungry? Like, would I not have protein to eat? And your point is, is no, but I do eat everything I harvest. And so, yeah, it makes total sense. Yeah. And if there's a year to not get a meat buck, if that's really what you're looking for, this is the year. And again, people, no shame if you do. Jason said that multiple times. You know, if that's what you're out there for, that's all fine. This is just a fun way to kind of tip our hats to mule deer.

And they're having a tough time right now with this bad winter that just came on and, you know, long-term drought, some of the things that Jason mentioned. And it's fun. So, Jason, you guys are just going to put all those tags in like a big lotto roller thing and just reach in and grab a tag. That's how you're going to do it. We are. But in the interest of time, what we're going to do is people are going to go on and register and register for the prize they would want in the order they would want it. And so, because let's just say we pull out, let's just say we have 50 prizes, which is most likely going to happen, if not more. We're going to pull a name. And if his first choice is taken, we go to his second. If his second is taken, we go to his third. We go on down, we issue the prize. I see what you're saying. Gotcha. You know what I mean?

Because if we called, didn't get him, left him a voicemail, how long until we can draw the second one, right? I get it. Yeah. We do that on Rockside, too. Yeah. So, anyway, that's why we built a website. I told the guys, and we all agree, like, we also have to work here at Epic. There's a lot going on. But having said that, how is it that we can do this in a timely fashion and you can go on and basically choose your prizes? And then if we can get a hold of guys and visit with them on air, that's awesome, right? And that's fun. I know. Yeah, man. You guys are putting in a lot of work for this. Because, like, when we've done prize drawings on Rockside, we've had this conversation before that a lot of times if we have 10 prizes, we just start drawing in order. First person gets the first prize. Second person gets the third. You know, something like that.

But we fully know that some guys are like, oh, man, I already have, you know, 15 packs of broadheads here. I didn't need more. I really would have liked that flashlight or whatever. And so it sounds like you guys are making that adjustment there where guys can get the more likely get the prize that they want when they're gone. Yeah. Some guys are going to want a Starlink, and that's going to be available. And other guys would be like, I don't really have a use for that. I'd, you know, rather have such and such. So, anyway, kind of fun. Yeah, kind of fun. Yeah, cool, man. Cool, cool, cool. So, let's see. What else? Winter wrap-up. Usually I talk to you in the spring. I kind of got behind this year. We haven't talked. Winter, I know you know everything that's been going on, but tough up here. But, you know, I've been out on the winter range. I did some shed hunting.

I took a flight about mid-May over just one of the migration corridors that are right here. And there are quite a few dead deer, but there's a lot of live deer, too. Yeah. Even in some of these hard-hit areas, you know, it's not – it felt good to see deer. And, of course, you know, they're not bucks yet. You don't know what's down there. Although a couple weeks ago, dude, I saw three fawns, you know, last year's fawns, running around healthy as horses just a couple weeks ago here. In one of the worst units, too. You know, now maybe they're the only three fawns that made it through. I don't know because this unit they're saying had like 80%, 90% fawn kill. But anyways, I think we're in the kind of ignorance is bliss phase right now. You know, we're not really out there looking that much because the bucks are still growing. We'll know more in a few weeks.

And, you know, I think it's going to be spotty. I think some places people are just not even going to notice it because I've seen that before on hard winters. And then other places I think guys are going to be in the dumps. They're going to be like, man, there are no bucks here. But that's my guess of what we're going to see up here. Well, I've heard the same thing. So I've got, you know, along with you, several other really good friends that hit it hard. And, you know, right in the dead of winter, right in, of course, February, March, whatnot, that know what they're doing. They live up there. And they would take road trips. And, of course, they're out looking on the winter range. And there would be in the same day, road trip, whatever, they would say, you know, this area was missed. And things looked fine. And over in such and such.

And this would be really specifically to southeast Idaho. And then, you know, parts up through Afton and some of that. But anyway, parts of it were like, wow, this is moonscape. There's no way they could survive. And so, you know, I think it was very spotty from what I've heard. And then the shed hunters, you know, for a large part, you know, they know what's going on. These guys are serious. They know deer. And the general feeling was a lot of young died. And the good age class, the age class we all like to see for hunting purposes this year, current hunting purposes, was, you know, somewhat hopeful that it will be a decent year. And that they're not finding, you know, large copious amounts of older deer dead. And so, you know, it was kind of, I don't know, I guess it kind of sparked a little bit of hope. When you hear death, nobody wants to hear about that, right?

And you think it was just everything. And it wasn't necessarily everything. And it was spotty. And so I'm like, I guess I feel very similar to you, but I don't live there. But I have guys just like you. And when you tell me something, Robbie, I pretty well take it to the bank. I know you know what you're looking at. And it sounds like you feel the same way. Yeah. I think some of this stuff in the heart of southeast Idaho, you know, 76, 78, 72, I think it's going to be bad. You know, and if you know a lot of non-residents are like, well, crap, I've already got my tag there. I'm not saying don't go. Just kind of set your expectations. But, you know, that's probably the hardest hit areas. But like it always is when these hard winters come in, you just mentioned it. It's usually your prime age bucks, you know, your two, three, four-year-old bucks that make it through.

And, yeah, they may not be giants this year. But, you know, they're going to have, and that's the other thing, too, the spring moisture is just continuing. You know, we've had two inches of rain here in Idaho Falls, which is a desert, in May. And it looks like for the next 10 days we've got it coming. And so the ones that are out there should be in pretty good shape. But I just had Toby Boudreau on the podcast, the Elk and Deer coordinator for the state of Idaho. We haven't released it yet. And he said some of that western Idaho stuff, which I observed, too. I took my daughter to a soccer tournament over there in April. And they did pretty good over there. I think you're going to kind of see the further west you move in Idaho, you know, maybe north of the Owyes. They kind of got some of that hard stuff, too. They were far enough south.

But, you know, getting over into western and central Idaho, some of those places did pretty good. And I've even talked to a few guys that were over there like, it was a hard winter? Man, no, not here. It was pretty good. You know, we had bare slopes and at least the lower slopes and everything. And so if a guy was coming up here to hunt this year, I would just tell him just, you know, if you're seeing nothing, move. Just move. It might be a year to move around a lot, you know. And a lot of times, you know, I kind of preach against that, you know, just hunker down. If you know one's there, hunt right there. But there's going to be some places there's not going to be any right there, I think. Yeah, you've got to hunt where they are, you know. And so, but if you know one's there, obviously what you're talking about is to hunker in and just stay on him totally makes sense.

But if you're not seeing sign and tracks and, you know, everything else that just tells you you need to be here. A lot of it is just the gut feel and feed and then as well as tracks and whatnot. But, you know, and don't be afraid to, you know, be aggressive and think outside the box and get after it. So I love Idaho. I'm telling you, like, we had a guy, you know, anyway, we consult with a lot of guys. And we did have a guy call in and, you know, kind of question the potential in Idaho and genetics and this and that. And, I mean, honestly, I put Idaho genetics against any genetics, whether it be Colorado or Arizona Strip or Henry's or Poncegon or whatever. Idaho, and you know this from the old-time books and Ryan Hatfield and all that. I mean, unbelievable genetics, the best of the best. Number two state. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Should be number two, man.

I think if everything was OTC for 10 years going forward, I think you'd see Idaho right up there again with the best of them. Yeah. And, you know, right now a lot of states and places, like you mentioned, the strip, they're getting managed for that. You know, of course they're going to grow giants. Well, those are lots of life, man. But Idaho, when they just take care of it, we throw, we still grow 240 deer around here. I mean, it just blows my mind. I'm with you. We got just some incredible genetics around here. And, you know, we may not get to see them here for a year or two, or maybe we will. You know how it is sometimes after a hard winter. Someone just shocks the heck out of you of what they find. And that's your thing, too, Jason. Like, dude, it is so green right now.

And unless we just get really dry and really hot, you know, I think the deer that are out there are going to do really good this fall. Yeah. Yeah, I worry a little bit about body condition. A little bit. Like, you know, but having said that, I mean, if you're coming off a hard winter, you couldn't have better conditions to go into the outland growing period. You know what I mean? And so, yeah, it's, Robbie, we're going to find big deer. You're going to find a big deer this year. I'm convinced of it. And I think you've got to just stay positive and just know that look at the positive sides. And there are a lot of positive sides. You know, this drought, these drought conditions have been pretty brutal here in south of you and down here in our country. And so you can't, we could go, we could turn off with no more moisture and 100 degree temperatures.

And I swear we're going to have a record setting year in many areas here in the southern part of the U.S. I contend it's like we've never seen. We had incredible fall moisture. The deer's body conditions all fall through into the winter. And then now coming out of the winter, we still have not even hit an 80 degree day, okay? And we're sitting here in June. It's amazing. We get out, we wake up in the morning, and you can feel the moisture in the air. That does not happen in southern Utah at this time of year. And so the optimism's pretty thick down here. And then for up north, like we talked about, having a good age class, it's probably in large part what you were seeing alive. It's going to be okay. I think the overall enjoyment of those hunts, people like to see deer. I don't care who you are, we like to see deer.

But I think the net result is you're probably going to see the same number of big deer that you would have otherwise. And a lot of hunts, I hunted age a couple years ago, I didn't see a big deer. I didn't see a single big deer. And you could argue that, well, two years ago was way better than this year. And that's probably true. And I think there's a decent chance I'd find one this year. But part of it is building upon the knowledge I gained then and not hitting it somewhat blind. But having said that, I do feel like there's going to be some great deer taken. And again, it's hard for people to look past having tough days and seeing half. You're going to basically see half of the deer, most likely, in these hard hit areas. You're going to see half of what you normally would. And that's disappointing. I like to see forkies, don't you, Rob? You know?

Yeah, well, it just makes you feel like there's deer around. I mean, you're pulling out of camp, 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Hey, I'm going to head up the glass. Oh, yeah, there's three small bucks right there. That's right. It just charges you up a little bit. And when you're not seeing that, perception's reality. You feel like they're not there. But what the data says, and this is why I think the Mealy Matter thing is cool, is because on these hard winters, we lose all the last year's fawns. So the fawns that were born in 2022 are taking a hit. They would be two points come October. And that's in most units, outside of your trophy units, where you've got your best hunters that are only focusing on the best bucks. But the majority of the West, people are just looking for a deer. And those are the deer they see. Because they're not educated yet. They're staying in the more open areas.

So those are gone, for the most part. And so, yeah, that's why if we save a few of those, great. We got something coming up. You know, I'm not a big point restriction guy, but on years like this, you know, that's where it works. Yeah. And, but, you know, just what I'm trying to tell people that are asking me about it is just don't expect the gravy. You're not going to see all these deer and these meadows and stuff like that. But don't sweat that. Because what you're looking for, there's not as many of them. Yeah, we lose our grandpas. Yeah, we even lose some prime age bucks, no doubt. But if, but in 2017, so after the hard winter of 16, 17, dude, I was still chasing a 190 buck around here. 100%. And, dude, he was great, dude. There was two or three others in there, 25, 27 inch, you know, 160, 170 bucks. But, dude, nothing below that. Right.

Like, you know, how these big, these big herds of bucks get, you know, they're 12, 13 bucks. Well, you know, six of them are two points. Well, none of that, dude. They were all, they were all nice bucks. Yeah. But then over the next couple of years, you know, they get hunted and, you know, lions and stuff like that. That area just slowly dwindled. It was actually better the year after the hard winter. 17. 17 was its best year. And it's just gone downhill since then. And some of that is, you know, low fawn recruitment. You know, all the things you're talking about with problems with drought. With drought, you know, all those things like that. And so, so anyways, I'm, like I said, ignorance is bliss, you know, but that's at least what I'm telling myself that, you know, the bucks that I want to hunt, there's probably still more than a few of them around this year.

And if, if, if we don't get a mild winter next year, oh man, this is when it's going to get really tough because we want to recruit those bucks up. And, and, you know, just over the years, maybe you've seen this too, you know, I can't, I don't have any like documented right here I can tell you about, but I just remember over the years, I saw this in 96, you know, after the incredibly hard winter in 92, 93. And 92, 93 up here, dude, was on the heels of a bad drought where this winter that just came up here. And when I say up here, I mean, here, Montana, Western Wyoming. Sure. Dude, these deer were doing pretty good last year. Good body fat levels. You know, we were getting late spring moisture. We were a little droughty, but, but, but, but that timely moisture did come.

And these guys over on the Wyoming range, Kevin Monteith and, you know, those guys, University of Wyoming, they were like, oh man, our does were in great shape last year. Well, dude, in 92, 93, we didn't have that, dude. They were skinny in October. You know, I was like, you know, 21 years old looking at these deer going, man, they don't look very good. And then we got that winter on top of it. But dude, sure enough, you know, 93 sucked. And we didn't know as much about deer then as we do now. Like we were all just like, oh, there's no deer. You know, we didn't really understand. Kind of surprised, right? Surprised. We had a hard winter. They died, but I'm now surprised. I don't see deer. We didn't know. We didn't know anything, Robbie. We didn't know anything. We didn't, dude. We didn't. But yeah, Doug Ayers, I don't remember him. He was from California. He was a buck hunter.

He used to come up here all the time in Southeast Idaho, Montana, Wyoming. He was pretty wealthy. He could hunt a lot. He was a hard hunter. And man, he killed a 350 pound buck here. Didn't score all that great, dude. Probably because it was like eight or nine years old on its downhill side. Big old heavy bases. I mean, we're a junkie looking buck. Yeah. And we were all just scratching our heads like, shouldn't that deer have been dead? Yeah. And yet that deer made it. But what I'm getting at is in, dude, in 95, 94, 95, and 96, those bucks that made it through that hard winter that were probably two to three years old. Dude, by 95 or 96, dude, we had some freaking giants around here. Yeah. In this whole kind of inner mountain area. And that 234 buck I killed was in 96. And I had him aged, dude. He was five years old. Wow. Lab age. Cut a tooth. Madsen. So I know that's what it was.

So, dude, backing up the calendar. He was born in 91. Right. Okay. And so he was a two-year-old going into that hard winter. Had he been a fawn, he probably wouldn't have made it. He probably wouldn't have made it. Yeah. But he was a year and a half old going into that winter, two at the end of the winter. Right. And, dude, I saw him when he was four. He was over 200 when he was four in 95. And the other thing that happened, too, 93, massive amount of spring moisture, just like what we're getting now. Mm-hmm. 94, freaking dried right up. And it was kind of droughty, but it didn't last long enough to really hurt anything. And then 95 was, you know, good, just right. You know, good moisture in the winter, but not a hard winter, not a dry spring, you know. And, dude, 95 and 96, those were epic years. If you're hunting southern Utah north, yeah, it's going to be harder.

But, man, watch over the next couple of years. I predict there'll be some giants that are going to surprise people that made it through those winters. And as long as we don't go into a hard drought again or another hard winter, I think some of those are going to show up. And I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. I just feel like, you know, it is somewhat forecasted that we're in for a wet two or three years. We're in for a wet spell. You know what I mean? And, you know, coming out of the drought. And so we'll see if that happens. And, you know, it would take a lot to have a winter that would be worse than what we just went through, especially up there where you're at. In 96, it's interesting you mentioned 96. I killed a 28-inch or 5x7 in 96 over here on what we called out in PHU's CWMU program in the center of the Ponce Gont. And it was like one of the better deer alive.

Like, it was a drought. Because you guys were drought down there. We were total drought in 96. And 2002 was total drought. It was brutal. And I know we can go through those drought years. And then you can match up. And little did we know right back then how that affected down here in, say, southern Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. You can line up the deer you kill or the deer you see. And what you remember is the great years. And you can line it up direct with moisture from, say, January through April. January through May. And it lines right up. Now, and so our drought years are your good years. Generally, if we're in a drought, you're going to have a light winter. Or you had a light winter. It's not a 180. We have a drought and you have winter loss. It's generally, we have amazing winter when you have a really hard winter.

And, you know, and same thing with spotty places within Colorado and things like that. So, anyway, yeah, 96 was a brutal year here. But, you know, you can line up. I even like you. I like to line up when you kill those deer, how old they are, and then back it up and say, well, he was born this year. And there's now evidence similar to sheep that maybe, you know, these fawns that are born on really tough years maybe never really reach their genetic potential because they never get out of that physical funk that they were born in, so to speak, you know. And so, again, we think we know it all, right? We know a lot more than we used to. I didn't even know why we had bad years back in the day. We would just go, man, I don't know. I just had bad luck. No, you know, Robbie, they weren't alive. They weren't alive. You know what I mean?

We were, I mean, there might have been one, literally, literally here in southern Nevada. It's where I spent a lot of my time, you know, back in the day. And when I was aggressive, had a gas card but no wisdom, and worked my guts out, okay? And back in the day, you know, in that country, in wet years, literally, we would find 20 bucks over 200 inches, right? That each person would know about or each of these good guides that are spending a lot of time, myself, whoever. And on drought years, you may know of one in four different units you would apply for. And it may be unit cluster. It may just be a single unit like unit 231. And you might just know of one on these really extreme dry years. And that buck, that one buck, there's one buck in 2012, I remember, killed by Mark Lane. He guided it. And it went 207. The year prior, it was like a 237-incher.

And we know the sheds were picked up, right? So, and we have trail cameras of that deer. And that deer has an amazing story to him in and of itself. Never, couldn't pattern him. Didn't have a pattern in the velvet, which is rare. But they had a personality. And just interesting, those kind of deer teach you something. But I guess my point is, you know, you end up with, you're hunting those, back in the day, you were hunting those, the deer that didn't exist. They were just existed in your mind. And then now, it's also interesting. You know, back in the day, let's call it 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, whatever. Everybody just, there was deer for everyone. We like to tease here in the office. We posted up a little video where, you know, an old-timer's like, bucks, bucks, bucks. And then I saw a big bunch of bucks go running out across a meadow.

Bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, bucks, every place I looked. You know, and we love, all of a sudden, somebody will pipe off, you know, and we're just, we're grinding away, right? We're getting 100 or 200 phone calls a day, and we're just right in the throes right now with draw results and draw deadlines, both. And, you know, somebody will be like, bucks, bucks, bucks. And it just reminds you, back in the day, there was bucks for everyone. People party hunted legally. You know what I mean? There was bucks for everyone. And now, when you see a deer, you know, it's like you have a respect for it. Like, hey, don't run. Like, I'm just going to drive by right here. Like, you know, your heart goes out to everyone you see dead along the highway. You know what I mean?

And it kind of makes it to where you can wrap your arms around a deer herd and just be like, man, I care about every living deer because they are so vulnerable and so sensitive. And we've gone through such a terrible time in the history of our lives, Robbie, whether it be your country in winter loss and our country in drought, that you just have such a respect for every living deer. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I think a lot of it is now we know so much more about them. We actually know what's out there. And, you know, you remember the old timers. And I still hear it even from guys that aren't that old is, you know, on a bad year, they always say, well, everything's high this year. And then, you know, the next year, well, everything's low. There's always a reason, some mysterious reason they're not finding them.

Where now we know enough about deer that are like, no, they're not up there. They're not down here either. You know, this area right here is hurting, you know, and I don't want to just do doom and gloom either because some places aren't like that. But we know what's out there now. And so we actually know when they're down. You know, our radio callers are coming in. We know, man, 90 to 95 percent fawn loss, you know. That's why I mentioned those three deer I saw a couple weeks ago, those three fawns. I'm like, holy crap, there's three fawns right there. You know, man, I want to hug them. Yeah, you do. They made it through the winter. You want to stand guard. You want to stand guard and kill any pup coyote that's even born, you know, in a 20-mile radius. Like, you do. And, yeah, it's interesting. I've always thought, you know, why do we continue to radio call our deer?

We know, like, again, we're studying the crap out of them, right? What more could we learn? We know coyotes kill them. We know bears like fawns. We know bobcats will kill them. Like, we know these things, right? But then you guys go through what you're going through, and then you say, well, we had a 90 percent loss on such and such age class, yada, yada, yada. And that's actually real-time data that's helping real-time management. Yeah, you bet. And the game and fish, if they mismanage, it's because they chose to. It's because they decided their budget was more important than the numbers that they see on their screen. And they get to choose, right? And whereas back in the day, we just didn't know. We just didn't know. Deer tags were over the counter in most every state back in the day. You know, we go back a couple of decades plus.

I mean, we hunted general tags in the rut with muzzleloaders. And that was when the night inlines came out. Like, we were pretty accurate with those. And those were fun times. There was deer for everyone. There was deer for kids, women, children, you know, dudes, trophies. Whatever you wanted to kill, you could find it. And now, with a hundred factors, whether it be, you know, cities, whether it be highways, mortality, winters, drought, crazy drought that we haven't seen, the likes that we haven't seen in who knows how long, you know, as well as winter loss. And then all the other variables that go with it, you know, it just ends up being tough, somewhat tough, to get back to the days that we remember. And my fear is that these, the old timers that know what they saw, know, knew, truly knew and saw what carrying capacity looked like in these units. They knew, they saw it.

They didn't know how to quantify it. But they knew what they saw, and that was 40 bucks a day or whatever. That those guys will pass on, pass away. And the new generation, let's call it me and you, Robbie. We're not that new, but we're kind of getting old, right? But, you know, we're left to remember what we remember. And then we got Logan here in the room, and he's going to replace you and I, and he's going to remember what he's going to remember. He has no idea what real carrying capacity looked like because those guys that remember that are gone. Those statistics are gone. The data's gone. The memories are gone. You know what I mean? And so we managed for a new carrying capacity, what we feel like carrying capacity is versus what it truly once was, you know? And so. But, dude, this is what I always try to remember, man. And you're right about that. You know, memories are short.

You know, memories are for a generation. But Colorado, dude, I don't, the worst deer hunting I saw was 93 to 99 in Colorado. You know, I was down there probably four of the five years. And, dude, it was just bad. It was just way, way worse than it is now. I mean, we were in Colorado. It was way better than it was then. Right. And, you know, even though we didn't know everything that was out there, just, you know, the, just the common guy go out and, you know, hunt a day and see what you see. It was, it was tougher then. And then Colorado turned that around with that, with those limited licenses. And some will say they even probably over managed it a little bit because they went off the charts in some units. And, you know, that's a whole other subject. Stockpiling deer. All I mean, we can't argue with them. It didn't work. It freaking died when the hard winter came.

But it just showed me how fast you can recover a deer herd. And there was other things, too. You know, they had, you know, the limited licenses came in in 99. And, you know, no real hard winters until 07. So they had, you know, seven years of growing deer. And then decent weather in the springs. You know, that stuff matters to them, too, even though they're high elevation deer. You know, they can't just be drought, drought. And, you know, maybe they, they'll still grow good antlers, but their fawn production goes down. Dude, they recovered that so fast. And then, dude, down here in Unit 56 in Idaho, they made that a draw unit. Gosh, when Idaho flip-flopped their deer and elk seasons way back in the day, like early 90s. They flip-flopped it. And they said, hey, we're going to take 56. We're going to make it a draw unit. And, you know, it pretty much sucked.

You know, nobody went on that side of the road. Everybody went on the 73A side. And that probably must have been maybe 91 or 92. So they kind of had to live through that hard winter. So we didn't really see much happening. But, dude, by the late 90s, dude, there was some smacker bucks down there. And, you know, I started scouting in like 2002, 2003. And, dude, it just showed me again just how fast they can turn that stuff around. And, you know, dude, there was, you know, maybe not 40 bucks a day. It's not that kind of country. But, dude, a lot of good bucks. And, you know, in 2004, just, dude, just a southeast Idaho giant down there. And, you know, just bucks that just, you know, you go across the road in 73A or you go west in the, what's over there, 57 or 55? I can't even remember. And, dude, it was just like just two different worlds.

And, you know, in fishing game for various reasons because 56 was kind of sticking out like a sore thumb because it was the draw unit. And so everybody moved out of it and were just hammering the units around it. You know, hunting pressure went way up in the units and, you know, a lot of dissatisfied hunters. And so they went back to OTC. And it's, you know, it was pretty good for a couple years. You know, there's probably some of those bucks that ended up in your magazine. Right. But it's kind of got back in line with the rest of the units around it. Now it just kind of ebbs and flows with the weather and, you know, stuff like that. Idaho doesn't have really any late seasons down there. So it's like a two-week rifle season. So if they make it through that, they do pretty good. But it's nothing like it was. I'm not saying that.

I'm just saying it just shows me that when things get in line, man, stuff can change in a hurry. Kurt Darner used to say it all the time is, oh, man, they can heal up fast. You know, be ready. They'll heal up fast. And maybe not as fast as they used to. But and maybe I just got rose-colored glasses on. I don't know. No. But that's the hope I hold out. It can change fast. And what you were talking about when you initially started was, you know, when game and fish in, say, Colorado went overboard and cut them too drastic. Let's just say, you know, how nice is it that they mismanaged to the deer benefit? You know what I mean? To the benefit of the deer, for once, we mismanaged in that direction. Instead of saying what is the maximum, I mean, we've got game and fish agencies here that are saying we have, you know, exceptional fawn recruitment, exceptional, you know, retention of our fawns.

And, you know, basically wintered extremely well and didn't die. And it's abnormal. In fact, we're going to have more bucks on the landscape. And so we're going to go ahead and issue more tags based off of fawn survivability from this year. You know what I mean? And you're just like, man, can't we just wait for a minute? I mean, you know what I mean? I mean, we're issuing a bunch of extra tags or at least wanting to take advantage of the fawns that survived, you know, and instead of waiting for, say, those fawns to gain a little age on them and for us to truly understand what's going to live and what it all looks like and whatnot. And so anyway, to have the flip of that is say we mismanaged to the benefit of the deer and, you know, maybe overmanage. And that's what I like about hunting some of these desert areas is they're accidentally mismanaged.

They don't know how many critters are on the landscape. But anyway, that's for here in a few minutes. I do, I agree with you as far as a lot of different variables came into play with, you know, going to a draw system in Colorado as well as light winters, great springs. And it was just a period of time that led up to 07 that was incredible. And one that nobody forgets, Robbie, like nobody forgets. Anybody that was in Colorado will never forget that time. And you know what's interesting and what's, I guess, and I want to maintain a positivity, but is it not okay to, why can't we get back to that? Is it not okay to lose some to winter? They don't want to ever lose, they don't want, they want to prep and issue tags so that all those deer go home in freezers before their winter killed.

I personally think it's okay to have a span of time, say, let's call it 2001 or 2002 through 2007 of, you know, 6-7 that was amazing. It was like a world-class experience for everyone that went. And then we had a harsh winter and there wasn't deer for everyone after that. And we remember that, but they're so scared to lose those deer to, you know, scavengers after their winter killed that they issue tags like crazy to make sure that we maximize and utilize the resource. And I'm good at that. I want people to be able to hunt. But what's wrong with having that world-class experience again? And not just a unit 44, not just a unit 13B on the Arizona Strip, not just the late Kaibabs or, you know, a couple of those units up there where you're at. Or, say, you know, 128 experience where you're seeing lots of deer, not next-level giants in Wyoming, but you're having a next-level experience.

What's wrong with having that here and there a little more and being okay with a little bit of winter loss, you know? But we're so scared of winter loss that we're going to maximize and maximize the tags. We're going to issue every tag we possibly think can be issued and still have the does get bred is the general consensus of the state agencies. It's just what it feels like to me, you know? Yeah. Well, I'm listening closely to what you say, and I offer what I've learned from a few biologists, which, you know, could be on the other side of everything you're saying. But, and I know they were right about this, because in 92, which was kind of the end of our four or five-year drought up here, so, you know, basically, you know, Salt Lake North, it was bad up here. And, you know, years of it. And, you know, clearing to Colorado and everything. Our fawn recruitment was going way down.

They were documenting this before the winter even came. You know, like if we were 70, 80 fawns per hunter does prior to that, when the drought came in, we were getting below 50. Sure. And, you know, yet there was still a lot of deer surviving because we weren't losing anything to winter. And so by, by 92, and they might have done this in 91, I can't quite remember. Maybe it was, maybe it was two years in a row. You could, they had two deer areas in Idaho. You could shoot a buck and a doe. And, you know, that's like, we, you know, I grew up in the 80s. You never heard of that. I was with the old timers talked about in the 60s. And these deer that were on, you know, 72, 69, you know, with some of the other winter ranges we hunted, 78, excuse me, 77. You know, down in there. Dude, we had so many deer on those winter ranges. Dude, just deer sticking, deer legs sticking out of every truck.

You know, got, you know, six guys shooting 10 deer. Bucks, bucks, bucks. Yeah. Bucks for everyone. No, and a lot of them were does too. A lot of them were does because that, that was why it was a two deer area. And yet, dude, when that winter came in, it still hardly left anything. I mean, we knocked the crap out of those deer. Sure. And yet still the next year there was, there was hardly anything. Now you could look at that two different ways. You could look at it with what you're just saying that, hey, if we would have let more live, then we'd have had more left over. But these, these biologists I was working with at that time, you know, Ted Chu, David Anderson, they were all like, see, this is what we're talking about. We would have lost those deer anyways. And all the, I didn't mention this part, they were working with the habitat biologists then.

They're like, they're degrading their own habitat. And so when we have this many deer on the winter range, and then they degrade their own habitat, we're going to lose more of them in the winter than we normally would have had we not let the deer, you know, get so high. Let's just use the word stockpile now, because that's what Colorado talks about is we can't stockpile deer. And those guys, it was those guys belief, Jason, that was like, we wouldn't have had them anyways. They would have died anyways. They might as well gone home in the trucks. At two and a half and three and a half years old, Robbie, that's the problem I have with that, with the mentality is, is that in, let's call it 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, we're get, we're maximizing tag numbers. Because we're scared of the, you can't forecast the future, right? But we're scared when the 92, 93 winter comes.

And so we're going to maximize the tags. And you wouldn't be talking, when you, Robbie, your voice, your voice comes up a click or two. You start talking fast when you're talking about those amazing times in your life, when you saw hooves out of the back of every truck, and there was bucks for everyone, and all of this, you know. And so nowadays, that's what I, I just, we're so worried about when that winter's going to happen that we're making it to where we haven't had a, when was the last time Colorado was really good? When Colorado was really good? Yeah. When was, well, by whose standards? By whose standards? Right, right, exactly. That's always what I got to throw in there. Well, and not, there's not one, there's not one person that doesn't talk about 05, 06. 03, 04, 05, and 06, there's not one person that doesn't remember that, right? Yeah, I was there every year. Okay. It was good.

Unbelievable. In fact, your voice gets faster. You come up a level. It's exciting, right? Right. And now, you know, when's that ever going to happen again? Only if we accidentally mismanage units will that happen again. Or weather. Sure. The other thing, too, Jason, is what I would add to that is, as I'm with you, those were great years. But I didn't get a buck every year. Me neither. Me neither. But it was great to see that many deer on the lamb steak. But tell me if I'm wrong. 07, 08, okay, that was bad. I mean, 07 was good. But 08 was bad because of that winter. Really bad in the Gunnison. Really bad in the Eagle. And then, you know, we felt those residual effects in those units. But really throughout the state, there was, all the deer took a hit, even though those units were where the heart of the winter kill was.

It's similar to what just happened in southeast Idaho and northern Utah. Like, that's where it's going to be the toughest. But I'm still expecting the guys out at Arco and, you know, up Island Park, you know, they're going to see some less deer, too. But tell me if I'm wrong. By 2010, 11, 12, Colorado was doing pretty good again. Things were good. Yeah, things were good. Okay. I killed, I mean, I've killed a number of big deer in Colorado, you know. And I agree with that. Like, you can say, you know, depending on the year, you know, in Swatch, I killed a 32-inch mid-90s, another mid-90s out of Swatch, a 212 out of Eagle on, you know.

I don't know, a buck out of 21, 34-inch. I mean, there's a number. And that was in 08, actually, in 21, you know, a 34-inch, 207 buck. Like, there's a number of, you could say, you know, great deer that were killed by other people. A lot of people, you know, have. But I think a lot of it was the fact, just factors of numbers of hunters in the field. And Colorado's unique. It has, you know, we always thought, Robbie, and, you know, there's a lot of thick country. And there's a lot of escapement, or at least was. And then now, the last X amount of years, you're just wondering, people are wondering, well, I can't wait for these late dates. These late dates are going to come out of the woodwork. And then these late dates happen, and they never come out of the woodwork. And then you're, like you talked about when we first started talking, is this, are they really in the woodwork?

You know, do they really exist? Or have we hunted them pre-rut, rut, post-rut, whatever, second, third, fourth seasons, hard enough with enough tags, you know, in the name of helping CWD in some areas. We've got to, you know, we've got to curb the age class because of that. Or whatever it is, maybe just the fact of just maximizing tags and opportunity. And prepping for, you know, a win or kill at some point that's, you know, that doesn't just wipe us all out because they didn't exist. Because they went home in trucks at two and a half, three and a half, four and a half years old. And so, you know, you can't argue that it's never, everybody says it'll never be back to what it once was. And I guess my contention is like, why can't it be, why do we have to continually hunt them in the rut when we know rut hunting's hard on deer? Although, Robbie, just like you, I love deer.

You and I are going this year. Yeah, I'm going. Just admit it. I already know. We're trying to get attacked. No, I'm not even trying. I drew. So, you know, I've got plans with my son and we drew. And so, anyway, interesting stuff to talk about. I'm on that trophy spectrum, you know. But having said all that, you know, there's arguments here in Utah that they're going to go to one point system and basic or potential, right? We're just going to review it and consider it instead of having general tags and then limited entry deer tags and a dedicated point, you know, where you can basically get three different deer points here in Utah. It's consolidating those and make, because in essence, everything's limited drops. Oh, I see what you mean. So, you don't have a limited entry point. Right. You don't have a general point. Okay, gotcha. You would just have points.

So, they're going to, you know, review that and stuff. And I was on that bandwagon there a while back. I mean, we're talking several years ago. It's like, geez, everything's limited entry anymore. Everything is. But if you do that, it's going to become really tough to draw everything, right? Just everything in general. And then it kind of opens things up to be managed differently than maybe just a general status. Who knows what that's going to look like. And so, you can, these evolutions of harder to get tags is also painful. Just, you know, we've watched over-the-counter tags kind of dissipate and that's painful. But you just don't know the perfect right answer because there's just not bucks hanging out of trucks like there used to be for everyone with over-the-counter tags. And like you said, it's a large part of its weather. It's true.

Here, I never valued the impact a drought would have until, A, I'm old enough to see it and understand it. And it's severe enough. It's not just a, you know, an ebbs and flows type drought. We're talking about a serious drought. And we used to have managers say, well, you know, what can we do to help the deer herd? Well, pray for rain. Well, that's not really a management strategy. You know what I mean? Like there's something you can do too. But honestly, it's kind of true. You need to pray for rain. Like there is, rain here is life. And it affects everything. And it's similar to, I listened to, you know, your podcast. I think it was with Randy. And he talked about, I'd rather go through a, you know. A hard winter. A hard winter than a drought that we've been through. Yeah. Because it affects the vegetation. That was kind of a change in thinking, wasn't it? Yeah, I loved it.

I agree with him. But I don't know that I could quantify it until I heard it from him. And it's the truth. These droughts are, they're killing the vegetation. It's not just like, oh, the vegetation didn't grow new leaders. It's like, it's killing it in parts of the country down here. And the deer are affected by it so drastically for multiple years that you just, anyway. Well, and that's why I'm not going to go down the doom and gloom path, dude. I mean, look at Lake Powell and look at Lake Mead, what happened down there the last couple of years. I get it. I mean, gee, they're out there pulling out 50-gallon barrels with mafia hits in them. And, you know, the lake got so low. I thought we weren't going through the doom and gloom. Now we're talking about dead bodies in 50-gallon barrels. Yeah, yeah, there we go, dude. But what I'm saying, dude, I'm agreeing with you. Mega drought.

Mega drought. That's true. Those lakes are set to come up, you know, 70, 80, 90 feet this year. And, dude, I'm just calling it. You guys are going to get back into a good cycle here. And Utah, now that the way that we set it up, love it or hate it, dude, the licenses are limited, you know, by whatever you call them down their zones. You know, they're micromanaged, similar to Colorado. And you guys got a thumb on it, dude. I'm looking at a note on my note board right here, dude. It's just old notes from when I wrote my book, dude, that in the late 80s, Utah was given a quarter million deer licenses. And by 2012, you guys were down to 74,000 deer licenses. And you're about that right now, right? 70, 80? Yeah, just under 70, yeah. Gotcha. And I know it's like, wow, that really sucks. But, dude, in that time, you know, you guys had some banner years during that time, too.

And, dude, I think if we get a little cooperation from the weather here, and you guys got a thumb on your licenses there, I'm calling it, dude. You're going to be smiling here in a couple of years. You're going to be hard to get on the podcast because you'll be like, oh, man, he's going to be needling me for waypoints. Man, he knows I'm looking at all these giants. And, you know, that's just how I have to think or I can't hunt. But I'm with you on, you know, people's memories are short and everything. You know, I get all that. I think what we're up against, Jason, is that every time these states put out these surveys, these hunter satisfaction surveys, and I'm with you, man. I'm on the trophy hunting spectrum, dude. I like big bucks. That's what I want to manage for, man. If it was up to me, dude, we'd manage every western state like Colorado managed theirs from 99 to 2008.

Man, that's how I want to do it. But, dude, that limits a lot of participation. And when these states come back, people are just – they want to hunt every year. And, Jason, whether we like it or not, there's a lot more of them than there are of us. I agree. And that's what we're looking at. And I want them to hunt. I want them to hunt. I want there to be bucks, bucks, bucks. I want everybody, when there's plenty of good deer and good age class on the landscape, everyone's happy. The guys that just want to kill something for the first time are happy. The trophy hunters are happy. I mean, just waking up in the morning thinking there might be something special. Robbie, if we know there's nothing special on the landscape in a unit, I don't think that's correct management. If you get up and you have no positive thinking that – Oh, yeah. I agree.

I just feel – this has been over-hunted and over-harvested. There's units that are like that, though. You know there is. But they've always been that way, dude. That's what I'm trying to say, dude. They've always been – there's always been places like – I think there's more now. I do. But, dude, there's always been units just hammered. Hammered. Yeah. You know, that was why they took 56 out of the general pool. It was just getting hammered. Too many roads. Not enough – not enough survivability. And so that's – that's always been good. Dude, I remember, dude, growing up in the 80s, and I didn't know it, but we were living in the frickin' heyday of mule deer. And, dude, all my uncles moaning about the frickin' deer hunting and the number of hunters and the number of guys from Utah. And, dude, you go look at our tag numbers. We don't have any more nonresidents in Idaho now than we did then.

And, yeah, dude, it was just doom and gloom. I mean, they're ruining all the deer. And, yeah, we didn't really know what was out there. You know, now I realize what was out there. But, dude, you said something a minute ago when, you know, when there's – you know there's none in the unit. Well, dude, I don't think that's happening on a wide scale. None in the unit? Did I understand you? Yeah, you understood me. I just think – you're right because you and I aren't hunting those areas, Robbie. Like, you and I aren't hunting those areas. But if you – I just – I feel like if, you know, if – yeah, I just – I feel like there's areas that we're maximizing tags, if not mismanaging to the opposite end of the spectrum, not on the deer side, right, to issue more tags than they should be.

And then that results in, you know, a lot less older age class bucks than would be healthy or should be or whatever. And so that's just – I mean, that's just my feeling. I don't know. I mean, you can't tell me that things are good and that, you know, unlimited over-the-counter tags are good for everybody. But there's – like you're saying, there's a happy medium. You don't also need to just give 40 tags total to make sure that we're seeing, you know, 40-inch, 240-type bucks. And so there's a little bit of give and take. And Arizona can do that, right? They can pick out a couple of units and do that because they've got the entire rest of the state to work with and have plenty of deer for everybody just to hunt. And that makes sense, right? That makes sense for them. It keeps everybody happy. They're continuing with the over-the-counter archery tag, although that's had its challenges

and they've wanted to help, you know, curtail what's happening there and yet having a lot of public feedback because people don't like change. And I don't like change either. I mean, change is hard, and then once it changes, you feel like you can never get it back. And I think that's also another reason people have a hard time letting go of the over-the-counter Wyoming. Your resident's going to have a hard time letting go of that if it ever came to that. Or, you know, Idaho at times. And so, you know, those are hard things to think about. And, you know, like you say, just like you said, weather plays an important role. And, you know, there's a lot of other things that are happening, a lot of other. Yeah, and tell me what you think about this. And Ryan Hatfield had had it in his book about when everything was general.

And now in Idaho, dude, when people tell me unlimited over-the-counter, in my mind, dude, it was never unlimited over-the-counter here ever, even when it was OTC, because there was still a cap on non-resident deer tags. And, dude, in the 80s, they were selling out on December 1st. No, dude, no internet, no texting, no vendors. You couldn't, you know, run up to Idaho. I mean, you had to call in on the phone.

Right. You know, stretch the cord across the room, sit there, wait. Dude, those tags were gone, especially the Southeast Idaho tags. I don't know if you remember this. Oh, I remember. We killed big bucks in Southeast Idaho. Yeah. Yeah, it was just amazing. And so the reason I say that is because even then, dude, once those tags were sold on December 1st, the only way the number of hunters could go up is if we grew a bunch more residents that year. Well, that didn't happen. So, you know, it was never just this unlimited, no cap on the hunters. And that's why I point out to people right now that, hey, we've still got about the same number of non-resident hunters. But this is what's changed, Jason. This is why I push back a little bit on over-management of the deer. All the residents in Idaho got all pissed off a couple years ago.

And now I don't know if it's because they can get organized on Instagram or what it is because they've been pissed off for years. And they push back on the non-residents just like Wyoming's doing. And then Idaho, we didn't change the number of deer tags. We changed how they were allocated to take some pressure off some units that probably needed it. I'm not saying that that wasn't warranted. So, do you know what almost every Idaho resident feel or non-resident feels like now when they have a tag in their pocket? That they have a draw tag. And now they hunt it like a draw tag. I think that's key. There you go, dude. For five years ago, it's like, oh, those are left over. You know? You ate them. I'll buy one of those. You ate them. You just had one to have it. Now you're having it because it's the only tag you can get.

And so, and if you treat that as a Henry Mountains deer tag and you put in real effort and real work with new technology and time, and there's a little bit of money out in the world, so people are putting real, a lot of gallons of fuel and willing to do it. And they have reliable trucks and side-by-sides and four-wheelers and 14,000 other things. And all the, you know, new age social, or excuse me, digital ways of learning units and social media and everything else. Like, people are learning things. Companies like ours, whatever. And, you know, people are, like you're saying, they do maximize their tag. Whereas the residents, you know, this is something they don't maybe truly value because it just comes and it's somewhat cheap, way cheaper than I think it should be. You know, price of a resident deer tag should be double or triple, what it is, even in my state.

But they won't even keep up with inflation, really, because, you know, the residents have grown so hard. It doesn't matter what state you're talking about. But anyway, having said all that, we value it, and so we're going to maximize it. And maybe we do cream off a little bit of an older deer on average than a resident, even without the resident knowledge, even without the local resident knowledge. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Like, up here, it always seemed like the non-residents were better hunters. Now, someone's going to drive by and egg my house, I know. But they just did, dude. They came. I don't know if they're better. They're just more serious. I don't know if they're better. Yeah, there you go. They're just more serious. And I have no facts on this to show that, hey, they had a significantly higher harvest rate. You know, I don't know. It just felt like they're not.

I mean, that's why there was so much hate for them. Like, some guys come up here, look at all them bucks in the back of their truck. And I'm like, Rick, you were back at the cafe at 930. What are you complaining about? You know, those guys have been camped at the end of that two-track road for five days. Right. But so they were – non-residents, you know, once they cross the state line, they've always invested more. But since Idaho has gone to this cap in these certain units, you know, now the guys that are lambing these tags, they're just upping their game even more. So do you think it was good or bad?

Is that good or bad?

So really, really, your caps are causing people to – in your – what you're saying is the caps are causing people to be more serious. If you didn't have caps, I wouldn't value it. I would probably eat that tag because I might get a Colorado tag that would conflict. But you're just saying – you're saying now that cap tag in 26 or that cap tag in 73 or whatever, I'm going to really – I'm going to really utilize. Yeah, I've got a draw tag now. I've got a freaking draw tag. Right. I've got a tag that's got value because so many people wanted it, and I got lucky and was first in the waiting queue, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And now all the other units that used to just sit there, you know, for those people that don't know what we're talking about, 75, 77, 72, you know, those always just had a lot of focus from non-residents.

You know, those – when people could just buy a general Idaho deer tag and go to any unit, those units suffered because more people ended up in them. So to answer your question, the cap was a good thing for places like that. But for all the other units that were just mediocre, average, nobody really thought about them, now once the cap is hitting those units I just mentioned, people are jumping over to other units and saying, well, there's still one there. They'll grab that one. Dude, they're calling me. They're calling me, you know, by 11 o'clock on the day in December. It's December 1st. It goes live, I think. They're calling me by 11 o'clock. Hey, dude, I didn't get the one I wanted, but, hey, I got this one over here. And I'm like – Same thing. People weren't even thinking about that unit.

And so now back to this whole Muley Matters thing, that dude is going to go over there and shoot a deer now. Where a couple of years ago, dude, he didn't even care about that tag. He didn't care. You know, and so I can't say if it's good or bad. I can just tell you I don't think in the long run it's going to grow us any more bucks. And maybe it wasn't intended to. Maybe it was just a social thing, you know, because a lot of these residents don't want to see anybody else in the field. Man, if they see anybody else, there's no deer on the mountain. You know, the non-residents go to them all. You know, it is going to help with that in some place. Somehow, in their minds, they're saying, we have pressure. Robbie, the quality isn't like what you were talking about in the 80s. You're talking about deer hanging out of the backs of trucks, right? And so the same thing –

Now, remember, those weren't big deer. Okay. I was just saying that was when we had our two-deer area. There was real carrying capacities being that. Well, no, no. You think there was room for more? The carrying capacity, that's why there were so many deer died that winter. They were so far over carrying capacity. Jason, you could go down there around Soda Springs, dude, and you could see the browse line from a mile away. Just look up on a hillside. You could see the browse line on the juniper. I understand that. But on a normal – But you're also – There's maybe a difference between a carrying capacity that's in average winters versus the carrying capacity of an extreme once-a-decade winner. Yes. Totally. And so we're up to carrying capacity in the 80s, late 80s, early 90s. And people, there was bucks and deer for everyone, right? And then we meet this winter kill.

If what you say by the letter of what we're talking about, by the letter of the law, so to speak, exactly what you say is that deer died because we were exceeding carrying capacity when the winter hit. So if we were under carrying capacity, if we were under that, would all of the deer lived? Not all of them. I think a hard winter is a hard winter. I think hard winters are hard winters. And feet gets covered up. But Jason, they're saying it right now. And snow gets crusted and winds happen. And you know what I mean? And I know what they're saying. I do. I didn't mean to interrupt you there. Sorry. No, you're good. You're good. But so how do we get back to the good days?

And that's what Game and Fish is saying. Okay, we want to make these guys happy. We don't really like them barking up the tree and screaming at us. How do we get back to those good days that everybody remembers? Because right now, every fishing game agency is thinking that people think they're useless, right? And they're mismanaging. When in reality, it's a lot of factors, weather and other things. But how do we get back to those good days? And Game and Fish is saying, gosh, I guess we've got to limit tags. But then we go away with this OTC for residents. And so the next best step is the first thing we can limit for even further. We can even further restrict the non-resident. And then that's kind of maybe the initial step before we truly go to a draw on OTC. You know what I mean? Yeah, that seems to feel like where it's headed. Right? Same thing with Wyoming.

Wyoming's saying, we have half the deer on our landscape in a lot of these areas. But we are not going to limit tags. So why do we even have management? Why don't we just, you know? And so... Wyoming's managing residents through point restriction and season length. And they're managing non-residents through a cap on permits. Through a cap. A cap that's always been there. And so we're just going to cut down another 100 tags or 200 tags. But in the big scheme of things, what's that? Nothing. Exactly. Nothing. And so, yeah. And so, you know, yeah. Yeah, but you know what? I know one of the biologists that lives over there. And of course, you know, in this conversation, he's the enemy. But he's like, these deer down here, he's talking 135, right? You're talking about it. He goes, all I got to do is get them through two and a half weeks of a rifle season. And they're going to make it.

And he says, that's why we have big bucks. All things considered, good winters, no drought, all that kind of stuff. To him, that's not a very long season.

That was his cap. Because that's what him and I were talking about, you know, because I was talking about pressure on deer. And he's like, pressure on deer? He says, we don't have that much pressure. And he's talking about, you know, down in decay and, you know, all that stuff there. He's like, yeah, we got to, you know, pressure around the roads on top, you know, stuff like that. You know, the easy places to get. So, I don't know, Jason. Look, I don't want to sound like I got rose colored glasses on here because I kind of do. You know, I'm not ignoring the fact that right now we are in a slump. And, you know, I relate a lot of that to weather. But the way that the Game and Fish has their thumb on tags right now, you know, we could do really well, especially in your state, if we get favorable weather coming back. I think it's going to happen this year. It's huge. Part of your state.

I think it's huge. That's why I'm like careful. Yeah. If there was deer, we wouldn't even have these conversations. Everybody's a hero. It wasn't even about a few years ago. Everybody was saying, you know, our deer back, there was deer everywhere. There was a few big deer on our general areas and people were somewhat happy in it. And it came and went with weather. And so, you know, we're also dealing, you know, there's just a, it shouldn't just be a one-year thing. Right? And so, it shouldn't. Exactly. It shouldn't. But this is the most extreme circumstance we've ever experienced is the drought we've been through. And it's not talking one year. You know, there's times we get a little bit of rain in April and May and we're shouting for joy thinking there's going to be some good antler growth. And there is at times.

It's, you know, but it's overall, it's still, we're still in this huge drought that's having minimal, you know, yearly annual effects that add up everywhere, a little bit everywhere. Feed, fawns, whatever the case is, right? And when water and, you know, games congregating on water and they're easier for me to kill and you to kill and predation. And there's just so many of these intangibles that are getting to be more tangible with technology and knowledge and biologists and things like that. Right? And universities that are spending time thinking about it and doing studies and all of these good things. But we're in unusual times and we also have incredible amounts of technology and with a limited resource, people value it more, right? We used to let dogs chew on, not we, my heritage, your heritage, used to let dogs chew on 35 inch

deer and, you know, absolute giants that won Jeeps down here in Vegas, right? And those deer can't be found in many cases, you know, for a number of reasons. Anyway, but having said that, now when there aren't any, when it's not available, like you said, the tags aren't just free to everybody. They're becoming more and more restrictive. They feel like a draw tag because the caps are tighter and tighter and the demand's higher and higher. It's the same thing when deer, when big deer become less and less plentiful. Then we put more and more emphasis on them, more and more value. We go to great lengths. We scout a lot more. Everybody seems like, it seems like nobody has a job. Everybody has two months to scout or they're figuring it out and they're working their guts out and they're good at what they're doing. They've got incredible glass. They got, they, they got video equipment.

We're all showing each other on, on social media what we're finding and it's creating a sense of urgency to get out there and work harder because, you know, whereas before it was just like, oh, I'm going to fail in silence over here and I'm going to read Eastman's or trophy hunter back in the day and, and see a little, a little highlight reel. It's going to get me excited for next year. And, and now we're seeing everything that's killed, right? If you even hear about it, you see it. And so anyway, and so how do we combat those times? I mean, these are with technology drought winners, whatever the case is, you know, and, and demand and, and hunter numbers and all of these things, these are just cruel and unusual times that sometimes require cruel and unusual steps to remedy in places where we can. But, or we just give over the counter tags in every state to residents, unlimited over the

counter tags in every state to residents and we'll do non-resident caps. And we say that's management. And, and I don't know if that's the answer either, but I, but I don't know necessarily the answer because I can't, I don't want it to be like Henry's where I can never get a tag. I don't really want it to be like the Ponce God where I can never get a tag or Oak Creeks or 13 a and B or the Kaiba blade or a number of areas to, to, to, to, to B2C, to B2C in New Mexico, whatever. Every state has them, right? You know, 44, you know? And so, but there should be, we, you know, we should be as excited as I am for this year, right? Like, like a more regular basis. And I guess maybe that's just this cruel drought that we've been through and your guys' winter killed it. Hey, you know, but things are. It's all compounding.

Everything you just said, the technology, the harder hunting, you know, stuff like that's all compounding. You know, we're, we're, we're, we're more accessible. You know, we can travel more, but dude, I still remember back in the nineties, you know, just barely out of my teens going to these meetings and fish and game are like, man, every time we try to start a new season over here, you know, I-15 just ruins it because people can travel so easily now. You know, it's nothing for, I remember the guy saying it's nothing for a hunter to drive 150 miles now in a morning before daylight, you know, and, and. We do it. It's coming off a, well, you know, like the eighties and seventies where, you know, it was 55 miles an hour and you know, your truck had a carburetor and it maybe didn't start, you know what I mean? It's true. People just weren't so mobile.

You had points that you changed every 6,000 miles or whatever. Like there was, you know, real distributor caps. I mean, I don't know. It was a challenge. Now my daughter jumping, jumping in her car right now and drive to Southern Utah and not even think about it. Not even think about it. It'd be disappointed if it broke down and it has 200,000 miles on it. You know? That's 205. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. You'd drive it anywhere. And that is, so these are intangibles that I'm talking about, you know, that you can't compound and they compound and, and, uh, you know, get, we're, how do you account for those? And I don't, I'm not saying tag numbers. Well, that's where I'm trying to take this conversation is when, when we were talking about Colorado and I think we both agreed. Yeah. That hard winter 07 08, you know, management was changed. Licenses went up in some units.

Point creep actually slowed down in Gunnison basin. You would know this better than me. So if I screw any of these numbers up, just say it. I don't have any notes really. I got one piece of paper to write on, but, but, but they, they, they upped the tags. And so point creep kind of slowed down. And to me, it felt like kind of like 09 through dude, even right now, although let's back up a couple of years. Cause I know we really put the smack on the bucks last November and, um, you know, the last three Novembers and we had late third seasons, although 2021, we didn't do them any harm. It was 60 degrees t-shirt weather for most guys. Um, but let's just say up to 2020. I thought those were pretty good years. You, you could get a light and I'm not talking about 44 or 66, but I mean, you could get a license. Grundle unit. Every, yeah.

And you could make, you couldn't go every year, but you know, it was kind of a good trade-off, you know, one to two point units. And unless I just got shafted by the weather, you know, 65 degrees on November 7th, you know, the last day of third season, which has happened to me many times over the last 20 years, I could find big bucks. Maybe I didn't get one, but I could find them. I felt like that was like a good balance. Like, okay, we got enough licenses here that we, you know, you can't look at the 44s, you can't look at the 66s, you can't do that. But you know, these other units, I don't want to throw them out there, but, but you know, you could go hunting. Oh, you can. I mean, I mean, whatever. Right. And then it kind of got harder the last couple of years, but that was because of the late dates and the focus on third season. I mean, everybody kind of moved to that.

You know, we all know where those bucks are rolling. I mean, I got a 30-incher last year. I can't remember what you got. Adam got a big buck. I mean, these are all, these are all dates that did this, you know, and we're just riding the wave. And even though I'm like, man, I kind of wish we weren't doing this. I'm not going to miss out either. I'm not going to be, you know, 65 years old saying, yeah, I didn't go those years. You know, I gave them bucks a break. Going every year. Going every year, Rob. Totally. Totally. That's right. Because of the chance. Because of the chance. Because of the chance. But there's nobody that, there's also nobody that's eating more tags than I am. And I'm, and I've, I'm, I'm, I'm over it. I'm just, you know, just realize I'm going to eat tags. Right. And so, but I, but you got to be out there to make it happen.

And you're always trying to outthink the system. And I think that's what all of this has done. There are places in Idaho that are, that have a, there's a giant deer. There's, there's 10 giant deer that are going to be killed in Idaho this year. Right. Or 15. Probably 15 or 20 really. But 15, 10 to 15 that you and I will hear about. And where's that going to be? And that's what's, that's part of the game. And that's what I live for. That's why I'm not just going to the same area in Colorado or even Utah. Even I'm skipping around on my general. I should be hunting out my back door. And I'm a little disgusted right now that I'm not going to be, you know, but my kids are happy, right? Because I'm, and I'm playing the point system for them pretty hard because they, you know, I mean, it's, you got to think and you got to understand systems anymore to be able to get, get the opportunities.

And so we're doing that and we're aggressive with it. And, and so, but where are these places that you, like you're talking about, there's certain places in Wyoming that are going to be okay. There's certain places in Idaho. In fact, there's a good chunk of Idaho that's actually maybe going to have a little relief and, and, and has suffered from even, you could call it drought conditions, coupled with a tough winters, not this kind of a winner, but you, you know, as well as I do, there's, you know, it hasn't been, uh, it hasn't had incredibly light winters over the past, you know, no, yeah. 17, 19, 23. That's right. I mean, three in what? Six years. That's right. That did not happen in the 2000s. Not necessarily devastating, but it did take a chink out of them. You know what I mean? And when you couple that with dry summers, there's just, there's just things that happen

and weather is so important, I guess. And I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that we're going to have to roll with things with the weather a bit. And, and it's, I think that's a, I used to think it's a cop out. I still kind of wonder, but it's a cop out because we can blame weather, right? Because we can't do anything about it. And so, okay, you know, that's God's plan and it is what it is. And, uh, we're going to pray for rain or we're going to pray for a light winter or whatever the case is. And so, but here we are praying for rain. Right. We both hate it. Right. But, but, but, but Hey, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face right now. It's nice. Cause, cause rain down here equals life and in all, all species, all, it doesn't matter if it's birds or freaking ground squirrels, it doesn't matter. And so, uh, anyway, we're, that's the same thing.

And that's the same thing with, with, with Colorado where, and that's what everybody's doing. And that's part of the game. And I freaking love it. I love thinking about those kinds of things. I love just getting tags. And then I'm thinking like, I'm going to get an antelope tag in Colorado and I'm going to push it back because I got too many tags going on right now. And I'll, you know, and they give you a little grace period where you can get your money and your points back. I'm going to push it back. And, and, uh, because you know, and let somebody like Travis grab it that really wants it this year. And, and, uh, turn back your antelope tag. That's what he wants. Yeah. That's what he wants. Right. And so anyway, I just, it's, uh, that's all part of the game and where, and I guess that's, um, that's why I started hunting the desert is, is I felt like I get away from people.

You need to go where deer can dive old age and I want more deer to dive old age. That's why I'm, I guess I'm so passionate about, you know, some of these things. And maybe I'm on the spectrum and I, and I'll admit it, I'm on the spectrum of ultra take care of the deer versus opportunity. And maybe, and there's a, there's a balance, you know, there is, there's a balance of what you're talking about. And, and I'll meet you there in the middle, uh, to a degree, but, but it's just hard when, when things are hard, there's not bucks for everyone. And when things are good, everyone should be out in the field. And, and, uh, you know, how, how do we do that? Right. But I always started, I started in the desert because it was mismanaged accidentally that, you know, game and fish didn't necessarily know what was out there on the landscape, just like your Arco desert, just like whatever. Right.

How do you, how do you quantify how many deer out there in that giant desert within the lava fields and different things? And, and, um, and so there's deer dying of old age and, and if you've got the right area of say a Nevada or wherever, right. I killed a big deer out of Vegas. I mean, if that's not where big deer normally reside, but on a wet year they do. And, and they do have the right genetics, but they never reach their genetic potential because the nature of that area is dry. But when you get that abnormal water, then something big happens and a guy should do everything he can to be there, wherever that is. Right. The local knowledge will tell you where you should be. You know, or you're not trying again, it goes back to when you first started, you said something about, um, don't cross out your units on your turn back tags to mealy matters.

So I don't necessarily know what tags you have, Robbie, like, like, like I could care less. And that's what people will send me. They're getting more comfortable with sending me video clips of big deer or whatever. And you too, because I'm not chasing their dreams. I've got dreams of my own. I've got the buck named bucks that I'm so forward to looking forward to seeing. And, and I've got, and I would never do something like that. And, and, uh, a, you'd be crushed on social media or whatever. And, and B would, you're not going to find it anyway. I mean, and, and C, you got to get the tag. And D I got so many other plans. I'm already turning back my own tags and maybe even, I have an OTC tag in Idaho, Robbie. I have one. And, and, uh, probably won't use it, but it was, it was meant for the rainy day tag that you're talking about.

It was meant for, I got something for me and my boys when my boys don't draw something, you know, and we can go and have a hunt together. And now they've got tags. And so do it. And then they've got school and they've got work and they've got other challenges that dad doesn't have because I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm here in the industry and, and I can dictate my schedule. And so I can go on more hunts. And so anyway, uh, interesting stuff, all of this stuff that we're talking about and, and, uh, how to find that next level buck. And, and, and, and just like Gunnison basin, we talk about Gunnison, right? Why? Because they had incredible deer and it was, it's somewhat easy to hunt and they're visible and way fun. Lots of deer, right? And so you have a special sportsman's group over there that cared a lot about it and, and

rode upstream and, and, and, uh, uh, I don't, again, I don't want to say argued, but had a very sincere, serious talks with Game and Fish and are always at odds with them on tag numbers because they want those days back or they want Gunnison to come back to what it is known to potentially be, to potentially be right. Not just have the one area of 44, you know, 21 back in the day. It's not that way anymore, but you know, not just have the one or two special places. And so we're all just, we all want big bucks, Robbie, like we all want big bucks and we're all not going to get them. And we're all, we're not going to come back to those days. And I guess at some point it's hard for me to resolve myself to that, that those late eighties are, were, were meant for the late eighties and they're going to stay there. That's hard for me. You know what I mean? Well, change is hard.

You say it all the time, but it's just change. And to me, I'm just looking for the next opportunity and I believe it's going to be there. That, that, that's, I don't know how it's going to come about. I can't predict the weather. But I, I know to just continue to make hunting more restrictive, more restrictive, more restrictive, more restrictive. Isn't, I don't want to, well, I don't, I don't think it is. I think it would grow more big bucks. It would do all of that stuff, but we've got to strike a happy medium between, you know, having the funding to fund our game departments. Cause that's the other thing too. I don't want a game department to ever have to go to the general fund of the public and say, Hey, you know, we got to have money here because we're not able to raise it because then they get a, a, a stronger voice in, in the, in the whole thing. And I don't want that.

I want to be able to tell my non hunting family, I paid for this. Those deer you like to see up there at the end of Ammon Lincoln road, I paid for those deer, even though you just go look at them and you don't shoot them. It's my license dollars that do it. Well, and what do you think a license should be worth as a resident? It's, it's, it's too low. I think, especially the way hunting has evolved and become more specialized. Roughly. More people don't mind spending more money on a tag. What's your, what's your resident tag fee roughly right now? Well, let's see. I bought my dad's last night and he's a senior and I apply, I bought him a license and I applied him in the controlled hunt. So I didn't have to buy his tag yet, but it was like 30 bucks for a senior. And my dad was joking around. He's like, well, you know, that's, that's a lot of money considering I'm not going to get one.

Cause he's not going to get one. That's my point. That's my point. How can you fund a, how can you fund a state on that? Hold on. Hold on. So that's a senior license. Okay. Okay. My license, my, my deer tag, 25 bucks, something like that. How can you fund a state on that? That's my point. $25, Robbie. You realize what that means? They're doing it. You're 2020. They're doing it, but you're in the red. Idaho is, is struggles not to be in the red. You know this. Oh, I do know it, but we're still funding our game department. And then we can get into the whole argument of that. Or if they spend the money, why did they spend it? Or we should have. So we'd be having these $4 million fish hatcheries. But if you look at the price of vehicles. Okay. And then you look at the price of tags. It's just a percentage wise of increase. I contend that it's not keeping up with inflation.

That's where I was going. And then what does it, what does all these studies, you think they're not free, right? All of the, all of our game departments and all of the trucks and wages and health insurance, all of these things go into funding a department, right? And so at some point, $25, you almost feel guilty. Like you almost want to give them 50 and call it a day. Because. Guys like us, you're exactly right. Yeah. And yeah, some guys like your dad would be like, hey, I was $3.23 in 1960. What's this world coming to? You know? And yeah, well, you also look at what you made annually, what your annual salary was in 1950. You know what I mean? And look what the average annual salary of kids coming out of college are right now. There's the, I would contend there's a difference. And, and, and so it's hard for me when, you know, if, if Wyoming's being funded by, you know,

let's, let's call it 75% is non-resident funded. Whether, you know, point fees, $50 for $40 for deer, $30 plus incidentals, you know, for antelope and whatnot. I mean, that, that's significant. You know, the funding from non-residents is significant. And, and, and I think it should be flip-flopped. I think the residents should fund their own state if they're the ones that are getting all the OTC tags and all the opportunity and benefit. And, and, and not to say that they should pay non-resident fees. I just, I just feel like you should be self-sustaining. Self-sustaining instead they're making decisions based off of, you know, non-resident contribution and, and having real live discussions. And they want to do what they want to do and what they fiscally or what they can do budget wise is two different things. Right.

And, and so they're careful, even though they're making change and changes on the horizon and we're all aware of it and everybody's concerned about it. And, you know, those, those changes be more rapid coming if it wasn't how, you know, how well their state's funded by non-residents. So it's interesting. There's just so many challenges. And, and. Well, I'm never going to vote for $150 resident deer tag. Right. I agree. Because there's not enough serious hunters out there to be able to do that. Even though you would pay it, I would pay it, all that other stuff. But to answer what your, what your original question was, I, I think they're too low. They haven't even kept up with inflation. And I remember like 15 years ago, Colorado was going to put their tags on the computer consumer price index, the CPI.

I don't know whatever happened to that idea, but I thought that was a great idea because, you know, as this consumer price index goes up, then, you know, that's supposed to take in, you know, wage increases. And even wage decreases, you know, an economy and all that other stuff that goes up and down. I thought that was a great way to do it. But, but, and, and, and, and I'm, I'm with you. They haven't done that with, with, with resident tags. I don't have a calculator in front of me. I don't have a, what a tag cost in 1980, but I don't think it's kept up, you know, compared to trucks and boots and, you know, all this other stuff. But, but going back to you, going back to what you're saying on non-resident caps is, is if we're, if it's costing a non-resident to enter your state at $500, maybe, maybe that's another reason that they're taking it serious. Right.

With the, with the hunting license and deer tag fee. And, and I'm just round numbers. I don't have any notes yet. You know, but I'm just saying that, I mean, that's quite a difference than 25 plus your, your hunting license. And so, you know, to double, it's nothing. And I think there's a big difference. I mean, 25 to one 50 is quite a percentage wise, a huge, huge spread. I think there's a, but whatever. That's one, one of the many issues we've covered. You know what I mean? Right. So it's kind of, I think it could go up, but when I'm at the fish and game meetings and there's, you know, some rich guy in the back saying, deer license should be 300 bucks for residents. I'm like, dude, you were clueless. Man, what about all these little kids? You know, what about, what about these guys? You know, they do just want to get a doe. They do just want to get a two point.

And just like my dad, given that money last night, he's like, I'm not even going to get one. I haven't shot one in years. I'm just giving them the money. This is free money. This is like a health club membership that somebody doesn't use. You know, we don't want to price that guy out. He'll still, he'll still give us the money. So, so, you know, it needs, it needs to be graded. And I'm applying, and I'm applying me and my entire family in Nevada. And it's no joke. You walk away with a big hit. Yeah, but you're the top 1%. Well, no, I'm just. We both are of spenders, of spenders on hunting. Well, your spendable income, we spend, a lot of our spendable income goes to hunting, maybe the majority of it. You know what I mean? And so I understand that. That's what we do. I understand that, but it makes you wonder every time. It makes you wonder from a non-resident perspective.

And we've talked about it today, even is, you know, you just, what's it worth? Just like you coming to Utah. And so part of that, part of the people's justification is, as well, I get points from general deer. I can draw a little more regular while waiting for that, Henry's deer, something like that. And so I can justify it because it gives me an option. It gives me an option to go hunt. And same thing with non, you guys don't have a point system up there in Idaho, but maybe I can justify buying that hunting license because I have this deer tag in my pocket, which gives me an option for me and my two of my boys, two, you know, two or three, whatever, depending on the year and their scheduling, to be able to go enjoy a hunt together. And so, you know, I just, and we'll, we spend that money and most likely don't even enter your state.

And, you know, but some of those things are worth it to me because that's the, our family's time together. And so anyway, like you said, there's that end of the spectrum and then there's the end of the spectrum where, you know, it is too much and, and youth tags should be very cheap. And I would contend, you know, we're, we're, we're set. We don't need to raise their tag fees necessarily. And some of these states are cutting youth a great break, non-resident wise. Oh, a great break. I think. So anyway, all right, well, awesome stuff.

Are we going to kill big deer? Are we going to kill big deer? Like we have been, you know, in past years, Robbie? Hmm. You know what, dude, I've kind of, I've kind of quit thinking that way. I just think more like, okay, I got to get out there. Are we going to kill old deer? I got to get it done. The eight to nine year old that you're, you were talking about that wasn't built just incredible, but was awesome. Awesome. We're looking for buddy. That's what we're looking for this year. Absolutely. And I'm going to do the same thing as I always do. I'm going to pay a little better attention to the high quality habitat that typically produces better deer. And the down years, and just because I have a good track record of bad winters around here, I kind of know where those places are. I also know places that are, they're kind of fringy places that when the deer are doing

really well, that you seem to see a lot of bucks there. And then it just kind of goes away, you know, on the hard winters. I'm not even going to worry about those places. You know, I'm going to the, going to the most productive. What about you? Well, yes. And what you bring up a good point is I think it's important. Your, your local knowledge trumps everything. And you're, you're going to, you're going to hit the ground running versus me coming up to your country. Let's say 300 square miles. I'm, I'm roughly in the vicinity that Robbie likes to be in. You're going to, you're going to do way better than me. You, you, you're going on last year's knowledge of your prior, the year prior, the year prior, even if you didn't hunt it necessarily. You're just out and about and you're, and you have contacts and friends and family and

whatever else that, that you, it builds upon your knowledge and your gut feel of where to be and how hard to hit it and, and the year to be there or whatever. And it might even be specific bucks and it might not be. Um, but I think that I've got one in mind. Yeah. I've got one in mind that was there last year. I got a shot at him during archery, miffed it. And I think he's still there. If he got killed during rifle, it was by a farmer that didn't have a smartphone. Cause we've never seen it. Um, yeah, I, I, I got one. He's not quite named yet, but, um, I got one. I'm going after that's the first one I want to look for. And I think that's important. And I think that's part of, part of this game. It's a challenge to be able to hunt the same areas year to year to year, especially non-resident wise, but resident wise, that's a re you're in a resident area. I'm sure over the counter general.

And so just over the counter. Yeah. So you can build upon that. And I think what I like about that type of scenario, we have it here, right? We have our general that's easier for us to draw some, some general areas are, are way easier than others. And what I like about being able to hunt, uh, and you, and you can stagger your family. So at least your family's hunting that area year after year after year. But what I like about that is you're building upon knowledge. You also don't have the, um, let's call them teams or guides. Uh, that are professional pressure and they don't want to be there, right? They don't want to be there because I mean, it's general, it's not managed. And they're, and the clients would come there saying, you know, uh, this isn't managed for big deer. Like I would like to, if I'm going to pay good money, I want to have a good experience. That might be private.

It might be, uh, you know, 45 or it might be whatever. Right. And so, and so when you don't have that professional pressure, I think I contend, even though it's not managed, like say 45 is with such a extreme low number of tags. You can find big deer. They're slipping through the cracks and that's your, that's what you're saying about the non-resident pressure is it's more of a, of a quote. They're not going to slip through the cracks as easy as they're going to try harder. Yeah, exactly. But I love that about the general areas. I think sometimes the, um, local knowledge hunting year after year and not competing against, um, you know, paid clientele, so to speak, uh, because it's general, uh, contributes to the potential of killing something special. Totally does. Still works in this day and age as of 2022, it still works.

And it's why I don't want to over manage the deer because it does me no good to have a whole bunch of bucks on the hillside. Like we did in, you know, Oh, four to 2000 to 2010 in Colorado. And I couldn't get a license even on, you know, just, just places that shouldn't have been that great, you know, should have, should have had that much demand. And, you know, I, it, it, dude, if I were God and I could, I could manage the West right now, I would put the whole thing on over the counter with a non-resident cap and then take a look at the residents. You know, maybe, maybe there, maybe a state has to have a cap just because the resident population is growing so good and leave it alone for 10 years. Yeah. I think we'd be growing giants. I think that a lot of people would still be happy. And you, you, this whole thing about taking advantage of local knowledge, dude, it does

me no good to have local knowledge of a unit. And I can't go back. I know one of the best units in Colorado, like the back of my hand, dude, I had so many licenses there before point creep got it. You know, I can show you which bush they're laying under. I don't even think about that place, dude. I'll never get to go back. I can't even get a landowner tag there. They're in such high demand. And, and, and dude, it's no better hunting than it was in 06. You know, it might be a little worse because of some of these things that you're talking about, you know, really focused hunters and the guides and the outfitters want to be there, you know? And so, so that, that's why, you know, and I'm on the other extreme. I get it. I'm not even saying it's the right way to do it, but, but that's the problem with over managing the deers is people start to over care about these, about these areas.

And you've said it before. I've heard on your podcast, you know, these draw units draw the, they pull in the best hunters and the best guides and dude, there ain't a big mule deer out there that can get away from that. You know, you put, you put 20 guys out in a unit looking for deer. They're going to find them. They're going to find them. And I'm not, I'm, you know, I'm not even against that. I'm just saying if we're managing for that, let's not be surprised and we never get to go on there. And if we do, we're going to come back with a sour taste in our mouth. Like, man, we can't keep up with that outfit or how can we do that? Yeah. Which is why in large part, a lot of guys are saying, well, should we limit, you know, weapon, how effective we are with weapons? Should we just take away, should we just take away range finders?

If you took away range finders, you've hurt archery, muzzle and rifle. Maybe equally. You know, and so now you've got to really, and then everybody would say, well, it's unethical because there's going to be so much win in the game and everybody's going to, you know, so, I mean, you just can't win, right? But, but I mean, I'm just, but that's. You could tear that argument apart in a, in a heartbeat. Right. But I think you're. Because those laser range finders have got people shooting further. Yeah. Than, than they would have been. But I think your management. I don't think it's a, yeah, I don't think you could make a strong argument for that. Myself. Is what? You couldn't make it, you couldn't make an argument for. The, the, the, the, the taken away range finders would be more unethical, more unethical. Because now people are going to wound more game. No. Well.

Put a range finder in a guy's hand. He's more likely to take a shot at 60 or 70 or 80 yards with his bow. 220 with his muzzle loader. 800 with his rifle. Yeah. Right. Right. You take that range finder away. Okay. Now he's taking 400 yards shots. But to judge. But how many times. Right. But how many times. And I, you know, does, does a guy say, I didn't have time to range it. I, I, I aimed for 35. He was 43. Or I aimed for 35 and he was 28. And, and they didn't get them. Right. So there's going to be, no matter what you say. I mean, that's, there's both sides of the argument. But that's why those discussions are being made. You know, is, well, we want to give more tags. We want to give more tags. And so how do we limit success? Because we're too effective. Like, so you either say, like, we've had discussions where, okay, when you're issued a tag that, that authorizes you to kill a deer.

Go hunt for 365 days and you get one deer. And there's going to be 100% kill rate. You know, I mean, that's, and so there's, people are like, well, if we do that, then we can't give very many tags. And so, well, well, how do we limit your success? Or how are we too successful? We're too smart. We're spending too much time. We have the trucks that can drive 150 miles without thinking about it morning and night. Maybe multiple times. I mean, all of those things. And so, anyway, it's kind of interesting. No, I'm with you, dude. And your over-the-counter idea may work in a place like Idaho or, say, Wyoming, where your residents are somewhat limited in number. And there's a lot of wild, crazy. Idaho has some of the most crazy, inhospitable wilderness country ever built. And, you know, it's so, you know, it works. It's working to a degree in Wyoming.

We've got a large part of the state that's general over-the-counter for resident elk. And they're, like you said, they're over-objective. It's crazy. And they're killing big bulls. You can't kill enough of them. Right. Same thing with what you're talking about in Idaho. Same thing. And they're still under a general OTC for deer on residents. And, geez, you and I want to go to Region G&H. We still want to go there. I was going to say, dude, as much as people complain about it, you and I would be there tomorrow. And one of us would probably kill a big deer this year if we both had a tag. And I'm hoping I get a tag. It's still good enough. I'm hoping I get a tag. How about that? And I wasn't. I was convinced you go south on a year like this. And not so convinced. I'm thinking it's going to be all right. And so, we'll see. We'll see if I get a tag. But it's one of those things.

I think the bucks you're looking for will still be there in at least some number. Yeah. Because this is the other thing, too. And I think we talked about this earlier. Dude, we had good recruitment coming up through the age classes until this winter came. Dude, there was a lot of two-, three-, four-year-old bucks running around the last couple of years. It wasn't back to pre-16 yet. But, you know, I'm talking Intermountain West, you know, Idaho, Wyoming, you know, some of the southern Montana stuff, you know, kind of my circle here. Maybe northern Utah. Yeah. Dude, those bucks should have carried over pretty good. They may be in a little rough shape this year. But, no. You wait another couple of years, they may not even be around. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know? It's interesting. But, yeah. So, it's working.

The technology thing, I'm glad you brought that up, Jason, because I don't know in Utah if it's at the RAC level yet, but you guys are having, like, you have a technology board or something down there? Yeah, there's a technology committee, and they – Committee. That's what it is. They came out with some recommendations. You know, you can argue that they didn't come out with aggressive enough recommendations because it's been reviewed by them for quite some time. But my heart goes out to them a little bit. You're going to take some major grief no matter what because it's so – everybody's so passionate about the thing they like. It was obvious it came out. It was so passionate that people love the Garmin digital bow sight. Yeah. They spent $1,200, and now I can't use it. What do you mean? Mm-hmm. They're not saying what's best for deer. They're not thinking what's best for elk. No.

They're just saying – and they're coming up with an argument saying, well, I get to use rangefinders, and I have a sight. We combine them into one, and that's the problem. And so, you know, so they're spinning it however they want because they are passionate about it, and that's okay. They have their vote, and they're passionate about it. And so it's hard to say we don't want scoped muzzleloaders. Well, there's a lot of people that like them. There's a lot of people that bought scopes just for their muzzleloader and have a great system that shoots 500 yards. Robbie, I shot a dong of freaking 750, and it shoots really good. And so, well, what's too far? Where have we gone too far? Well, I don't know. That's up to interpretation. Your answer would be different than mine probably. I don't know. I don't know, Jason.

If somebody said, hey, man, do you want to hunt every year and have a chance at a big buck, or do you want to continue down the road that we're on where, you know, worse rods, less tags, some years, less bucks? I want to hunt a big deer every year. Then what are you going to give up? I'm going to give up technology. Me too. Me too. Every time. Every time. I'd hand them my rangefinder. But I'm the first guy that if they said, a lot of contention is, well, you know, you can still use open sights if you want, Jason. And, well, yeah, but it allows for a turret and scope, and I'm good with that. I'm not going to handicap myself. Right. I'm going to go as best as I can. You know, whatever it is. I mean, dude, I use trail cameras, man. I mean, I fly if I can. Right. You know, horses, motorbikes, you know, I'm not a long-range rifle shooter because I'm kind of a crappy shop. Electric bike.

Whatever. Electric bike. Everything's on the table. Let's see. Absolutely, man. Everything. And this tag's now a limited number. It's $500. It's hard to get. I'm lucky to have gotten it. It took me four years to draw it, 10 years to draw it, 20 years to draw it. I'm going to do everything I can to have the experience of my life. And versus like what you were saying is, well, if it was OTC, we would just want to go and have experiences. And once in a while, we'd smash a big one, you know, because not everybody was putting everything into it. But we don't live in that day and age. We live in this day and age. So what are we going to do? It's gone. Yeah. I know. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard. But I would. I would give up some technology for it. I really would. I'd hunt with a four-power scope.

You know, whatever it took to get it to where we didn't just have to look at more license number caps. That's what I would be looking at. Well, there's people that contend that it's not fair to use a cow call because we're imitating sexual sounds and, you know, when they're vulnerable in the rut. And, I mean, you're just like, man, because they're so against change. They're so against change. So they're going to take it to the other end of the spectrum and kind of be unrealistic. Yeah, but that's just unrealistic, people. And this is, I put it in my second book. This is why I'm not against long-range hunting. I have not seen any data that says that it's impacting harvest at an appreciable level. Yeah, you and I both know people that got 200-inch bucks at 800 yards at 10 years ago they wouldn't have got. All right?

But, you know, 10 years ago there was other ways to get 200-inch bucks and you could hunt better units. And so is it appreciably having an effect? Would it make a difference? If it doesn't make a difference, no, man, I'm a red-blooded American. Don't take it away. I want that freedom. I want that range finder. It's okay that my buddy hunts with an 800-yard gun. It's fine. Even though I don't. It's fine. I want that freedom. But if somebody can show me that we can have better hunting by limiting that stuff, the data there, this is what it shows us, man, I would be all for it. I really would do it. And that's why when the guys that are throwing out saying, oh, the cow called, what difference is that? If it makes a difference, then let's do it. Right. But you're a human. You feel more effective with a turreted scope muzzleloader. You know you are. I think you know you are.

And so no matter what statistics can be drawn, no matter what conclusions can be drawn by statistical kill data, you know. You already know the answer. You know we're more effective with turreted scopes. You know we're more effective with tripods and 15-powered binals. Right. But if we've limited life, like Utah is doing 74,000 deer licenses right now, and they used to do 150,000, 200,000. So are we shooting the same number of deer with better equipment? Is a range finder, is it appreciably making a difference? I'm not saying it is or it isn't. But if there was hard data, how could you argue against that? Idaho, I remember 10 years ago, dude, I broke up a fight at the fishing game because the fishing game was taking away inline muzzleloaders in Idaho. And they kind of brought them back a little bit, but you still have to use a conical. They're still pretty tough.

You know, prior to that, it was sabbats. It was everything but a scope. And people went out and bought those guns just like they did with the Garmin sights. These guys spent $500, $600. You know, in 2008, that was like spending $1,200. But fishing game took it, and dude, look at Idaho's muzzleloader odds. They're still pretty dang good. They've held up well because of that limit in technology. Because guys are like, I don't want to mess with that. And I like that because it makes it to where you really have to want to muzzleloader hunt to apply for it. Because not everybody, every single person can pick up a muzzleloader with a scope and shoot with it. And so it makes it another rifle season. And so, you know, I want better drawing odds. And I'm willing to hunt with an open sight, loose powder, all the restrictions, non-sabbated, whatever. All the restrictions, maybe not flatlock.

You know what I mean? I mean, there's a limit where I'm like, I don't really want to go that far. I mean, might. I don't know that I really want to. But anyway, there's those kind of things. I think also the reason you're not seeing the data to back your claim is because there's so many other variables that come into play when you're talking 150,000 deer. You're talking about whatever. We're talking about different times when guys would sit in the backs of trucks, legal or not, ethical or not, whatever. They were in the backs of trucks with two dozen arrows having the time of their life with bucks, bucks, bucks. They were everywhere, Robbie. And so, yeah, they killed one eventually, Robbie. They killed one and the statistics won't back your claim. And that's the same.

And so you don't have – your statistics aren't taken from a controlled environment with exact variables all the way around with the exception of the method of take or the tool used. Yeah, they're not being studied. You can't. You can't because there's populations. Population comes into effect when dictating success. Season dates come into effect when analyzing success rates. And so we had season dates back in early 90s, late 80s here in Utah with General Deer that were in the rut, November. And now we don't. And so, you know, there's some – but maybe you could contend that we're still successful. Well, but we're not. I'm in the rut. So there's – you've got to have everything to be exactly the same to realize that this is the value of a turreted scope and this is the value of open sites and the difference in success.

But you as a human feel more successful with those tools, with a refined tool like that, a new age technology, you know. And that tells you what you need to know. That tells you that if you want to be less successful, you might want to address that. That's all, you know. Yeah. And so what you're saying is even if we can't prove it, we know it. You know it. Yeah. You know it. You – they were super successful with 30-30s because there was box, box, box. That's everywhere. You know what I mean? And so – and guys would knock down 30 inches. It was nothing, you know. And why? They weren't glassing. They didn't even – they didn't even have the bottom of the barrel glass that we have nowadays. You know what I mean? They were shooting them on the foothill right here with the side of my house. Yeah. They were – it was just fun, right? They're road hunting. They're having a great time.

And so, yeah, there's so many different variables. But you know as a human – you just know. You know. We don't have to put numbers to it. But anyway, change is hard. And I don't necessarily want to change. I want to go back to, you know, you and I, when you were talking about your 230-incher and my 230 buck or whatever, right? I want to go back to those times. I'm trying to recreate. We had a – my biggest deer in Arizona, Adam and I were down there. We worked hard. But it was what you don't want, what you and I don't want. It was my once-in-a-lifetime draw tag north of the Grand Canyon, right? And so it was my one chance to kill a giant Arizona deer. And we went out there. We hunted the rut with a rifle. We were the only ones out there. It was kind of – you could call it undiscovered. It just wasn't talked about. It was an area that was maybe – let's call it overlooked.

Although people – the locals knew there was big deer. But there was lots of – there was big deer in other areas. Every unit has that. Yeah, right. So – and you could go easier parts of the unit with that particular time frame and go see bucks everywhere. And, you know, wintering poncing hunt bucks inside Arizona as well as coyote bucks running. And so anyway, you could go anywhere and everywhere with 75 tags. You just didn't – we just didn't have any people. And so it was us against the deer in the rut. Just the way we wanted. Just the way you wanted. And incredible genetics and age class like crazy, you know, weren't super effective, you know, so to speak now compared to nowadays. I feel like that maybe it was like – maybe it's just the emphasis. Maybe it was just the emphasis because we were killing a few really good deer. And Colorado was really good.

And so it was just, you know, it was 200-inch deer. People were seeing them somewhat regular in Colorado, which kind of made it – just the emphasis would last or whatever compared to nowadays. But anyway, down enjoying that hunt and hunted him, found him. Adam actually had him come running by him chasing a dog. On video. Yeah. I remember. Yeah, I videoed him. Actually, I think you videoed him the next day from a little tiny Butte. Very tough to glass this particular area. Anyway, ended up getting lucky. I went around, you know, and we were on Buttes kind of facing each other. And this deer came out on my side from being bedded all day long. And I hammered him at 300 yards. And I didn't even really know what I had. I didn't even really know. I just knew he was a giant, just like you would know. You just know, like, this is one of those, you know, once-in-a-lifetime special deer.

I don't know if he's 215 or if he's 220 or, heaven forbid, 235. Yeah, ends up at 275, right? But you just don't – anyway, and to walk up on him and then just the sheer awe, shock and awe for – out of respect for the animal. And being able to experience that once in your life. Well, and you – and we always say, ah, I'll never top that and whatnot. And if you truly felt like you could never top it, you know, I still want to experience lots of harvests. And you call them kills. I'd still want to experience all of that and put my hands on as many big deer as you can because they're all different and you want them all. But trying to recreate that experience, Robbie, like I try that and I've gone without killing a lot. Because you want – if I harvest right now and I kill this 195-inch or whatever it is, 185, 95, 200 even, you're not going to walk up and be breathless.

And when you are breathless out of respect and just sheer, wow, like look at this animal, you know. It's a genetic potential, the age. How did he make it? Where did he live? I want to know everything about him. I want his spike sheds if he had them. I want his forky sheds. I want his three-by-two sheds. I want everything about this deer. I want to know everything about him. And so how do we recreate that in this day and age, you know? And you just keep trying, right, just like you're doing. Just like you're doing. You wake up – today you were thinking about deer. Yesterday you were thinking about deer. The day before you were thinking about deer. You're not doing that necessarily for $150. Like those – you know, or quote, a meat buck. You're laying awake at night just going, wow, I just want to see. I want to see that kind of deer on the horizon walking away from me just breathless.

You know what I mean? Out of respect and, wow, how special is that, you know? It's a once-in-many-lifetimes buck, and I don't want to burst your bubble. It'll never happen again. I know. I know. We're going to look for experiences that bring us that same emotion and that same satisfaction and that same excitement. And, you know, here you are, you know, 15, 16 years later, just as passionate about it more. More. Robbie, I'm hunting more than I've ever hunted. But I'm hunting – I feel like – I feel like – and you can chime in on this. You've been there. I feel like I get too many tags every single year to do the tags I have justice. I was better off when I was – I didn't have two nickels to rub together, but I had some time. And the one or two tags I got, I spent crazy time on. You know? And I was more effective because it was a do or die. I didn't have backup plans.

Now I'm like, well, if this hunt's not so good, I've got that Idaho TC tag. If that hunt's not so good, I'm going to roll into Colorado third. And if that hunt's not so good, I've got a late archery in New Mexico. You know what I mean? Like – and anyway. The hard part about that, though, is, you know, I've tried to cut it back, too. But you can't just have one tag a year. You can do a great – you can do a great job, hunt every single day of a 14-day season. That doesn't mean anything. You may not get one. Probably won't get one. You've got to have more opportunity than that. And, you know, I've always had to hunt 25 to 40 days to kill a big buck, you know, open season days. And, you know, I'm hunting at least that much now. But I always walk that line between having too much that I don't give it a good focus and then not having enough that the season ends. And, man, I didn't tag out.

And yet there's still seasons open in the West that I could go to. To me, that's the art of the deal right now, trying to figure out – trying to figure out how to do that. Because the other thing, too, dude, I get tired, you know. I get wound down towards the end of the season. I get burned out. And then I'm not hunting as well, you know. And I've recognized that in the past. And I'm like, I would have been better off to be off a couple of weeks than I am out here just going through the motions. So I have to always, always kind of think about that stuff. And I feel like, too. So I harvested a deer in Colorado, okay. And it was a 206 buck just oozing with, you know, mass and kind of like that candle wax around the beams. Just kind of drippy, you know. Just – and I didn't even go, Robbie, until a Wednesday. I didn't even go until a Wednesday had been open, what, three or four days by then?

And I harvested – The last five days? Yeah. Well, I just couldn't make it. I can't remember the circumstances. But I was like, I just got to tell myself the last five – You were off on another tag. Right, or whatever, right? And so I'm like, I got to tell myself the last five days are the best five days or the last seven days or the last – whatever it is, whatever season you're hunting. You know, the last five are the best five. A, people are going home. B, they're even going to be deeper in the rut. C, there might even be more potential for inclement weather, which helps us in Colorado. And so I'm telling myself that. And that Wednesday, you know, I basically drive up on the deer accidentally. And he's rutting. And he's – and I video him for 19 minutes. It's 120 yards or whatever. Trying to decide if I should shoot him because I can't judge him. He's too close.

Like, have you ever been, like, too close? Like, if he's 400, I'm pretty good at judging him. But if he's 100 or 80, I mean, I struggle. Yeah, all the – like, man, is he bigger than I think? Yeah. Or is he smaller than I think? I was thinking he was smaller. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, you know, and I'm like – and not that I – not that I – I mean, a lot of guys would be like, just shoot him. Like, what do you mean? You know, no. Well, I just – remember, this is my fourth hour into the hunt for me. I've got the rest of the day – the rest of the days and the rest of the season to hunt, and each day is going to get better. And so I'm in my mind saying, well, I can smash him right now. But then I'm – it's over with, and I'm giving up maybe that potential, you know, breathless potential of walking up to a 220 or something. And maybe this is a good year on a good unit or maybe whatever.

No, it turns out we didn't see anything better. And Adam had a tag. He shot him. Yeah, Adam had a – oh, and I'm ecstatic. Once I walked up to him, Robbie, I was like, what were you doing videoing? Like, you're stupid. Because he was – I was ecstatic. It wasn't that I shot him and was disappointed. I was ecstatic. He just had the look, right? And it didn't matter that he wasn't 270 or 230 or whatever. It didn't matter. I was ecstatic with him because he was – the way he was built. And everything about him, his body's huge, just prime of his life. It was just ecstatic. Like, I'm just like, wow, you know, this whole experience. Like, this is why I didn't have to scout all summer. I didn't have to scout. I didn't have to go hunt 25, 40 days. Robbie, you're a better hunter than I am. I'm spending more than 40, I'll bet. And I'm – Yeah, but I'm not shooting two hunters.

Well, but you know what I'm saying? Like, I even feel like I'll spend 40 days and not even see a 190 or a 185 plus. That's happened to me too. Yeah, and so then I'm like, but then this one was such a gift, you know? It was such a gift, and you can't discount the gifts. Sometimes good things happen to you, you know? And it had nothing to do with me. And it had everything to do with a good friend of mine, you know, Brady Dixon, knows the area, and he gave me a good handful of areas that he knows have potential, right? That he's – you know? And so, Jason, go check these out. Like, you know, this will get you started. And, you know, so having good friends with some local knowledge and then having the rut dates and the right year and the right day and the right time that I happened. I mean, I had side-by-sides driving above me, and I'm in this draw, real choked-in draw that's got great feed.

And these side-by-sides, I'm like, you know, the reason why I decided to shoot him, I was like, would I be sad if a guy shot over me right here and hammered this deer? Yeah! Yeah, I'd be disgusted. And so, okay, what are you doing? You know, you know. And so, anyway, just I think it goes into when do you put 40 days into it, and when do you plan on getting lucky? And I use Colorado to get lucky, you know, because we got those late-season dates. And you probably do, too. And although you have some local knowledge in some of the units, like I do, you're really spending all your time up there in your backyard. Mm-hmm. You know? Not quite, but almost. That's where I put most of my focus. But, yeah, I've hunted all these states around me. I usually have one out-of-state tag a year. For me, a good year is to have a tag that allows me to take advantage of the archery season,

you know, late August into mid-September when they're kind of vulnerable and take advantage of your summer scouting. And then if it's an Idaho tag and I can actually go back to that place, it's even better. I mean, because before they move, before they run. Yeah, before they run. Like October 15, October 20. Yeah, but even like that buck I missed last year, he wasn't there during the rifle season. That place, it's just the way it is. They get out in real open stuff for archery, and after that they can go anywhere, and there's actually quite a bit of rifle pressure in there. But for whatever reason, just during the archery, there's just not – it's not a draw tag is why. You know, nobody cares, you know? They're all over on the other unit, you know, with their four buddies that all took the morning off of work to help them glass. But anyways, that's ideal. Have that.

I don't care if that's Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming. If I could just have that week or two right in there and take advantage of that. And then the next one is, you know, kind of those early October. Idaho opens on October 10 most years. If I can have a tag that allows me to hunt during that time, and it's fine if it's in Wyoming. I mean, but you can still take advantage of some of your summer scouting. And so I like that. And, you know, most of the time it doesn't pay off. But when it has, like you called it a gift. Sometimes you get a gift. Sometimes you grind it out 30 days, and you actually kill the buck that you were after. And then, dude, I don't even really care after the middle of October unless it's snowing. Because usually I'm so tired by then. I've been on two or three big hunts. And then, you know, hunting season always starts right after scouting season.

So I'm kind of tired from that too. You know what I mean? Yeah. And even though scouting's fun and all that other stuff, it's like, man, I haven't seen mom. I haven't seen the kids. You know, who's this big guy? You're not human if you don't get tired and miss home or miss some of those niceties, you know, some of those things in life that you should miss. And I used to try to power through it. And then, you know, my dad was the one that called me out on it. He's like, you're so freaking grouchy. Why do you even go deer hunting? I'd hate deer hunting if I was you. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. I need to rest. So I've kind of learned that kind of mid to late October. Unless it's snowing, you know, that's some tough conditions. And usually I just take a break then. But then I try to make sure I have something going on first of November to middle of November.

It's hard to get tags then, you know, but something going on so that I can be out there then. And to me, that's an ideal season. You know, a week or two in September, a week or so in early October, you know, maybe a few days in later October if I'm getting some snow and some good conditions. And then, you know, just to be able to sample the rut somewhere. It doesn't have to be hardcore rut. In fact, this whole thing with Colorado, we should talk about this, is they've pushed it to these late dates. And Colorado's saying it's because they want to limit the spread of CWD. And, you know, I had Brandon Diamond on the podcast. I had Toby Boudreau from Idaho. Brandon's from Colorado. You know that. Brandon's a good guy. But, you know, I pushed him on that. Like, okay, if we're going to try this, these late seasons, to limit the spread of CWD,

because their whole hypothesis theory at best, I think, is that these big bucks spread CWD more because they travel. But I'm like, okay, but let's give it a try. But if it doesn't result in that, if we're not limiting the spread of CWD, then let's not kill off all of our age class of bucks. Because the other thing, too, none of them have been able to answer this, is the young bucks travel, too. Dude, I see little bucks chasing does on this canyon. And the next day, oh, my gosh, there's that buck. He's clear over there. Well, they're getting a taste of it. And they're not stupid. I mean, they're getting a taste of it. And they're going to walk for a minute. Exactly. And so if we're going to go kill off all our age class of bucks, I mean, how far down the age class do you got to go to limit CWD?

And the reason I'm putting that in there is because right now, yeah, there's some great opportunities to hunt, you know, November 1st through, you know, roughly 15th to 18th in Colorado and, you know, and be able to get a tag. And so, of course, I'm going to take advantage. Of course, I'm going to do that. I'm not going to miss it. I like that you admitted, and I'm just teasing you, but I like that you admitted that you don't want them to give too many tags, that you want them to limit tags. You know what I mean? I don't want to give such late dates. I want to give the same amount of tags with 30-year dates. Yeah. That makes sense. I want to give the same amount of tags. That makes sense. But just let it go to November 7th or 8th. It's good enough then. Let us taste the rut, but let them breed without interference, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. And if you want to keep the fourth season, great.

Give five tags. Well, and I think they're considering it. They're open for, you know, suggestions right now, and they're obviously considering some things. I think large part in Colorado, and they've been able to get away with it for a number of reasons, but they manage elk and deer together. And so you end up, they want later elk dates. The revenue comes off of elk, OTC tags and whatnot. And so, you know, to keep them together, if we're going to go later, I mean, you just take them both later, right? Because you can hunt deer and elk at the same time frame. But to me, that's a cop-out. That's a cop-out. That's right. I think that's a huge cop-out. You can still have a late elk hunt, and you can still have an earlier deer hunt. Idaho went down that road years ago with the flip-flop for deer and elk season. I think it's one reason Idaho's been able to maintain a decent buck to doe.

Could you imagine if you had early season dates in Colorado with the forested country and the escapement that there would be? If you, you know what I mean? I mean, it's crazy. When they come down on the winter range, they're vulnerable. And that's what I like, and that's what you like. And I love rutting deer. But that's not healthy management. It's not sustainable for older age class bucks long term. And I'm not even just talking for the trophy hunters. I'm talking about let's maintain this 25 to 35 buck to doe ratio that a lot of Colorado has. They've had it for years. Unless it's just a low, low year, a lot of those units can do that. Let's maintain that and let it have a little bit of an age class. You know, I'm all for that. And that's why the late dates, you know, I kind of threw that in the middle of my buck story there,

that I'm taking advantage of that right now, but I'm hoping it goes away and goes back to the more traditional third season open, you know, late October. We're into the, you know, maybe fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth to November. Once in a while, it rotates to the tenth. And then we give the special fourth for guys that are really willing to wait two decades or two and a half decades and very limited in tag numbers to let them have a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Right? Yeah. If they want to do it, yeah, go ahead. But keep it low. Keep it low. It's kind of at that level of, like, it doesn't even matter if we have this season, you know. Right. Yeah, okay, maybe a top-end two or buck. We'll get killed. But it depends on who draws those ten tags. You know how that is, dude. Depends on the weather. I mean, sometimes you can't get around.

You know, when we have normal winters, we haven't had normal winters. When you have normal winters, it's freaking cold, man. It's cold and it snows deep and it's crusted and it's somewhat hard to get around. And, you know, that's when the jeeps come out. Texas, you know, for all the elk hunters, cow hunters, whatever, it's amazing what kind of equipment those guys have in it. And they look forward to it. It's a good time for them. But anyway, yeah, the weather makes a big difference. And we just haven't had it. It's been, like you said, 65 degrees some years, you know. Yeah. 2021, dude. I was on a great unit. Third season. Bucks going crazy. I had about an hour in the morning to hunt them. After that, they were in the cover. And I was glad because there's people everywhere. I'm like, man, all these guys are packing around long range rifles. There's a sniper on every ridge.

And there's freaking nice bucks running around out here in the sagebrush, man. Get in the trees, you guys. Get in the trees. You know, I don't want, I really don't want to see that continue, Jason, because, you know, I know that that's just too much pressure. I think even to have nice bucks around, that's too much pressure. I'm not even talking the Giants, you know. I don't. And I guess that's my point. I guess that was my point about trying to get back to the days that we remember. And it doesn't have to, you know, it doesn't have to be exactly like it was in 04, 05, 06. It doesn't have to be exactly. But if we. I'll take 10 to 15. 2010 to 15. I'll take those years. There you go. I would, too. I would, too. But it's interesting. I mean, it's interesting. And so with these late season dates, you're right. They need to figure out how to cut tags.

Just like New Mexico, they had the youth hunt and unit 2B rifle. And, you know, for the most part, it was early season. It was, the deer weren't nearly as vulnerable and whatnot. And then they kicked it to the end of November, left the tag numbers. You know, I think it was 150. And left the tag numbers. Just left them. Well, they smashed some great bucks. A lot of them. And it became a youth trophy hunt. Instead of just a youth hunt to get them out to enjoy hunting. And youth aren't, by nature, trophy hunters yet. They're just enjoying the whole experience and want to, you know, I mean, just getting their scope on it. Learning how to point and aim and shoot and prepare and glass. And all of those things come into effect with a youth hunt. But this became a trophy hunt. You know, and it was hard on deer.

And so, if you're going to have late season dates, you can't have unlimited tags or large quantities of tags or whatever. Just like what you're saying. I 100% agree with that. Well, cool, man. Well, hey, bro, we've gone two and a half hours. Can you believe it? No. Gosh. I could go another two and a half. I could go another two and a half. I could too, dude. Dude, I know a lot of guys came to this podcast, though, to hear a buck hunting story. And I didn't prep you on this, dude, but I'll tell one of my last big buck and you tell one of your last big buck if you haven't already told it. If so, you can jump back. You want to go first?

Why don't you go first since you've prepped and I didn't? Okay. You can be thinking about one. So, mine goes back to 2020 and through last year. I went through a bad slump and some of it was my fault, just my poor shooting ability, especially with archery equipment. I had some chances at a couple of big bucks. Wounded one. Just nicked another one. You know, these were top end bucks for what I'm looking for. And those were just, you know, regular tags. A lot of scouting went into them. But they would have been great to tag either of those bucks. But then in 2020, I drew a great rifle tag. Probably one of Idaho's top three tags. I couldn't believe it. And I rearranged my schedule. You couldn't really scout for it. It opened on October 10th, but that's just when the general season is. A lot of these late hunts are on general season units.

It was one of those kind of units that ran until November 30th. And just living here my whole life, having local knowledge, I knew it wasn't going to get real good until after November 15th anyways. So, I didn't scout hardly at all until about the 1st of November. And then I had a Colorado tag that year too. And that was the first year Colorado rotated late. I think 2020 we opened third season on like the 7th. And it went through roughly the 13th. And so, I was like, man, I can't miss that. And I already kind of know Idaho is not going to really turn on until after November 15th anyways. These deer need to migrate. They need to get into the mid-range. Not quite on the winter range. They don't really hit the winter range until December. But, you know, they'll get down onto the fingers that are, you know, 1,000 feet above the winter range. You can access it. You can glass it.

You can cover a lot of countries. So, you can have a chance to find a good buck. So, I thought I'll get back to Idaho. I'll go on this Colorado hunt. This is when I went with Travis that year. And he shot a good buck. Dude, a nine-year-old buck, which is an incredibly old buck by today's standards. And we hunted the whole season. And we got down to the last day. Travis had told me, hey, dude, down off this finger, everybody's riding this road right here. He says, when you get off of that finger, he said, it's like a new unit. There's nobody down there. He says, I walked through there yesterday. That's where I tracked that buck, or I think it was the day before that. And he said, I didn't even see a boot track in there. He goes, you should go in there. There's does in there. It's going to be November 13th. You know, everything's rutting right now. So, he dropped me off on that road.

I walked down off of that ridge and got down in there, got on some deer tracks. The snow was deep enough. You couldn't track individual deer. So, I'm kind of tracking, you know, herds of deer. You know, here's three deer here. What's this? Come over a little rise, dude. Here's a bunch of deer bedded down. And it took me about 10 minutes to see through the timber and what I was looking at. It was a doe laying down. And I thought, man, there's got to be a buck in there. The wind changed a little bit. One of those does winded me. And she didn't bust out of there. She just got up and got all nervous. And all the other deer started getting up. And all of a sudden, I saw a new deer. And I could only see the right side of his rack. And he wasn't a giant, dude. He was probably a 180s type buck, 27, 28 inch wide. But it is the last day. And, you know, just a good looking buck.

Couldn't get a shot at him. Had to wait a few minutes. And he finally turned. And I saw just a glimpse of his other antler, too. And he had a little bit of a short main beam. Like this buck probably only had 21 inch main beams. But, dude, everything else was there. Good backs. You know, decent mass. Probably five inches at the base. A few little kickers here and there. 135 yards. Dude, I missed him. I freaking missed him. And I shot off my knee. I mean, I missed him clean. I still don't know what happened. So I come home. I'm like, it's okay. I got Idaho. You know how it is, Jason. You just move all your energy to the next hunt. You know, the next one's going to be the one. Dude, I come to Idaho, dude. I hunted out of that 15 days. I hunted about 12 of them. Jeez. And, dude, I looked at a lot of bucks. And, Jason, I just never saw a buck over about 170.

And, you know, if you go back to 2020 and what happened in 2016 and 17 with those bad winners, you know, those would have been our four- and five-year-old bucks. And they're just, their age class just wasn't there. It was just a bummer, you know, to hang up one of the best tags in Idaho and just not even really saw one to go after. But that's how it was. And then in 21, 22 is when I missed those other bucks. And then I hunted, you know, just a general October season, waited for the snow. Dude, I'm getting down to the end of October last year. I'm like, my gosh, dude, I got like 90 to 110 days of hunting here. And I have not killed a deer. Now, some of it's my fault. I've missed three bucks. But, dude, just a downer. Just a downer. Like, wow. And, dude, plus I'm tired. I hate the ones that get away are hard on a guy. You know what I mean? I see when they're your fault. Yeah.

You've done, how much work goes into them? And then when it comes time to make it happen, you didn't. You didn't make it happen. Dude, 100 days. 100 days wasted. Wasted. And so I've got one more hunt last year. That's that third season hunt I was talking about. And, you know, Travis is blowing up my phone at the end of October. He's all rested up, ready to go, dude. Let's go, man. Let's go a couple days early, you know. We'll sleep naked on the mountain. We'll find these bucks, you know. He's ready to go. I'm not hunting with that guy. It's a little weird. It's a little weird. I know, dude. He sends me some really weird texts. Oh, I mean, hey. Some of these serious mule deer hunters are weird. I'm not, but they are. So he got me all fired up, dude. I met him down there. And, dude, I was kind of in the, I mean, I was excited to be there. Don't get me wrong.

You know, you're in Colorado with a tag. And it's, gosh, what did it open last year? What, November? 10th or something. God, I mean, you're like, gee, it's usually closed by now. And it's just open. So we got down there. And we had hunted the unit before. And, you know, Travis went one way. I went the other. Started scouting the night before the season. And then that morning, opening day in Colorado, third season this year was so flipping cold. You know, below zero. 14 below at camp. You know, I got up. I got up at 5 o'clock. And everything was frozen. I couldn't get the propane stove to work. I couldn't. I mean, I could hardly make coffee. I don't go hunting unless I have coffee. And, you know, Travis comes wandering in the tent about. It's not good for you. It's not good for you. It's not, dude. But neither are monsters. I know. Okay, keep going.

So anyways, Travis comes rolling in the tent about 6. Like, gosh dang, dude, it's so cold. He's got his mule and I've got his horse. And we're just camped at a trailhead. We can go into the wilderness if we want. Or we can just stay out and hunt the fringes. And you know what, dude? These bucks are going to be moving today. There had been a little bit of a storm. I said, I'm hunting from the pickup. It's anybody's game. It's anybody's game. There you go. And I'm like, dude, we saw nice bucks walking across the road in the headlights. I said, there's bucks right here nobody shot at. I'm going to take the easy route. And I'm going to go just hunt right here for at least the morning. Kind of scout this area out. And he did the same thing. He went to a little bit different area. And, dude, I went out, definitely confirmed, totally in the rut.

Every herd of does that wasn't just a doe and a fawn had a buck with them, whether it was a three point up to maybe a 150 buck. And I'm like, okay, this is just a matter of just finding a buck that feels secure here. They're around. Hunting pressure was pretty high. But not a lot of people shooting. I was kind of surprised. I was expecting to hear a lot of shooting. There's a lot of oak brush there. I think that, you know, was limiting it a little bit. So by about 1 o'clock, I'm back to camp. Travis, the same thing. Dude, bucks are all over, man. He goes, they're right here. He goes, can you believe the guys driving them down this road or just driving right past bucks? I'm like, I know. I think I'm just going to still focus on this. Just hit some of these knobs. Literally hunt from the road. Not in the truck. But drive down the road. Park my truck. You know, hike up on this bluff.

Look in. There's private there. You got to be careful. You know, but look in this little piece. I'm just going to keep this up. So I did that that night. And then the next morning, Travis says, I'm taking my mule. He's going in this little wilderness park that he knows. And I went back out and did what I did for the morning and still was finding bucks. I found a place where I could take a horse and get around some private because that was everything, too. Like it is in a lot of Colorado. Private low. And you could glass down there. Every field had bucks in it and did some nice ones. Not giants, but like. I think that helps with. That's part of the escapement. It is. Whether it's thick timber or whether it's private. Private, yeah. And I went down there to just make sure nobody was given permission just to make sure. I figured they weren't because the deer were out in the fields.

It knocked on a couple doors. You know, people don't know. Nobody hunts here. You know, I can't go there. You go back up on the public. But what I gathered is I thought, you know, there's enough bucks on that private. And even though up on the public here, I'm just seeing like 150s. These big bucks are not going to leave those does alone down there. They may be leaving at daylight. Maybe they're only down there at night. I just need to let one make a mistake. But, dude, to get around the private was like three or four miles. Right. And last year, I hurt my knee real bad. And so I was a little bit gimpy. And I thought, I found this place where I could take a horse. It wasn't even really a horse trail. And get back around these deer. And that was going to be my tactic for the rest of the week. I thought, I'm just going to stay up here on the public.

I'm going to just check deer coming back and forth from the private. And, dude, the private is like way down there, like a mile and a half. You know, we're not talking I'm just hunting the fence on the private. It's not that kind of a deal. You know, you can see enough that it's like if a buck's coming up through there, you're probably going to get a shot at him. So I get back to camp that night. Dude, Travis killed a 30-incher that morning. Dude, got out there, got onto a herd of deer. Bucks were running like crazy. Just sat and watched them. And it was thick enough. There was quite a few hunters right there. But he's like, dude, nobody was hunting these deer. Nobody knew these deer were down in there. Killed a 30-incher. So, dude, we're like super pumped. You know, 30-incher in camp. Can't believe it. And Travis just had a new baby last year.

And so, you know, he told me this before the hunt. He goes, dude, I'll stay as long as I can. But if I get a deer, I got to go home. I'm like, yeah, I get it. It's no problem. But, man, I'll tell you what, on that Sunday night sitting there thinking, man, Travis has got it. He said, I can hunt one more day. He said, but I got to be out of here by Tuesday. I'm like, oh, man, I got to be here for like freaking six days by myself. And, you know, it's cold. You know, November's dark. You keep each other going. And the nights are long. The nights are brutal. You know. Yes, exactly, dude. And plus, Travis has a good camp. You know, I'm just sleeping over there in some Army tent. You know, he's taking the Taj Mahal home. So he said, but I'm going to help you tomorrow. He goes, you go up on the public like you have. He goes, I'll go glass down on the private. Maybe I'll have a different angle.

If I see something headed that way, you know, we'll regroup. Sure. You know, we checked with call. We couldn't remember. Like in Colorado, can you text each other? Can you call each other if you see a buck? Yeah. You know, we checked out all that. Travis is like, well, I'll let you know if I see one. So, dude, I get out there. And there were some other hunters out there, some guys that were hiking and everything. And it's probably by now it's like 830. I was probably about a half an hour late just because it was kind of a new place. Wasn't quite sure how to get out there. And you couldn't take the horse all the way out there. I tied him low and kind of sort of working my way up this draw that I could glass a couple days before up in that draw from way down on the private. I could look up in there. And all I confirmed was that there was deer there.

I mean, it was, you know, I wasn't seeing any big bucks or anything. But I'm like, that's a pretty little secure draw that really needs hunted at the prime times when they're moving. You know, it's not the kind of place you want to get to at noon and sit there all day. You know, you need to be there. And so I'm kind of feeling like I'm a little bit late getting up in there. And, you know, I've texted Travis a couple times. I'm over here. If you see anything, let me know. I hadn't heard from him. I wasn't really looking at my phone. And I get up there and I start glassing. And there's four does and maybe a couple fawns. And they're standing in an oak brush that's pretty short, maybe about as high as their backs. I can actually see them. Because a lot of times they get in that oak brush that's over their heads. You can't see them. And I'm like, well, hey, there's some does right here.

Those guys are hunting. They're back there 500 yards. I don't even think they've seen these deer. I'm just going to sit here. So I'm glassing. And you know how it is, dude, during the rut. You know, those does will tell you where those bucks are if you watch them. You know, and they kept staring back in the brush, you know, like a lot. And because those big bucks are, you know, they're pretty active during the rut. You know, they make a lot of noise. They're like a big bull in September. I thought, you know, there's something back there making a lot of noise. They keep staring in there. It's either a guy moving through there slowly or there's a buck running back there. So I just kept glassing it. I'd move maybe five yards every couple minutes, just get a different angle. And I spot a good body-sized buck. And it still took me a little.

When I first saw him, I just thought, oh, that's like a 140 buck. You know, it's kind of hazy. I can't really tell. And he would come out of the cover, and then he would go back in. And one time he'd come out, I'm like, man, he's a freak. He's way bigger than those does. You know, I kind of noticed his body. It was just the way the light was coming in. It was really hard to see his antlers. You know, I had the spotter set up, but it was still hard to get on him. He's about, by the way, he's about 500 yards away. And so I'm just sitting there watching him. And I thought, I got to get closer. If this is a big buck, I need to be closer than this. I need to know what he is for sure. Obviously, he's not a 230 giant with a bunch of stuff hanging off him. I would already know that. But, you know, you got to be careful. Like that buck you were talking about that you videoed for 19 minutes.

You can let a really nice buck walk if you're not careful, you know. And so I'm working my way up the draw, and I cut about 100 yards off. And it was just enough to get an angle where I'm kind of looking down on him now. And, dude, he was big. He was 30. He was 30. Solid 30. And just about that second that I thought that, I get a text from Travis. I was like, shooter, dude, shooter. Right there. He didn't know if I saw him. He's like, he's right in that same draw. I'm like, dude, I got him. I know it's him. Hey. He passed the test. He didn't just sit there and wasn't on his phone. He was actually working hard. He was working it, man. No matter if he had a tag or not, he was working it. That's a true friend right there. He was, dude. He was. If I had not seen that buck, you know, he would have let me know he was there. That's right. So, anyways, dude, and it's kind of funny, dude.

Like, some bucks, you know, you have to get them really fast. You're like, bam, there he is, man. I better go boom, you know. Dude, this wasn't that kind of buck. It sounds like the buck you were videoing. Right. The buck would come out. It felt like you got some time. Yeah, I got some time. So, dude, I found this big rock and, you know, laid my pack up on the rock and, you know, my coat. Not going to miss this one. I'm trying to build a rod. We're not going to miss this one. I'm not going to miss this deer. That's right. He's about 420 is what I figure I'm going to have to shoot him at. Dude, he came out of the oak brush like three or four times, and I would just get the scope on him, and something would happen. He would get in the does, and I wouldn't dare shoot, or I would lose track which deer he was. Like, it's still dim enough. And, by the way, he's 30, but he's a little light.

He's still about five inches at the base, but he doesn't get heavy as he goes. Doesn't have five-inch triple-eye guards. Doesn't have hanging hook cheaters. Exactly. So, you could lose track of him a little bit in the scope. Like, is that him? And then he would turn. I'm like, well, that's him. And I'd get the hash mark on him, and, ah, frick, he'd go in the trees. Well, dude, this goes on for, I don't know, forever. Five minutes. It feels like forever. You know, I hear my phone over there buzzing. I know Travis is just going nuts, you know, but I can't look at the phone anymore. He was one dude. Kill that deer. Yeah, and that's exactly what he was doing, dude. He started thinking I didn't see the deer. He was like, what is wrong, dude? Can you not see him? Yep. Yep. And so, anyways, the buck finally comes out and makes a hard right looking at the doe, and pow!

And I couldn't see after a shot for a second. And all the does scattered. And then all of a sudden, I see this, like a horse bucket. You know, I see this something bucking up and down in the brush. And so, I'm looking through my scope, and dude, I hit him. And he had gone down. But dude, he got back up. And I'm like, what the flip? And now he's facing me. And he's just kind of standing there looking down the hill, because that's the way the does went. Yeah. And I'm like, man, this is not a good shot, but I better take it. You know, a deer facing you at 400 yards. Yeah. You know, it's just, you know, a 12-inch little thing to hit. So, I waited a little bit. Maybe it took a minute or so. Maybe not quite that long. 30 seconds. And he turned, and I got another one in him and put him down. Jeez. Jason, it still took two hours to find this buck.

It was, dude, it looked like it was not very thick over there. Dude, when I got over there, those does were in the only short oak brush that was over there. Wow. The rest of it was over your head. And, dude, I started to think I lost him. Like, I was getting down in the dumps, and there were so many deer tracks over there. Those deer had really been working that draw, and there was about, you know, two or three inches of snow. You couldn't really track. And so, dude, it was tough. And, you know, I had the Swarros with the little tracker on them. Yeah. And, dude, you know, I screwed that all up. And I don't know what I did. I got over there, and I'm shooting back. I could see the rock, but I couldn't get it to work. You know, it's my fault, I'm sure. Yeah. But, anyways, I just did the old circle in the grid, and I finally found him. And, dude, he dropped right there where I shot him.

That buck hadn't moved 10 yards that whole time. How many times does that happen, though, you know, where people don't follow up like you did? I mean, you know, I mean, you try, you try, you try, and then pretty soon you're like, ah, I must have missed him, you know, and off you go. It's more than I think we think. Yeah, I think so. Wow. Crazy story. Well, I guess I want to tell you about one that got away, but I don't think I can because I'm not quite over it. Oh, really? Emotionally? Yeah. Yeah. You can do counseling? Yeah, I might. You should. They don't get away, and this one, you know, I mean, at least, anyway, this one, when they're this easy, and this one did. And, anyway. Dude, tell me. You'll make me feel better. I've had so many get away.

Come on, man. Well. Dude, unless it's going to screw up your chance to get him in the future. No, heck no, I'm not even going to be able to go back, so, yeah, well, it's a Colorado story. I was going to tell you a desert story because of your, you went, you know, because we got the mountain story from, but, yeah, so it's a Colorado story. I went in, and I worked my guts out, and just like what you're talking about, you know, there's a lot that goes into it, and you're always, you know, and you don't know it's anybody's game. Every year's different. It's, the pre-scouting doesn't help, although it may teach you, you know, roads and things like that. There's a lot of movement. These late seasons, there's just a lot of movement, and so you need to cover the numbers. You guys, you guys covered the numbers.

You covered the ground, but you also, Robbie, what I take from your story is there's a little technology used. You were hunting in and around private with confidence because of Onyx, and you, and you, and you advertise Onyx, and so we can say it, and I, and I use it, and so you hunt in and around private with confidence, and you also worked harder than the average guy that goes to Colorado. The average guy that goes to Colorado doesn't leave the truck, for the most part, or side by side, or whatever, and you were doing three to four miles, horseback, not horseback, whatever. You guys were willing to do what it takes, right? Just a little bit more, right? Did I understand it right? No, dude, you got it. There were easier places to hunt that had deer in them, but over that couple days, I kind of figured out that these are going to probably be $150 unless I just get super lucky.

I need to get somewhere that's a little bit more secure. Right, and if it's a little bit more secure this year, it probably was last year, the year before, year before. Now you're hunting an older age class deer in this area that, because generally, I find generally, they don't just randomly migrate. They have a pattern in their migration. This deer will come and shed within two or three miles, depending on weather in this area, or rut in this area, or go to this area, use these same trails off the 12,000-foot peaks, or whatever, into this area. And so you find those areas, and unless you blow them out with podcasts and things like that, and you get a lot of pressure, you know, that area will have an older age average deer than, say, the easy off the road. Having said that, deer walk, like you said, deer walk, they get a little bit vulnerable,

they're starting to look for a new doe, or whatever, and then they cross the wrong road at the wrong time, or whatever. So, but you guys were willing to work, and you hit it, and there's a lot of easy draw units that, if guys always tell me, yeah, I mean, the general consensus, this unit's terrible, doesn't have big deer, but I got one to two to three miles off the road, and I got into a whole different type of deer, and no people, and a better experience. And so, anyway, that's kind of what I gathered, you know, from Elati, from your story. And so, anyway, same thing, I'm hunting this area, cranking, and I actually put up some trail cameras. Can you believe it? Would you put up trail cameras for a third season? In third season? Third. No, my fingers are too cold. Okay. Well, they still needed water in this area.

And so, I put up a few trail cameras and water sources in heavy migrant areas, and then I would just check them, as well as glassing. And glassing was by far, I mean, that's what you do. That's what you do on those seasons. You cover the ground, you cover the numbers, you glass, you glass, you glass some more, and then you go to new country, and you do it all day long, because they're up and down, up and down, it's cooler weather, all of these things. And, but these cameras just happened to catch, cover a few more numbers. You know, as deer were moving into this area, I could see when they first came in, and then they would hang around, and then pretty soon they wouldn't be on camera anymore, they moved on. And so, it was just allowing just a few more bucks, you see, right? Well, there ended up being a giant that came in and rudded around, but he would only come

out at night, and he would water. So, you're catching him on the trail camera? Yes. At night? Yes. At night, because, and then they, deer are social, and when they're rut, it's easy to come around. If I'm a buck, and I'm looking to rut, I want to check a bunch of does, I go to a high traffic area, and I can check all the does. And so, he would do it, he didn't necessarily, I don't even have one of him drinking, but the does were, or whatever. And then there was new does moving in. And this was a way he could see if there was a new doe that moved in that was hot, or a doe coming in, or whatever. He was checking does. But then, but he was smart enough that he wasn't being seen in the daylight. So, how are you going to kill a deer that's in thick, thick trees except for at night? And it was night after night after night. And so, I just started. You saw him more than once? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I didn't see him. I didn't physically see him. But on the trail camera, he showed up more than one night. He wasn't just passing through. Right. And I'm working the area, but I'm also, and you've got to hunt where big deer are. Just, I've never done this before. You don't, it's never the way I hunted Colorado. You know, it just happened to work on this particular unit. And so, anyway, then glass, glass, glass. Why can I see everything? I can see the whole world. This was a good glassing knob. I'm in the right area. How? What is he doing? You know? And it was just persistence. Just grind, grind, grind, grind. Not leave. There was, you know, people everywhere. High traffic. This and that. Wow. Yeah. It was just, how are you going to kill him? Like, where's he even going? You can't track him. I mean, it's hot and dry and dusty.

And all of those things you're talking about on these tough, tough years. And so, anyway, one day, one day I was, I was, I went and checked another area. I was coming in and he was standing there off the side of the road at 150 yards running in broad daylight. It just so happened that maybe he felt less pressure or whatever. There wasn't people around. And I'm like, I can hear side by sides. I can hear all this. Anyway, I get out. I don't know, I'm 20 yards off the road or whatever. I get down and I'm, and I'm shooting. I don't realize it, but it's like wispy little yellow grass, you know? And, and I can see through the scope just fine, but my barrel is lower than the scope. And I didn't have a, you know, tall enough tripod. I'm, I'm crapping. Yeah. For all intents and purposes. Like, I got to get this deer killed. He's outsmarted me for how many days? This is my only chance.

Here come people. I can hear, like, I can see my, the whole, the whole thing going to crap, you know? And, and I, I squeeze the trigger. Nothing.

I mean, this is a chip shot. I'm talking 225 yard, like chip shot. You know what I mean? And you're on, but you're still on the tripod. I'm on a bipod. You know, how does, how does this happen? Shoot again? Nothing. Goes up, goes up over the hill. I get all my crap together and go up over the hill. You got to back up. Did you, did the gun go off both times? Yeah, the gun's going off the spine. Oh, I thought, I heard you say click. Okay, gotcha. Well, I mean. So, you missed him twice off the bipod. Yeah. Go up over the hill. Now he's at, what, 395 or whatever. You know, you know, you know, the whole cluster range, fine, all this, all the gear that's slowing you down. You can just watch him walking away. You feel like, and this and that, you know, 395 yards or whatever. Again, did it again. Missed him again.

And I'm like, and, and, and Robbie, like a, like, and not, not to say anything just doesn't happen that I don't experience that with a rifle. It, it, it range like that. It's, um, I can usually hold it together. I'm, I, this was a dead deer. I was, I was gutting him before the second shot went off in my mind. You know what I mean? And, and, um, anyway, he walks away and, and I'm like, okay, no problem. I'm going to hunt these thick trees. And, and, uh, he got away that night and then I, I hunted and hunted and hunted and hunted. And I figured out kind of where he was going and it all made sense why I couldn't find him. And then I just never saw him again. And, and now, so fast forward, I can't shoot this gun anymore. Right. So, and it's one of my best guns. And I'm like, in my mind, anyway, I go to throw a different scope on it this year.

And, and, um, my, my, uh, rookie, rookie mistake, but there's different lengths. There's different, uh, lengths of, um, base, base mount screws. And one had bottomed out too early. I thought it was tight. It had bottomed out too early. And then it had sheared. Okay. When I go to pull it off, it's like nothing. So one of my base mount screws is not even, not even working. Right. And so, uh, and I was having problems with, it was being erratic. I was working it and it was being erratic. So I thought it was the scope. I was trading the scope out. And now I'm realizing, no, it's the way it's mounted. And this, this, you know, that I didn't realize happened. And who knows how, I don't know all the ins and outs, but a, a, it was not Jason's fault. Okay. That's all I care about. And I'm just teasing you. I'm laughing. It's all my fault. It's not like you probably had, I probably did.

I probably did. But there was grass. I mean, I reenacted, I went and looked. I mean, there was grass that I didn't account for. And then, um, maybe, maybe my equipment wasn't set up right. And I've smashed so many deer with this particular gun, but I had traded scopes. And then, and, uh, anyway, um, he got away and he, you know, it's significant deer. And, and so, you know, two hundred, I don't know, 10 or 15 or whatever, you know, I mean, I hate to even. Giant. Yeah. Just one of those kinds of deer super mass. And, and, um, uh, you know, just one of those, one of those things. And, you know, it's hard to, hard to, those ones are hard to, hard to talk about, I guess, you know, cause we were supposed to be perfect out in the field, Robbie. We've got lots of years under our belt, but we're not, we're not. I wasn't, I probably lost it.

Uh, I had it so focused on this particular deer and, and, uh, you know, just, I don't know, didn't make a happen. And that, that's the heartbreaker of big deer. And I think that's, what's the difference between big deer hunting and just deer hunting is if, if you're just deer hunting, oh man, the four point got away. Oh crap. Look, my scope. Oh, I should have sighted my gun. And what was I thinking? You're going to get another chance tomorrow or in a couple of days, you're going to get another chance, but you just know when that happens that this is, I'm not going to get a chance for a long time. We talked about it today. 20 days, 40 days. I mean, this slump, I just broke a hundred days, 120 days, whatever it was. I can't even count them all dude. How many days I hunt? I can't count them all. I spent 30 days on one deer and it was a significant monster.

And, uh, you know, and I never, I never, I never got a chance at him. And that's the heartbreaker of it all. When do you quit and go to number two? Mm-hmm. Right. Right. Oh man. Yeah. And, and, and, and I'm surprised at how many years I've hunted and the rookie mistakes I still make, especially with archery. Dude, the first three big bucks I pointed my bow out, I killed all three of them. You know, 184, a 196, uh, the broken heart buck, which didn't score well, but he was bigger than both those bucks. 19 inch back, six inch bases, you know, just a giant. First three of them, three arrows, three dead deer. Um, I didn't recover the broken heart buck right away. I did lose the meat on him, but I did recover the buck. Um, and dude, then the next four deer I've pointed my, my bow out. I've missed, uh, let's say I missed two and, uh, wounded one and nicked the other.

Just, and dude, I shoot a lot. I mean, I, I, I am, I, I shoot a lot of arrows, a couple thousand a year. Um, this morning when I texted you to see if you want to come on the podcast, dude, I was at the archery range. Uh, I mean, I shoot, but dude, I just don't hold it together at the right time. Robbie, there's, there's a difference between shooting at paper and shooting at animals after you've worked for two months scouting, you've hunted for 10 or 15 days. And then you have the one chance at 40 yards, you know, there's too much emotion. Well, there's too much emotion. You're like, I got to get this shot off or he's going to leave. And he's not, he's feeding, he's doing whatever, whatever situation you're in. Once in a while, I killed one that was on the walk. It was not, it was now or never mostly, most of the time, you, you know, he's not, it's

not as dire as a, as you make it in your mind. It's not. I can't believe it took 30 days, 20 days, 10 days to get to this point. And he's now 37 yards and, and you can't control it. And, and I got sick of it. I got sick of having buck fever and, and putting all this work into it. And I couldn't finish the deal when I was really young. I couldn't finish it. And I'm like, and finally I was like, just, I had to tell myself, you know, and there wasn't podcasts to listen to or anything else. You're just beating yourself up at home. Right. And, and reading a few magic magazine articles. And you're just like, you know what? You got to pull it together, Jason. You have to pull it together and you have to make it happen. And if that means not looking at the antler, if that means whatever you got, you gotta be so mad at yourself.

If you, if you, whatever, like pull it together and then, and then lose it. And it, and I do. I lose my mind when it's over. I start shaking. I start dry heaving. It's just all the, I just become, and it's every time, Robbie, it's every time I can't even, you know? Yeah. And it's just because it all came together and, and it takes so, it took so much effort, you know, to get it to, to that point. And, and, and, and I went through a funk, Robbie, I tell you another one that got away and, and, uh, the deer would have been the deer nets book non-typical because another guy has him. Somebody got it. It won't, won't enter him, which is fine. It's all fine. But I know he nets because I had him scored, uh, and officially. And he grossed low two forties hard horn. When I, when I, when he ducked my arrow and I put one through his, uh, you know, his back

straps and the void with an arrow in the velvet, he'd have been over two 50. Okay. Mm-hmm. I was a freaking idiot. I, I, I, it was my fault. I would have had the deer. I had multiple chances. I stocked the crap out of him. I was successful at stocking him to a degree, but once he had, once he had my number, once he knew it was like a lion that's constantly in the area, you know how deer are skittish. They just get skittish when a lion is constantly in the area. He was just, it was like, I was constantly in the area and he was onto that. And so he was nervous. I was in 20, 30 mile an hour wind, totally in my favor. He didn't have a clue. I was there. All of a sudden he took off. He just took off randomly. And then pretty soon he goes back to feeding. He was a nervous wreck because I was in on him too many times and, and I may have shot at him and not gotten him. You know what I mean?

And so now he's onto it and he lived, it healed up and, uh, you know, a couple of weeks or a month later, uh, a guy smashed him with a rifle. And so, you know, that's a heartbreak. Did he know you had hit him? Oh yeah. Everybody knew. Yeah. And this was common. He was, he's a good friend of mine. Like it's, it was, uh, you know, anyway, I'd tell you more, but I want to throw up right now. You know what I mean? And so it's just, uh, and, and, and sometimes you find yourself getting into a weird funk. I was looking, I was so confident I was going to kill him that I was looking before maybe the arrow actually left the bow. I was looking, you know, I was looking, you know, and, and it changed. And then also he got, got onto me and was in on camera with duck the arrow. And, uh, you know, it just, it, it, it, he should have been dead. Should have been dead, dead, dead, you know?

And then, and so those are, when those things happen, then you're like, all right, I've got to fix myself. How am I going to get myself out of this funk? Because I'm doing something weird, even though I've shot a ton of paper, you know, I've, I've, I'm a ton of animals. Yeah. Or whatever. It gets me down, dude. I've shot a ton of them. I've got a lot of bucks with my bow. So walk in the park. Let's do this. Yeah. Point the bow out. I'm kill them right. Right in the pocket. Shoot them right there. You know? And then, uh, I don't know. I can't explain it. Just, just got to quit falling apart. It's buck fever at a different level. I'm not shaken when the buck comes up. I'm not, I'm not that, but I'm not finishing the deal. You said it a few minutes ago. I'm not finishing it. Right. I'm not take, I think the deer is dead before I finished the job. So confident. Is what has happened.

So confident. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And, uh, how, how am I, how am I in this spot where I still have an unpunched tag? And then where am I going to go now? You know, like they don't just make them every day. You don't just go to, sometimes you don't. Go to number two. You don't know where number two is. And it took me 30 days to get to this point. And so now I've just educated him or, or whatever, whatever, whatever. Right. And so, you know, your hunt, you can kind of see the writing on the wall. I'm going to eat this tag. And I really, I really should be punching this tag. And, you know, so anyway, I, I should end with positive one, but I, I've told you a couple in the middle. Hey, that's all right, dude. That's all right. We're human. And I think last time we did a podcast like this, I just told you my heartbreaker stories too. And I think that's good for people to know.

It's not all easy out there. It's it. I use the term heartbreak all the time. It literally breaks your heart. I think that's what attracts us to it is because when it does come together, like you said, you're shaken. You're so emotional. You know, you dry heaved, you know, I do somersaults. I mean, it is amazing. I can't do somersaults. I need to, I need to do some more yoga.

Well, Jason, man, I appreciate it, buddy. We did three hours. I know in your life, three hours is very valuable. Oh, you too. Especially this time of year. I'll fail. I know, but this was my idea. And, and, uh, but thank you very much. And, and man, I, I'm just so glad we did it. And I wasn't kidding in the opener when I told you, I had so many people to ask me to do this again that, you know, I've listened to tons of podcasts. My favorite one was with you and Jason Carter. When are you going to do another one? Dude, people email me, people hit me on rock slide, people Instagram and me. And I'm like, you know, one of these days it'll align. It just did. I thought it was going to go a little. Logan's still awake. Oh, Logan's awake. Right, Logan? He's, he's cranking. Yeah, of course. Poor guy, dude. He likes it. He's right, Logan. You like it. I do like it.

No, he's a good kid, but you know, and he, and he lives for this stuff. And, and I like having him on cause he gives a different perspective of the young kid of the young generation. But I just, you know, there's so many more stories, Robbie. Like I would be nice. We thought we would just tell stories. Instead, we kind of got into too much theory. That's been talked to it nauseam. And, you know, you're tired of it. I'm tired of it. We can't fix it. We're trying to just go out there and hunt and kill big deer. And so, you know, maybe, maybe we just come back and, and just talk stories. We can do it again, buddy. All right. All right, man. Thank you very much. Logan, thank you for sticking with us for three hours, man. I appreciate it. Absolutely. It was a great time. All right. Thanks. Sure. Appreciate you, Robbie. All right, buddy. You bet. All right. Bye.

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