EP 32: Developing a Personal License Application Strategy with Jason Carter and Adam Bronson

The first thing you've got to do is develop a personal hunting strategy. It's very complicated and every state's different, but that's what we love about it. Some are strictly or random. Even if they give points, it's just another name in the hat. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter here, Adam Bronson, John Peterson, all part of the Epic Outdoors crew. Of course, we work with Chris Peterson as well, John's brother. He's awesome. He's filming all this and he's responsible for all the digital portion of all this. And of course, Jeff, John. A lot of you guys have dealt with Jeff, John over the last year or so. Finding hunts. Jeff deals with our outfitters and manages openings and helps guys find hunts. So anyway, super appreciative of him as well. As we get started here, we just kind of wanted to introduce ourselves, tell you a little bit about what we do as far as the license application portion of our business. So here at Epic Outdoors, we do a lot of different things. We do a magazine, covers all the states, breaks them down in relation to Western big game hunts.

As well as we have hunts for sale with guaranteed tags, whether it be landowner tags or other private land avenues to be able to obtain tags and hunt on properties. And we work with a lot of outfitters on the draws as well. So if you draw tags, we work with outfitters and, of course, want to help you obtain some of the best hunts with some of the best outfitters in the West, Canada, Alaska, Mexico. So anyway, but today we want to visit about our license application business portion of Epic Outdoors and kind of go over some different things and kind of tell you about us and how we do it. Yeah, I think we also want to talk about just drawing tags in general. So, you know, it's a lot different in the West than it is in the East. A lot of times it's easier to get tags in the East. Here out West, you've got to have a strategy.

You've got to look at multiple states in order to go on good hunts every year. Yeah, you know, you can hunt general deer, general elk, you know, maybe a few antelope here and there on an over-the-counter or general season tag you can get every year. But for the most part, if you want a trophy type hunt, you know, for deer and elk and antelope, you've got to pay some dues. You can get lucky. Every state draw system is different. That's our job to break that down. You know, how their state system works, if they give a percentage to bonus points, applicants versus random, all those types of things. But you do have to develop a strategy. And some of those are short-term, mid-term, and long-term plans. If you want to hunt sheep someday, you better not get in a hurry. That's a long-term strategy. In fact, some guys might even argue it's a 40-year strategy.

Adam and I like to think it's more like a 20-year strategy. Give us some hope. Yeah. And, of course, we've been the benefactor and have been able to draw some tags that were surprises, such as Oregon. We both drew Oregon. I don't remember what your drawing odds were. One in 215 or something like that. Mine were like one in 409. So, anyway, beat the odds. Of course, Oregon, for sheep, doesn't have a point system. And so it was just luck of the draw. Not, you know, didn't have the, you know, ability to gain points and have a better drawing odds as the years went along. It was just a straight one in 409, one in 200 and something. So, anyway, we beat the odds on that and just proven to ourselves as well as others that people do draw tags. This year, like every other year, our license application guys drew a lot of awesome tags. It was amazing. Yeah, it's fun.

When you get to apply some of those guys and they draw, it's as if you drew a little bit. You know, you get to celebrate. You can't beat Adam to the phone. Adam can't wait. It's a little like Santa Claus. You're telling guys what they got. And it's one of those things where, you know, we feel like we drew it ourselves because we're going through the motion for these guys that are busy in their everyday schedule. And we actually choose most people's units and analyze the odds and look at their hunting schedules and try to apply them for hunts that they can go on. And so then when the draw results come out, it's awesome to us, too. Like, it's one of those things that, you know, it's kind of a little perk on our side to be able to, you know, help guys draw tags and feel like we were an integral part of that process.

Well, and the reason I think why we can do that is we do it ourselves and have for decades. And so when we do have some of those experiences happen like that, you've been dealing with some of these guys for years. And whether they're 75 and they finally draw their desert sheep tag and they're going to finish their Grand Slam or they finally draw a long way to mule deer hunt that they think they can finally hunt a 200-inch deer, it's all part of their personal strategy that we've been able to help them accomplish. And, you know, they've entrusted us with, you know, our level of expertise to help it make it happen. It's our job to understand their needs and wants and match that with available units in different states they should be doing. A lot of these guys, maybe they've accumulated points prior to having us do their applications.

So they're trusting us with a lot of portfolio, with what they've accumulated. These points are like gold. They're like money. They really are. They cost a lot of money to get to 10 points in some of these states. We're talking, you know, when it came to a mule deer, $10,000 to $20,000 tags or $30,000. Henry Mountain's $80,000 or $100,000 tags. If you can buy your way in some of these, you can't buy your way in. That's right. So in sheep tags, you know, you're talking in some of these states, you're equivalent $75,000 to $150,000 if you were to go buy that same tag at a, you know, Wild Sheep Foundation auction or something like that. And 20 plus years of trying to draw that tag leading up to that. That's right. So it's something we take very seriously here, both for ourselves and also the clients that entrust us to use their applications.

But like we said, the first thing you've got to do is develop a personal hunting strategy. You have to have something in mind of what you want. A lot of people, if they don't live out west, they have a dream of wanting to come out here. They want to hunt elk. They want to hunt archery elk. So whatever you do, we start off with, you know, trying to offer them, break down what's important to you right now. Maybe nothing is. Sometimes it's, hey, just build me points for now. Realizing that no state makes your points species or unit specific or weapon specific. You just accumulate points. But for the other, you know, the majority of our guys, they're trying to draw tags every year. You know, they're not just, hey, build me points. And so we have an interview with them at least once a year, but as many times a year as we need to, to go over their schedule.

Their plans, what they have booked already, what windows of time they need to block off for, you know, weddings or family trips or whatever. Just like we do in our own lives. Because when we get to January or the first of the year, we all evaluate our own points and things where we're sitting. We kind of pencil off a couple of units, you know. Jason, I mean, you've drawn desert sheep in Utah. You pretty much knew when you're about to draw, like me and my elk, you and your Arizona deer. There are certain states with the way their draw system works that you can start your annual plan on those. That's right. Yeah. Just like Adam's saying, you know, it's quite a process to get it all figured out and to figure out what to do. And we all want to hunt this year and we all want to hunt next year. And then we want to hunt, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road.

And so how are we going to get to that point? And so like Adam's talking about, there are general season tags you can hunt every year over the counter. And a lot of you guys out there may be from the East Coast and have started hunting the West by going to Colorado over the counter for elk. And there's a lot of guys that do that and they enjoy that every year. While they're doing that, that's a hunt. Great. Got that one checked off. I always go October 21st to the 29th on the 2nd or whatever season you choose. Get that over the counter. So block that out. Let us know and then I can go every other month other than this time frame. Or you might have your whitetail hunts that you like to do in the rut with over the counter tags back east. Great. We block out November. I can't draw November. No problem.

As we go through your portfolio and go through all the different applications that we apply you for, we do not apply you for November. And some guys know they get landowner tags. They might come on a CWMU here in Utah with an outfitter that we recommended or whatnot. And so we know you're busy in September. And so we tailor your applications to you and your hunting schedule every single year. Adam and I especially, we have John and Chris and other guys that visit with some clients as well. But Adam and I usually deal with 95% of all the applications and all the hunt strategies for all the different clients of ours. And we take pride in that. That is something that we feel like we're good at. We've been doing it for 20 plus years for ourselves as well as other clients. And so we're well versed in how each state's system works. And we work on the drawing odds.

Of course, we write it for the Epic Magazine. So it's one of those things like we're doing it no matter what. If we didn't have a licensed app service, we're still crunching all the data. And so we feel like it's something we basically, for the first six months of the year, maybe even one month, December of the prior year, work on. And our crunching data for a living, sometimes 16 hours a day, each of us, and crushing it for our magazine. And so we're well versed in what's out there, the availability on different things, whether it be general season tags or landowner tags with outfitters that we work with. Or maybe it be draw tags like Adam's alluding to. And there's a lot of the best opportunities to hunt out there for the average guy is through the draw process. Yeah, and you can't beat having that type of experience.

I never put in an application for myself without running it past you two. It's just a resource that I have. And any of our members have that resource as well to be able to do. But you guys are up on the latest changes, everything. If there's something that you know I might be interested in, you'll say, hey, John, what about this unit? Have you thought about that? Yeah. And Adam and I do it to each other. A lot of times our offices are side by side, and there's just things. What about this or what about that? And this is what we live for. This is all we do. So whether it be even on our time off, which we don't clock in because we own the place. But even on our time off, we're thinking about strategy and how to get a tag for a 200-inch deer or the opportunity to hunt a 200-inch deer, the opportunity for 350-plus bulls.

And Adam Case in point has drawn a tag this year for Arizona on a unit that he knew, roughly knew he was going to draw because we analyzed the odds so heavy. And it's a unit we know there's some giants, maybe even the biggest bull in the state of Arizona. So there's just awesome opportunities out there for roughly 15 years worth of points. Yeah. You know, and that brings us to that planning-type phase. There are some states that are predictable because of their point system. Some are strictly or random. Even if they give points, it's just another name in the hat. But there's other states like Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado that give either a portion or, in Colorado's case, for deer and elk, all their tags to the people with the most points. So from, you know, maybe I'll ask you in a minute, Jason, but that's usually what I first look at when I go into my application year.

I'm like, what are you, we're usually looking ahead to a year or two in advance sometimes, knowing what season dates are going to do in a certain unit, like Colorado deer dates, or in this case, Arizona. I knew the elk was going to shift a week later, all the archery dates. And we look at the moon phase like you did. Yeah, the moon phase is good. That always, none of that can hurt you. So I kind of had it circled, and I knew I probably would have enough points this year. And I, why not wait? I could have maybe drawn it last year. Wait one more year, have the hunt sink six days later. That's probably going to hopefully pay off. So usually I analyze the ones that I think I could be guaranteed or very close to, that I have to then plan around everything else, because those are hunts that I've usually waited a lot of years to draw, 15 years for an elk.

Jason, I believe when you drew your desert sheep tag, it was, you know, 16, 18 points back then was max or whatever. You know, I'm up to 21 now in Utah. I know that's another one I have to plan around because I want to, that may be my only desert sheep of my life. And I don't want to draw it in a year that I've got a bunch of other things going, and I'm turning tags back in, and I'm not doing it justice or whatever. Well, and there has been years when you've had a 50% draw on that, and you lost the coin toss. Yeah. And so there's times where you... And then I have a wide open schedule because I planned on drawing it. But you planned on it, and you're like, ooh, and then you didn't draw. And there are some of those times when you cannot predict, you know, who's going to cross over. So you can kind of say, okay, these are...

When there's only a few tags there, it only takes three or four or five applicants to cross over, and then your odds are a mess. But generally speaking, in a lot of cases, especially we love Colorado for this reason, is that you can tell when you're going to get drawn. You can't on the sheep, goat, and moose. You cannot. I mean, that's more of a random draw, even though the points help you. But deer, elk, antelope, you can look at those odds, and you can predict. But if you've got a grundle of points in those units, like 18 to 20, you're in more of the driver's seat. But if you're in no man's land, just apply. But that's usually how we approach it. And so obviously, if you're just looking at applying in the west for the first time, some of those things don't really apply to how you're going to develop either strategy for 2017 or 18

because you're not in the driver's seat with a bunch of points. But if you do have points spread out, and we're not talking some states like Colorado, two, three points, you've got a guaranteed deer tag if you want it in certain units. It doesn't take 10 or 15. We gave that example because I was simply holding out for something that I wanted, and it took me that long. But there's other units in other states. You know, general elk in Wyoming, you want to go every other year, you can go hunt every other year. And the same thing with some of those late-season bull hunts in Arizona. Even though you waited 15 years. I could have went twice or three times. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Some of those late seasons are 7, 8, 9 points. And so if you want to go hunting, you can go hunting. And that's the one thing about the West. It is scary for a lot of people, even residents of the West.

Even people that live here in the West because it's very complicated, and every state's different. But that's what we love about it. I love knowing that Colorado, I can plan on a few things. And then I love the randomness of New Mexico. I love the randomness in New Mexico. And I don't want them to go to a point system. And then Idaho, I love the randomness in Idaho and forcing you to choose sheep, goat, or moose. And if you do one of those, you can't do deer, elk, and antelope. I love that. It's cool. It's different. I like the variety, too. And yet we get to, you know, work on the point squared system in Nevada. You know, although I hate it because it feels like it's so hard to draw. And all five choices count in Nevada. And so we're thinking about those things nonstop. It makes a big difference on, you know, what the state looks at when they're actually pulling applications.

And it makes a big difference on our choices. So I know, Jason, in some of your, we've talked about some of the guaranteeing tags like this elk I drew. You've had some of those experiences in the past. And so some of them you still are very top-heavy on. Others, you're back in the draw. And your philosophy of changing, or your strategies probably changes. It changes, yeah. Once you burn your points, you have a different mindset. You're not protecting 15 or 20, you know, elk points in a state. You want to go back more often probably the second or third go-around. So how do you look at it, your first, you know, first of the year? I can't decide. You know, we could, there's a couple ways to go through this podcast and YouTube episodes that we're doing here. But we could either go through the states alphabetically and kind of crank what our thoughts are in each state.

Or we could just go through what we're thinking and what we do, you know, species by species. Let's do both a little bit. Let's start with the states and just go and overview a little bit through the states. Okay. Well, for, you know, for starters, let's just talk Arizona. I've drawn my deer in Arizona. I had max points. It was 2007. And so by Adam and I analyzed it. John was probably in on it because, you know, John's been, John and I have been, you know, in business together and working together for many, many years. As well as Chris. And Chris is our videographer and is all a part of that as well. But anyway, we knew I was going to draw. It was one of those things. Adam and I, you know, analyzed the odds. And I didn't hunt the traditional Arizona 13A, 13B like everybody was doing. I wanted to draw, but I wanted, I didn't want to compete out there.

And so anyway, ended up, you know, there was a big pair of sheds found. And I had max points and big pair, meaning 300 inches. Kind of big. Solid. And so. That'll work. Good solid buck. Probably in his prime. Anyway, ended up applying for that unit, which was 12B. And not that 12B, 12B does not hold a candle to 13B. I totally understand that. But I was after one deer. And Adam was in on it. He arranged his vacation, so to speak. Of course, he was working with us at the time. And adjusted the hunts that he was guiding and going on personally to accompany me on that. Because that's a once-in-a-lifetime type opportunity, much like his will be here in the near future when he draws. So anyway, went out there. Couldn't find that deer. We went out and killed another big deer that we didn't know about.

But case in point on that is being able to capitalize, having the points to capitalize on an opportunity when it comes available. I had max points. And then a big deer set of sheds is found. I can draw that tag. And I think that's kind of part of this. Sometimes we go through our application strategies, and maybe we don't know why we're... I've got 16 antelope points in Colorado. Not a huge fan of hunting antelope. Okay? They're okay. I've killed a few. I like them. Adam's killed a giant. Now he's kind of addicted to them. But... Anything big's all right, you know. But having said that, I'm going to keep gaining points just because I never know. And then maybe there's some big buck found, or maybe there's a great opportunity on a ranch, and I know I can get that tag.

And so for a little bit of a minimal non-refundable for each year, I can gain points and know that I've got to hunt someday down the road. And so with Arizona, I've drawn an early rifle tag for elk clear back in 2000 in Unit 1. And then I gained up my points again. Another 15 years worth of points, I drew Unit 1 archery and had a great hunt. Killed a .355 bull. Killed a .367 the first time I drew it back in year 2000. So great opportunities there. We continue to gain points. I continue to gain points as well as you guys for the sheep there. We've not drawn any sheep tags. You know, like I said, I burned my elk points this year. It'll be my first go-around on a big bull down there. So I'm looking forward to that. I got totally lucky last year just for the simple, it used to be $7.50, now $15 for each species. Added antelope probably 8 or 10 years ago.

You know, just because, well, I'm buying the license, I might as well do it. Lightning struck. I drew Unit 10 last year. And it literally struck. You know, antelope may seem easy to draw in a lot of places. Arizona, it's like drawing a sheep tag. They're extremely tough to draw. That's right. So just totally got lucky. It was an afterthought. You know, I've hunted antelope a few times in my life, like yourself. They're fun. I don't base my whole fall around them. Right. And, but when I drew that one, it was in a time I had nothing going on. And, hey, if you're going to hunt a big antelope, Arizona is a good place to throw your name in the hat. Shilled an average 87. Yeah. It was awesome. It was fun. So, but Arizona in general would probably summarize as probably, even though there's a lot of opportunity over the counter archery all day. It's more of a. And I drew coos deer.

Yeah, you've drawn coos. You know, after my big deer tag, then I know I'm not going to draw the strip again. And so I did coos deer and drew coos deer. Now I'm going to do an archery deer. And so there's other tags, not just two units in the state, 13A and 13B. There's plenty of other tags and plenty of other opportunity with 10 and less points. That's right. So both ends of the spectrum, extreme trophy quality and a lot of opportunity. You just got to be realistic in Arizona. And, you know, expensive state, $160 license and then $15 per species all online. Generally speaking, other than my coos deer and Adam's elk this year, you can't plan on those. But there's a couple you can plan on. And I planned on my coos deer. I analyzed the odds, knew I was going to draw. Adam knew he was going to draw his elk or at least have a 50% chance or better depending on who crossed over.

Yeah, that's right. And so. I did want to make a point. You said on that Arizona deer, you knew that a shed was found. Yeah. Well, our license app clients, they can take advantage of that because it's not just once, you know, every 10 years that you hear about something like that. You and Adam are taking 50 calls a day. Yeah. There's stuff that comes across your desk that the general public doesn't know. Well, there are things. And Adam and I do. And that's a very good point, John. Adam and I do hear about X amount of 200-inch deer killed in 22 of Colorado. Yeah. Okay. Not being in this business, or if we were just out on the streets, we wouldn't hear about these. We don't have people calling and telling us this. Oh, and by the way, here's live pictures of this and this and this and this. And so we get to learn a lot.

And then, you know, as a result, I think it does make a difference on where we're applying guys in our knowledge base. That's right. And staying up to date. Like these things. Over 15 years of when I started applying for this out, I wasn't applying for the same unit I ended up drawing. No, you weren't. You know, and you were probably bounced around. Unit 10, unit 9, I bounced around. You played for 15 years on 13B and 8, and then moisture or set of sheds, boom, you move and drew that year. It was totally different. Burns and feed in your unit. All kinds of things change. And all of a sudden, you know, units that weren't good years ago are now crazy. Gunnison gets killed off by winter or whatever. Things are evolving and changing nonstop. You'll always, this strip will always have good deer. Okay. You don't need to pay us $100 to learn that. Or Henry Mountains in Utah.

Henry Mountains, Utah. It's a pretty good unit. But having said that, the Oak Creek's come on all of a sudden heavy. Boom. Here we kill a 230-inch deer. 220s. 210s. Tons of good bucks for very few tags offered. Percentage-wise, the Oak Creek's probably did better than the Henry's. On numbers of tags. And, you know, percentage-wise. And so there's cool things. But if we know somebody's got those points or they're coming up on that. You could draw the Oak Creek's ways. Then we switch you or we know, oh, this guy's, he's going to draw. But we know that there's a unit that something special is going on or we hear a tip. And keep in mind, our members and license app guys and our members of the magazine, we take as much pride as they do in them drawing tags. They might not feel it. It's them personally. But we do because we get the stories, the photos, and the accolades of doing a good job.

And really, they're not hiring us to just get my applications in. I mean, that's part of it. They're hiring us, drawing me the tags I'm after. That's really what they are. So we're not just filing applications and getting them in so we don't miss the deadline and just building the points. And then we'll do it again next year and all that. None of us do it for that reason. It's expensive to play the game in all these states. The goal is to get drawn on the tags that fit my criteria, your criteria, or our clients. That's really the goal. Well, and a lot of it is we look at it as if we were that person. So we go through our notes. We make copious notes. Every time they call in, we've got all that. And then we're looking at it. Okay, this guy is a mule deer lover. He's killed four over 200. Probably not going to apply him for average units.

Yeah, doesn't need a 175 or 80 buck, and he'll eat a tag and go home. Right. Now, even though our personal position and where we're at in the application strategy might be different than that guy, we put ourselves in his shoes. And every year can be different. You know, if you book a moose. You know, a couple years ago we went moose hunting with Jarrett Dooling. That chewed away two weeks in September. I did points only for elk in Arizona that year because I didn't want to draw that the same year I had that. So every year is different based on what you have going. And some states don't allow you to do points only, so you do a hardest to draw application strategy hoping you don't draw because you're doing a Dooling moose hunt. And so there's a lot of that that goes on. You might not do elk in New Mexico when you go on Dooling because there's no points. There's no points.

You can sit out Idaho and New Mexico. Good draw states like you've alluded. It makes you feel good because you have as good of odds coming in the first year as somebody been playing the game for 20. But having said that, they're the first ones you sit out if you have a too busy schedule this year and don't want to draw tags. Or go, like you said, for the hardest to draw only. Let lightning strike and make it work out if you do draw. So that brings us to, well, California technically. Although we don't do a lot of applications in California for ourselves, there's some members that live in California that like to do it. And there's non-residents that are willing to spend those extra dollars and they feel like they have that expendable income to go ahead and go for the one in 5,000. Whatever the odds might end up being.

The way their tag allocation system is working for non-residents, it's a tough one for non-residents to justify doing. And so we're honest with guys. You could save your money and not apply for California. Even though maybe it's better for us each year, we actually want what's best for the client. We're not looking to get every nickel and dime out of them. We want to apply them in states that are actually worth doing. And sometimes we'll tell them. Not that everybody should apply in the states we do. And I tell that guys often. Hey, I don't do it. Jason doesn't do it. It doesn't mean you shouldn't. But if that gives you perspective on whether we should do California, we don't think it's a can't miss one. If you're not already at max points or whatever. And so we're realist.

You know, to throw 200 bucks away, you know, if somebody in California, unless they absolutely need a desert sheep and they're going to do every single desert sheep. You know, go ahead and do it. I'm not going to talk a guy out of that. But to try to grow a great deer tag or an elk tag as a non-resident there is harder to justify. Well, and like that, like you're talking desert sheep in California, basically 10% are allocated to non-residents. Up to one. Up to one. Might not be one. Sometimes two. Maybe. I'll go to residents. So that's where we're talking about it being, you know, one elk. One elk in the entire state of California could go to a non-resident. Could be a cow. And if that's a cow elk, that's done. We met our quota as non-residents. One antelope. Up to. Up to one antelope. One. Okay. So how tough is that?

It's a very interesting dynamic when you're talking places like California. However, we have a lot of California residents that have us do their applications. They're in a totally different ballgame. They're a great client. They're in the 90% pool. They're in for all the tags. No problem. It's just our job to let you know of those opportunities and what's worth it and what's not. So that kind of does bring us to Colorado. Yeah. Even though we've talked about Colorado already. I know Adam and I, we work really aggressive on the sheep, goat, and moose. Yep. Of course, deserts, the point system doesn't work for deserts and you kind of got to choose. You can't do them both. And so Adam and I do the Rockies. We do Rockies. I've got a bunch of points. Hope to draw there one day. I know, you know, you do goats as well. I've got lucky in drawing a goat in Montana, so I never started in Colorado.

Those odds are generally, for sheep, moose, and goat in Colorado, some of the best in the West. They really are. They make you front the full permit fee, $2,100, $2,200. It has been all up front. 2018, they've told us they're going to allow online. We're assuming they're going to make you pay the full permit fee on a card. We'll see. That will be easier, but we'll have to see about that. But it's kept the odds good. You have had to write a paper application, send it in. So we'll have an update on this, you know, later on when they solidify that. Even with that, even with the applications, you could write a credit card check because they accept personal checks. And so sometimes guys can float their own fees on a 0% card using a credit card check. So there was a few little things to not have to pay or to actually have that money leave your account. That's right.

And the biggest thing to keep in mind on moose, sheep, and goat, they have a different point system. It is not a preference like the deer, elk, and antelope where all of the tags go to the people with the maximum points. You have to first accumulate three base bonus points, and then every year after that, they give you what's called a weighted point, which, to simplify it, just gives you a mathematical advantage every year after that. So you can draw your fourth year in the draw for moose, sheep, or goat. And we've seen people do it. Their fourth year in the draw is your first real year that you could draw a tag. Well, you're issued a random number, and then it's divided by how many weighted points you have. Yeah, plus one. That's right. To get you another new number. That's right. And so you can draw on your third year. That's right.

When it comes to the deer, elk, and antelope, Colorado probably gives 75% of their elk tags over the counter. The remaining 25, roughly, percent of the state that they draw tags in, there's a lot of demand for those because there's not a lot of units to spread out. The northeast corner, unit 210, 201, those units like that, 61 even, just seeing dramatic increases in what it's taken. And point creep just keeps going and going, 20 to 26 points. And if you don't have that many points or within a point or two of that, it may not be worth ever chasing. So you just don't simply have enough people to spread out on elk. Deer is a totally different situation. Totally different situation. Well, you know, going back to elk for a short minute, it's not good management practice as far as trophy quality to just issue tags over the counter.

And when, like you said, 75% of the opportunity is issued over the counter, that leaves you a dozen units or 20 units, you know, or opportunities. That you burn points for. That you can burn points for. And then you've got thousands of people gaining points, and so it makes it hard. Yeah. Having said that, we've found a few units. We've hunted a few units such as, you know, 40. Yeah, that's right. Such as those units where we've done well. Yeah. And we've seen some good bulls. And don't take 20 points. And so, and even using third season type tags, fourth season tags, well, not hunting elk in the rough. Just kind of come to the realization that I've got X number of points. I'm never going to draw this. What can I draw? Making it, you know, picking it and going hunting. But talking about those 75% of the units, those can be tags that you can get any year you want. Come out on your own.

You can use Colorado as the backup plan. Yeah. Get an elk tag. Go archery elk hunting. Drive deer tag. Supplement it with an elk tag. Go hunt and have two species. Get an outfitter and go hunt or come do it on your own. So there's, depending on what end of the spectrum, if you're on the trophy end of the spectrum, Colorado would not be a state we'd really recommend starting for elk. If you're an opportunity elk hunter, absolutely. Go. Should be one you should be looking at. Every time we're hunting deer, you know, no matter what unit it is, we're seeing bulls. Six-point bulls. Yeah, they're seeing six-point bulls. And we just don't have tags in our pocket for that because we're not looking to just pack out elk meat. No. When we're trying to kill a big buck. 200-inch deer in the rut or something. Yeah. So, anyway, but those are, there's quite an opportunity.

You know, when looking at deer back in 1996, I drew Pinion Canyon. Back then, the eastern plains was like the only place you could kill a big deer in Colorado. It wasn't managed. It was like western was over the counter. Yeah. And so, and then when they went to the draw system for every deer unit in the state, you saw some changes. Dramatic difference. When they started managing hunters on a unit-by-unit, season-by-season draw for that tag or you don't go deer hunting. That's right. It got better quick. You know, by. And those rifle hunts, now they're offering rifle hunts. It's basically third and fourth season. They're rut hunts with a rifle. Only in the state of Colorado would get away with that and continue to manage, or continue to maintain trophy quality simply because it's a deer factory. For nearly 20 years since they've done the draw.

Yeah, they've got incredible genetics and habitat. And a lot of escapement. Variety of terrain. You've got, for deer, talked about it already. If you have one to two points and you want to go hunt this year, there's a unit for you to draw in Colorado. It may not fit perfectly what you want. If you're a 195 only deer hunter, it's probably not going to fit that. But if you're like, hey, I just want to hunt 170 bucks, you should go to Colorado every year to two or three. Oh, my kids got leftover tags this year. So if you draw your second choice, you get a leftover, still gain a point. You're prepping for the future while still hunting Colorado. So there's a lot of great opportunities. I know, John, you do. Personally, I love to draw Colorado every three to five years. And you do it. I won't hold those points or build them up. And you hunt at 63. You even hunt at 44. 68, 44, 35. Yeah. Yeah.

And you're killing a wacky deer. Yeah. You know? And so what a great state to hunt in. It's absolutely a state every deer hunter should be either gaining points for or hunting. Yeah, that's right. And a lot of them may get to the 15 to 20 point range. If you're stuck or have built that many points and you're like, okay, now I want to use them. Those are probably some of the units you should be looking at because you're going to have lower hunter numbers, maybe higher buck to doe ratios. But once you draw, we're highly in favor of going to Colorado as often as your schedule can allow. Don't. A lot of those hunts tend to be weather dependent, the late October, November hunts, to make them really good. You can build 15 to 20 points, say I've got a four-season tag here, and go there and it lays an egg like last year. And it's 75, 80 degrees the whole hunt. And you, that wasn't worth it.

Well, and you used to be able to turn your tags back in early. The day before the hunt. Yeah, and now it changes everything. And so. 30 days. Yeah, you have to 30 days you can turn your tags back and who knows what the weather's going to be. And so a lot of it is just, you know, banking on the dates. And now with the dates being later than average, last year was best, you know, this year's still good. We're expecting and hoping for something good. If we get any kind of weather at all, big deer are going to hit the ground. I do, you did remind me that when you were talking about that, Adam, about the 20 points and knowing when you're going to draw. I don't know if we covered it, but Colorado's one of those states, the guys with the most points win. Yeah, they do have a hybrid draw that applies to certain units that take X number of points. But for non-resident purposes, ignore that.

Because our 20% quota is going to be met in the maximum point draw in those units. So any tags earmarked for hybrid draw are going to go for deer. This is for deer and elk. They're going to go to residents. That's right. Well, they do the hybrid draw to the regular draw. And like you said, we're in the same draw with the residents. Although we have a separate allocation. 20% or 35%. And we draw our allocation before the residents in nearly every case. There's a few units that obviously, you know, like some of those middle mountainous crazy country that actually residents have a few points and maybe do reach their allocation before we do. But generally speaking, we reach our allocation before residents. And once we reach our allocation, we cannot draw in their hybrid. That's right.

The only difference is that is the antelope that they don't have the 20% to non-resident or 35% to non-resident. It's just whoever draws antelope. Whoever draws, draws. There is no non-resident quota for antelope. And that's why the hybrid works. Yeah, we've had a couple licensed clients the last couple of years draw hybrid antelope tags. But that's the only instance we've heard of the non-residents draw on it because there's no non-resident quota. So generally speaking, they consider everybody's first choice before they go to anybody's second. So they'll look at all the first choices. If there's two applicants, one has four and one has five, the guy with five will draw. That's right. That's boiled down for deer elk. So what, John, do you have anything to add about Colorado?

Well, one of the things I love about us managing people's whole strategy is we can look at a guy and say, okay, he wants to kill a giant buck sometime in his life. And so we've got a long-term strategy for him to build points like me in Nevada. I'm not going to Nevada every three to five years. I'm building points in Nevada to hopefully draw really good tags sometime. But Colorado, no, that's a different story. I'm going to go as often as I can. Why? Why? Well, because I don't want to skip too many years of not having a good tag and not having fun. And Colorado is just one of those states. You always have a chance. Yeah, you do. And you could kill a giant. Well, that's the nice thing. You could kill a giant on a 0-1, 2-point second choice. We've done it. So that's what I want to do. But Nevada, those tags, just for me, aren't going to come around every year. So I'm building up.

Well, a lot of it is they take all five choices. They square them. I say only meaning. You don't know when you're going to get drawn. They square everybody. You have seven points. You have 49 plus one this year's application. Now you've got 58. Eight times eight is what? 64 plus one is 65. So, I mean, you just cannot tell. It seems awesome that they square them, but they square everybody. I know a guy with 25 deer points, okay? He cannot draw any true. Muzzles. He applied muzzle as his first choice. That's right. Phil, you know, and what do you say? What do you say? It does work. It just sometimes it is realistically taking 15 points in Nevada to get good deer tags. We might as well finish off Nevada where we're on it. When we're talking about deer and elk, it's a very – there are average deer units. Not a lot of average elk. They're generally very high-quality elk.

You've got a seven-year waiting period after you've drawn elk tags. Yeah, they change that. And so once you draw, my philosophy in Nevada is make it really good because if it takes me 10 or 12 years, 15 to draw a tag, then I wait seven. That's 20 to 30 years in between elk tags. I just don't want an elk tag. There's other states like New Mexico with no points or Idaho or even Colorado or Wyoming. I go hunt elk in that interim. I'm saving that one for something good because of that strategy. Deer doesn't have a waiting period. That's right. But I still tend to stick, and I know you do, Jason. You're the king over there. I stick to units I want to hunt. I don't want to go to the easy-to-draw areas in other parts of the state. I want to hunt, you know, eastern Nevada, closer to Utah, closer to home units that I know that – Well, and you can turn your tag back. Of course, you know that.

Yeah, that's right. You've actually done it. I've done it. You know, you can draw your tag. You can turn it back. You do lose your deer permit fee or elk permit fee. Elk's a little steeper, $1,200. Yeah, $1,200. Deer's $240, but you get your points back. I look at everything in four-wheelers. That's like what? A fourth of a – fifth of a four-wheeler. Or that's a 1991 Honda. Four-track. So, I don't know, however you want to look at it. It is a full four-wheeler if it's old enough. That's right. So, it does hurt a little bit, but the nice thing is you can get all those points back. And one is if you didn't draw. And when you're packing 15 to 20 and all of a sudden you drew Nevada the same year you drew an early rifle in Arizona or a Utah that are all upper echelon elk units. Yes. And they're at the same time. You can't make two of them work or do them justice. Right. So, take a hit.

So, you could point guard it in Arizona, which we didn't talk about. You could point guard it and turn that tag back. You could turn it back in Nevada. And you could turn it back in Utah. Utah. And you can turn it back in Colorado, but you won't get this year's point. That's right. You're going to stay stagnant as if you didn't apply that year. So, that brings up a general philosophy. We do get the questions sometimes from people who say, well, we're talking about playing for six or eight states. What if I draw them all? And the answer is you're not. And part of that, you've got to trust us. And the other answer is if you do, you've got some options. You can turn some stuff back. About half the states, roughly, will allow you to turn them back one way, shape, or form. Get your points back, your money back, maybe both.

But especially some of those states where trophy quality is very high and you don't want two of the same in the same time, you've got options. Others, you're stuck with. You know, Wyoming, you're stuck with it. You know, Idaho. Speaking of Wyoming. Are we jumping ahead? We're jumping ahead. All right, all right. Well, I'm just so excited because the trial results came out today and we had some good news. But, yeah, let's keep going on Nevada. All right. So, you know, Nevada has three species of sheep. But for non-residents, they can apply for desert sheep and California bay corn. And they give over, last year, 30 non-resident desert sheep tags. That's more than all the other states combined. Yeah, it's unbelievable. And they have extreme trophy units and just opportunity 140 to 150 rams. Yep. And so, it's a must apply for desert sheep. It's a state where they charge $142 for a license.

Then it's $15 to $20 per species. So, if you're going to do Nevada at all, much like Arizona, don't just do, hey, I just want a desert sheep or I just want a mule deer. For another minimal $20 to $40, you can add two to three more species, build the points. They have great antelope in Nevada. They, like you said, square your points. It's random after that. You get more names in the hat. Whoever gets it, gets it. Great trophy state. I would probably label it more as a trophy state than an opportunity state for sure. There's no question. You know, Nevada has some of the most limited resources. It's an arid state. And it relies on water. And it doesn't have a lot of water. That's right. And it's got a lot of wild horses. You know, and so, but for the resource they have, it's amazing the quality they have. Quality. Unbelievable.

Adam and I were looking through the trophy, you know, Boone and Crockett record book. They've got a trophy search query, which is awesome. Anybody that's out there, it's a great opportunity for you to log on. It costs $40 a year to be an associate member. But you can get on there. And when you do, you get on there and you notice what was killed. One unit, because you can tell by the county they're killed in, killed two bucks that were $193, $194. Net typicals. And it came from one specific unit on a late season. It's pretty amazing. And there's not that many tags. Percentage-wise, amazing what they're producing. And the elk, the elk did go through a cycle. I drew a late elk tag clear back in like year 2000 or 2001. It was right when I did the Arizona as well. Not the same year, but back-to-back years. And, you know, with those elk, it's amazing the quality. It was unbelievable then.

They went through where they had a little bit of a lull, adjusted some seasons. The quality went down. Now the elk are back. It's unbelievable what the bulls that they're producing. And like you said, Adam, earlier in the podcast or the YouTube video, whatever you're looking at, watching, it's amazing quality. No matter if you're talking the 06s, the 07s, whatever unit you're talking about, it's great quality. Whereas like Arizona, or even Arizona, the king of elk states, has units in the fives and sixes that are producing 300, 310 type bulls. Yeah. An occasional 350 to 70s, you have the wild card effect even in those units. Yeah. Even in those units. But Nevada, you're killing 330s in every unit. There's not an average unit. You shoot 330. You hold out for 330s in every single unit. That's right. You can't even do that here in Utah. I mean, the okers. That's right. You know, or whatever.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. One thing to point out probably about before we leave Nevada is if you're a mule deer hunter and you know you're going to go with a guide or an outfitter, they do have a outfitter restricted guide draw for rifle mule deer. It only applies to rifle mule deer. But it's an earlier draw, about a month earlier. You apply with an outfitter amongst only another pool of applicants with outfitter applicants, non-resident applicants. And your odds are generally better. If you know you're going to hire a guide when you draw a rifle deer hunt in Nevada, we recommend applying that. We can help you pick those outfitters. We can help pick your units that fit your criteria. If you want, if you're happy to shoot 170 bucks, you can draw almost every single year in Nevada for those type of units. Yeah.

We've got outfitters that are hunting the area 14, area 15, which is 141, 151, 16, 17, all those areas. Unit 6, early. I mean, you can hunt them literally almost every year if you do the early hunts and just have good quality deer hunts. Keep in mind, these are rifle seasons only. And so there's a separate allocated number of tags for a separate drawing. And you can only apply in one or the other, the main draw or the outfitter draw for deer. That's right. And so if you apply in the outfitter draw, which occurs before the main draw, then that's your draw. You'll get a point and it'll use your deer points. Even if the next year or the year prior you applied the main draw, all those points are good for whatever application period you choose to apply. One year you want to sit out and do points only. You sit a year out and do points only.

Or if you're like, well, I don't really want a guided hunt this year. I'm just going to sit out and do the regular draw, the best unit in the state. You can do that. But just something to point out. And we incorporate a lot of our applicant strategy because if they're guys that go guided on all their hunts, they should be doing that. Much like New Mexico, which we'll get to in a minute. But I don't know. Where are we at, too? I think it's worth reiterating in Nevada, if you're going to apply for one species, do them all. Yeah. Even if you hate antelope. So you don't have to front the fees. You don't have to front the fees. It's one of those. It's so cheap. You should build points. Yeah. For $200, $250, depending on everything that you add and some of the silver states, which are governor-type opportunities, you're $250 or less. $250 to $180, depending on the species you choose.

And like you said, John, you're going to gain a point for every single species you apply for. And the quality is so good. Even if you don't love antelope, you spend 20 years and you build those points just because it's cheap, you're going to have a great hunt. $10 a year, build an antelope point. And then when you want to draw, you've got a pretty good antelope tag. So I don't know if that brings us to Idaho, but maybe we'll just talk about that. Like we've said, there's no point system in Idaho. They do require you to buy a non-refundable hunting license, $155, $60. The biggest probably thing to keep in mind there, if you want to apply for sheep, which they have Rocky Mountain or California bighorn, you can draw one of each in your life, or a shiris moose or goat. You have to pick one of those species and you're done for Idaho for the year.

So, and you do have to front the entire tag fees, whether you apply on paper or online for those big three, we'll call them, which is $2,100 something dollars. So it's an expensive out of pocket. They end up keeping $175 to $200 of that. But it's a flat random draw. Whoever gets the tags gets it. Non-residents are limited up to 10% of the tags statewide. Yeah, statewide. For those species. So, you know, on some of the species like sheep, you know, there's 20, 25 units. They're only going to draw eight to nine non-resident tags. And every year is just a product of the random draw where they're drawn. Whenever they come up, they can't draw more than 10% in an individual hunt code. And whenever they draw eight or nine or 10, you know, 10% of the statewide tag, all the rest of the tags go to residents. So it's hard to, we portray the drawing odds as they are.

Everybody's in the hat together, residents and non-residents, until we meet our non-resident quota. But straight draw, a lot of people like it for that. Some people don't. I think you meant, when you said 10% per hunt code, I think you meant on the deer, elk, antelope, and whatnot. Because like unit 11, they don't give 10 tags. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can't exceed. Like, let's say you've got a unit like unit 11. They've got one. A non-resident can draw that one. Can draw that. And that exceeds 10%. That's right. But if a unit has no more than 10, like if a unit has 25 moose tags. There you go. They can only draw two to non-residents in that hunt code. So there's a 10%. On sheep, it doesn't really map out great, but on goat or on sheep or on moose, you have 20, 30, 40 tags in some units. And so it's a 10% statewide, 10% by hunt code. Sheep and goat, you know, they're all less than 10.

So no more than one in that. And that's right. And so, yeah, I just wanted to clarify that a little bit. We get talking fast. Of course, Adam and I each have had a monster and we might have another. That's right. So anyway. We need to see about Phil sponsored this podcast. Because we have enough of them incidentally around us that they're getting a lot of free press. Anyway, so as we talk about, I want to talk about Idaho just a little bit more. I've drawn a moose tag in Idaho. Of course, when I did it that particular year, I couldn't have applied for elk, deer, and antelope. And then I've also drawn deer tags in Idaho. And so it's a great opportunity where one year you can do sheep. Adam, I think you applied for sheep this year. I did the deer, elk, and antelope this year. But next year I might do sheep. But just, it's cool. However you're feeling.

And there's no point system like Adam says. And you do have to donate a hunting license fee. And so a lot of times Adam and I hunt wolves up in Idaho. And that's another cool thing. We've each killed wolves in Idaho. Adam killed an alpha male. Just an unbelievable experience. And I've got lucky and killed a couple of wolves. Public land, wolf. I mean, what a trophy. We hate them, but we love them. It's an amazing feeling when you kill a wolf. You feel like you're going to go to jail. It's an accomplishment. That's one of the hardest things. You get one of your crosshairs and you're like, can I really pull this? Can I do? Yeah. You've been taught your whole life, Danger Species Act. Yes. Behind bars, you're going to get to know Bubba real well. So if I'm in the wrong, I thought it was a coyote. If I'm in the right, I knew it was a wolf. And so anyway, what a great opportunity.

And so we do that. We kind of have that knowing, you know, we know we're going to buy a hunting license. But we're okay with it because we're going to go up there and hunt wolves. And a lot of guys hunt over-the-counter deer and elk tags. Yeah. That's a lot like Colorado. You can use that as a last resort and buy an over-the-counter deer tag. They have whitetails there in Idaho, mule deer as well as elk. Just one thing to keep in mind. If you don't do the sheep, goat, and moose draw is about a month or a month and a half before the deer, elk, and antelope. If you don't decide to put in for one of those like we talked about, you can do all three deer, elk, and antelope. And you don't have to front the fees. They're a little bit later in the year. A lot of people with a June 5th deadline on the deer, elk, and antelope will use it as a, hey, I've drawn nothing else. There's no points.

I'm going to throw some names in the hat for deer and elk in Idaho. Yeah, you can kind of tell. I know you do that. Yeah, I do that quite a bit. And so anyway, just an awesome opportunity. They have some amazing quality. The elk are, there's a couple units that are just absolutely phenomenal, world class. And then deer too. If Idaho was left alone and managed truly properly the way we would manage trophy units, it would be better than Arizona, Colorado, Utah combined probably. It's unbelievable the genetics they have. Having said that, there are a few deer that make it to that 8, 9, 10-year-old class, 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old, and are amazing. There's some 230, 40-inch deer killed every single year in Idaho. It's unbelievable. And some of them are coming off general areas. Okay. So pretty awesome. Maybe just real quickly, let's briefly gloss over the Kansas and Iowa. They're white-tailed.

Iowa's a white-tailed state. Kansas does have a mule deer option with the white-tailed tag. Probably the biggest thing to keep in mind in those two states is they're very predictable when you want to go. They're not random. Iowa's preference points for archery, you need to accrue two to four points depending on the unit. So if you just know you want to hunt there someday, you're going to have to get some help either through a friend, a connection, an outfitter, a landowner. It's 98% private land. I don't know the exact number, but it's private. Kansas as well, 95 plus. And we both hunted Kansas. We both have. Yep. And so keep those in mind. You don't really need to build points for Kansas. It's just one of those that when you want to go, I mean, one point will guarantee you any white-tailed tag in the state. Zero will get you probably. You can't gain points for the mule deer.

That's right. You know, opportunities. So anyway, we do cover those. Even though we're known to be a Western big-game hunting magazine slash application service, most of the white-tails across the east are over the counter. Yeah, those are the two that are not. Those are two opportunities on options that are actually, you know, an application-type deal where we've had a lot of demand from our clients. That's right. So we take care of those as well. So I don't know, New Mexico, you want to jump to that one? I guess. Yeah, let's dive in. We love that state. No points. So New Mexico is one of those opportunities. There's an amazing amount of opportunity in New Mexico. A lot of species. A lot of species. Go broke chasing them all. I know Adam killed a barbary sheep. I mean, it's... And they've got stuff you didn't know was alive in this country. Yeah, that's right.

Oryx and barbary sheep and ibex and, you know, those are some of the exotics they got. And then, of course, deer, elk, antelope, coos, deer, you know, desert and rockies. Yeah, so there's a lot of opportunity there. You know, all three choices on the application count, there's no point system. So it's one of those things you can put in for one or two awesome areas and then something you'd accept on the end. And we do a lot of that. We do, you know, there's giant bulls killed. I've hunted 23 and killed a, you know, a 360s bull in 23. I killed one of my biggest bulls, 386 and unit 38. Something that, you know, was the first year it was available to non-residents. But it was one of those that hadn't been open for 20 plus years, as near as I could tell. And I figured there had to be at least one giant. And so New Mexico is just one of those.

There's the standard good ones that will always be good probably. 16D, 16A, 15 is a popular one, 17, 13. But then there's a lot of those that are not so popular that are amazing. That's right. You know, and so the biggest thing to keep in mind there, no point system. You're not falling behind if you decide not to put in. And they do require you to front the tag fees when you apply. They allow you to do it on a credit card. For sheep, that's over $3,000. So, yeah, be prepared for that. Whenever we go through New Mexico planning strategy with somebody, we always identify that. Because you can run up $10,000 on your credit card. Well, with your Ibex, Oryx, sheep. And then if you have a son or a daughter doing it, pretty soon. $15,000 or $20,000. Yeah, you're thankful for 0% cards. Yeah, and so we highly recommend that on that point.

For a state like New Mexico, you can pay other application services to front your fees. You'll pay out the nose for those because they're putting it on there. But this day and age, we all throw away dozens of offers in our mailbox every month from a credit card. And you're only fronting it for what? 30 to 60 days depending on when you apply in the application period. You wait towards the end. And, you know, you apply. It's on there 30 days. Sometimes you don't even get a full cycle. Even if you paid a little interest. Yeah, not the end of the world. You're saved. Be a lot cheaper. You know, most people, the way we view it, that are looking for somebody to do their application service, that hunt a lot, that spend a lot on their applications, probably have a credit card. They confront a few of those states like that. They'll save a grundle of money by using their own card.

Refund goes right back to your card or a check to you. Application service like this doesn't handle it. There's no money that has to swap back and forth. But back to New Mexico, you do have to front the fees. It's a great state. Not super deep on their mule deer. They've got a few key units up in the northern part of the state. Very hard to draw trophy mule deer down there. Tough. Tough. It's really more known as one of the top three or four elk states. Elk state. Ton of variety. 280 to 310 bulls, 330 to 350, and 350 plus type units. It's something for everybody. And they have the outfitter draw versus the regular draw. So if you're going with the outfitters, a lot of times there's opportunities to draw tags with a lot better drawing odds. And so we use that, you know, as well. And we apply guys with outfitters to help them out. Sheep as well. It is tough to draw sheep tags. That's right.

Even though it's a $3,000 up front fee. That's right. You know, if you know you're going to hire much like Nevada for deer, New Mexico has a guide pool for 10% of the tags that go to residents or non-residents that apply with an outfitter. Only 6% go to non-residents that are just on their own. On their own. And then the other 84 go to residents. And so there is a higher percentage of tags plus fewer applicants in the outfitter pool. You'll have better drawing odds. And that does apply for every species. So something to keep in mind. Sheep. For antelope, sheep. Yeah. You know, you'll go, you'll have one sheep tag in the unguided pool and two in the guided. Yes. Your odds are roughly twice as good. Twice as good. You know. From what our calculations were there. Last year it was. Twice as good. And keep in mind on the guided pool, residents and non-residents can draw those tags.

That's right. We apply some residents with outfitters in their state because they know they're going to hire somebody. Yeah. And they just want it all happened. And the odds might even be a little bit better. Yeah. You know, even though there's only 10% of the tags, still might be a little bit better. Than staying in the resident pool. That's right. It just depends on that. That's right. So, great state. Great opportunity. The coos deer average at best, you know, somewhat spotty. But at the same time, they do kill some giants. Just like anywhere, there's just a lot of cover. There's low population base, except for like in Albuquerque, there's just a low population base of people. And so, you've got a lot of these little tiny towns. Around the. And they just, I mean, same thing. There's bulls that aren't named. We don't have that in Utah. Yeah. We name our bulls. We name them all.

And we might name them when they're born. You know. And that's the same thing with Nevada and Arizona. They have names. And there's specific plans on how to kill those bulls and who's going to kill them. And the outfitters are competing against that. New Mexico's wild and crazy. It's one of those places that they've got outfitters. But it's interesting because you just never know. There's bulls coming out of the woodwork that people haven't named, didn't know about. But it's a big country down there. It's thick. Even the burns are still thick with standing dead. And a lot of great feed. And so, we love that state. It's probably good we don't live there because we'd be addicted to everything. We'd probably be knocking down a few. Barber sheep every single year. An Ibex off range every year. Yeah. There's crazy. Or aurex, I meant. Yeah. Crazy opportunities.

Just crazy amounts of opportunities. And so, something for everybody in New Mexico.

So, anyway. Again, one of those states, it's good to supplement with. Other states where you just don't draw forever. There's no predictability. To buy your way in. You can buy elk tags in that state for six, seven grand. You know. The trophy. The very, very best tags are going for 12. But, you know, for good, solid tags that are great opportunities, especially for archers. You're talking six, seven grand. You know. Eight on a high end. And yet. 350 plus bulls. Yeah. You can't do that in Nevada. No. Nevada tags are 17 to whatever thousand. That's right. Opportunity tags. Crazy. In New Mexico. Crazy expensive. You can get them for 12 to $1,500 for opportunity elk tags. Yeah. We bought some. That's right. 1,500 bucks. That's right. And you're still hunting a 300 class bull. That's hard to beat. Yeah, it is. Can't beat.

Especially if you're a self-guided guy and you don't need a guide outfit or all that. You can go that route. Montana. I guess let's jump to that real quick. Um, a lot of people ask us. I want to draw a sheep tag. How about that? I really. And Adam, you've hunted? I have. Drone a goat tag in 2003. Had a great hunt up there. I do the sheep and the moose as well. The big three, so to speak. They're Rocky Mountain bighorn or legendary. We all know that. That's what we all dream of. I set my bar a little bit higher in that state for that reason. Well, it's because you killed a California bighorn, which is a subspecie of the Rocky. I don't need one. I want one, but I look at Montana as like, let me, let me have a chance to kill a 185, 190 ram. I don't need just a ram in Montana. Colorado, you're going to kill 170. 160 or 170. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And that's what you're looking at.

So for Montana, that's the one place that you can just. Dream big. You know, great goats, great sheep. Sheep hunts are generally not very difficult physically. Their moose have seen better days like several states out west right now. They don't make the permit fees for any of those three. It's a flat application fee, you know, 80 or 90 bucks per species by the time that all is said and done. And you apply. Where we get the most questions about Montana, no question, is the deer and elk. Their draw system is a little bit complicated. It's interesting. That's right. And it's not clean. And they've got great opportunities. They do. To try to gloss over it as quick as we can, non-residents have to first, when you apply, you apply, you obtain a general season deer or elk or deer-elk combination license. Apply for that. You have to obtain that.

And in some of those cases, like the elk this year, they're guaranteed. So you're going to get it. But you can't just cherry-pook. Yeah, exactly. You can't just cherry-pook and say, put me in for the best trophy deer and elk units in Montana for the minimal application fees. You can't do it. They get you on the hook for the general license, which the deer and elk combo is over 1,000 bucks. Yes. All right? You've got that. Then you pick your limited quota units. Apply for the breaks or somewhere. For archery breaks or 270, 261 deer or whatever. Whatever. You don't draw. Now you're either stuck with a general tag you don't want. Or you get an 80% refund. That's right. That's the system. But 80% is still expensive. That's right. So it's easier to just do that in a minute like that. But there's a lot of little intricacies about that. Because you can go to do some of the units in the breaks.

Yeah. Every three to four years, you just got to be willing to eat that 200-something dollars every year when you don't draw, if you want to build the points. I ate it this year. So I think it's, and I wouldn't have to buy it. For a big bull. But I think it's a better opportunity for guys that actually want to use that general tag and then go up there and hunt. And you can still kill a giant out there in the general. It just takes, just like Idaho, you can hunt over the counter. In Colorado, you can hunt over the counter. I would say there's better opportunity in Montana. You can take a little work. There's some public land. You're willing to get aggressive? Go do it. Or private land. You want to pay some trespass or whatnot or an outfitter? Go do it. You know, there's opportunities up there. It's just going to take some work and research.

And once you get going, you'll probably end up there every year. That's right. So that probably... The deer, they're hunting over the counter. A lot of them are general. Most of the state. Probably 90% of the state. Yeah. Wouldn't it be... In the rut with a rifle. Yeah. So that's not a good management tactic. Like I said, we're at the exception of Colorado because they're still on a draw system and they're really managing the number of tags that are issued. And it's a deer factory in Colorado. You can't hunt deer in the rut over the counter with a rifle. It does not work. Repeatedly that deep on unlimited tags. So then you end up with a 270 tag or something like that. It's actually managed and limited. And then you end up with some good bucks. So it does. It has great genetics. And people will call us after watching this and show us the 210 inch of the kill last year.

And they're 440 bulls. And they do exist. They do exist. It's unbelievable. It's just for residents, it's a lot easier to jump through non-reds. It's a little harder to swallow their application system for eating that general tag if you don't want to use it. So jumping down to Utah. Utah? Maybe. Do we know anything about Utah? Geez, I hate Utah.

Utah is one of those, I mean, of course, I don't even know where to start. There's so much opportunity in Utah, but it's also limited as well. It's very tough. It's tough to draw a tag. And it's different from a resident and non-resident perspective, too. We're residents here. So Jason's, a little bit of his frustration is we have to pick one once-in-lifetime species and one of the limited entry deer, elk, or antelope. So for sheep, goat, moose, or bison, choose one. So Jason, let's just have it. Let's be frank. How many once-in-lifetime? You've drawn two once-in-lifetime, which is pretty dang good. You do a buffalo when you're 15 or 16 years old. Yes, 15. And then through the maximum point process after they started that in about 93, you drew a desert sheep. Of the others, how many of you have drawn deer, elk, and antelope in your life? You've drawn, I know one elk.

I can't remember if deer. Oh, you drew an elk. You drew an elk and deer. I drew elk. But is that it? Back then, it was a posted hunting unit. It's now a CWMU program. And that's available to residents only. And so, yeah. And that was in a drought year. And your hunting life in almost 30 years? Is that about all you've drawn? Yeah. I did draw a pontagon muzzle back when they had the muzzle in the rut. I drew that. But I was so young, there was no way in heck I was even able to maximize that tag. Yeah. There was giants walking around me. I probably never saw them. You know, I was a young little kid. Okay. And so, I have yet to draw on my once in a lifetime. I've drawn an elk tag on Mount Dutton. And I drew an antelope tag back when I was like 15. We could put in for everything back then, if you remember. Yeah. I drew one of those back then.

That's it. I've yet to draw either. Okay. So, now we've got the general, which we used to get over the counter. We do get to hunt those every year. Now, they're on a limited draw basis. Thankfully, the quality's coming back. I would say that's a bright spot. It's a bright spot. And so, we've got deer tags. Yeah. General deer tags. And from a non-resent perspective, switching gears just a little bit, they allowed, when they started making people pay a non-refundable hunting license of 30, 35 for residents of 65 for non-residents, I think they were afraid non-residents weren't going to, they were going to leave Utah. Yeah. So, they let them do every species. And, well, in that way, they could justify spending. And all it really did was diluted all those other pools, really. It just threw, everybody almost does them all. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy. They got points for every species. Yeah.

It really didn't help anything. And it hurt the people that were probably top-heavy in a few of the species. But, anyway, that's how Utah works. $65 for non-residents, then $10 per species. No permit fees up front. Yeah. So, back on the general deer that you're talking about, that's the only real thing, unless you've accumulated a lot of points, Utah gives, for the limited entry in one's lifetime, half the tags go to the people with the most points. Half on a random draw. Half go random. And the more points you have, the more names you have for those random draw tags. But, for the most part, Utah's very conservative, a little bit like Nevada on limited entry. Like, when you got something, you really got something, but they don't come around very often. So, you guys started off with the general deer tags. It's something you might want to look at incorporating,

because they're a lot, they're not to be overlooked anymore. Yeah, so you can apply for two deer tags. You can apply for the general, and you can apply for the limited entry, and get points separately for each one of them. So, yeah, we do recommend guys doing that. Anyway, what was I going to say? I can't even remember. Or something. I need another monster. So, anyway. Great state, a lot of public land, high trophy quality. We hunt our bulls in the rut. We hunt archery, muzzle, rifle, a lot of our, you know, and, of course, we have some late seasons as well. But, while we, you know, if we rifle hunt them in the rut, we have to give less tags to maintain quality. So, it's tougher. We could give more tags. We hunt them in October, November, and let them alone in the rut. But we like that here in Utah. We like killing stuff when they're bugling.

Well, and, you know, we do have a bunch of once-in-a-lifetime species. They're very hard to draw, but we've got desert sheep, rocky mountain bighorn, free-ranging bison, which are doing incredible. Henry Mountains and now the book cliffs and other units. Those opportunities have really increased. Mountain goats as well have increased. You know, Shire's moose, again, like some other states, are kind of lower in numbers right now. But you've got five of those once-in-a-lifetime species. You've got, you know, awesome hunts. Anything you draw on a limit entry into Utah, with a few exceptions, you mentioned your favorite unit earlier, the Oak or Stansbury. That's one of those. Probably, with that exception, you're probably going to have an awesome hunt. Probably worth mentioning the Dedicated Hunter program for residents. Well, the Dedicated Hunter does pertain to the general deer tags.

And so you can, as non-residents or residents, can participate in that program. You do have to draw to be able to be accepted. It took me a point this year to draw. Yeah, to get just dedicated. And then once you're a dedicated hunter, you can kill two deer in three years. Locked in for three years for that unit. Got to do some service hours. Because if you've got time to hunt, it's a great way to get out there. It's amazing. It's like buying a land on our tag in Nevada. You can hunt all seasons. You can hunt the archery, muzzle, and rifle until you kill a deer. And then you can only kill two deer in three years. So basically, they're saying, well, you're a dedicated hunter by doing that. And then you do some service hours or buy them. Or buy them. This state can be bought, which is nice. Yeah. So anyway. Especially if you're non-resident. Even residents. Sometimes we get busy.

You know, at $20 an hour, I don't know what they're costing at the moment. But anyway, you can buy those dedicated hunter hours that you owe. And then anyway, be able to hunt and hunt extended time frames. And also, you know you're getting a deer tag every year. You don't have to draw the general each year. You know you're getting the next three years. You're getting a deer tag every year. And with some time and energy, elbow grease, so to speak, even some of these general areas here in southern Utah, we know people that would not trade you a Henry's tag for one of their general deer tags because they're hunting specific giants. We have great genetics. And if you have escapement and deer that can make it to six to nine years old, you're going to have some giants. And we have that. I do believe you've killed one or two good bucks. Killed a couple of good ones. Killed a couple of good ones.

But having said that, I'll go through 15 years of getting general deer tags. And then kill one year. Go back to back. And then kill back to back, you know, pair of bucks. And then go six or eight years again. I'm in a drought. So anyway. Maybe one thing about Utah as well is if we're painting a blink picture regarding the draws, and it somewhat is for trophy quality, it's a great state for guaranteed tags, both through the CWMU and Landlord Tag, the conservation permit program. They do cost some money. But you can bypass the draw by a unit-wide conservation tag or landowner tag or a CWMU, a Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit tag, and hunt on private property, much like Colorado's ranching for wildlife property, with an outfitter, 60-day seasons. Again, you get to hunt elk in the rut, deer in the rut in some units until November 10th.

So if you've got – we book a lot of hunts for Utah for people that want to bypass the draw, book a deer hunt, book an elk hunt. That's something we can help you with there. And with the CWMU program, I mean, they do offer a few resident tags to be drawn in through the regular draw process. And so anyway, that's kind of a tradeoff. Yeah, we're going to give you extended seasons and guaranteed tags in trade that the public can come in and hunt for no fee, no extra charge. So kind of an awesome opportunity. What we do like about Utah, we love Utah for big stuff, the variety, and we also love it because people with zero points draw. They can draw. You can draw with no points. And we see that every year. Every single year. That's right. That maybe brings us to Washington and Oregon. So we'll talk about Oregon first.

So it's one of those states that used to cost about $75 to buy their non-refundable hunting license back when Jason and I, Jason, drew a sheep tag up there. Yeah, 2004. Random draw, no points. 2004, I drew another one in 2008. First time the West John Day was opened to non-residents. Yeah, I drew an East Bates Butte, same year it was open. That was just a coincidence.

You know, $8 application fee, license fee, they've jumped that. License fee's doubled now. So it's not an $85 sheep application. It's, you know, $160 or so. You know, they've added non-residents goats. They don't have points for those species. So, you know, your odds are 1 in 2 to 600 for some of these sheep hunts, which is on par for a lot of other states. It's hard to talk down too bad to Oregon because they've been good. They've been good to us. Giving me a sheep tag. But are you applying in Oregon right now? No. Okay, am I? No, no. And so it's one of those opportunities. I mean, they do have blacktails and they have some good opportunities. Columbia whitetails, some of these weird species, but a different species. Columbia, yeah, exactly. Anything that's not mule deer is weird to you. Well, you know, elk, sheep. Roosevelt. You know, they do have a big variety. They do.

And the way they work their quote up, their 10% tags, they usually just designate which units you can apply for as a non-resident. You know, you've got five or six sheep tags a year, roughly one or two mountain goat tags. Deer, elk, and antelope, they have a quota system that is not very favorable to non-residents. It, you know, 95.5, and of those five, half of those can go to outfitters. So you're, in essence, on those, deer and elk going for about 2.5% of the draw permits. Some units will have one tag every other year. Because of that. Yeah, you'll have one tag in the draw for a non-resident that year. It usually will go to a max point holder. And the next year it goes to an outfitter. Antelope is even less than that. Now there's going to be some people that come after us on this Oregon podcast.

And the part of that is they do have a lot of elk and a lot of game, but they're just not managed for quality. So it's hard for us to justify driving to Oregon to go hunt, you know, a murder's crick for elk or something. You know, we just aren't going to do it. But they do. It's a game-rich state. And for guys that just want to kill stuff, like, go to Oregon. It's great. Or if you're a resident, it's a different story. Yeah, it's a different story. And they do have great genetics. And there are some big deer. And we've hunted. We've hunted the juniper muzzle or deer tag in Malheur. And I spent a lot of time up in some of that country in trout cricks and whatnot over the years. And some of that was through these outfitter tags we're talking about, the 2.5%. Some of it was through that. And so, you know, a guy has a juniper muzzle tag, like, go hunt it. If you want to hunt it, go hunt it.

Don't wait 10 or 15 years. Go buy a tag. And they're not that expensive. No, that's right. But they've got some incredible elk units, about three or four of them for trophies quality. You're going to take one tag every other year for most of them. We've been in one aha. That's right. It is. And there's some good elk. So, you know, if you've got a ton of points accumulated, okay, you might look at those. But generally, most people look at it at this day and age. If you're just starting, oh, I want my name in a hat for another sheep tag. And if you're doing that for sheep, it's hard not to say, yeah, for your eight bucks, get a deer and an elk point. And we did that. Yeah, we did that until we drew our sheep. And then we're like, okay. And then they raised the cross. And I'm like, well, you can get a guaranteed outfitter or general season Roosevelt or even black tail tags.

You don't have to draw some of those oddball species. You can go around the draw and go shoot one sometime. You can hunt Applegate blacktails with a rifle prior to that late muzzle. On a general. On a general. And I did it. Yeah. And so, yeah, I can sit around and wait and build points and work towards just a season change. I'm just hunting a different season. It does make a difference. I'm not saying, I'm not minimizing it. It's an amazing difference hunting deer, you know, blacktails in October versus the rut. There's no question there's a difference. But with a little bit of elbow grease, you can hunt the same unit, same bucks over the counter every year. So maybe a little bit hard to justify for a non-resident. It's totally up to you. You can go either way. If you're really adamant and plan for as many sheep states as you can, probably do it.

If you're a deer and elk trophy person, I wouldn't even consider starting it. And they do have points. Obviously, we've been talking about it. They've got points for the other species other than sheep and goat. So anyway, you can, you know, it's a 75-25 split. 75% of tags go to people at the most points. 25% on a random draw. It's just tough to split one tag. Yeah. When you've got one, it's going to go to the max. A little bit tough. I guess it brings us to Washington. We primarily just address the big three, the sheep, the moose, and the goat up there. It's $110 application fee per species. They have a point system. It's well established 15, 16 years now. They square your points. It's random. There's no non-resident quota. Whoever draws the tag gets them. Having said that, the odds are still rough. They are really rough. There's a lot of residents in Washington, hunters.

So they're in the draw, and then the non-residents all draw together. Very, very tough odds. It used to be about $50, $55 per species. It's been doubled to $110. A little bit harder. It's harder to justify, especially 16 years into a squared point system. You're a lot of points. So do you apply in Washington? I don't personally. I don't mean either. So anyway, it is one of those opportunities. We do it for guys. And there's some guys, we call it maybe a money, no object guy. He absolutely wants every opportunity to draw a sheep tag, no matter if it's one in 5,000 or one in five. That's right. And so we apply those guys, and that's what our service does. It's our job to help you understand what you're up against and what your non-refundable dollars are gaining you, no matter what state we're talking about. And so we just want to be honest. That's all. We're not bashing Washington.

No, there's some incredible opportunities in Washington. There's some big sheep, big goats, big moose that have been killed. There's big deer. I've got guys that hit me up about deer all the time. Every week I'm having a Washington guy. You know, I had a guy draw an awesome tag the other night and hit me up. And so I'm not saying I know anything about it, but I'm into big deer, and I know they have a few. And so we're not trying to run it down that way. Just from a non-resident perspective, those are our feelings on it. And adding to that, the deer and the elk is a different setup. It's not just a $50 or $100 application fee for that. Non-residents have to first acquire what we'll just label as the general deer-elk tag. And then you buy that. And there's no 80% refund like there is in Montana. And no, it's not cheap. $400, $500, $600, depending on the species.

And then you can add the quality hunt. Very, very tough to draw those. So there's a very high probability you're just going to spend a lot of money to get a deer or an elk point. We're talking the most amount of non-refundable dollars of any state. That's right, for deer and elk. So that's why we don't cover it. Residence is a totally different story. It's cheap. You're there. It's cheap. Non-residence is very, very hard to justify unless you live in a bordering state like in Oregon or Idaho and you go to hunt there every year. Totally different state. So maybe one state we didn't talk about real briefly is Alaska. We do cover the doll sheep drawing up there. A lot of Alaska, the majority of Alaska, you can book hunts with outfitters any year you want. Go hunt doll sheep in what we'll just label as over-the-counter areas.

But there are areas like the Tope Management Unit and the Chugach 14C units like that. 13. Yep, that they control the number of tags. They set a quota aside for non-residents and residents. You generally, in almost all cases, have to have an agreement signed with an outfitter. By law, all non-residents have to hunt with an outfitter up there or a first degree of kindred relative. To sign in a contract to an outfitter is just a formality. You've got to do it. So, you know, get that taken care of. It does allow you to apply for units that, on general, are going to have more mature rams and maybe a better chance at a trophy ram without having resident pressure flooding there or whatever. They're generally at the Chugach. It's close to Anchorage. It's mainly just to keep all the Alaska residents from just over-hunting it. That's basically why we've got what we've got.

And they do offer great hunts, you know. Well, having said that, you are applying to hunt a better quality animal. You're not going to save money on the guide fee. No. Your guide fees might even be more. It's not about saving money up there. It's about I'm applying for these units that are managed for trophy quality versus, like you said, kind of indicating over-the-counter for residents. That's right. That's right. So we do cover it. It's an early application deadline, usually mid-December. Yeah. So if you're considering that, it usually takes a little bit of planning ahead of time. You've got to get a contract signed. A lot of times people are still hunting in November or early December. Just something to be aware of. We do cover Alaska as well. And we can help you find and outfitters. Just like any of these states. Help you figure it out.

We can help you get hooked up with them, get the contract signed, and whatnot. So Wyoming's one of those states. It does have some great elk hunting. It's got marginal deer hunting, although there's some big bucks. You know, the general areas like region G&H, like Adam, you know, as we maybe alluded to earlier in this podcast, I can't even remember exactly everything we talked about. But the G&H are over-the-counter for residents, and yet they're killing some of the biggest deer in the state. It's an odd situation. Yeah. It's like some of our giants on our general down here in Utah. Being the best in the state. Yeah, the biggest deer in the state of Utah killed last year, well, depending on, we'd have to go fish on nets and stuff. But every year some of the biggest deer aren't killed on the Henrys. They're killed up here on the mountain, on our general.

And so anyway, having said that, you know, some of the traditionally good units, 102, 101, 128. Somebody drew 128 in this circle. But anyway. Good luck, John. Anyway, offer some good hunts, relatively speaking. But it's relative. It's not one of those states. I feel bad. I think Wyoming could be much better than it is. And I think even the residents know that. The residents just aren't willing to give up hunting every single year and buying that tiger in the county. Yeah, and their genetics are great for deer. They just simply don't manage on their, and they do have limited entry units. Unit, you know, like you said, 101, 102, 89, 90. They just don't manage them for trophy deer. It's mainly they have to carve them out of the general units because they get pounded when they're in the general. That's right. So let's just control the hunting pressure. It's not to. Let's grow giant bucks. No.

Elk is kind of a different story. It's a great elk state. And there's something for everybody. There's general season tags that you get to draw every other year. There's units that you now need 11 or 12 points, which is max, and you still can't draw them. Yeah. So all ends of the trophy spectrum. Well, we've killed some, you know, we've killed some bulls up there. I've hunted with my dad and killed a 400-inch bull in Unit 61. Carter Mountain. I'm trying to know. Kind of a weird, interesting name. But anyway, we've hunted 58 in some of these different units up there. And, of course, Adam, you've hunted in Unit 7. I mean, there's just a lot of good opportunity up there for hunting 340, 350 to 380 plus miles. Or easier to draw stuff that's 280 to 320. Tons of those. And then, you know, we left out antelope. You can't mention Wyoming without mentioning antelope. My go-to state for antelope.

Yeah. I mean, you've got, sometimes you've got trophy units. The way you guys cape antelope is amazing. I've never seen guys that cape antelope like you. It's unique. So, anyway. But, yeah. It involves using a shovel. Leave that to your imagination. But antelope have extreme trophy units with high amounts of public land and low tag numbers. If you want to wait that long, some of the Red Desert units, somewhere in between. And then you've got the eastern third of the state, which is heavily, heavily private land. And you can hunt antelope every single year there. It is going to require some knocking doors or an outfitter or landowner type hunting situation. But if you ever want to hunt antelope or you like to hunt them, everybody should be applying for antelope up there. You should be applying for antelope up there. And so, as far as the sheep, goat, and moose, absolutely be applying.

You know, there's a lot of units that don't have random tags. And so, you can see when you're going to be able to draw for the guys that have a lot of points for the sheep, goat, and moose. And so, not goat, sheep, and moose. So, you can kind of see when you're going to draw. And then you can see what your random drawing odds are if you don't have very many points. That's right. They give 75% of the tags in Wyoming. This is for non-residents for moose, sheep, and goat and deer, elk, and antelope. Two applicants with the most points. The other 25% go randomly. Random draw. And if there's only three or less tags. Yeah. They'll all go to max points. And so, you know, we use that in our application strategy for our guys. We're not going to put them in for Unit X. If Unit X gave two tags last year and was going to do it this year, and they're both going to go to people with 18 points.

Because you have no random chance. That guy just wasted sending in $2,200 for a sheep application. But there's a lot of people that do that because they only want the best unit. Well, the best unit is not available. It's the best unit that you can draw in your situation. That's what we do. We do the best unit that you can draw. That you even have a 1% chance of drawing. And if you want the best, we look at it. You need a random chance. You have a 0% chance, but you can still submit that application. You know, we don't do it that way, but some people do. So, anyway. And then it is an interesting state, whereas if there was, let's say there's two non-resident tags and you put in as a party of four, your guys could all draw. They issue more tags. They'll exceed the quota to meet your group. It's a great group application state for that very reason.

Get down to the last tag available and your group's drawn, they'll give you all tags. That's right. That's nice. Didn't really talk about that, but if you ever have a group party applications, it's very easy to pull those together in our application system. Some states have limitations where you can and can't do that, but we can go through that on an individual by individual basis. We don't need to get that detail, I don't think. But for the purposes of this podcast, it was just a little something-something. It's one state that offers that. I think one thing that we really need to cover is licensed application service and having people do your applications for you. You know, are you a good candidate for that or, you know, can you do it on your own? Because you can do all of this on your own. And I like to say it's similar to doing your taxes.

Something you can do on your own, can somebody else do it? But do you want to do it? Right. Do you want to do it? Some people really like doing it. Do you have time? Right. Yeah. I'd say if you've ever missed an application deadline, you're a good candidate. And if you miss one every year or whatnot, it might be something you want to consider. Yeah, if you miss one, you know, depending on the particular application it is, it might set you back 10 years. Yeah. You can't catch up. It's one of those things. We've talked about a lot of these states that take 15 to 20, 25-plus points. One point is a monumental, kicking you out of the max point pool, kicking you out down to whatever, you know. And so anyway, it's a very, it's a tough, you know, a very interesting dynamic. And it's one of those things where we can't tell you if you're a good candidate. Only you can tell you.

But we have a lot of guys that want us to do it just because we're not going to miss a deadline. But they tell us which units they want. So you can still choose your units and have us do them. And some guys are just busy. They're doing construction, doing whatever, forming on jobs. They're working, you know, 25 out of 24 hours in a day. And they absolutely do not have time to do it. But they want to be in charge of the applications. No problem. You're in charge. Just tell us what you want to do and we'll do it. We've made it fairly simple as well in terms of a fee structure. It's either $50 for a state or $100 a state depending on if you're doing, you know, one to two species is $50. Three or more in a state is $100. At any time your application total gets to $500, it stops. It stops.

We alluded to that a little bit earlier when we were talking about some of the states like California or maybe the Washington or Oregon. We did, yeah. We're not just simply going to talk you into adding everything and racking up a bill of, you know, $800,000, $1,500, $2,500 like some other application services will rack up. That's ridiculous. That's almost a guided hunt for some species in two years. You do it for three years, you've got a heck of a great elk tag in New Mexico. So can't spend more than $500 a year with us. And we've, I think, covered the rationale behind our research, you know, in the magazine that we do. We're doing that. We eat, drink, sleep, drawing and obtaining tags in the West. As far as, you know, writing the Epic Outdoors magazine, we have that.

We're going to evaluate your application as yours but also through our eyes because we look at things the way we look at them because that's what we've done for 20 years. Well, and I just, you know, it's hard. I was a little apprehensive about doing this podcast because it's hard to talk about yourself or, you know, what you do and maybe why you're the best at it and why you think, what separates you out from everybody else. But this is something we've lived for for 20 plus years. You know, when I was in college, and we're talking in 1994, 95, I was applying in Arizona, you know, on my credit card to get points and stuff. And I know, Adam, you were the same. And we've just, we've lived it, breathed it, drinked it, and this is the only way we've ever obtained tags. Now we're buying a few little landowner tags here and there to supplement our draws, and we recommend you do it too.

But it's, you know, there's a time and your life changes. And as things change, your application strategies change. And that's what we do. We work with people depending on what their situation is. It doesn't matter what your situation is. Everybody should be applying. I've got multimillionaire guys applying. I mean, because like we've talked about, it's hard to buy your way in everywhere. If it's a $100,000 bill to buy a governor's tag for an Oregon sheep or whatever it is, every time you want to go do something, it's still tough to justify for these people. And so the draw system is for everyone. It's just how you're going to use it and how you're going to mold it to what your situation needs are. That's right. So, yeah, if you have any interest, you know how to get a hold of us. That's hopefully a breakdown on our license application. There's a lot more ins and outs.

We've taken a bunch of time to try to go through the states and how they all work. There's a lot more to it than that. We take it very seriously. Like we said, a $500 maximum each year. If you only do two or three states, that might be $200, $150, $200. You know, it's not a $500 or nothing. You know, glad to help you out, whether it's a last-minute deadline that you need to make or if you're only doing sheep in three or four states. You know, we have guys that do that. And we have guys that do 10 or 12 states, and we do them all for them. Now, we can handle it. We're never going to miss a deadline. We'll treat your application with respect to what you want that year out of your application strategy. There's a lot of, you know, it's interesting. Like we have a lot of clients that have us do their licenses, but we take pride in it. Having said that, Adam and I choose everybody's units.

We put our hands, so to speak, on every application that goes out of the office, whether it be online or paper. And I think, you know, we're going to maintain that. That's what separates us is we do it ourselves. We've drawn a lot of tags this year. I cannot tell you, and I don't want to tell you necessarily, but it's an amazing amount of tags that we've drawn this year. And a lot of it is due to the fact that we're analyzing the odds. We're analyzing exactly what they want, a .340 bull, a .345 bull, a .360 bull, or a .400 bull, or whatever it is. Same thing with mule deer, same thing with sheep, goat moose, everything. And we're analyzing Neil's odds, depending on the weapon they're comfortable with, whether it be archery, muzzle, or rifle. And we're tailoring it, exactly tailoring it, because we want you to draw. We want them to draw. We want them to book hunts.

We want them to be able to hunt here in the West and to be successful. There's a lot of services out there, and we know firsthand, here's three choices. Every one of our guys are going in for these three choices. Let's get it done as fast as we can do it. And we want to get it done fast, we get that, we have a busy workday. But at the same time, it's our job to draw our guys' tags. Yeah, the tags they want, not just random tags. We value the criteria and the interview process we've had with them and what they've told us they want. The weapon type, the trophy criteria, guided or self-guided, physical limitations, all those types of things that they've given us. Match that the best we can, because if they do it for five or ten years and never draw anything, and sometimes that can happen.

You're going to lose clients if you don't draw them tags, and you're going to lose clients if you draw them the wrong tags. That's right. And abuse their points. That's right. That they've saved up. So we understand that because we've lived it ourselves for so long in terms of how we try to acquire our own tags. Well, and it's how we've been so successful over the years. We've hunted a lot of country. We've killed a lot of game. And we've done it, large part, 50%, 60%, 70% through the draw process. And so, you know, it's the name of the game. You have to do it. If you want to go hunt, you can go hunt. If you need some landowner tags, no problem. You don't need the licensed app service to do that. But just as buying landowner tags supplements the draws, the draws supplement landowner tags. You've got to do it all. That's right. There's a time and place for all of it.

And I'd say one of the side benefits to being a licensed application client is we know your preferences in each state so intimately that if another opportunity comes up for a landowner tag that's in a state that you're not doing, we're going to say, hey, call you up. Hey, I've got an opportunity that you may have missed if you weren't a client. Well, and we have guys. We have guys, John, that talked to Adam and I about maybe, you know, hey, I'm willing to go. I've got the points. If you find me the right opportunity with the right private land piece and the right outfitter in Wyoming for deer, I will go. If you can find the right antelope hunt for me in Wyoming, I will go. I've got the points. I'm ready to go. And so we will have openings come up. We call them. We go through the license app, guys. We figure out here's five guys that this will work for, and they will love this hunt.

And we draw them the tag and they go. And so it's everything. It's interactive. It's very interactive. When you're doing a licensed app service, you're interacting with the guide hunt side. You're interacting with everything. And sometimes there's just DIY, so to speak, guys, the guys that just want to do it on their own. Hopefully we've hunted at the areas and we can help them. If not, we have a member experience list where we can send them names and numbers of members who've hunted these units in the past. And in large part, people are willing to help each other because these are tags that don't come around very often. And they're not going to be, you know, hunting against each other, so to speak, every year, year in and year out. So anyway. As far as maybe a timeline, the Alaska doll sheep in December is the first deadline.

Then starting the first of the year is when everything kind of kicks off. So if you're interested in having to take care of your license applications, you can visit our website. The application forms are on there. Just realize at the end of the year, first of the year is that time we really like to have a visit and a strategy building process for that year. Doesn't mean you couldn't call us in February or March and say, hey, I've been behind. I missed a state or two. Pick me up from here on. We're always glad to do that. But looking ahead, if you're watching this, consider it or have another service do your applications already. Give us a call. See if we can help you do it in a better way. Yeah, we'd love to visit with you. We do it every day. And so anyway, we'll do it this summer.

We're happy to visit with you here in July before the hunts get going and get things going, get you over onto the Epic application service and get you in our system. We're a very interactive service, very personalized service, and we'd love to visit with you. And, you know, you can reach us at 435-263-0777. Or you can email us info at epicoutdoors.com. That comes to our secretary. She sends it to us. We'll be back in touch with you. And like Adam said, you can download the forms on the web, mail them in, send them in over the email, take pictures with your phone and send them in, or we can just do it over the phone. Either way, we're going to want to visit with you over the phone and finalize those applications and make sure we're doing exactly what you want us to do. And I just say it's never too late to start building points.

Even if you're older, you know, a lot of us who draw, we're starting at zero. And so you're starting with a lot of other guys. Yeah. Never too late. Just like you said, John, you're hunting Colorado every three years. Some of us are hunting it every single year. And so you can draw a second choice this year, gain a point, you know, applying and get points and whatnot. And then like we talked about earlier, Adam, like you guys can draw with zero points here in the state of Utah. You can draw with zero points in the state of Nevada. New Mexico doesn't have a point system. Idaho doesn't have a point system. There's a lot of opportunities out there, and you cannot draw unless you're in the draw. So anyway, that's our job to get you tags and to, you know, help you on the different aspects of your hunting desires and what you want to do.

Develop zero, one, five-year, 10-year, 15-year plans, plus plans, 20-year plans. And to get you tags and just let you know of the opportunities that are out there. And it's your job to tell us what you want to do. All right, guys. That's it, huh? Yep. All right. Till next time. All right.