EP 296: The Llama Dilemma, Western Conservation and Muleys Matter With Dustin Wittwer

Anything to do with Western big game.

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

Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, and Logan coming at you from southern Utah. It's freaking cold out there. It's dang near what? 31 to 45 degrees, Bronson. It says 45, it feels 31. Windchill thermometers aren't working yet. It's colder. It is colder than crap. Shot Justin's gun today. We're getting ready to go to Colorado. He's smacking a thousand, no problem. So, super awesome. Anyway, kind of fun. It's a fun time of year. I mean, of course, we're wore out, Bronson. Do you feel like you had a long year? Yeah? Yeah, I do. So, here we are. And then we're not done. Coming on mid-November with a whole other bunch to go. Actually been cranking on the December magazine and trying to get it done as soon as we're done. Janet gives us the okay. We gone. So, anyway, today's episode is going to be kind of interesting. Another podcaster. Dustin Whitworth, Backcountry. What is it?

Backcountry. What is it, Logan? It's Backcountry. Finding. Finding Backcountry. Backcountry always kind of throws me for a loop because Backcountry is about 300 yards of the truck to most people. But he also has another company where he does the mills, which is like... Backcountry Logistics. ...honey Logistics or something. So, that's company. And then he does some of those food bins or those big old boxes, the snack packs. That's what I meant. Backpack Logistics, yeah. Yeah, so anyway. Llama Logistics. A couple other businesses. We're butchering everything, but, you know, he's a good dude and he can take it. Anyway, let's give him a holler. I know he wants to talk about a few different things. Definitely another monster connoisseur. He takes it to a different level than I think even you and I do. Oh. The monsters. Oh, well, yeah. He says he invented white monsters.

All I know is... I see a lot of... Yeah. Taste testing going on. A lot of taste testing of a lot of weird flavors. It's just an excuse to buy more energy drinks. All right. Let's give him a holler.

Carter? I was just telling Bronson... I've got him on the phone here. I was just telling Bronson that you feel like that you invented white monster and I think that's a bunch of crap. Well, I wouldn't say I invented it, but I definitely put it on the map. No.

Bronson. Kind of like Al Gore on the internet.

I mean, I don't know. But hey, we fully acknowledge... He says he was the first to acknowledge that white was the good one. He could have been... I've got receipts. I've got receipts. I'm sure I was making that one. Receipts for what? Okay, Prime. What does that mean? We got Prime time here on the air today. Go to Prime. Yeah. Yeah, I kept my receipts from the first ones I ever had. So what does that mean? What does that mean? It just means that I have proof. Well, our receipts are so old that they fade.

When you guys bought them, you were still writing checks for them at the Linds market. Dustin, we still write checks. We paid cash. We didn't have credit cards. We write checks right now. Can you believe that? Do you even write a check anymore? Yeah, I do every once in a while. Venmo? Venmo? We got Venmo. We got Venmo. What he's trying to say... You could Venmo us a little cash. Because he was Monster when Monster wasn't cool. Well, that's what he's trying to say. He's trying to say that the reason we drink him is because of him. That's what he's trying to say. He doesn't set it, but he doesn't have to. Yeah. Because I already know what he's thinking. The real debate, the only one that's got a real leg to stand on is me and Ben because, you know... Because why? Well, we're the only ones that are willing to put our necks on the line with unbiased reviews of all the energy drinks out there.

I just want to know... There's too many nasty ones. I just want to... And I don't have enough years in my life to have a bad tasting monster or energy drink. I only want good ones. There's so many negative medical reviews that I just want to know if you're worried about meeting your maker and talking about how many kids you converted over to drinking white monsters. I don't know, but I just had to do this blood work for like a life insurance thing, right? And it's what? It's cherry. Perfect. Could be better. Everything's cherry except this like one thing and it's like, oh, this is directly tied to your liver and I'm like, oh no. I'm like, I'm sure... I don't know what it is, but I'm sure that dates back to all the monsters. It might. I don't know, but I drink monster and they go in and do a blood pressure test and they're like, man, you got good blood pressure. Healthy as a horse.

I know I'm fine. I know it's fine. It's good. It's like a good blood solvent. Yeah. All right. Well, what are you, what are we, what are we talking about today, boss? This is your gig. This is my gig, but you're recording it? Well, yeah, we're recording it, but that doesn't mean anything.

Just your Mealy's Matter stuff, man. Oh, yeah. Like, listen, I mean, I'm a... I thought you were going to talk about spitters and things like that. Yeah, we can wait in. Should we talk about the survivability of having... Of a llama versus a horse? Well, yeah. What would you rather have if you're in the back country? Yeah, you guys pretty much crapped all over that. Well, they didn't do it. No, it just begged the question. They were just nothing but a liability. Which one of the Star Wars, this is a really rough question, which one of the Star Wars, I think it was Empire Strikes Back, right at the intro, he's riding that thing. It looks like a llama, but it's like a two-legged llama, and he, like, has to kill it and climb inside of it to stay warm and survive in the snow. I mentioned that on the podcast. Do you remember that? Oh, you did? Oh, I did. You could... Could you fit inside

a llama's carcass, could you? No, you can't. You can't. Okay, then they're useless. Then they're useless. Can you? Can you just... No way. They're useless. No, but I mentioned it... You could climb in a horse. Exactly. And I mention it because, like, for moose or something in Alaska, like, if you had to, you could do something weird like that. But, I mean, it's far-fetched. Like this whole podcast so far, it's getting far-fetched. Have you even seen that Star Wars movie I'm talking about? I have, yeah. He cuts it up with his lifesaver, the guts go... and he jumps inside and survives. Yeah, I couldn't remember what the animal was called, so I was getting... Yeah, well, I don't... I couldn't get it. I just think you can't... You weren't even alive. You wouldn't even hug a llama for warmth. You wouldn't even hug them. They're wooly. What do you mean? They hate people.

They look at you cross-eyed. If you had one stuck in the snow, though, you could shear it and then take all the wool and throw it in your sleeping bag with you. Okay. Okay. If you have electricity and shears up there, yeah. Yeah, or clippers of some sort. And, like, you're going to think square enough to be like, I'm going to shear this thing right here. Saying that the llamas were a liability at that point... Huge liability. That's like getting broke down on your side-by-side and then saying, blaming the side-by-side is a liability. Well, A, it left you there. B, what are you going to do with it now? Oh, this frigging thing. We wouldn't have had a flat tire, a blown, you know, we wouldn't have popped our... How'd have had a 200-inch? ...sway bar on our Tacoma if we hadn't brought one back here. We wouldn't be near as deep. We wouldn't be near as deep without it.

I agree with you, Dustin. I agree with you. So, anyway, it's fine. So, go ahead. We can just go ahead and do a little shameless plug for your llamas business. Let's do it. Listen, the llama business ain't really a business anymore. Like, we've transitioned from renting them. You're just doing it to avoid paying taxes? Exactly. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, anyway, keep going. Go ahead. To throw a cup on the pasture to keep green belt status. Exactly.

Less homeowner tax. Hey, maybe you guys don't understand, too, the price of llamas nowadays. Oh, it's probably probable. Why would anyone be a cattle farmer, right? Like, you can sell llamas for $3,000 to $9,000. What? Trained? Trained or green? Green, bro. What are we talking about? Green. Green three to five off their mamas yearlings. Yearling? Yeah. For three to five grand? Yep. Carter. 3,000. 3,000. You don't even have to feed them good. You can't even. You can feed them plywood. You can feed them garbage and they still look the same. You can't tell. You've underfed them, overfed them. They're just like bigger goats. Aren't they like a bigger goat? Yeah. They kind of are. They're kind of disgusting. Carter, what do you? No. You want to do it? I'm out. I'm looking for an investor. We could do the epic llamas. We could start with a, what do they call them? Crees or crap? Crees. Huh?

Crees. What's that? A breed? We could buy a crea off Dustin, get our start. The epic llama business. What is a crea? Is that a type of llama? No, it's a baby. It's a baby. It's a baby.

Cries a lot. It's what I, it's spelled like cries or something like that. Anyway. Yeah. Wow. So, all right. Profitable. Profitable, but not profitable for IRS purposes.

On one hand, it's like, yeah, I'm trying to find Texas. At some point, they're profitable. At some point, it's a hobby. And then you got to move to Wyoming and find an accountant up there that'll work with you.

All right. All right. All right. So, we, it's, it's not really, we're not really hot and heavy renting them out anymore. We just, we just breed them and use them and then sell them as, you know, either yearlings or train. Gotcha. Kind of fun. I, I don't, it's very little. What is the life expectancy of a good llama? Is it like a horse? Could you get 20 years out of one? Yeah. Yeah. You get 20, 18, 20 years of packing. Okay. Wow. It's, it's a little, it's a little different though because they can't, they're not really fully mature to like four or four and a half. Yeah. So, it takes a minute. Yeah. You're only packing like half loads. Like what, you know, when Finch was saying 80, 90 pounds, that's on the big four and a half year old. So, you know, three, three and a half, he's only packing maybe 30, 40 pounds, you know, they have a weird. What's a male, what's a male, is it called a stud?

What's a male llama called?

Male? A boy. Just a male? Yeah. I actually don't know. Yeah. Okay. Well, you called the baby a very unique name. A cry, cry. Well, they call him cries. Crias. Yeah. Crias. I figured they had different names for the males and females. And I wouldn't know that without Dustin. He posted, he had a Cria or something and posted about it and I was like, okay, I learned something. enough, probably enough. I was intrigued until Carter tapped out and then I lost my investor so I'm out.

We can make a side deal. All right. So then, what else you got going on? You got a day job, of course. You're doing guns and whatnot and then you've got this back country food box. Backpack logistics with a food box. Cool stuff. And that's what I'm trying to push, right? I mean, listen, the meals is taking off, right? Like, we doubled last year from the year before, right? Wow. And so, guys are buying these, you know, pre-packaged, they get to build their entire day's worth of food with us, right? So, I inventory their breakfast, their lunch, their dinner, all their snacks, drink, you know, drink mixes, right? The mountain ops and the wilderness athlete, crap like that, their instant coffees. And they put a, you know, a $40, $50 day order in and they might do two, they might do 10. And then I box them up in a gallon bag and send it out to them, right? Ready to roll. Right. Yeah,

you sent us a five pack, five days, sorry, five day meal kit from Backpack. So, you're giving away to the Muley's Matter initiative a five day backpack meal kit. Yeah. Yeah. So, like 250 bucks should cover them, right? And that's about the value, but they'll be able to go on and do five full days of food, you know. You figure 50 bucks a day is what you got? Yeah, that's on the high, that's on the high end. It's on a high calorie. Take a freeze drive. I mean, just them alone are 15 bucks. Yeah. Yeah, they are. But then, but then we took over, so do you remember Cody Rich's Backcountry Fuel Box? Yes. So, I bought, I bought the, basically just the assets and stuff because he had shut it down shortly before, but he was getting out of that, so I bought all the assets and stuff from that and then kind of launched this Trailblazer box. Which is really cool. You actually, I got one from you

and it was awesome. Did a little video clip, but I never posted it, sorry. Oh, great. Wow. But it was cool. It was really cool. Yeah, and the idea, the idea there, you know, you can't scratch much out of people for something like that, right? It's like magazine subscriptions. You got to have tens of thousands to make it work, but. It's more or less just pushing your other products. Yeah. Exactly. Filtering them into the meals because that's where I make money. Well, and you should. You're providing a great service. So, on that, do they kind of give you, you know, do you give them a whole menu and they just kind of pick some of the things they like or do you just do a random thing, sampler, or how are you doing it? No, it's all, dude, it's all custom. You should jump on and look. It's even got, like as you're building it, right? We've inventoried, I would say, there's very few guys

that are like, dude, you're not carrying something that I want because we have a lot of the, you know, just the basics, right? Right. But as they're adding it, they're custom building exactly what they want and it tallies it up on the side as they're putting it in their day of food. Oh, I see it. We're actually on your website right now. We're low for calories as we speak. Yeah, see how it's, it's telling you your, all the options. Yep. And it's showing you your weight, your calories, calories per ounce. Little Debbie, that's, that's, that's for Ben. Yeah. The cosmic brownie. Yeah. Did you do that for him? Is he the only one that's ordered any of them? Hey, go to the, this is why I'm the, this is why I'm the energy drink guy. Go to the energy tab. Okay. All right. And find white, find white monster. Monster energy. Energy. And then, Oh, there's only one that comes up as white. A 12 ounce.

That doesn't even, that doesn't even get your heart rate up. You're not even going to offer any other flavors. You're only white. There's not even an option. You click it and it goes straight to white. But I guess he's thinking backpacking. You can't take a 24 ounce. I mean, you could, but it's weight. Bronson, you ain't packing a 16. It reminds me of the first vehicles that were made. It reminds me of the first vehicles that you're, you can have any color you want as long as it's black. Hey, where's white monster energy? White. That's what you get. 12. This is good for you. I know that it's good, but I, listen, I can say with confidence we're the only backpack food company out there offered white monsters. No, the others realize it's a liability because it's not healthy. You're backpacking with high blood pressure. All right, guy. Yeah. So this is good. And I, I,

does this happen to options right there and probably does your order, it stores it. So if you go for a week, come home and want to go back and like, like Walmart, I hate going in Walmart. I do too. So I do my online Walmart, pick it up. And it saves it. It saves it. And a lot of my hunts, I buy very similar things. And so every week or two, if I need to go, I'd redo it. Does this save it like that? And you just go redo the same thing. If you go back to your orders, probably your prior orders or something. Yeah. Yeah. Or do you have to start over? You probably have to go rebuild it. I don't think we're that advanced. Look at, look though. He's got it all a vacuum packed. Oh yeah. I knew there's a day, but yeah, that's, that's great. It's just that, you know what I mean? Like drop downs. Yeah. Whoa guys. Do you hear that? Was that? Yeah.

The guys like Carter that are like truck camping or horse, horse guys, right? They usually just leave the, they leave the dinners off. Right. And then they, they have their, you know, big dinner back at camp. Rib eye and Dutch oven potatoes. Right. Hey, you'd be surprised. I love that too. You'd be surprised at how much I ate some of this crap you're selling right here. Yeah. Yeah. Like during the day, so, so for example, there's a PB and strawberry jelly sandwich kit. Okay. What do I get? Do I get the, the to go cups for the peanut butter or how does that sandwich? So there's a, there's a product, there's a product called split. Maybe you've seen them at Walmart. Half jelly, half peanut butter, half peanut butter, half jelly in a packet. And you just squeeze it out onto your, onto your table. Okay. Okay. I like it. No, this is pretty handy. So anybody that's interested,

backpack logistics.com, but really Dustin, we're here to talk about what we got going on. Yeah. Mealies matter. Yeah. Listen, I, Hey, I'm, I'm your biggest fan, man. Like I, I, I, I'm in my head. I was the first one to contact you guys and donate something, right? It's not for sure. You were right. Just like the receipts for the white monster. Yeah.

I was early. I was early. No question about it. No, I just, listen, I, I, I think the whole thing's interesting, man. I think there's, there's a almost, it's almost created like a movement, right? That I'm not sure a lot of people agreed with or understood. Right. And it, it taps into this whole, um, you know, this whole mindset going around, like we could get real deep into this, um, aspect of it, but like, you know, there's entire companies out there that are built off of selling the idea that you have to kill something on every single tag. Right. Right. And that's a problem, man. Like, and so it's just, it, you know, that's like the, the starting thesis here. And then you see all these, all these guys that have gotten behind this. And you guys said, I think you got, you know, $50,000 or more, probably at this point. It's like 65 now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just,

it goes to show that the, the mass majority, everyone isn't on that camp of like, yeah, let's, you know, let's tip over something. Every, I am deserved of a deer, every single tag that I get, I don't care. The last day I'm going to shoot something. And, you know, it's been kind of interesting to see, you know, and, and I understand businesses don't always, you know, they're not there to promote each other's things and stuff like that. But like, there's a lot of influencers that haven't said anything about this. Right. And there's even been some that have spoken out against it. And I'm like, what is that saying about you and your, you know, your principles here is like either, either what you work for a company that has to sell people. So an idea of killing something every single time you go hunting or well, you're too insecure to not kill something. And every time you go out, I mean,

it just, what, you know what I mean? Like, you kind of, yeah, you kind of mentioned though that, you know, about the critics that they're with an S and actually, I'm not sure I know of two. I know of one. Yeah. But, but I'm not sure I know of two. And, but even at that, I know there are two, right? If there's a couple of guys saying it, there's, there's more that probably think that I think in general, that is natural. It's human nature to be a little bit competitive, a little bit, whatever, and think, well, why would they do it? Would it just be, you know, for their own self-interest, selfish promotion of, of Epic or whatever. And so this actually started, Dustin, we have plenty going on in our life, right? Like this actually started. You need another project. We had a, what we felt dire straight necessity, drought stricken deer in Nevada, Utah, Northern Arizona.

And then the winter of this last year. And then the winter started off, but we were fighting. If you remember, Bronson, and you, I know you do, because we talk about it daily. We were, we were at odds with the division of wildlife here in Utah. And we're like, well, they're going to keep giving out these tags. 90 to 95% of the people at the RAC meeting, our regional advisory council here in Southern Utah, got up. And, and, and in relation to the tag quotas, proposed, increased increases for general season. An increase off of a year that we had one year of a major slash. And then the next year they wanted to jump back up. Right. So we're like, why, why are we doing that? Well, in the, in their mind, we were having a hot, an abnormal fawn survival. And we're like, well, those are two points. They're going to be two points. They're going to be two points. It's like, chill out for a minute.

We don't have our populations back. We come off the nastiest drought ever. So Adam and I, and I mean, we were, it was born on a podcast, you know, basically. I listened to that. I listened to that episode. Yeah. And, and, you know, Adam was like something, something along the lines of basically we should just do this and da, da, da, da. And all of a sudden it was like, let's do that. And, and, and it was, okay, go ahead. Issue your 3000 tags, your 2000 tags, whatever the case is, go ahead and do it. But with those tags, we can do what we want. We could kill. We could not kill. And we were also, that was a very clear, clear, uh, distinction maybe that we made. We wanted everybody to go out, hunt your guts out, hunt your guts out on whatever deer tag you had. And if you didn't see what you wanted, just know in the back of your mind, if you don't need to shoot a deer, which, you know,

very few people have to have the meat off of a 85 pound yearling bug. Yeah. You know, and that's a, that's, that's not the usable meat. You're talking maybe 40 pounds of usable meat. Very few people with what you have to spend to get a tag, your gas, everything that goes into it. Yeah. You can, you can buy 40 pounds of hamburger. You know what I mean? So I'm just saying in reality, Oh, I need the meat. There's cow elk for that. There's a lot of things. So we were very clear, go hunt your guts out, go hunt your guts out, but there's an alternative. Just pulling a trigger. There's nothing, there's nothing that's labeled you as a failure. It's kind of like when you go fishing and you don't catch your limit. That's okay. That doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, some people have that thing. I didn't get my limit of ducks or my fish or, or I didn't kill a deer. Oh, it was.

But back in the day when our dads were young, it was like, did you get your deer? You know what I mean? And that was kind of the mark of, are you a real hunter? And we're just, my listen, my grandma Whitworth. Okay. I still remember when she made the comment, but way back when I was a little kid about how great of a hunter grandpa was, because he always came back with a deer, right? He always came back with a deer. And that was the mark of a good hunter back then. Right. And, and that, that, that isn't the mentality. The, I don't believe it is, but that was just like, I mean, grandpa Whitworth grew up hunting for literal meat. Well, and you probably were in the fifties through the seventies or whenever that was, when there were three times the deer we have. And a good age class. Yeah. And, and, and the age structure was awesome. Yeah. It had all ages, you know,

we're dealing with hunters being so good. It's not a matter of if grandpa's a good, good hunter, if Dustin's a good hunter. Or he's got optics and a gun that makes him. Even if you're not a good hunter, Dustin, you've got the equipment to make you successful. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And so we're just saying, Hey, you know, a little bit of self-control here. If you care that we're in a dire straits in some places, in some places. And so it's, it was born off of that coupled with a winter kill. And, and then game and fish is coming out. We have an 80% winter loss. Now we're, it's maybe even higher. We're seeing, but yet we don't have 80% tech cuts. And so we were like, why aren't you cutting tags? Okay. So obviously this is a balancing act with, you know, with budgets and whatever. Yeah. And so then we're just like, all right, we'll go ahead and issue the tags.

Maybe we get to choose as a hunting group, as an industry, what we do with those tags. It will find a kill. Hope everybody hunts and does the best they can, but maybe the last day you don't smash a fork. You just smash one. Yeah. Listen, I'm, I'm the, I'm the poster child Carter. Right. I, I had that to, to be in New Mexico and this has been, you know, eight or nine years or whatever. Back when I was, when I was the guy that you're targeting right now. Right. I went down there, you, you know, the old potential of that unit. Sure. And it's gone downhill. Right. And it was especially warm. We never got the winter. And so we didn't see a mature buck. Right. For hunted from daylight to, you know, daylight to dark, as hard as we knew how to hunt for the five days that they give you. And guess what I did on the four and a half days in, I couldn't take anymore. You smash. And I,

I dumped a two and a half year old four point with epic genetics. Like you admitted it. And I think even your buddies gave you a little grief over it. Like I listened to that podcast. Yeah. Listen, why, why do you think you've never seen a picture of that? I'm not proud of it. Right. And so that was about the turning point in my life. When I realized I came to the realization of what really matter is trying to, to, to show guys. Right. And that is like, I didn't feel good about that. I didn't need the meat. Uh, I was just doing it because I was a little insecure. Right. Like I was an insecure hunter that was like trick, man. Like I'm, there is something though. Everybody, everybody, everybody likes to harvest something. It is. There's something about you're going to the range. You're doing all that. You build the bullets. Maybe you're a reloader.

You're wanting to know how an acubon performs, you know, versus the normas that Josh is seeing it all to fruition. Having it. Yeah. Like finished, finished your whole purpose while you're out there. There, there's something to that. And, and, or maybe you have young, young kids with you or a new, newer hunter or whatever. Well, that makes sense. And all that goes into it. It all goes into it. But at the end of the day, if you don't just have to say, did you get your deer? You know, and that I had to get, I had, I went to Colorado. I spent this amount of money. I have to have hooves up in the back of my truck going home to Utah. Yeah. You know? And so then from there, then everybody's like, well, what about, you know, what about New Mexico? Or what about Nevada? Or what about Idaho? What about Colorado? Like, and so then it just kind of gained some momentum. Yeah. And we, you know,

we've done the best we can to try to keep maybe the intent of not diluting the prizes to the, you know, whatever, 25 states that have mules. I don't know, 20, whatever. Whatever it is. To, to kind of what we are intended to target our concerns were to begin with. And we've maybe even, you could say, broaden them beyond those states, but, but just try to keep the principle at is. And, you know, and honestly, as this has evolved, we'll probably keep doing it. but in, we all hope within five years, we've haven't had any more devastating winters. We've had more normal, when normal, uh, pre-sip years to where we've had consistent years of fawns. We know that this does not, this is not going to grow deer populations. It's not going to fix our whole deer problem. We know that. We're not, we're not, we're never purported to do that. Yeah. But, but while our buck numbers are low.

But it's what we can do. It's what our buck numbers are low, both because of populations being down and years, of low recruitment until maybe the last year or two, it will save some bucks now. And hopefully in five, six years, it's, and we did, and we did a bombs on moms so we can save some does. And the reason why it doesn't, again, this goes back to the DWR. We get, we have a few landowners here locally that'll complain when they have 10 deer, eating them out of house and home in the winter when they're not growing anything. And so then they feel a need to go out and smash those does. And, and so we've had this whole, and that really, we need a whole revamping of the landowner tag system to make it to where landowners want to see the deer on their property. And, and if it's transferable tags and they were, they had some value, it could possibly fix all that.

And there are some transferable tags, but not on the general. So we're just saying there was those kinds of things. We're like, okay, we'll go ahead and issue the doe tags, but maybe there'll be a few less does killed. If people know that they're going to be possibly rewarded with a prize, if they don't harvest one, because our populations are all time lows. It feels like, and pretty much everybody agrees with that. Why are we still issuing doe tags? On range land, especially in some of these places. And Bronson, you guys saw it. You guys witnessed it on Zion three weeks ago or whatever. Oh yeah. Landowners with a half a mile buffer off of their eight acre grass patch. Not even a bailing hay. And they're, they're out there smashing does the migrating deer on public land. Clear down in the bottom of Zion. So, so those are things where you're just like, really?

We're smashing does that migrate onto your thing in place in October. We all agree. The populations are problem. Then on top of that, we're talking about populations of bucks and a good age structure. So while Bronson's talking about the fact that these saving buck tags is not necessarily going to grow deer numbers. It does help with our overall age structure of bucks, which we feel like is abnormally low and, and bucks in general, especially because we're not sure how those bucks are being counted. Are we, what, what constitutes a buck right in a, in a formula. And so anyway, those kinds of things are, are what's concerning. And so we address that. We address the limited draw, the general and over the counter and the bombs on moms. There's three different bins. It's maybe going to, you know, be proportionate for the tags that are submitted or whatever.

Not going to have an equal number of tags in every bend because probably not going to be as many. But what the alarm, the, the biggest problem, one of the bigger problems we had, Bronson is watching everybody. This isn't just Adam and Jason's deal or Epic's deal. It's watching the entire general public down here, get up and voice their concern. And the rack went and voted against it. Yeah. They voted for the tag increase. They voted that. Yeah. The rack did. The public was 90 to 95%. Do not, do not increase our general season tags because you have one good farm crop going to be two points this year. That's literally what, that's literally what happened. And so then we're like, well, what can we do? Then you know what? This is the only thing we can do. We, we're don't, we're not the DWR. We're not the king of Utah. We're not on the rack. Yeah. We're not on the board. Well, and here's,

so here's, here's my question for you guys. Cause let's play this out one step further. Right. Cause I'm the, the DWR has got to be careful what, what they, you know, they, they, they, I'm not sure they completely understand how this can work. Right. So everybody, everybody looks at this on a one year basis and thinks, Oh, we're having a bad winter. Muley's matter is going to step in and help us here. But, but my question for you guys is at what point, if we don't have this mindset longterm, right? If we don't start putting more bucks and more mature bucks on the landscape, because the irony in the hunting world is that we're losing hunters, right? We're losing hunters. We're losing hunters. And so, you know, they may be think, well, if we issue more tags, maybe more people can be involved. This is, this is my same argument. This is, they don't have a good experience. Their,

their argument is if we keep cutting tags, we aren't going to be able to continually recruit young hunters. Right. And that initially sounds, Oh yeah, that makes sense. But I contend that, yeah, the experience that these 12 to 16 year old kids are 10 to 16, depending on the state. If you take them out there on a glorified drive in the mountains or a hiking trip, and they don't see anything. If you take them out there day after day, after day, and they don't see it, which is happening. That could be worse than if that kid never drew a tag and just had to wait a year. Because he's like, dad, I'm not going here for three years. We haven't seen a three point in three years. Yeah. And the youth do, and the youth do have a better chance to draw than we do. And we can also mentor our tags. So if, if a dad or mom or whoever really cares, the kids can wait a little bit, but they don't have to,

if they've got family involved, there's other, there's other mechanisms to get them. There's other options. And there's cow elk. And there's a lot of stuff for that. So I mean, my kids are out crushing the place. So my point is, is if the experience, and I'm not saying they have to kill a 25 inch four point when they're 12 or 14 to be hooked under. I'm not, I didn't do that. They need to see, they need to have some opportunities, interaction, you know, maybe close call, maybe miss some. I mean, we all know some of the challenges that, that face you taking 10 to 14 year old kids at times hunting. It's, it's real. But if it's just a repeated, wake you up at four 30 in the morning, we drive around, we hike around and, and never see any, there's no reward for them. And then you've got abnormal school load, school workload for homework at night,

trying to make up for the time when you went out in the hills and didn't see anything. And pretty soon they lose interest. And that's what, that's what our contention is. But when there isn't a carrot big enough out there, don't, doesn't matter. Just giving them a piece of paper to go out into the mountains. They can go into the mountains without that piece of paper. That's right. Yeah. So I see, I, I grew up in Nevada, right? And you guys remember, I mean, I had what I would consider the picture perfect youth experience, right? We, we grew up in, in the Nevada had a youth preference. You basically drew every year. And I was that kid. I was, I shot a young, it was all seasons. It was a three. Yeah. You can hunt all seasons. We, we only hunted the rifle, but like I shot, my first buck was a little three point. My next buck I wanted, I was ready to, even at that point, I'm like, okay,

I got to get something a little bigger. Right. So I shot a three by four the next year. And then the next year, you know, but in Nevada, you had that opportunity and that ability to see enough deer back then that you could pass. Right. Even with a 12, 13, 14 year old kid, we were passing deer up because, Oh, I already shot a three point last year. I'm going to get a one year older buck this year. Right. And, and I never killed anything at that age. I never killed anything over 170 inches or whatever, but, but the quality of the hunts allowed me to do that. Right. Yeah. But here, so here's, here's let, let me go one step further. Cause the youth is one thing. I'm curious at what point do you guys feel like the, the adult hunters are going to get, get sick and tired of this. Right. We, I, I understand that you and I, yeah. And not want to take their kids. If they lose interest in hunting,

they're not going to take their kids. They don't even want to take themselves. Right. Yeah. At what point does this get so below average that it's just like, I'm, if you know, I can't even go find 170 inch deer. I'll go to lake. And I've killed. I'll buy a, buy a boat and we'll go do, do like pal vacations. You have a, you have a boat. Well, I'm talking theory. Okay. I'm saying these people. I have one too. Go out with Travis. Hobbs and, and pull in Lakers, you know, or whatever. Go fishing or yeah, we're going to ride horses to get whatever, just a hobby, a family hobby versus hunting. If, if it's a, and yeah, we believe though, Adam and I believe that if there's a, if the resource can handle it tags for everyone, we're not trying to make a Henry's out of Pine Valley or Zion. That's a misconception. Yeah. The, the, the, the, the Robbie Denning podcast, right?

Where you guys kind of went back and forth and it was like, well, you know, Robbie's Robbie's a little, you know, he's, Hey, he's just like us. He's very opinionated in his own opinions. He, and he has some valid, he has some valid points. What he doesn't want to do is, and I, and I'm, and I guess I'll speak for him to a little bit, but he's very good at, at portraying his opinion and he's done it. And I have a lot of respect for him, but what he doesn't want to do is if you give up OTC, you give it up forever. They never go back to OTC. And so, and I, and I understand that. And he would, he would rather hunt OTC and, and hunt nice bucks or, but the potential for a nice buck, than not have any potential at all because he didn't get a tag. And so there's some validity to that. I see that. You see that you see the conundrum that we've created here, right?

Let's circle back on this whole thing because we've now created a conundrum where everybody gets a tag, right? And everyone wants a big, a decent deer. And then you've got all these companies, right? I won't name all of them, but you've got companies. And, and more importantly, nowadays, you've got the influencers and the social and the YouTubers and all the guys that are, you know, selling the apparel at Western Hunter, whatever. And their whole entire business model, like their whole entire premise of people buying their stuff is based on getting a tag and killing a deer with it every single year. Well, and they all have logos. They all have logos of big bucks. They're not putting two points on their hats. You know what I'm saying? And so everybody to, for people, and people are on social media to see the special stuff that gets taken. And so, you know, to,

for people to say that they don't care about trophies, just not the case. I think everybody being a man, you kind of are excited about the anomalies that get an older animal, bigger, mature, multiple eye guards. I mean, you want to feel like you see a few of those die and, and we're seeing less and less this year, Bronson. I mean, think about, we can't even think of a 210 inch or kill on the entire second season in the entire state of Colorado. We've heard of one. I mean, those are, that's a problem, you know? And so, and why is that? There's a whole nother podcast. That's, you know, rut dates, you know, too many tags and, and all of these things. And so, and too many tags based off of, you know, our current technologies and things. So these are lots and lots of issues. I think this, this thing, this Muley's Matter was just initiative to base it. Basically,

when we have no control over tag numbers, the public had no say. They proved that. Let's try to, and we did increase tags. Let's try to save some bucks while we're trying to, yes, grow them through, Mother Nature's the best grower. No question. Grow populations through Bombs on Moms. Grow populations of, of, from cutting the drought, not having a hard winter, a good solid age. Having Mother Nature kick in is going to, is going to grow populations. We know that. But in the interim, the live bucks or the live young bucks that were, about to become two points. Let's, let's try to save a few of those. Manage them properly. That's right. If otherwise, if we shouldn't, if we don't need to manage them, why do we have all these biologists and stuff? Let's just turn them all into game wardens. I don't know why it matters if we just going to give OTC always for the rest of our life. Why do we,

why do we need that? Why do we even need to radio color stuff? Why, why do we need any of that? If all you need is seven to eight bucks per hundred dose to breed them in November, December, December, just, just keep that up. If that's biologically what, what we keep hearing, that's all you need to have a quote, healthy or enough reproductive success in a population, then yeah, you don't. So now when we've got Bronson, this is interesting stuff and Whitmer, here we go. but now when you've got agencies and boards that don't listen to the public, then all of a sudden you have really interesting proposals coming out for Southern region. And you got, and now we've got, we're faced with some crazy stuff, shortened seasons, interesting weapon types, which are basically back. 30s and long bows. Open site 30s. Flirt locks. And this is actually out on the website. This is the RAC process.

There's a RAC meeting tonight. And these things are being proposed. Okay. Why? Because they wouldn't answer to the public's cry for. Something to fix our deer. Less, less tags for a minute until our deer come back. And, and we contend we're in this wet little, you know, span of time. It's awesome. We're actually going to grow some deer, Bronson. No matter what they do, no matter what people do, we're going to see an influx of deer, fawns, living, things like that. Because we've had a good 16 months, you know, or whatever. Yeah. Or two years. Hopefully that comes through this next, spring. But in the meantime, what can we do? This is all we can do. And, and this has nothing to do with. Epic's membership. This is, this is free to people, except for the stamp to get the tag here. You go on, on monster, or excuse me, monster muleys, but muleys, muleys matter website embedded in Epic outdoors.

Cause somebody has got to do it. And so you do it. It's costing us money. If you want to just, I mean, Logan does a big part of his job. Half his hours. We're doing all this. We're doing the facilitating. How many hours you spend on this? Most of them, probably. 30 hours a week. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's open, you know, Jason and I open the mail, but a lot of times we hand it to him and it's when we're, got it up to here. He's making sure they registered properly. And they got them entered and getting them, you know, make sure they meet the criteria and we're, we're getting in donations still weekly. And so, yeah, it's, we're not making a thing from this. Some people, well, you're just using this to promote yourselves. Epic outdoors is name, not in, isn't in muleys matter. And I know we're tied together. We hired Logan to not do this. I know that. We happen to do a lot of other stuff.

So, well, listen, it's, it's, it's no, it's, it's no better. It's no better than all the other companies. Most of which I was referring to are the problem, uh, hashtagging conservation that they give 2% for conservation, right? And they're using that. Okay. Their business. And I'm not going to, I can't dive into that as much. Cause I do. I, I personally feel like at least they're doing something, Dustin. Like I get it. I know. That's what I'm saying though. Like, but if a business, let's even just call out Cabela's or somebody it's so big. We don't, we can't hurt anybody's feelings. If they say a certain amount goes back to conversation, conservation. Oh, that's, I think that's great. I think they should get some kudos for that. They should get some kudos. Epic outdoors, get some kudos. Is it going to amount to any real dollar figure? Oh, maybe it would be a grand of, of, you know,

a few memberships. I don't know, Dustin. It's not, it's negligible. We don't even think about that. That's not even negligible. It's not even a way, a way out. If it, if this cost us some members because we were passionate about it, we'd probably still. I have it. I contend we've cost ourselves some members because there's a lot of people that want OTC tags. We have. And so, but we're passionate about our opinion. And I guess in this world and in this free enterprise system, our business, our idea, we're, we're hatching this. And we have the right to every year as we see winter's crush, drought come, whatever, evolve this a little bit different every year. Doesn't have to have the exact same rules for every year. We answer emails daily. Yeah. Bronson answered an email today on Montana. Guy, guy says, Montana's dealt with droughts and winter loss.

And of course our game agencies are issuing over the counter resident tags with rifle, rut, rifle in the rut on mule deer. Like, please help us. He, he slightly critical. Y'all didn't include Montana, but, but in reality, he's just saying, keep, keep us in mind in the future. We're, we're up here fighting an uphill battle against our division. And we have it. And we made some, had to make some lines in the sand somewhere. And that was part of the reason when you have a state that allows you to hunt five weeks in the rut or four weeks, whatever with a rifle, not shooting a deer is not going to do anything. It's not. So we just decided we're not going to include that, the general tags up there. We actually, Dustin, we actually feel like we get along. You can call people, our competitors and things like that. We actually feel like we get along with them.

You realize like some of these businesses you would call our competitors. There's our submitting tags to me, at least matter. Like we have the division wildlife employees submitting tags. Okay. So we do, we've, we've got them in there. We have, and so, and we, we want them. Okay. And, and actually through the grapevine, I've heard they're pretty, pretty optimistic about the program. Like we issued the tags. Y'all get to choose how to, you know, what to do with them and kind of an ideal world. Really? That's, they don't want to tell people they have to shoot a four point. They don't want to tell people what they, have to use as a weapon. You know, maybe a single strand bow or, or a number 11 percussion cap or something. And so, and so anyway, we appreciate that. We actually, we actually value our relationship. We're a little critical because there are things, Bronson,

there are irreconcilable differences when it comes to tag quotas, even within their own formulas. That's the only thing. And I think, and Bronson was very vocal and went through all the formulas and, and, and kind of use their own data and challenged some of their tag quotas. And so that kind of frustrated some relationships and, and strained some relationships, but we don't want that. We just want, we just wanted to be heard and felt like that the public that stood is, is heard. And their point is, is there's a lot of people that don't come to these meetings that aren't being represented. And, and our point is if they're not coming to the meetings, they don't deserve to be represented. They need to write in. They need to, they need to write with their opinion. Otherwise, how do you know what the, what the, what the silent public wants? 90% of the written and the oral comments,

and you don't have to go to, you can write them in, are all in favor of not increasing the permits. That's pretty straightforward. You're, you're, you're not an elected official, but in some case, in a way you kind of are, you're there to represent. Yeah. You're there to represent. You don't take all the extremes and do the extremes all the time. And we know that has been done. But in this case, you could argue that the extreme side of things, the, Oh yeah, we're going to increase the tags. That was the extreme side. That was a five to 10% of the people that wanted that. We have people, Bronson and I both have people in our own neighborhoods. Let's call them neighborhoods, live within 10 miles of us that have told me, this is this last week, multiples. It's just interesting. Cause a lot of the hunts are coming to, you know, coming to an end. And so they said, I was so proud of my son.

We went out and I'm like, there's a two by three, you know, let's, let's harvest that deer. You know, dad, I really think I want to put my tag in the Muley's matter. That deer is going to be bigger next year. And I'm just like, wow. It's a whole mindset. It takes years to create that mindset. And, and you're already seeing a little bit of result of people thinking twice, even kids. How about that? How cool is that? That's really cool. You know, not that, not that, Hey, son or daughter, you, we never want you to harvest. You got to harvest, right? Like it's, it's healthy for these kids to harvest stuff. It's all the whole experience is healthy, but it's also healthy to have to show a little restraint when you feel like they need it. And, and when, when we have numbers off the charts, we're cool. No problem. You know what I mean? So that's, and that's exactly why though,

I'm going to have my, my apparel out soon. Uh, save a deer, shoot a cow elk, right? Send it like absolutely. They can't kill enough elk in Wyoming or almost any black in the sky with your arrows and your bullets. Like you cannot kill enough elk in Wyoming. Wyoming. Yeah. Wyoming, you guys are overpopulated generals OTC for you. So what do they do? Force you to go kill more? Like, what are they going to do about it? But then yet they're limiting non-residents. So it's just, it's a little interesting how they're, they're teaming at the seams, but they can't figure out the non-resident elk. They just have a problem with us up there. Yeah. You know? So, but there's another thought. I'm just, I'm digressing, but what about here's something my brain's turning. These are always dangerous moments. They are, but next year, let's just say next year, if we have a similar type program,

if you send in a unpunched deer tag and a picture of a punched cow elk tag, you're, you get points squared in that or something like that. Yeah. Square, square your points. Maybe the biggest prize goes to you killed an elk and you saved a deer. Kill the cow elk and saved a deer. It could be. I'm serious. That's what I'm saying. We could throw a four-wheeler at that or something. I mean, geez. Yeah. Hey, you're going to have a lot. Carter, you might have to shoot your first cow elk. No. I want, I can't kill a mom. So I went out to Iowa. I want a little corner in your booth to sell my t-shirt. They're so good. We're taking your idea. They're so good. I went out to, I went out to Iowa. And so they give you a doe tag and a buck tag. They want you to kill a doe. Like they're disappointed when you don't kill a doe because they're trying to, they're trying to grow crops to live. Right.

Like it's not, this is no joke. It's not like. They're prolific breeders too. Oh. They're, I mean, they can get out of control. They're grateful for CWD and blue tongue, whatever else. They're not really. They're not really, but they are prolific. And so anyway, I teased Carter. I shot a buck. Yeah. I teased him. I said, Carter, well, your doe tags at the bottom. Didn't you know you have to kill your doe before you're fucking? He looked at me like, no. For 0.2 seconds. You'd looked at me. I'm not going to admit it, but it did cross my mind. I'm like, you're what? And then you're like, dude. And I'm like, so anyway, I shot a buck and that story will come out later. It's awesome. World-class experience, world-class buck. And they're like, okay, it's time to shoot a doe. Okay. I have never killed a doe. So bad. You'd look at the udder and be like, how do I gut this thing? Like, I don't know.

You know, the gutless method works on a doe as it does. Yeah, it does. But back there, they want you to gut it and then they're going to hang it. And it's going to be, it is. They don't want you to put the guts in the field. They want you to drag it whole to your truck and then get it back at the barn. Get the side by side. Yeah. Anyway, I'm just like, I sat there in the trees. I'm like, you guys should have gone back in. Oh, I did. For a doe? No, for a coyote.

I couldn't do it. A day and a half and I'm on the road. I couldn't do it. I can't do it. Like, I don't, I can't do it. And it's not that, um, I'm, I'm looking down on people that do like, you want a doe, shoot a doe. They're issuing tags. Put me in your freezer. That's fine. It's just, when I was raised, you, you cherish the does. And it was probably my debt, my dad instilling it in me because he's always fighting for better populations. He worked for the division of wildlife and felt like he was fighting the establishment. You know what I mean? He was always against the grain. And, uh, and so then I was raised with that and you just cherished your does. They, they built your bucks, you know? And so anyway, speaking of bucks, I think everybody's dying to know what mule deer have you killed this year? Yeah. No, I haven't killed big old deer. Nothing. Now what I've,

what I've chased is another story and that's not coming out on a podcast.

It's which state at least. No, no. How much time he got. Bronson. I've spent some time. I just, I, I heard Bronson finally milked it out of you that you had like seven or eight mule deer tags. I did. No, it's not, I got more maybe. How many, let's just, how many of them are over with? I'm, I'm, I'm counting myself. I'm going to count.

Well, you guys are counting that up. I'll tell you how many. At least four are done with. I'm grateful. When they come to an end, you can quit putting gas in your truck. But until then you're trying to make good on something. That's just not going to happen. I'm just, I'm so picky. Um, what we're, it just is what it is. And, uh, I enjoy being out there and I want to, I want to just be, you just be shock and awe. When you walk up to one, you just shock and awe, you know? And so for the rest of my life, I'll be putting lots of unpunched tags in file folders. And that's what I do. I'm really good at that. Really good at that.

Bronson killed a great buck. Smashed one right off the bat. Opening day. Feels like two years ago now. I mean, it's been three months. Well, it's been three months. And I almost can't remember. No, it's Nevada actually. But, but I mean, I've had some grinders. It's after that, I've had a couple like Jason. So, and I've got a couple to go, which hopefully end great. But, but yeah, I mean, my average, my average for the year. Yeah. I hunted one day on one, but my average is still a week. Yeah. A week plus on my bucks. The bucks are still alive. So I'm going to become a professional shed hunter. I'm going to get with Ben and try to figure out what kind of gear I need. Probably includes little Debbie's that are on your website. Listen, I, I thought this year, just like every other year for the last three years or whatever,

that I'd be able to pick up and snake a first come first serve in Nevada. Didn't even get, didn't even get one today. Did you listen? I saw, I've seen two permits. Yeah. In the three or four months or whatever it's been. And I have a job where I sit at the computer when I'm working, like when I'm in, when I'm in the office, I'm in a computer. So I have a runner. Do you clock out when you get on this? No. First serve website. No, it's running right now. It's been running this whole time. So you're doing the Nevada. You're doing the, you're working on Nevada right now. Oh, all the time. Well, the quota, the quota change in Nevada where a non-resident tag has to go to a non-resident. We have to go. It's like, yeah, I think I want, I've watched it for a total of like an hour all year. Cause I just knew. Well, it's a waste. It's a waste. Yeah. It's a waste of time. I saw two,

I've seen two permits in, I'll bet you, I don't even know a hundred hours of sitting here watching it right. While I'm working on the side. But when you have two or three screens, you've just got one screen kind of churning in the background while you're doing orders and whatever. Yep. Yep. Colorado, Colorado leftovers has been impossible. It's been tough too. It's tough. The announced sell time has kind of made that really tough. It just happened. We know guys that have done it. Some of the guys in the office, but getting tags is tougher and tougher. And we sympathize with that. And I think that's another reason there might be even, even, you know, Robbie, you brought, brought up Robbie, you know, Robbie, Robbie represents a good segment of the population out there. And so we, I value his opinions and whatnot. And he, they, their company has donated to, to Muley's matter.

So similar to you, similar to Travis Hobbs himself, not a company himself donated $500 cash. Like, and so it's, it's awesome. And these guys, it's hard for them to see change just like it is for us. We've seen a quality change and, you know, as well as getting tougher and tougher to draw tags, just like they are. And, you know, of course up there where they live, they have a whole different set of circumstances they're dealing with. We see it from our perspective. We're, we're fighting our battles down here. They're fighting their battles up there. And so for, you know, uh, what they're saying and what their opinions are, are, are, are, are valued. And maybe even, um, you know, we agree with some of that stuff. It's just, sometimes it's hard for us to say, you know, we've had so much change since 21st century. Here we are. We, do we really think that OTC still makes sense?

We went through it in our state, you know, you know, we did, we went to regions, five regions. Then we had to cut hunts down to five days long, you know, 20 years ago. We saw a blurb in quality. We did. And then when we finally went to unit by unit, it was, it was tough. It was because we'd never done that before. It was tough. I can't have everybody that has a general tag hunt in Pine Valley. So they had to break it up. No, that's right. So, but, but I understand the two states really that remain, you know, the Wyoming and Idaho and, and, and at least Wyoming has been a fairly lower population base. Idaho hasn't, they're fighting bolstering populations of people. Yeah. And, and res, people are moving in more residents. And so they're combating that. I don't know how much that's going on in Wyoming to the extent, it is in Utah and Idaho, but, but, you know, that's a reality.

You can't just have everybody get a tag that wants one at some point. I don't think that's going to work. And when is that, what's going to be the tipping point? And you guys, and you live in Wyoming now, Dustin, you know, you got Wyoming residents. They do not want to give up their deer tag. And so you see this huge winter kill bigger than, bigger than anybody can quantifiable, quantifiably bigger than anything they've ever seen. Okay. In, in record keeping times. And yet they have no way to combat that per se, other than, you know, just an awareness of, of people saying, Hey, don't, don't just shoot the only buck you see. Cause it might be our breeder buck. You know what I mean? Yeah. Right. And so, and so it's causing game and fish agencies to look at their system, to be able to combat that in the event of emergency. And so anyway, whatever, I understand it. I understand all of that,

all of those issues. Yeah, it's hard. I'm not even saying they should change. No, I'm not even saying Idaho should change any of that necessarily. Mealies matter is one of those things that we can all agree upon. No matter what you think about management, no matter where you live, is don't, if you don't have to have it, maybe value the resource enough to let it live. That's all. Well, it's, yeah. And it's, it's the only, it's the only way that, that it all, it's all suffice, right? The state still gets their money, right? Because they get to sell the permits. Everybody gets to go out in the mountains and have their family deer hunt. Every, you know, it's the only way is if that, you know, and maybe it's 5% of us and maybe it's 50%. Who cares? Yeah. Right. But it's, it's the only way to move the needle besides the common sense things, right?

More habitat and better fencing and the highways and all the stuff, predator management and, you know, the obvious stuff we haven't really talked about, but it's, it's really the best idea that I've heard that we, you know, grassroots movement that can change something right now, this year, without anybody's vote or anybody's, you know, is just each individual choosing or not choosing to maybe make a change with their own tag. So that's why I got behind it. I loved it. Well, and it, and it, and it, and it makes sense for all of us. It's not, we're trying not to be fractured as a hunting industry. There's so many opinions on game management. We, we saw what we saw in our little Southern region. And, and then we, of course, we hear the cries of everybody up North and, and sympathize with it. And at times, hunt Wyoming, at times, hunt Northern Utah or whatever.

And so it was something we could, everybody can get, get behind and it has nothing to do. Let's just go over a couple of things. You don't have to be a member of Epic Outdoors. You don't have to be a member. You would get on, um, Muley's Matter on the Muley's Matter website. You go to epicoutdoors.com. It's the first thing you see, click on it and then go, uh, submit. You can go to your, how to enter, click on that, go choose your prizes. You got to send your tag to us and then you're going to be in the draw. Okay. And there, and with that is some contact information so we can call you. Some, some tags don't have phone numbers on them. We need to be able to contact you and then select your prizes. The prizes, we're going to divvy up based on percent of people that submit. So if there's five doe tags, you can't give 10 prizes in the doe, in the bombs on mom's draw. Okay.

So we're going to do it based off a percentage. So it's evenly fair. And that's just across all, all the states that are being considered. And the states are listed. They're listed on there. So you got limited draw tags. You got general or over the counter tags and you got bombs on mom's tags and the states. But if I'm like, if I'm a Wyoming, if I'm a Wyoming general tag, am I competing with only Wyoming general? You're competing against Arizona, Idaho, and Wyoming. All the general tags. Not, not non-resident Wyoming. Cause we're on a draw. You're Wyoming residents. Right, right, right. Non-resident Wyoming will be in the limited entry pile, which is probably going to be, I don't know. I don't know yet. I don't know if that's bigger than the general or not, to be honest. I was no idea, but because of the Utah general being limited entry, it,

that probably skews it more because we're based in Utah, but I'm just guessing. We're just going to try to proportionate, make the prizes, proportionate somewhat to the tags submitted. This will, to some extent. So percentage wise, this will be evenly fair, not just targeting trophy hunters, limited draw hunters. We're not just targeting general OTC buck tags, and we're not just targeting antlerless hunters. It's even three, but three bins that are even percentage wise. So that's how, we don't know how else to do it. We can adjust it for next year. That's what we're doing. And we've, we want to say thanks to everybody that's participated. If there's no participation, you feel like you're the only one that feels this way. You know what I'm saying? But, but it's been overwhelmingly not the case. We're knocking on the door of a thousand entries. You know,

and of course this is when all of the, this is when all of the hunts are just in people this month. We've got a lot of texts. I still got to send, I still got to send mine in. Yeah. The deadline's December 1st. If we didn't mention that by 5 PM, December one, we have to have it in our office. Well, yes. The tag, unused tag. Yes. And that's to promise that you will get in. And then what we've decided is it may take us five to six days to sort it all out. If we get, if we get tags within that timeframe, when we can get you in the draw, we're going to get you in the draw. There's a few hunts that end. We've got to draw the line somewhere. Right. At the end of November. Yeah, there are. But to make sure you're in, get it in by then. But if they come in December 2nd, we haven't run the draw. You're still going to get in. It's just. We had to put a date on there. We have to put a date on point.

Okay. So, so there's been a lot of questions like, well, my hunt ends right at the end and I do it. If I first air it, will it get in? Yeah, it's going to get in. It's going to take us five, six, six days to, to, to get it ready to, to run the draw. I don't even know what day December 1st is. So it might be a Sunday. It's a Friday. It's a Friday. So. All right. So anyway, and then, uh, there's some rules on there. Um, in, uh, you know, entry forms, it has to be a physical tag. How do you do a, how do you put an E tag in the draw? You're going to put a photocopy in there. I mean, so these are. We just had to make our own rules and please understand that. Yeah. Basically. We're not trying to be not fair. Dedicate a hundred tags in Utah that you have to submit to the state to prove you didn't harvest. They're not counted.

We excluded those because you also are incentivized not to shoot a deer or you can't shoot one of them. You can't shoot three. One has to be unpunched. So we don't want to police that. We just decided that was a little muddy. So, and I realized that, but listen, if anyone, if anyone's having the urge to complain, like these are the same people that complain about the free algorithm on the free platform or the free social media platform that, you know, doesn't get them as many likes as they used to get on the free platform that gives them free, you know, free eyeballs. So this is all just for a good cause. That's all it is. We're not trying to be unfair and, and, and, and we can revamp this in the future. There may be other states that elevate higher in our minds in two years than others that are cranking out deer like crazy. And we may drop a couple of states.

I hope we can drop a couple of states that start cranking stuff, but there, there, and the critic, the critic that you're talking about there, Dustin, I mean, okay, you're going to have a little bit of that. You got to expect it, I guess, but it did, it does frustrate a guy. I think based off, it was just based off inaccuracies, you know, assuming there wasn't a bombs on mom's band, assuming it was just targeted to trophy hunting, you know, assuming that you had to be a member of Epic. I mean, there was several assumptions and after three or four posts of that, at some point, you got to speak up and just say, it's not, it's not necessarily the case. And, you know, but, but, but no problem. I mean, we're fine. It's not a big deal. We actually get along with everybody in the industry and, and are good with it and have other businesses submitting tags. And it's good. It's fun. It's all good.

They're not, not supporting our bottom line. That's for sure. So, yeah. Well, I appreciate it, man. I think you guys have started the huge, you know, whatever you want to call it, a movement or a grassroots movement or a, almost a lifestyle idea. Right. I'm going to build, listen, I'm, I'm going to build a brand on this, right? Like I'm, I'll be the title sponsor next year. And it'll be on the premise of this whole, this whole feeling. You're going to build a for-profit enterprise off of Muley's matter. That's nonprofit. Yes. You're that guy. I'm that guy. What was the slogan? I mean, you've already trademarked it. I'm sure. So it doesn't matter. Was it? Yeah. I've already got it. Save a deer, kill a cow out. Is that what it was? Yeah. Save a deer, kill a cow. Okay. Kill it out. Or doesn't even need to put out. Cow would work. Beef. Beef. Cow out. Yeah. Beef. Whatever. Cow moose. Mutton.

Yeah. Hey, my other one, my other, my other one that I'm working on that I'm going to, that I've already trademarked is, you know, you see the, you haven't trademarked it. You're just doing, you're just posturing. You're just posturing. You can't, you can't eat the horns. Right. Is what everybody says. Mine is you can't mount the meat. Right. Okay. Well, that, I don't know.

It's going to take off like wildfire. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Next year or two, I've got. We should run all your ideas by us so we can help you filter the good and the bad.

Here's an idea. We'll do it for free. We'll do a lot of long, cold nights on the prairie of Wyoming. Let's left unto yourself. So we want you to succeed. Run them by us first, boss. Before you dump major amounts of money into some of this garbage. Here's an idea. Next year, I've got a, we've got a three legged mama that got hurt in an accident. We're going to make money off that. Is this a joke? Is this a joke? Hey, there was a three legged llama once that. Anyway, continue the story. Well, that, that's the story. We're going to throw him in the muley's matter donation next year. Some lucky, some lucky guy is going to pass on a doe and be rewarded with a three legged llama.

Whatever. Does it come with tack? They'll keep the tack and sell the wallet. Tax extra. Oh, well, we appreciate your support and, uh, yeah, and your donation and everybody else's donation. I hope they're, I hope their companies are wildly successful for supporting, uh, muley's matter. It's probably, yeah, it's probably the last one, last made dedicated podcast we're going to have before the end of December, mainly because we're all going other places for the next two weeks. We've got Thanksgiving thrown in there as well. So, um, yep. As, as mentioned, check out the website, epic outdoors.com, um, real these matters.com. And, uh, you know, enter your tag, pick your prizes, send your tag in. When that comes in, Logan marries your entry that you did online with your tag and it's been received. You know, what's funny, Brunson, we've had elk tags submitted, unpunched elk tags. And I want,

that should go against him because we want those punched. Yeah, that's a minus. Yeah. If you send it an elk tag, you're invalid for the next five years for Muley's magic. You're banned for life.

It was, it's just, people are just assuming, you know, obviously it's just jump to some, Hey, I think that, yeah, who knows, they could have just had some, Hey, send those guys in. If you don't punch a tag, they draw prizes for it. And that could have been how it was conveyed. Maybe their wife threw in the elk tag instead of the deer tag. I don't know, but we have had elk tags. It was pretty, pretty funny. No desert sheep tags.

Well, good times. Hey, I appreciate you initiating this podcast. Of course, you know, there was a little banter on Instagram that, you know, somewhat initiated a conversation about it, but we've been on podcasts with you before and, and appreciate your support and it's all good. So. Yeah. Uh, what are you drinking? What are you drinking? Come on. That's a rhetorical question. Dude, he did a double gulp. It's not white. What do you know? It's water or punch. Is this one of the, is this one of the, is this one of the 226 that you're still taste testing of all energy? Is this a new one? Listen, I had one, I had one, one, some, some, I have people bring them and send them to me. That's how ridiculous this gets to review. And it was called like rooster booster or something like it was complete, like from overseas. He's non FDA approved. Yeah. Oh, not even close. Straight from Indonesia. Oh,

sorry. Yep. Not even close. It's got ground up antler. The pro tip, as you guys know, the pro tip with energy drinks, the reason I can go so hard for so long on them is you have to supplement with water. You know, it's the guys who just pound them all day with no water. That'll get you. Yeah. They are. They're, you know, like too much caffeine. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta hydrate. You gotta drink, drink them and then drink something that really hydrates you afterwards. Yeah. Drink something that works. Well, all right. Yeah. Hey, thanks for spending time with me. You bet. Send us in your tag. Yeah. It's, it's coming. And luckily it's just a general tax. You don't know where I'm hunting. You don't have a clue. Well, it says G E N on it. Yeah. You can hunt. We don't care where you hunt Dustin. Yeah. And, and everyone who sends in their limited entry tags,

they can be assured that you guys aren't going to like post them or you're not going to look at them. Come on. I mean, we won't. I mean, a lot of the limited entries are, are hard to get tags. So to be whatever, you know, there's like, they're like legitimately tough. We had some Arizona type app tags just sent in. Yeah. Like that's all. All private. Like that's all private. So it's not going to just post everybody's, you know, house location. We've run plenty of raffles and, and had to be discreet with, you know, contact information. We make a living. Not going to show a picture of the tag. Applying people. And are careful with their personal information. Yeah. This is all about just making sure they're in the right bins. And then when they get drawn, it's a valid tag, a valid entry. It was in your name. Somebody that saved a deer. It was in your name. Yeah. And it wasn't a photocop.

We've asked people if they can do photocopies. No, no. Cause you could have copied that tag and then punch the tag on. I mean, there's just, no, you can't, it doesn't work. There's certain things that just don't work. And it's, it's just in the name of, of an, of keeping the integrity of a, a free draw. I will say. Over $50,000. Yeah. If somebody did try to fraud the system, we would probably make them famous. Oh, we'd, what do they call it? Lamb based on the podcast. If something does happen, there's ways to cheat, right? Every system. Trust me, if that happens, it's not going to be pretty. Yeah. So it's all good. It's all good boss. Hey, well, appreciate you guys. Go jump on the, uh, jump on the muleys matter. If you've got a tag or even if you're still hunting one, you know, the last week or two of the month here, think about, think about, uh, you know, just, just not for once,

just not. Then send your, send your tag. Make it matter to you. Basically. All right, guy, go, go have a glass of water. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. See ya. Bye. Bye. All right, everybody. That was an awesome podcast. We appreciate Dustin and his support. Dustin Whitmer. Like we said, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of different management techniques and styles. Uh, everybody's got an opinion. This is one we can all agree on. And, uh, anyway, muleys matter. If you're, if you have an unpunched deer tag, uh, and it fits the criteria that's on the website, limited draw tags, say in Arizona, Colorado, west of I-25, uh, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, or you have a general over the counter tag in Arizona, Idaho, or Wyoming residents, or a bombs on moms, any antlerless tag in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, or Wyoming that are mule deer tags.

Consider sending them in. It's free of charge. You're going to be in for some awesome prizes. And we appreciate you and your support of the muleys matter movement. Um, just a little something we can do. We, of course we can voice our opinions, go to all the meetings in the different States, things like that. This is just a little something extra. And it's kind of a fun way to give away some prizes. We've, we sure appreciate the donors and whatnot, uh, out there. Also appreciate the participants. We've gotten a lot of entries and we're going to get a lot more and it's awesome. It just shows that we have, there's plenty of people that feel the same way. It's, it's okay to have unpunched deer tags. It doesn't mean you're a bad hunter. So anyway, actually a good conservationist and a good sportsman. Uh, appreciate you. Good luck in the hunts.

There's a few hunts coming down the pipe that are going to be ending here shortly. We're right here in the middle of November. The best time to hunt mule deer is in the rut. Uh, good luck to everybody that's going, that's in the field or going to be in the field. We, we hope you kill a great buck, but if you don't go to mealy's matter.com. All right. We'd like to thank all of our sponsors here at Epic outdoors for top of the line, hunting, clothing, and apparel in every environment. Visit underarmor.com. We'd like to thank under armor for being our title sponsor and making this podcast happen. Visit our website, epic outdoors.com for discount codes to under armor, hunting apparel, handcrafted quality precision rifles from start to finish. Red rock precision is one of our sponsors and many of our staff uses red rock rifles. Visit red rock, precision.com to find out more.

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