EP 341: The 2025 Epic State of The Union and Epic Unguarded

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Hey everybody, Jason Carter, Adam Bronson, Logan coming at you from Southern Utah. It's just Adam and I at the mic. Of course, we like to tease Logan here and there. He might throw in a little something-something that would really make you think, teach him something about the West, huh, Logan? Do I have a lot of wisdom? Well, you got some. Well, good. Then maybe I will. And he's got the final say editing power. Oh, I know. So, I mean, geez. There's some Logan fans out there that will be listening, Logan. Of course, we ought to be talking about some of the things you're looking at doing here in not too long, of course. Hopefully. Maybe buying some guns and scopes and all kinds of stuff. This is a terrible place to work to have some money in your pocket. It doesn't matter if you're 25, Logan, or 50. It never changes. Logan, we got to pay for your wages somehow.

We want you to go to the Epic Gear store more often. The money just circles right back into your pocket. Money movement is good no matter what. If money doesn't move, we're in a recession. Maybe even a depression. Cash is also a king, Logan. Yeah, it's true. I'll keep that in mind. All right. So, anyway, just to start this podcast off, we are now sponsored, title sponsor of Fierce Firearms. Appreciate them and their support of us here at Epic Outdoors. Go to www.fiercefirearms.com. The current ad and the publications covering the Mountain Reaper. I have one personally. Yeah, me too. Pretty awesome. Yeah, I forgot. You got one, too. John's got one, too. I have a goal to kill something with it this year. All right. Why not? Not a scope, son. I'm packing it around. This thing's freaking dirty. You dope yours up yet? I haven't done a dope. I haven't chronoed it. Done.

I need to shoot the thing. I can't believe how good it shoots at 750 yards. So, out here, our gun range out here, there's a target that's like 724, 725. And it's less than a six-inch group. Nice. Factory ammo, too. Oh, factory ammo, totally set up. And what I like about it, that foldable stock, you can throw it in your backpack, and there's just this little, tiny puzzle break hanging out the top. I mean, it's perfect for, like, hunting goats when it's got the weekday only rule because you've got so many hikers in and around you. You could have that in there and put a baseball cap over the top, and they'd just think you've got a kid in the backpack. Exactly. You're toting around your kid being a good dad. Well, anyway, I'm over there with Roger Smithson, and we shot one of those goats on that type of hunt. Yeah, it's a real thing. People. And I wasn't even trying to be somebody.

Like, a lot of times, people are putting up a Trump flag over the top of their tent and trying to stake claim, I'm a hunter, I kill stuff. Not me. I was being respectful. Yeah. You know? You're passing by them on the trails, and you just don't want to. Women, children, not others. Yeah. You know? I mean, there ain't no vegan that's going to be able to beat me up, but I'm just saying, just be it out of respect. Anyway, whatever. This just reminded me of that. You could throw it in your pack. It's nothing. Unbelievable gun. Comes in at like, I want to say it was like six and a half pounds. I'm just going from memory. I weighed it when it got in, and then you throw a scope on it, and it comes with a rail. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Pretty incredible. Anyway, that happens to be the ad that they're running in this publication.

It happens to be a gun, me, you, and John, and I don't know who else here in the office has one, but one that you kind of got to have. One of those new age guns that are like all metal and mechanical. Just like Logan started off with, it's a hard place to work when they bring something new you don't have here and come out with it. We're like, I want it. Right? That's what happens. I do want that, especially. The one downside is my wife works here, so you pretty much don't get anything by her. And I kind of forget, because everybody gives everybody a lot of grief. You know, when somebody gets going down a road, and we're like, holy cow, and then you forget everything I'm teasing Jason about. Janet can hear him. Pretty soon I see her stand up and head Jason's way, and I'm like, I'm sorry she's coming to your office. Yeah, she did. And she goes, what? You need a new scope?

I'm like, no, it's right. Yeah. No, I actually have one. It's right there on the chair. It's a COA. Okay? It's a 99. It's pretty amazing. I think you'll like it. And then the other times when she stands up, she goes, oh, you got a new goal. Yeah, 360 buck hour. And she goes, oh, you got a new rifle? No, you did. You did. Or we did. We. You know, like I always say, what's mine is ours. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you decide to leave me, and then it's yours. That's the way it goes, right? But anyway, pretty good times we have here. Pretty fun. Anyway, if anybody out there is looking to buy one of these Fierce rifles, of course, hit us up. We sell them. And we're happy to deck it out with the scope and everything that you need and visit with you about it. You can obviously go to fiercearms.com, check out everything they got. They sell direct, too. Whatever. Support them. They're supporting us.

They're supporting the hunting industry. And we appreciate them. I don't know how many guns we've sold, Bronson, but it's a lot. I want to say hundreds, okay? But let's just say it's a lot. Yeah. And nothing, rarely do we have an unsatisfied client. I think we've had one. You know who he is. I'm not sure he could be satisfied. What do you think? What do you think, Bronson? What else are we talking about? Moving right along. All right. So anyway, what we are going to talk about, let's talk about the state. I want to call it State of the Union for the West, right? All right. What's going on out there that's piqued your interest?

Well, we're always super excited this time of year. I always like to say I'm batting 1,000 until I'm not. A lot of people say, no, you're batting zero because you haven't batted. Yeah, exactly right. But I like to call it 1,000. I'm still perfect in my apps until I get the first rejection. But I'm excited about that. I am. It is February 10th. Yeah. So for all you guys that are listening to this and haven't done something for your wife on Valentine's Day, better get something done. We take ours to the Expo, so we got that covered every year. She's ecstatic to go to the Expo, right? It's all for her. Kind of a... Is that the way Becky feels? It's all for her. I'm sure. I haven't asked, but I'm sure that is. It's kind of a common thing. But I'm nervous about some of the southern states on the moisture status. We're obviously not at absolutely critical time yet. We are critically dry.

But it's also not time to green up yet anyway. And if something changes here quick, we'll be all right. But I would... I'm watching that in states like Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. The states we love. Exactly. We live in that realm. And that's even like for our Utah general season. I mean, something we get to hunt every single year. It's dry. I've not seen a lack of snow like this. Ever. I don't know. Let's call it 1996 and year 2000. How about, no, 2002. Yeah, it was bad. 96 and 2002 are significant. I still feel like this is lighter. I don't know why. I mean, I've driven these mountains. And Logan, you said beaver, they got snow up there on the Tushers. They're just a little bit further north. My dad came to visit me this weekend. He said, you know... 71's fine. I-70. No. No. No. But he had snow coming over, I guess, Fish Lake slash Manti. Salina Pass. Salina and all that.

So I know it scraped through central and northern Utah. But I guess you said the Tushers got some, huh? Just a little. Got a dusting. Up on top when it's cute as it is. I had guys hunting chukar out there on the crickets and all that stuff by Milford. They were hunting an inch to two inches of snow. Okay. So, I mean, I'm just saying, okay, so... We're excited about an inch or two. We're excited about that. Okay, that's a heavy frost. That's right. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. But whatever. We're watching that. I know this. When I go out to feed the dog, I'm wearing my lawn out because there's no moisture. It's just like turning to... Well, you know, we eat over here at this little Mexican restaurant and, you know, their landscaping is just straight up pure dirt. That's the way I feel like my backyard is becoming. It's just... We went and watered all our trees.

Midwinter, you're supposed to water trees, I guess. It's like how the golf course, too. Like, you're not supposed to golf in Cedar City or be able to golf in the winter. And these mild, dry winters crush it because it's a city course. So if it's sunny one day, they'll open up for middle of the day because it's city revenue. And you run the carts on dry, just grass. Grass and it turns to dirt. And a few years ago, half the greens died during the winter because they just don't go dormant right or they need water probably is what they needed. You know, they didn't fully go dormant. I don't know what it is, but they had to redo like half the greens. I know this. We had an emergency family meeting and we really needed to trim all the fruit trees and everything because it feels like spring's coming right now. No, yeah. Dad did say in San Juan, he said some of his fruit trees are about to bud.

This is February and it's over 7,000 feet. Early February. Yeah. And if they come out, you know they're going to freeze 15 times between now and May 15th. I know. I know. So, yeah, we're watching that. I mean, obviously there's other states, northern Utah, Idaho, Wyoming are average to slightly probably below. But I mean. Which is good. Which is okay from a winter survivability. Usually they are. That's their limiting factor. Yeah. Both Idaho, Wyoming deer are reeling from hard winters over the last 6, 8, 10 years. But the bucks that are there, we're seeing a slight uptick in quality of the bucks that are alive. If you can find one. Yeah. Yeah. So the numbers are way down, but the quality of what's there. And there has to be some relationship. Bronson, the biologist. BB. Bronson, the biologist. Put their biologist goggles on.

Tell me a little bit about, like there's some relationship between the crushing of a population, but yet, and then they come back, the ones that are alive come back better than ever, quality wise. And you would think Wyoming has plenty of feed. Why is that? Well, they do, but. The competition of having. Deer are also what they call, as far as foragers, concentrate selectors. They are not, they are not suited like elk. Horses are the best. Horses throw everything in their gut and they're eating all the time and crapping all the time. They just glean from it, but they just eat all kinds of roughage and feed. Elk are a little bit more like that. They, they, they have their rumen to body size is a lot different than a deer. A deer body size rumen, it's got to be really, really good. Concentrate. That's what they talk. Concentrate. So the quality of feed means more to a deer.

Than, than just roughage and fill it up. Yeah. So when you have a lot lower deer, which you often have after major winter kills or things like that, and then they leave there and spread out over the summer range, they've got everything they want. Yeah. They've got everything they want. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of stays that on sheep too. And they can go and have an entire draw to themselves right now. Like, that's what they're finding. Instead of a batch of a group of 30 bucks living in one basin. Yes. And you live there every day, 360, well, for four, five months. The ice cream gets eaten. Yeah. And it's gone. And now you start eating melted ice cream. Even though to you and I, or to me especially, I'm looking at it going, this is the greenest place on planet earth. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm used to Nevada. Or Arizona. Exactly. Or Southern Utah. It's good.

But if we're talking the ultra best, it can get gleaned off if you just have a lot of it. Yeah. And then, you know, there's a lot of research even on sheep. You know, when you introduce sheep to a place they've never been before, or they're reintroduced, I should say. They haven't been gone for a hundred years. Incredible quality. Yeah. Well, maybe we'll segue into New Mexico. Yeah. Look at unit six. Yeah. I mean, same type of thing. Historically, I don't remember, have it all pulled up. Haven't had. Well, they did transplants way back. Yeah. Let's just call it. So it's a relatively new up and coming herd, but the quality is unsurpassed. Yeah. And yet you look at something like Wheeler that's been established for how many decades? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And then the quality just is kind of, it's dang good.

Let's just say, well, they went through a recent disease and all of that. Yeah. So it's got its issues. But let's just say, generally speaking, regardless of the disease, if they didn't even have disease, the quality is solid. Yeah. But between the Taos Pueblo and the Wheeler Herds, you know, they all go to the summer range and they all, everything keys in on the best of the best in the summer range. Yeah. And, you know, when you get semi-saturated or all that, there's just, it's not like you can say their quality is terrible, but they're not what you're seeing in unit six right now. It's just stupid. It is stupid. I mean, you got two 200-inchers last year and multiple other 190 plus and multiple. And Devin and I saw it ourselves and we're not even trying. We were just driving around. Remember the one I videoed? Yeah. Along with the buck. Of course, we're looking for bucks, right?

And then there's this one long ram sitting there and I'm like, ah. Wow. I sent it to you and you're like, is that in Utah? Just tell me yes. Well, I'm probably hunting sheep at the time. You were. You were. You're throwing me a bone? Yeah. I'll put it. Name your price. Name your price. Exactly. Exactly. No, no, no. Bump the brakes. But anyway, and I think there's the same similarity going on with elk. Generally speaking, when I see large populations of elk, let's just say it's Manti in Utah or 6A in Arizona or whatever, you don't have that very upper echelon. Not the numbers of them. And it might be part that the hunters are really good and we have to give out a lot of tags because the populations are high. Same thing with Manti and things like that. Yeah. You give a lot of tags there. So there's fewer elk that are going to live through the 370, 380 plus bulls. Yeah, maybe.

And maybe part of it is feed and high animal populations and things like that. Remember when we killed Joshua down in the desert, first bull to ever be killed in Area 24. He's the only bull foraging that unit. Yeah, and I can't remember a bigger one since. And it was back when there were no elk down there. You know, same thing when we're finding these low populations in New Mexico of 18, U118. I hunted 38. Yep. And what did you kill? Yeah, killed a great bull first year of the rifle. Mid-380s. Yep. Same thing in 38. Same thing in 38. Killed a couple 380s. But not something that would be normal for the normal person. Like looking at it on paper, not that exciting. But there's places that are low densities that have giants. And I don't know. And they don't stay that way either. No. Because you don't have to remove very many elk from places like that. They double the tags.

You look at some of the, you double it from 10 or 20 to say, you know, 20 to 40 or whatever. And it's over. They're that sensitively low numbers in these places that if you just double the harvest in 3 to 5 years, good luck killing a 350 bull. That's what it feels like. That's what it feels like. I know there's many other reasons for cycles. And we're not going to go over every little thing. But there's just a feeling of some, I like hunting those less populated areas. Because it just feels like there's that potential for an absolute giant. Or maybe there's less people honing in on them. Less whatever they can become of age. And be amazing. So to finish up this State of the Union address, it does feel like it's dry. Nevada, extremely dry. Southern Utah, extremely dry. Arizona, extremely dry. Parts of New Mexico, very dry. We do have a wet period coming up this next week.

Expo week, by the way. Anybody that's interested, you should be at the Expo. And we expect to see you there and supporting the hunting community. So in advance, thanks for coming. We're going to see you there at the Epic booth. We want to visit with you. But having said that, this Expo week, we've got a little breath of fresh air coming. Maybe even some rain in the Vegas country. Maybe let's talk about some of that. They need that down there. Yeah, we got, of course, we're tied in with some friends of ours down in southern Nevada with the Fraternity of the Desert Bighorn. Super good people. Very avid sportsman conservation group, obviously targeted about that southern part of Nevada. And yeah, they've got major water hauls going off right now.

They're actually unloading sheep to other places in Nevada and offering them to Utah right now because they've learned through experience in many of these units that rely, some of them, almost 100% of their water sources are man-made guzzers. Almost 100%. And you would say, well, they've got Lake Mead. Why don't they walk? No. Okay. They didn't learn to walk, so to speak, right? They grew up on a guzzler, some of them. That's right. So it's not as easy. And what they've learned in some of these other years within the last five is they'll stand around and die within a quarter, half mile of that water source. And we're talking about dozens and hundreds of big games guzzers throughout the state. And specific to desert sheep, a lot. You know, we've got a list here of about 30 or 40. They're going to embark on a hauling.

Most of these, as you look at the last known water level, which they have monitors in these tanks, you know, which most of them will haul or hold, you know, 9,000 to 12,000 gallons, you know, of water. And they're at 10, 20, 30%. 50% is high. Yeah. We've got like one at 50 that they're saying in the McCullows. Yeah. Okay. Great. Good job. The rest of them are next to nothing, you know, like you said. And when you have high populations, let's call it what it is, muddies, for example, you got hundreds of sheep there, okay? And they're sucking it down to 25% of, let's say, 10% of 4,600 gallons, 25% of, say, 11,500. Yeah. Okay? It does not take very long. They stand around it and drink. A couple thousand gallons. The gallons doesn't go very far. Right. But in normal winters, they're not drinking anything. They're not even drinking now. They're out feeding.

Because it's been raining and all that, and you've got, you know, feed. At some point, your green feed pulls up. They're getting enough from their feed, and the air temperatures are, call it 60 to 70, 80 degrees. They don't even need to drink. But when it hasn't rained for four months, and everything they're eating is dry, they have water demands on them. So, yeah, I saw, I think the figure we got emailed, they're going to maybe look at Baffin to spend like 800K. A hundred thousand dollars. You know, on these helicopter flight time. In dealing with, a lot of them are helicoptering in. There's like two out of the 30 we got here that are able to be serviced by the ground, and ground crews driving water to them. But other than that, you're dealing with airtime. And it's hard on things.

Now, having said all that, thanks to the fraternity of Desert Bighorns, thanks to some of these conservation groups that come in, we like good times, Bronson. Like, who doesn't like a good time? These, we've been, nothing good seems to last. And I think we're seeing some of that. And as we're going forward in a dry winter like that, you're seeing the effects. I mean, there was, it felt like desert sheep for everyone in Nevada. We had populations of 10,000. It was unbelievable. 10,000. And in five years, I mean, they still issue a lot of tax, more than any other state. But it's really come down and, you know, makes you realize how vulnerable some of these can be during extended periods of drought. And they're mitigating some of that with conservation dollars and funds of able, monitors.

We're talking manually monitoring a lot of these where, you know, you've got biologists keeping track of where the water levels are at and whatnot, reporting and managing those water levels. It's where, you know, let's just say we didn't do any of these guzzlers all. We wouldn't have had an eighth. Maybe we would have. Maybe we would have had a fifth of the population. And they go get water or they don't. And if they don't, they die. And so we've kind of, they've kind of made it to where these barren mountain ranges actually sustain sheep. Sustain a big game animal. Yeah, so now you've got to kind of help them limp along in these bad periods. But it's amazing what if you could just get a storm or two, an inch or two of rain on these things, what it would go. Maybe this next week gives them a little rain. Hopefully. It'd fill them up.

But it also, you know, a lot of that gets trapped out on the rocks and washes and stuff like that that they can water out of. But then as the feed this time of year, if it rains, it's going to green up down there like that. They'll have no water demands for probably a couple of months if we can just get some rain. So cross your fingers. So we've got that. And then we've also got a lot of other things happening. There's, you know, just as a general overview, nothing specific. It seems like a lot of the states are considering all the weapon restriction type things or the technology committees are emerging in all of these western states saying, how are we going to deal with this new age hunter that has all the tools? There's not a tool that you could even dream of that we don't have. Access to.

And so I think there's some of these talks in Idaho, some of these talks in Wyoming, some of these talks in Nevada's continuing down those roads. Of course, Utah, it's always on the front of everybody's mind. And Utah and Arizona are some of the first to really nip it in the bud a little bit and address the technologies and where is that line of what we're willing to accept. And so anyway, we're seeing some of that happen as well early this year, right now. Well, and oftentimes it comes after, not always, but it comes after some tough periods, whether they be heavy winter loss. And like in the case of, like I talked about, Wyoming and or Idaho in two or three years in the last 10, you know, kind of created some of their, you know, population declines in mule deer and things like that. But yet they still are under a resident general season over-the-counter deer scenario.

And, you know, it's hard to give that up. You may not ever want to give that up. So they're looking at ways that we can maintain that, but also not have as high a harvest as we've been having with today's, you know, 21st century. Guard that 30 buck per hunter doe in Wyoming. I mean, they've got it, right? That's their minimum management objective postseason. And yet they're on an OTC for the residents. So how do we guard that? Well, we're going to limit the non-resident tags. So we've got them under caps. Maybe we'll limit that a little bit more. Or maybe we'll deal with shortening the seasons, which they've done, putting antler point restrictions on, which they're working through and figuring out what that means and the results of that. And so there's all of these what we would call band-aids to kind of prolong, I don't want to say the inevitable,

but maybe it is, you know, of going to a draw system. You know, so that's, yeah. And Idaho's looking at Utah's doing that to some extent with some of these experimental. Like, would you? I would love it. We all would want everybody to have a tag like we've always had or our kids to have tags, whatever. But when times don't warrant it, I also, I would err on the side of more on the caution of let's protect and, you know, conserve a little bit more of what we have instead of overshoot it and then really have big problems to ever get it back. It feels like nowadays, I just want your opinion on this, and you and I haven't even discussed this really, but it feels like there's this huge push of we need more hunters, more pro hunting, more pro hunting, more hunters, more hunters. And then when you have more hunters, you can't just have OTC, you know?

And so I'm just wondering, like, what our thoughts are, what your thoughts are. I haven't even wrapped my head around it. It is, doesn't it feel like there's more hunters than there's ever been when we were young? Or is it just Instagram that makes me feel that? It might be because I'm sure the numbers, and I don't know how they surveyed people in the 70s and 80s, I guess, because they were writing paper tags out and every mercantile in Utah and gas station and everything. But, I mean, you know. Draw results came out on Bubble Jet Printer. Remember the Bubble Jet? Yeah. You know, and it was like up in the. Yeah, big deal. Big young Bailey. Yeah. The Game and Fish offices. You could go look at everybody's name, you know? Well, so I'm sure collectively, because of the pure over-the-counter scenario, it is lower.

But I definitely do think it's a completely different type of hunter this day and age. They're better prepared. They've got better gear. They've got better guns. They've got better optics. They've got all of that. And when you then superimpose that and, oh, I finally got a tag and how they sink their teeth into whatever hunt it is, it may be just a general season deer tag, they're effective. If you look at the general season harvest in a lot of Utah units, they're crazy, even archery in a lot of units. Muzzle loader, high. So it's a balancing act. And we're seeing, you know, some of these experimental hunts that, you know, we've talked about in Utah, these restricted firearm hunts, which everybody's trying to find a centerfire rifle that's not a smoothbore, but it's a real caliber, real caliber. Not smoothbore. You mean the cartridge. Yeah. Straight wall. Straight wall.

Not smoothbore, sorry. Yeah, yeah. A straight wall cartridge. You know, yeah, you can use that under hams in situations like that. And I bought one. You don't really want those. I've got one coming. You don't really want those on the Beaver West or Boulder or something like that because I don't have to use a, you know, a slow slug. A primitive. Let's call it a primitive rifle. Yeah, it is. It's a big slug. Round nosed. Yeah. You know. Rock throwing. Versus a 7 mag or a 270 or even a 6.5 PRC or something if you could just go find something drilled and tapped. Yeah. It's hard to find that. So it's a great deal. We are looking into some more options here at Epic Arms. Epic Arms. How about that? So here we have the Northwestern CVA totally weapons restricted here in Utah, which would be Cache, Boulder, Beaver West.

Weapons restricted meaning like a number 11 percussion cap or musket cap being open to the elements, exposed to the elements, and open sight. So we've got that in a CVA. If you need one, call us. Get the best deal out there. So we've got that option. I've got it. I'm ready. And then also an open sight rifle, which we are working on that. And we're going to get, you know, what we feel like are the best options out there. And so all these different SKUs you're even causing. Logan here, his family, and 14,000 relatives over in Beaver because you're pretty much related to everybody. That's true. And there's probably only 14,000 people in the county. That's probably a high estimate. Yeah. Let's call it 9,000. There you go.

There's way less than that, I think. You're Googling it. This is good. You've got three times. We're going to find out how many relatives Logan has. Beaver, Minersville, and Milford. I mean, the other ones don't. AI says. 7,200. There we go. AI says he's got. No, 73. Scroll up. 7,327. Yeah. AI says Beaver County in 2022 was 7,327. That was in 2022. We have two years. Was Circle 4 still alive in that era? Yes. We have two. So it's probably lower. Probably lower. Let's call it 9. They're up to 9,000 guaranteed. Don't you think? No. Jason. No. The Circle 4 closing down. Well, oh, yeah. Ah. We also have people that have left the county in search of work. And other places have actually increased work. I don't know. We've got the wind farm. We also have that lime plant out there to Wardella. Yeah. You know, that's employed some people.

I heard a rumor they were bringing pigs back to the pig barn. They are? Yeah. It was going to be chickens, but now it's pigs, I guess. I don't know. It changes, but some. Chickens seem good. Here in Beaver County, that bird flu doesn't exist. The government wouldn't be allowed to kill chickens in Beaver County. That's right. So anyway. Why are we all? How does Beaver County, even Pollock's not in here, how does it seem to come up in our conversation? Beaver County's awesome. Yeah. A Beaver County is a great place to grow up. And I didn't. I hit the end. Jan and I were married, ended up in Beaver County, but it is no question. I mean, the last of the good places. Three wheelers, no helmets. You're welcome here. Whatever it is. Leave your house unlocked. Right on top of loads of firewood as a kid at 60 mile an hour for 50 miles getting back home. Yeah. It's all welcome in Beaver County.

What a great place. It is a great place. I don't care what Pollock says. I really don't even listen to what Pollock says. People will be surprised to hear something positive off this podcast. It's the truth. If you want to have an old school, normal upbringing, I'm not saying it doesn't have its challenges, but wow, what a great place it is. Same. Monticello's right there. So. Same type of place. So we have 7,327 of Logie Bears relatives that are needing firearms of weird sorts. At least part of those people will be doing the Beaver West. And a good portion won't be. But anyway, if you're up in the cache and you're dealing with the General there or say Boulder or Beaver West or whatever, all of these different SKUs are going to cause a little bit of a need. Try to be working out your problems sooner than later is all I'm going to say. I want my problems worked out right now.

We saw the problems with the one power scopes in Utah had last year with people that put it off until, oh, I need to go sight in my muzzle or in like July and August. And there was no scopes available. So just don't put it off until, you know, the weekend before the deer hunt. Think you're going to drive down to Beaver Family Pond or whatever it's called and pick up some drilled and tapped scope off the family dollar or whatever. There's one of those big pawn shops in Beaver. I can't remember what it's called. It's a sporting pawn. I'm not from there. So I'm not. And they do sell a lot of stuff. You pull in there the weekend before the deer hunt, think you're going to buy a, you know, rifle with tap sights? Or do you think you're going to pull up to Logan's house or his parents' house and be like, hey, you know, will you lend me a gun? I mean, they might. No. Okay. Okay.

That's competition. Good point. Good point. Good point. I guess here's another thought. What if somebody buys a gun like that, anticipating they're going to need it on the rifle hunt, but they're a dedicated hunter or something, and they kill in the archery and muzzle, they may rent that gun out during the rifle hunt. You could name your prize. You could. Logan, that's how you make it. It's a good business model. I'm going to pay this rifle off. You could buy it and then kill during the muzzleloader and archery. Okay. It's a good plan. And it's open sight. So what if they fall on it? That's right. It's not the end of the world. And when the ATF shows up on my door. Oh, you could use it as a handyman jack. Which I guarantee you people will if they were out. Oh, man. Anyway. But anyway, and that's one of the last places to probably have handyman jacks is Beaver County.

Another reason they're awesome. Well, San Juan County, Bronson would have that too. You better have one. It's never not in the back of my truck. Yeah, ever. Especially after Arizona. Right. Especially after my kids rescued you and your little girl up here in the mountains. I didn't have a handyman jack. Without a handyman jack, nobody would have known that story. That's right. So, all right. That's all a good point. So anyway, we have some of that kind of stuff that's happening. And what we're talking about is Band-Aids. Idaho is considering some of these primitive weapon opportunities knowing that they've got challenges. People want quality. We don't have quality. We don't want to go away from the OTC for residents. And so, what are some of our other options? And those are options. Once you go away from OTC for the residents, it just feels like it never does come back. Right?

It just never really comes back from being a draw. It doesn't. And we understand. We're not even telling Idaho or Wyoming how to do it. We understand the foreshadowing of what might be coming. And it's hard to see that. So, if something else could work until hopefully string a bunch of mild winters and wet summers together and grow deer and get things going in another direction, that's what you hope for. But in the end, it may end up just being a Band-Aid and you just have to say, hey, that didn't do it either. And we've got to do something more drastic. Yeah. What we found in New Mexico on this open sight, iron sight, I looked at a lot of the kill rates. And there were some times, antelope are hard to kill with an open sight muzzleloader. Okay? So, I mean, there were, and mule deer at times too, like those multiple power scopes and the wazoo muzzleloaders are so accurate, even 400 yards.

600 people are stretching them to plus. But at 400 or 300, they're deadly every time. That changed. But a lot of the kill rates weren't that much different, which we've heard a lot of. It would just be interesting to know you've got a five-day season, muzzleloader elk, and the kill rate didn't change. Were people just not that picky? Did it kind of change that dynamic? Yeah, like we argued a little bit like in the past, like in Utah. Utah, up until what, 2014 or 2015, you could only use open sights on muzzleloaders and or one power. And then from then until what, 2022 or three, whatever, they went back. They said, well, it didn't change a whole lot. But like we said, yeah, on a general season, people may just not have passed as many bucks early in a hunt when they had to go back to a less effective weapon.

I was going to say, no, I can't just reach out and touch something 300 or 400 yards any time I want now. And it wasn't mandatory reporting. And then also prior, the game may have been more plentiful. We're in a whole different era now. You can't compare everything. But we all know it, quote, saves some animals to have that happen. Call it saves lives. Well. I don't know. Yeah. There's just a difference. When you walk up to you, if you go in your gun room and you have an open sight primitive versus a multiple power wazoo, whatever I want to do with the exception of smokeless. What are you going to grab? I'm going to grab the one on the right. Yeah. My fave. You know what I mean? One that I can kill anything with. Right? Isn't that what you're going to do? Yeah. Exactly. So, yeah. Anyway. Challenges. All right. That was a long State of the Union address here in the West.

Just a little something to think about. Maybe we'll do those at least every month or something because, you know, we're not going to. Let's quantify our opinion of the drought. It's too early to tell. Maybe not for elk. Yeah. You know, in like Arizona. People are pretty well feeling like elk in Arizona is going to be next level tough, antler growth-wise. It's a big off unless it changes really fast and also comes really hard because elk, unlike deer, deer shed, you know, roughly now. They actually shed before elk in a lot of our places. But they don't start growing in earnest until April and May on. Where elk, they start hitting the ground first week of March, you know, all throughout March. And within days or weeks, I mean, they need it right then when they hit the ground.

And you might even say they need their body condition to be in good condition before they drop so that they don't have any lag. Okay, yeah, I dropped three weeks of stagnant crap feed and then it rained. You know, that may not be enough to get off to an awesome start. So, it's to the point here in the next, well, obviously by the first of March, you want something to start falling from the sky. You do. When it comes to elk. You do. You want raindrops, man. You need it. And we haven't even had any snow to even shovel anything in our personal driveways or at the work here. So, yeah, we're looking for some relief there. But nevertheless, it's still a good year. We're just so on the very discriminating side of things. And now we're good enough. I don't know if you could have done this in the mid-90s. Nobody would really know the correlation.

But now with social media and everything else out there, you can see, you can predict it and then see it. You can see the net results. There's less quality of elk in Arizona, maybe less in New Mexico. Dry years in Nevada for elk at times, they're great. They do have some higher elevation mountains in some range that they can eke out a little bit better forage. Than just high desert, Unit 910 in Arizona. Or the Navajo or a lot of those parts of New Mexico. But I guess maybe speaking of New Mexico, the one thing about it is you're also, if we want to, let's break it down a little bit. It's a state, since there's no point system, you're never like, oh, I didn't get what I thought was worth a lot of my points in that state. Who cares? Who cares? If it didn't work out, all you're out is the money for the tag.

I guess in the cases where you hire an outfitter, that's additional costs that you're sunk into it as well. But it's not decades of points. So maybe, you know, a good thing is we have until, what, March 19th? Yeah, March 19th, 5 p.m. By then, you're going to have a little bit better idea, you know, maybe from the elk standpoint. If it doesn't look like anything better now, it might be a tougher year. But if it does start to come, okay, roll the dice, go for it. Rain it in, maybe the top units, if it is going to be an incredibly dry looking year. Or if it, like we always say, you know, if it is going to be a normal to above average year, which it's hard to say that's going to turn around that fast. But if it does, we've talked about it. We've gone out to weird units that have low elk numbers.

And you can go to weird places and sometimes steal a bull off of a lot of either earlier or not prime seasons. Or just units that are, like, capable of it. But the masses of elk are not known to be, say, you know, trophy size. But one or two is all that matters in the case like that. That's what I think. And I think there's so many different options to apply for. And you have three valid choices on your application. They'll go through one, two, three before they go to the next guy. And so a lot of guys are wondering what that should look like. Like, for them, what would that look like? If you're looking for, let's say, a 280 to a 320 bull, which is, for the most part, a lot of people. People would not, if you wouldn't pass a 320 bull, and quite frankly, it's a freaking nice six-point type bull, then make three better odds choices, your choices. Maybe it's something like a 6A or a 6C.

Or maybe it's one of the other seasons, the later seasons in, say, a unit 15 or a 16C or a 16E or something like that. Like, there are options for you other than just the second archery, because that's the best rut, which would be September 25th to the, or the 15th to the 24th, in 16A. 16A and 15. Or, yeah, 13 or 23 or 16D. And that's all I'm going to do. You know what I mean? And so, or even a 16B wilderness if you're willing to be packed in or something like that. And so, you know, or you could make one of those your number one choice and then go with two easy odds. I don't know what that looks like for you. And so that's why, you know, we're all a little bit different. It might look like, on wet years for me, it might be, I might be out in the desert on all three choices just for something weird. Pipe dream weird. You know, let me be with low people.

So, but chances are to have one or two big bulls in my unit. Yeah. You know. I like that. I like some of these weird skews out there in the middle of nowhere. I also have killed, we killed a 367 bull on the first archery. It was like September 7th. I'm not, he was bugling enough that I stalked him, but he was feeding away from me when I shot him. So, it's not like he was coming in, going to, you know, fight me or steal cows or come in looking for a hot cow or anything like that. Like, he knew it wasn't going, but it was going enough that he allowed me to know his location on a regular base and I stalked him. I kind of like that. First archery doesn't scare me. However, when you're going to go down there, it's going to be 90, 95 degrees. When it's a dry year and then you get really dry, it can be tough. I mean, I haven't ever done that specific hunt myself. Never drawn one of them.

I put in for it before. Like Jason said, oftentimes maybe it's my third choice if I do a couple archery, you know, second season hunts, my first two. And then end up with the first season. And usually a unit that I still feel capable hunting, 340, 350 plus bulls, bull. I haven't drawn it. But, yeah, it worked out for you. And some years, it's all about the year. You get some of those years where the early monsoon comes. It's raining and all that. There's green feed everywhere. The cows are in good condition. So, the bulls, everything starts herding up early, which is obviously all a crystal ball as to what that's going to look like in September. But, once again, you're not out. I guess if you're hiring a guide, I don't want to minimize that. If you draw a tag and then hire a guide, you're out a pretty good chunk of money.

But if you aren't, if you're a self-guided guy, all you're out is your time and tag fees. And you're not out decades of points. So, just don't be afraid to try something in New Mexico. We've learned a lot from stuff that we've done that I don't want to go do again. But, also, some stuff that we've tried to go back for because it worked out. And, you know, you know how lucky you got the time just to get it the time you did. So, in some of these weird places. How about Cash? And we can talk about him because he's not here, right? But, how about Cash comes out and he tries, you know, a weird unit because we pushed him there, right? Is he, hey, what do you think? Okay, try this. And he goes out there, goes with one of our outfitters, does a, you know, a hunt with them in a weird unit that has the reputation for a couple of giants but is a no joke sometimes really hard. It's really hard there.

And a lot of times people don't want to go back. Like, they're just like, okay, I kind of, I get it. There's probably a couple alive. But I'm not, like, a huge fan. But, anyway, he'd go back in three seconds. He had a great hunt. How about we're watching the video and we're like, what's that? What happened to that bull? What's that bull? Why didn't you shoot that one? And then pretty soon Logan has this weird look on his face. And pretty soon Cash has this weird look on his face. And pretty soon we find out he had a better hunt than we thought. You know what I mean? He had more. Didn't he, Logan? I had a blast. Yeah, but, I mean, I'm just saying there was arrows released that we didn't know about. Yes. Probably more that you don't know about. I don't know what he told you. I thought an elk had a near-death experience. It did. It did.

And it was like, what was it, like, five and a half yards from him? Oh, yeah. I don't know. Let's call it ten. Just ran him over. Yeah. And we're like, why didn't that six-point die? Yeah. And then you guys all looked at each other like, da. Right? Logan, remember that oath we made driving home that we're not going to tell the details of that encounter? I think this is what my NDA includes right now, so I can't tell too much. I don't know. You never signed that with us. Maybe cash. Maybe cash. Yeah. Well. Anyway. Regardless, he ended up taking a bull home, though. He did. He did. You know, even after that scenario. And it was just, it was kind of a fun moment here in the office, because I get it. We don't want to talk about the tough times, right? We've all kind of had them. And so, anyway. But it was fun to have full transparency. The video proved it. What happened to that one?

But anyway, kind of fun. New Mexico's one of those. You rarely have a bad experience. Now, even if you don't come home with what you went out there for, hunted deer in multiple units, there have been some times I didn't really have a good taste in my mouth. But a lot of it was I didn't have the local knowledge, and I tried to do it on my own. And you're going in some weird unit, like kind of expecting to have this backyard knowledge that I have here, and go down there and try it down there. And these are New Mexican deer, okay? They're hard. I mean, I don't know. Well, and they're sparse. They're sparse. They're not very many of them. You know, and people say, I have a big one in every single unit. Okay. Pump the brakes. I mean, and who knows? It could be in somebody's backyard. It could be out in the whatever, right? Chinook or who knows? I don't know. Out in the middle of nowhere.

But that's what I like. There's a few named animals, but generally speaking, there are animals that never get seen by people. Or guides aren't honing in on or competing for or whatnot. There's competition. Don't get me wrong. And some of the best units, absolutely. 2C deer. You know, moving to deer, I guess, a little bit. I mean, no joke. I would take a 2C tag. I mean, jeez. So people often say, Bronson, like, you know, I don't know if I should apply for deer. There's only a couple options that really make sense. It's right. There are a couple options that make sense, and you should absolutely apply for deer. That's my opinion. Even though there's not 50 different units that are amazing. Similar to Arizona, you could say, well, the Kaiba in the Strips, and all there is.

And if you're going to do another species, which I guess if you were to call, if I were to say, what are the no-brainer must apply for? I mean, you'd have to say elk first. It is known as an elk state. They obviously have a lot of the exotics we can get into later, or maybe not, or just brister them. The oryx, which we talked about a week or two ago with myself. Barbary. Barbary. Ibex are not that good. No. Not nearly what they used to be. But let me just ask you this. Where else are you going to get one? Yeah. You're going to have to go over to the Middle East and do it, or do something else. Same with Africa and oryx. So you apply it, forget about them. But when it comes to, I wouldn't call it a must apply for deer state. I wouldn't. But if you're going to apply for it for elk, you're going to buy their $65 license for non-residents and apply.

I mean, the deer on those quality hunts, it's like $360, and they keep like $13 application fee. So to your point, it's like if you're already going to buy the hunting license and you're doing elk, which more people should be doing elk than deer, I guess, because there's not a, like we say, there's not a big deep list of quality trophy deer units in the state. There's a lot of average and a lot of sub-average and a few great in the state for deer. Well, and I've hunted like the January archery. So fun. So fun. And that, let's just call it 2B, for example, that unit is a total different unit in January. I mean, you've got deer coming in from Colorado, deer coming off the hick, whatever, and it just kind of loads up with a fresh batch, let's call it. Those early hunts in 2B, they are garbage. They're really hard. It's not even something I would want to do or wish on somebody.

I know locals are listening to this and they're smiling because they got the local knowledge. I'm talking to, but even more of them that we're talking to are saying the number of tags that are given there is so far out of whack in terms of being able to preserve what most people envision or remember a 2B rifle hunt. Well, back in the day when they had the youth hunt that was earlier and they gave 150 tags, and then they went to the late youth and they maintained, they had this late hunt of like, say, November 22nd to the 30th. And it went from 150 down to 25. And when they first kept it 150, we were like, what are you doing? We're not even residents from your state. We know different. Like, come on. You're going to cream them. Well, and what would you do if you're, you and Ty, okay? You're Ty's dad. Ty draws a youth tag on a late 2B. You're making, you're saying this is your trophy.

That's right. This is his trophy tag. We've had a lot of member draw. None of our kids drew that hunt, unfortunately. We all tried. But those that did, for those first couple years, it was unbelievable. And then it wipes out the quality of the deer, the migrants that come in, you know, and pretty soon you see overall that late archery reap the rewards of that, which were negative, which was a downturn in quality. So, anyway, now that they've adjusted that, starting in 2023, we've seen adjustment in tags down to 25. So, and really, that's what it's for. It's for the kids. We're not trying to make kids trophy hunters. We're trying to allow them an opportunity to go hunting. And so, anyway, they've also got the earlier, an earlier season youth hunt with 125 tags in October. And that was great. And they started that as of 2023 as well.

And so, they took that 150 and split it up and gave them an early hunt. And then, of course, this is a special hunt. And be careful what you wish for in that October hunt. That's the hunt we're talking about. It's an opportunity. But that's about all it is. You've got a tag in your pocket. Right. That's all I'm going to say. And that's what is out there to get the kids out and going and to not be trophy hunters. Just kill a buck. Anyway, having said all that, 2B, the late archeries on almost all of these units are pretty awesome. We list in the publication some of the more sought-after ones because you only have so many pages to work with. This magazine, every single month, is dang near 150 or just over 150 pages. And so, you can only do so much. Our online for members who join, obviously, get the publication, but then have online odds that cover all the units.

And so, you know, there might be something in there that works for you as well. We cover a ton of elk units. We don't cover as many deer mainly because, what I said a bit ago, it's not deep in quality units throughout the state. It's got a lot of average to even, you call it below average, opportunity type units to just go deer hunting. But the drawing odds, like Jason said, are on our website. You want to go research those. But those that we feel give worth noting for a little bit better chance to kill a quality deer, we include them, including the coos deer as well, which is another unique thing. They aren't nearly, obviously, as widespread as they are in Arizona over dozens of different units, you know, a handful of units or so, plus or minus in New Mexico are, you know, really, you know, cater, I guess you want to call it, that southwest corner.

I contend that you let an amazing coos deer live by not going to New Mexico. I'm sure I did. I just had, you know, it's one of those things. You only do so much. You get it, and then you end up getting something a little bit better in a different state, and something's got to give because they're the same season. And, you know, I chose mule deer, but still didn't kill a deer on that tag either. So, but, yeah, probably did, but it was one of those things I just kind of had to weigh out. You make a – And I think part of that goes back to what you were saying. You didn't waste a bunch of points. So you wanted to have that tag to be able to have the option. It's the same thing as you, and I'm not saying you, but putting an Idaho tag in your pocket or an Arizona OTC. You may not go use it. Oh, I'm going to use them.

If the draw goes good for you, that falls down the priority list, but you have the tag, and you could use it if you want it for a few hundred bucks. You got an option. Got an option. So that's what's good. Antelope in New Mexico is off the charts. The downside is if you look through it for the non-resident perspective, you know, most places we have a guided option and no DIY option in some of these units. When they give 10 total tags, you're not going to have a DIY option on the non-guide draw, the regular non-resident draw. So they allocate at 84% to resident, 6% to a regular non-resident that doesn't necessarily want to go guided or isn't contracted with a guide. You could go guided later after you draw the tag, but then the guided is the remaining 10%. And residents can dive into that, too, if they want. I don't know when they would.

There might be one opportunity that makes sense draw odds-wise, but you'd have to really look at that as a resident to decide to do that. Super tough odds. Not quite as tough as Arizona Antelope because there are, but they're bad. One in hundreds. Hundreds to several hundreds for non-resident, non-guided especially. Even in the guide draw, Jason, some of these better units, they're one in 100, 200 to draw Antelope. They are. But it's a random draw, so anybody's going to win, you know, randomly. Kind of the same thing as deer. If you like big antelope, which New Mexico is known for it, and you're willing to maybe hire an outfitter especially because they are going to be very, very rare if you draw a great tag, you can consider doing that because, you know, they're going to keep 13 bucks. Antelope states, let's just regardless of New Mexico, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada.

I mean, those are kind of known antelope states with the real opportunity being, let's just say, Wyoming and maybe Nevada. Yeah. Actually has real non-resident opportunity. Two numbers, and then Arizona, New Mexico next, and then Arizona. They're like sheep tags down there. They're extremely tough. But anyway, just for guys that are interested, grab a point in Wyoming. Do yourself a favor. Do that. And then Nevada, since you're applying for other stuff anyway, desert sheep that really matter, or elk, or deer, and I just like to tease the antelope lovers because everybody thought I was one there for a minute. Nevada makes sense for an additional few bucks. Why not? All right. So we've got Barbary sheep. There's plenty of opportunity there and, you know, in the draw, and then also even some over-the-counter type opportunities. Yeah. Just depends on what you're looking at there.

You know, frankly, I mean, if you've got the time to really go dig your teeth into something down there in OTC, there's something to be had. Frankly, probably a lot of the residents are going to be those that can capitalize better on those that come across some sheep in places as they're hunting deer or elk or things like that, and some units that end up going back and be successful on. But, you know, especially that Unit 2930 cluster, which is by far the best, you know, public land option for you. They got hunts scattered when, Jason, from like October cleared through the, you know, February, March or something like that. Loaded, loaded. February, I guess, at least. Loaded, and I think you just look at the odds. A lot of times these hunts that are going on, let's just say October when everything else is going on, maybe those are some of your better odds.

It's just we're always using that to go into some rare time frame. We're busy. Yeah, we usually, just like the Oryx this year, I usually put in for those like we always do December, January, February, something like that, so that it doesn't overlap something else. So look at those. If any of those are interested, you don't really have options on the IBEX. You've got archery, muzzleloader, or rifle. They're all tough odds, even the archery. They're not easy to draw. On the Floridas. And so, yeah, if you want to go down there and do that, I think you might as well. It makes sense. Where else can you do it kind of a thing, but the quality is nowhere near what it once was. It just isn't. With the exception, like you look at Oryx or, say, Barbary, maybe even the opposite. Incredible quality. They're doing great. Yep. Yeah. And once-in-a-lifetime type opportunities on Oryx and IBEX.

And so, you know, where is the Barbary? Not as much. You can pretty much do that as often as you can get drawn or, say, OTC. And we also have, you know, private ranches and guided opportunities on that OTC. So, you know, there's some good quality. So, if you want to do something like that, you should call us, like, right now. You should call and visit. Visit with Devin. And he'll definitely be able to get you an opportunity to hunt Barbary sheep. So, all that. Yeah. Seven, eight species to choose from down there. I mean, if you do apply for them all, you know, sheep, Oryx, IBEX being the most costly. You know, you can rack up a bill down there on your credit card of $7,000 or $8,000 pretty easily since they do charge your species fees up front at the time of application. Like I've said, you know, your hunting license fee, they'll only end up keeping, what, $13 per species after all those.

They usually are pretty fast, too, putting that back on your card. Yeah, your results are going to come out like April 23rd if you, let's say you applied on the 19th. Like, you just waited as long as you can. You don't have, you have just over a month. So, maybe if you hit it right on your credit card cycle, you don't even have to have a full cycle. That's probably not going to be the case. You're probably going to go one month with having fees on your card unless you just pay it off. And then get your credit. When your credits come back, you're going to have a credit on that card. And so, anyway, or do a 0% or whatever. Get creative. Yeah. You know, lots of guys are getting creative on the 0% cards. And, hey, now that Trump's in office, maybe there's more of them 0% cards that come out. I don't know. Huh? Never know. You know, so. Haven't seen an executive order on that.

That's one thing I haven't. Executive order. New Mexico can no longer make you front the fees. But, actually, we like the fronting of the fees. I actually like all the different systems. For Colorado coming out in 2028 with the potential Bronson, and maybe this is where we go into our, what are we going to call this? The 10-minute, what were we calling it? The epic unguarded. Okay. Epic unguarded time. Tell us how you really feel. Yeah. I just don't think that Colorado really needed to go down the road of fixing this system that we all like. What's the problem? I know the preference thing, and I get that I'm never going to draw 44. And I want to draw 44 for deer. So, I could say, in 2028, starting in 2028 or beyond. You got a chance. Yeah, I've got a chance. And so, this is good for me. It's actually, I actually enjoy the way the current system is of the preference system. Predictability.

The one thing it really probably doesn't work with at all has been elk. They just don't have enough units to run everybody through the system. I mean, these north, well, it doesn't, we used to just target those north, west corner units. 210 and 201. 210, 201, 1. And then with the 40 and 61 being your fallback, now all those units are taking 20, 25 plus points to draw as well in all the seasons for the most part. So, it's because those people that are chasing the northwest corner, falling back to units like that or others in the state. So, in general, elk tags in Colorado take way more points than they should for the quality that's there. If you just remove those top couple units to northwest corner and you start getting into the mid-tier units of, you know, call them 76, 49, 66, you know, a lot of other units around the state. 40.

I mean, the amount of points they're taking to draw based on the collective or the majority of what size of bulls are there are not correlated at all. But, so you might argue that, yeah, you know, going to a 50-50 split, more or less like Utah gives our tags. That's kind of in a short, short way of what Colorado's going to be going to. Yeah, so you have a chance to draw those, but the odds are still going to be astronomical in the random draw. And then the point, you know, they're now going to, instead of all the tags coming off the top, you only got half of them. So, you're still not going to make any headway on the top and the random odds are just going to be bad forever. But, I guess, if you just like want a chance, there'll be a chance to draw. There'll be a chance. It's just going to change also this whole dynamic of the preference system where you have, let's just call it half.

If there's only one tag, it's going to go to the preference. But, let's just call it half. If you have, like, half, it's going to change that dynamic where when a unit took zero, one, or two points, it's now going to take two, three, or four points. Yeah, it's going to take more to do that. That's a consequence. The other side of that, yeah, you have a chance to draw any tag in the state as long as they have, you know, two donors in tags or whatever like that. And it will be interesting, though, because let's just say 44 draws a certain amount of people. Then, their first choice is 44. They're only going to get their second if there's leftovers. Yeah. So, there may be a lot of people putting in for hunts that used to do points only as well, though, so they could be coming off the sidelines, entering the draw, make those random odds absolutely brutal. Which is what we would do.

But, maybe, yeah. I would, you know, there's a lot of years we do, when we can't draw what we want, why am I putting in? I just do a point. But, now, you'll put a hunt code down and you're probably going to put in for something, a swing for the fence type unit. But, so, yeah, maybe over time, these mid to lower tier units, maybe they're still easy. But, still, when you're only taking half the tags off the top now, you've got to realize this may be harder. I guess what I'm telling people, if you, we've been preaching to people, use your points all along in Colorado. But, if you've got enough to use something on a deer tag or something like that and you don't want to give in hard with point creep, use them in the next three years. Yeah, we also don't want to create this overwhelming sense of urgency. Because, quite frankly, a lot of people will be disappointed.

Yeah, well, or, like, let's just say, let's just say it's a 21 third now has half the tags going to people on the random draw. So, a certain segment of the people are going to do 21s or 22s or their favorite Gunnison or a Gunnison fourth or something, right, a 35 fourth or something where they can't draw it but they think they're in for a random draw. Okay, good for you. You're now out of the pool for the preference draw because your first choice was taken up with something you couldn't get normally. And so, who knows, maybe those odds won't be as bad as we think. But, I just, I like somewhere that's a preference draw because we're non-residents everywhere except for our home state of Utah. I like the different systems. I like Oregon, or, excuse me, I don't know. Okay, slightly like Oregon. I already abused that state and killed a sheep of theirs.

But, I like Idaho that doesn't have a point system but makes me choose. So, I can either do sheep, moose, or goat or I can do deer, elk, and antelope. And, by the way, we don't have a point system. And, by the way, you have to pay this pretty steep hunting license fee that's non-refundable plus the 2.5% or 3% on the credit card fees or whatever if you're doing the sheep, moose, and goat. It's somewhat significant because you're fronting those fees and not so much on deer and elk and antelope. And then, same thing with New Mexico. So, I like that. I like the variety. Yeah, you like the variety, right? And then, you go to, say, Wyoming.

75-25. Yeah, 75-25. And, if there's three tags, they're all going to go preference and no random. But, then, once you get into that random pool, you do. It's not a 50-50 split like, say, Utah or Newt, Colorado will be at some point in the near future like we've talked about. But, there's some predictability. And, then, there's an option on the random. And, it does give people a chance to draw 128 that would otherwise just do points in the summer or whatever. And, then, Nevada squares them or Montana squares them. There's all of these different, you know, point systems that we like. We do. If everything was the same, it would be a little depressing. No matter what system you're on, it would be a little depressing. Because, it's like, you can't play.

It's nice to have one or two states a year that you feel like you can drive the ship and somewhat maybe force the draw at whatever point level you're at. A Colorado, a Wyoming, a Utah general in cases. And, sometimes in a Utah limited entry if, you know, you've got enough points there. But, states or Arizona as well. You can drive the ship on a hunt or two versus random luck or all preference. And, I started this way too late and I can't command anything. So, I do like it. Yeah, I get that. I get that. And, then, kind of changing up the sheep, moose, and goat where, you know, it's going to basically be the bonus points. You know, you're not going to have this preference up to three. And, then, after that, you get awaited. We don't really understand how that's going to affect your odds. So, did it? You know, now it's going to be more of a bonus point system. That'll be good.

You know, it'll be, I mean, it'll be interesting. I don't know. You could wrap your head around a little bit better. Yeah. The other one, you get a random number and divide it by your weight of points plus one. And, like, okay, it really hinges upon what your random number is. Probably more than how many points you have to divide it by. Yeah. Under the current system. Yeah, that one's, you know, a little bit tougher to quantify. But, at the same time, when you just looked at bare applicants versus number of tags, and you kind of look at what you feel like your odds are, you know, I mean, it felt like it was worth doing in Colorado. And, it's going to continue to be worth doing in my mind.

I don't know. Like, the Wyoming sheep and moose, a whole other subject. Yeah. Yeah. Unguarded. Unguarded, Adam and Jason. Well. If you have 20 points or less, don't be doing it. But, having said that, it's possible. It could change there, too. Yeah. There's stuff being proposed legislatively, which, you know, we don't get into, you know, rattling. Every proposal. There's a change in every state because we've seen a lot of stuff get proposed and it goes nowhere. If this changes, then you're going to have to make some serious decisions. The good thing about it, if it changes this year and you decide not to put in, you still got the option this summer to buy a point and jump back in and say, oh, it looks like they changed something. That might, I might have random tags available to me in 2029 for sheep. Maybe. Sheep and moose. You know, if that changes.

So, when stuff changes like that, we'll come out with a very opinionated, you know, you know, idea of plan. But, if they change that system, it's also not. Oh. As a 20 versus 21 points versus 18 points won't be. In a square. Most likely a super significant monumental difference. And so. Well, you look at currently like a system like Montana squared, moose sheep, goat, Nevada squared for their sheep. And, I mean, it's all over the place where people draw in terms of tag numbers. It's just completely random. It's not skewed at any level on people 20 plus drawing at the top. So, you could just decide, you know. The odds are horrendous no matter what, I guess. That's right. That's what you could say. Everybody's points are squared, so you're just. How about our favorite system of Montana using preference on the general and then bonus on the limited entry for elk deer. And then you.

And you have to have one as a prerequisite to even get into the real draw for the other. To get into the other one. And, by the way, if you do points one year on the preference for the general, you have to apply for an actual license the second year or your points go to zero. And if you apply with zero points and buy the point for that year for 100 bucks, you go in with one and you have a 0% chance. Because the 25% random are set aside for people with zero. Not just the random draw, but you have to have zero. So, you have to opt out of participating in the point system to be in the random, which is fine. Counterintuitive, though, to not pay money to have better chances. And you get a point going into the draw. Only state like it. Most people are asking us, hey, you know, I have. I think I have 14 right now, so that means I'm going in the draw with 15. Okay. No.

Except for the preference in Montana. Preference in Montana. You know, and it is weird. And that's why when you have zero and you go and you pay the $100, you jump from the 50%, 60% drawing odds to zero. Paid for the $100 by December 31st. Of the prior year. So, right, right. So, let's just say you knew you wanted to go in 2025. Last December, you would have bought in this preference. Now you have two. Now you have a great shot again. 90% chance to draw the general. If you were going with the outfitter, you would also click that little button and pay it a little bit more. And then, boom, now you have three points to your shoe and automatic shot. So, with this general, not necessarily. Maybe, depending on, you know, what the odds would look like on a bonus on your special limited draws. But maybe you probably just want to go on the general, right? There's plenty of general options.

If you need help with finding somebody, you can give us a holler. But quite a bit of demand on the general elk in Montana. And it's one of those few places that you can kind of command a tag. Every other year. Yeah, similar to, I mean, Colorado OTC for rifle, right? They took away from, that'll be another interesting thing in Colorado. It'll be interesting to talk about the odds in a couple years. What are those odds going to look like on the, what used to be OTCs? So, we're not going to list them in the magazine necessarily. There's too many to list. Well, they're just OTC. And they just went from OTC. So, let some cream rise before it's worth really. And will it really rise when you still have OTC for residents? Yes. And you're also going to give a significant amount of non-risin tags. Pretty hard. Pretty liberal harvest quotas on a lot of them. But it's going to be interesting.

Some of them going from hunt every year that might go three, four, five points regarding a non-risin draw pretty fast. For the same reasons we got done talking about that elk a while ago. There's just not enough units, you know, for everybody to spread out on their elk. Well, now you're getting more because you made archery units a draw. Pretty interesting. Is that 10 minutes? Oh, it was probably over 10 minutes and everybody's done with it. But that's just our real take. We get a lot of questions. And we're not just saying some podcasts just say we get a lot of questions. No, we get a lot of questions on like the Wyoming sheep, moose. Some of these changes are coming up. Colorado, the strategy behind Colorado. Strategy, especially right now, dealing with New Mexico, the three choices that matter. Things like that. So, I'm glad we kind of covered that.

We always try to make it a go in the magazine in print to be very direct in our opinions on each species and whether it's worth the pluses, minuses of it in the system, whether it's a quote must apply for or not. But that's kind of what we're talking about here too. So, podcast listeners get that for free, so to speak. But the magazine's got a lot more maybe detailed approach of what we think is really worth your time and maybe not. Trust me, if you think this was deep and detailed, it's a fraction of what we, otherwise, if we just gave it to you all, then it just is what it is, right? It dilutes it a little bit, but plus what's the value of the membership? Having said that, it's nice to have it in print. It's nice to be able to read it somewhere on an e-mag. It's also nice to be able to go query odds.

I was talking to a guy today and I said, he was going, tell me about these off-range OREX and youth and all of these things. And I said, well, this is what I would be doing. I would be going and looking on our online odds and then just scrolling through the seasons that overlap elk and deer. People don't want to give up their elk and deer. And so, that might be where you get into your better odds and whatnot. He's like, oh, trust me, I was on it for hours last night. And it's a pretty cool, I get addicted to it. Other than by 5 o'clock, I'm ready. I'm ready for maybe some new conversation around chickens. Maybe something at the house. Yeah, the price of eggs. Maybe seeing what feathers Trump ruffled today. Maybe seeing how Elon's doing and looking at some budgets and a few things and whatnot. But I don't know. It is pretty fun.

I'm pretty proud of what we've got going on at epicoutdoors.com. You're going to see it at the expo. We're going to have demonstrations out on the videos and whatnot at our huge, giant screens that came over before the tariffs. That's right. Came over on the slow boat before the tariffs. Just got here in time. John turned out to be a hero. And Adam and I were like, you paid on WhatsApp. You paid over WhatsApp, John. But we saved 10%, Jason. No tariffs. Exactly. That's exactly. No tariffs. And so, anyway, love John. Sometimes he's a little risky business. He came out smelling like a rose on this one, but very easily could have never heard from the guy that his name we couldn't pronounce. Yeah, and you think your credit card company is going to say, well, somebody took your money from the credit card, and there's no way to get it back. So, anyway, good.

I'm glad we've got some giant screens going to be at the expo. A little bit of back history on that. Kind of fun, but whatever. Fun. All right, Bronson. New video. Logan's been instrumental in putting that together. Him and Josh. So, plan on stopping by our booth. 2744. And along those lines, got another shout out to a couple of our longtime partners here at Epic Outdoors. Kenetrek Boots. They always have a booth at many of the trade shows, including Western Hunting Conservation Expo. They'll be there. If you can't, you can check them out at Kenetrek.com. K-E-N-E-T-R-E-K.com. But swing by the booth. Try your boots on. If you're like me, and, well, if you're like everybody. Feel is everything with a boot. I mean, feet are one of the most unique body parts on people's body. I don't know why people talk about foot fetishes. That's disgusting. Well, I'm not talking about them.

I'm just talking about foot. Logan, you have a weird foot fetish. No. You're disgusting. I got nothing. I'm talking about the bones and bunions and broken feet and toes. I mean, I've had a broken toe for 10 years now. Big old 65-year-old guy's toenails are disgusting. But anyway, this is your chance to try them on. Try them on whether you want a light hiker, you know, whether you want a mountain boot, whether you want grizzly pack boots, whatever. They're going to have that there. So try them on in person. You'll have to buy them there in person. But you try them on, know your size. Know when you're ready to buy. Jump online and buy them at Kenetrek.com. Great partners of ours. I've used their boots for 15-plus years. I don't know how long it's been. Oh, longer than that. A long time. You don't have the pair of the OGs. Yeah. Exactly. Another one is PhoneScope.

You know, they obviously came out with that Carbon Pro Series this last year. Awesome setup for your PhoneScope setup. But they've got so many things to rattle off there. Probably the easiest thing to just walk in their booth, they're going to be right across the aisle from us. PhoneScope. If you're not able to come to Western Hunting Conservation Expo, see what they got new there. You can check them out at PhoneScope.com. P-H-O-N-E-S-K-O-P-E.com. But like I said, they always have a big presence there at Western Hunting Conservation Expo. Chance to check out whether you've got a new phone, whether you are going to be getting a new phone. Check out what they got. Their MagSafe accessories. Different things like that. So, check them out there as well. Straight across the aisle. I don't have the number from us, but it's right on our aisle. Doesn't really matter.

They're right across the aisle. For a minute, you can't miss them. They've got a big booth. Oh, Chestyn's from Beaver County. I wonder if that's how he got phone scope with a K. Because scope is not spelled S-K-O-P-E. You think that's how they thought it was spelled when they started the company? I'm wondering. I'm just wondering. He wouldn't admit to it, but maybe. Because we asked him last time he was on. But then it turned out pretty cool. So, whatever, I guess. Right? P-H-O-N-E-S-K-O-P-E. Whatever works. Good dude. We could have. Chestyn. His family. Why didn't we spell E-P-I-K? Why did we not do that? It would actually be better. I hate the C. It might be interesting. I don't like the C. What? What's a two out of three vote? Me and John. Do you want to just vote on it right now? Yeah. Should we just change a few? Well, we've probably got legal stuff. I mean, we've got entities. Well.

LLCs and corporations and ownerships. There's been some reserve spelling and stuff. But anyway. We could do it. You probably can't just change it like that without having. People expect us to spell. Accountants and lawyers involved. I mean, if we make one little mistake in the magazine, which it hasn't happened for a long time because we all of a sudden decided to take our editing serious. But hey, we are a bunch of hunters still. But we do the best we can. Some dudes are better at spelling and hunting. And they tell us all about it. Oh, yeah. They're English nuts and all that. And I'm grateful for those people in the world. You missed a comma on page 53. I'd like to alert you to paragraph number four. I don't think you should use an M-dash. That would have been Bronson. I don't think you should use an M-dash in there. A simple comma would have been better. That's exactly.

Let me put Adam on. So anyway. So in the future, we're going to talk about State of the Union, kind of give you an overview of what we're thinking. And then at the end. I think we're going to get this juicy, unguarded stuff. Epic, unguarded. We're going to. This is going to be. We've already pretty much told Logan and Jenna. Don't be touching it. Not to be edited. We will watch any. We don't have to watch language here very much at all. But sometimes something comes out inadvertently. Exuberance or excitement. But we just said, hey, we're going to speak our minds on something. We're going to get a little bit frank. Maybe that helps you make your own application decisions a little bit better. But there also just may be matters of strictly opinion. That doesn't matter. I'm just spewing my opinion. Jason spewing his. It has no consequence in your life.

We don't have perfect, similar opinions to each other. But, you know, sometimes like. And I can't think of. I actually can't think of one. John doesn't want kids to hunt. Yeah. John hates kids. I'm okay with kids. I like kids. I just don't think the kids should be trophy hunters. I just don't think we should have dads, you know, putting a lot of pressure on kids to be trophy hunters because they get this late rifle tag in New Mexico on a special season. Or even, say, you know, area 241 to 245 in Nevada for the resident youth. Non-resident youth. They get no preferential treatment. But it does for the residents. And, anyway, I just go kill bucks and, you know, just get a few bucks under your belt. Just go kill some stuff, you know, and get bloody, you know. I mean, that's being a kid. Get elbow deep in the rib cage. Yeah.

Learn how to gut them even though we haven't gutted anything for like the last 20 years. Don't show them the gutless method first. All you dads out there, make them gut. I even pull out the, you know, tenderloins without gutting them. Just do the little crease and fill in there and do a little cut, cut. Make every kid do it once and then show them the real nice way to do it and they'll never do it again. It's kind of like driving a stick shift. Have you ever? I haven't. You haven't had to gut them normal? No. You haven't done the whole save the testicles and split the ball sack? No. You've never done anything like that? I've been the bone out method. The what? The bone out method since. Or just the quarters and the back strap and then the tenderloin and some neck heat. Call it a day. All right. And let's go. All right. It's kind of like a stick shift.

Your kids should be able to learn to drive a stick shift even if 98% of the cars these days don't have it. I can do that. That I can do. Good. Did you learn that? Did you learn that? Did you have one growing up? Yeah. 16, 17? A little Suzuki Samurai. That was the first car I went to drive at like 12 years old. Gutless. That is a gutless method right there. Well, I wonder about when you go to Oklahoma, what was interesting, like you go to different places. You kind of went and roamed, you know, kind of thing. Well, they always hang theirs and then you're going to skin it the way they want you to skin it. And then you're going to. They want to take the guts out into a trash bucket. Whatever they do. They like to gut them hanging back. The white tails like to hang it, gut it, and let it fall into a garbage can. I just want to say, just watch, okay?

And this thing's going to be in a cooler and headed to Utah in 43 minutes. And your coyotes are still going to just, you know, have it all out there. That's the one thing I'm going to do is kill more coyotes when they walk in front of me. Like, I just don't think the game is that worked up about one gunshot here and there. Especially throw a little suppressor on. Yeah. Yeah, suppressed. Yeah, anyway. I'm having fun with that. It is kind of fun. I mean, I did have a gun that nicked the end of a suppressor and that wasn't the best thing in the world. I couldn't figure it out. It wouldn't hit the box. And then I'm like, I look at the end, I'm like, there's like four Nicks. That wasn't when you're shooting a .338 through a .30 cal suppressor, was it? No, it was a .30 Nosler. Okay, just checking. No, guy, no. But you've got to think about those kind of things, too. Yeah.

Well, because we've got lots of them. They're .556, .223 suppressors. And then we get others that are, you know, .30s, which we usually make so we can put them on any of our guns. But there's something in the hurry in the dark. Screw it on the end. No, no, no. But, yes. Well, if you can think it, it's been done. So, poor guy that's done that. That's why I don't take my AR suppressors off them ever because that's all they are. Yeah. All right. Well, everybody, we're going to do this once a week for sure. We're going to crank them out like it's our freaking job because, Bronson, it kind of is. I guess it is. We work for y'all. That's what we do. Work for y'all. Yeah. All right. Okay, everybody. Have a great. What is it? What day is today? What day is today? Have a good Valentine's week. It's the 10th, yeah. Hopefully see you at the Expo. Yeah. When are you putting this out? I hope today.

Tomorrow. Yeah. All right. Okay. All right, everybody. Let's have a great week. We'll see you at the Expo. Come down. Visit us. 2744. 2744. Let's face it. If your goal is to kill big stuff, you need to draw quality tags. Quality tags are typically hard to draw. To increase your odds of drawing good tags, you need to apply in multiple states. That's where an Epic Outdoors membership can help. For only $150 a year, you get access to our consultants, our online tools, and to Epic approved outfitters and members-only optics discounts. With unlimited access to our team of consultants and access to the Epic Outdoors magazines, applying in multiple states is easy. No more worrying if you're applying for the best areas, no more applying for a unit where there has been a die-off, and no more missing opportunities where you could be in the field and not sitting at home.

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