EP 57: Hunt Expo, Shed Tours, and Optics, with Kents Optics

so we'll have three different sets of sheds there that have growth scores over 300 it's gonna blow your mind there's nothing like it it's not just something you go do for a quick weekend hunt so it just became a passion of mine anything to do with western big game welcome to the epic outdoors podcast powered by under armor hey everybody jason carter and adam bronson here at the epic outdoors podcast uh just cranking along it's january 31st it's wyoming's elk application deadline today midnight anyway we've been visiting with a lot of our hunters um it's that time of year where everybody's been applying speaking of applying uh there's a couple of different things you can apply for in regards to winning some hunts in addition to the state draws we've got the wyoming super tags guys can apply for those they're ten dollars a piece

or you can go for the trifecta for 30 bucks a piece it's 10 different species 11 chances to win you got applied by july 2nd 2018 you can apply online at wgfd.yo.gov backslash epic outdoors so anyway pretty easy to remember wgfd.yo.gov backslash epic outdoors go on there and buy your chances to win you can do it by july 2nd so pretty awesome opportunity and then uh we're also going to be hitting the expo the hunt expo yep uh february 8th through the 11th coming right up here salt lake city uh salt palace convention center we're going to have a booth there number 2845 it's a great show i believe this is in what jace about the 10th year something like that long time we've been there pretty much every year a great broad variety of western north america hunting opportunities there among other things there's a bunch of hunts to apply for uh 200 different hunts to apply for utah

convention permits every big game species um deer elk antelope moose sheep goat bison these are five dollars five dollars a piece to apply for and then you got to validate them in person which kind of you know encourages people to show up and enjoy the hunt expo and kind of cruise some of the different booths and so anyway it's in addition to the regular utah draw but they're the same kind of tags they're basically you know you apply for a unit particular season if you get drawn it's just like you drew in the regular draw that's right also coming up at the western hunting conservation expo on saturday february 10th in conjunction with that is the full curl society social just a awesome gathering there of sheep enthusiasts they'll be giving away 10 sheep hunts three stone sheep hunts five doll sheep hunts

a desert sheep hunt and a rocky mountain bighorn all fully paid for there are a few um contingencies upon them some of them you can't have ever taken a sheep some some of you can't ever tell killed a stone sheep or a doll sheep just to kind of affect the odds kind of give something for everybody you know if you've already had killed all four of your north american sheep you still got hunts you can win there it's a great great chance and go online at full curl.org and purchase your 50 or 75 dollar basic membership there you can buy additional tickets online there or they will have a booth at the western hunting conservation expo you can buy your tickets there put them in the bin then on saturday february 10th we'll be a sponsor of that event epic outdoors will be and just an awesome event they meet together two three hours and draw all those on on saturday early

afternoon so it's great great opportunity where guys can win those um they're giving up for you know free charge basically you've got a hunt paid for probably have to pay a little airline fees here and there but anyway overall they're basically free hunts so if that's not enough you can come by our booth we're gonna be uh taking memberships for epic outdoors and for new members and people that sign up their buddies we are giving you a name in the hat to win a hunt here at epic outdoors that we're going to be giving away the first part of march so anyway love to see all you guys we do have some show specials going on so come by booth number 2845 love to visit with you you can have world-class shed collections by our buddies the harrows as well as they're selling optics and then of course we've got epic

outdoors where we do licensed application service as well as memberships to our magazine research publication and selling hunts so we'll have the whole epic outdoors crew come on by and let's talk some hunting in this last magazine we did some of you may have noticed most of you most likely a new advertiser for us it's kent's optics we've dealt with these guys for years and years so on page 11 is their is their advertisement there um they deal in vortex night force swavsky zeiss all the big names and these guys are awesome they've actually been uh selling optics for years years and years and and uh sell a lot of them and yeah great prices some of the best prices in utah they're doing high volume volumes that way they can you know pass that savings on to on to you guys so give them a call yeah so with that uh that that is owned by david and jeff harrell we're going to get david on the line

and uh see what he has to say for the next 45 minutes hello hey you there yes i am well uh well cool so uh we've got uh david and jeff uh harrell on the line with us and we just wanted to kind of visit with them we're going to be sharing a booth with them there at the expo um these guys are awesome guys we've known them for years and years they're hardcore hunters in the january issue um as kent's optics and they were in my soapbox i kind of did a little intro there and uh got them on the line with us they're hardcore hunters they've hunted many different western states dealt in optics for many many years and uh just thought it'd be good if we got them on the line and visited with them a little bit and so anyway how you guys doing we're doing really good how about you guys today we're doing good we're doing good it is the wyoming

uh deadline to apply for for elk if you're just you know applying for an actual unit or hunting so you know we've been jammed a little bit but uh anyway it's it's been well we're having a bunch of cedar city weather up here we've been we've been hitting 50 degrees up here this i think it's the nicest winter we've ever seen in in tremont so we've been enjoying it it's like 65 degrees down here today in cedar yeah january i mean after the winter we had last year for the deer to be able to have this uh what a bonus yeah yeah you guys look at it as a bonus i'm looking at the desert saying there's nothing there i am not hunting the desert yeah we got running we got running water year round up here so we don't we don't see what you guys we don't have that problem no you guys don't well uh well as we get started here um i just kind of want you you to introduce uh maybe david you

you know introduce you and your brother kind of where you've been you know where you're uh where you're going what your plan is maybe a little bit of your history as far as your hunting and background like that so people can kind of get to know you a little bit well you know about uh we've been in the grocery business our whole life our dad and uh our business partners started a grocery store here in tremont utah about 35 40 years ago and so me and my brother grew up in the grocery business well that got boring to us we both went to college got degrees and came back and didn't uh didn't go into our our fields of choices and decided to stay in the grocery business well one thing led to another and i decided you know it'd be fun to sell sporting goods for the store so i started selling leopold and burris and redfield at the time this was back when the redfield illuminator

was a real popular scope and so we started selling those type of items and then uh when the when the hunting market started demand in european optics we went uh we swarovski was our favorite so we went after swarovski and and uh picked up a full line of swarovski and became a swarovski dealer boy it kind of took off from there we started selling a lot of swarovski when we became real good friends with uh our rep paul kendall and then he switched over to vortex optics and so we became the first dealer that he signed up here in the state of utah and it's kind of ran from there picked up you know four or five other optic lines and and then it's kind of grown into uh small i mean we don't have a large sporting goods shop and i like what most people are accustomed to but we we do a lot of online not online selling but phone call selling out of state selling a lot of real serious hunters

we try to help them with their gun setups you know they're all their optic needs and it's just grown into a fun fun and exciting business well what i really what i really like is your business model basically you're taking the wives that grocery shop and you know they're going to want to buy their husband optics and spend a bunch of money on hunting so i think it's such a natural that you did that well and you can't beat that you know here you got a thanksgiving week and this grocery store is just rocking and you put out you put out binoculars and and spotting scopes for the wives for christmas there you go there you go you get all those cells you otherwise would never even think you could get so yeah it's been really beneficial you know it's odd people people we get that probably more than any one thing people say you really you're in a grocery store yeah yeah buy bread and rangefinder

but it has worked out good for us we've been here a lot we've been i was i've been here since i was 13 my brother's been here since he was 10 so yeah it's we've been in this well not not to place a long time not to date you but how many years roughly you've been doing it oh 25 at least in in the opt again oh wow that does that does date you guys yeah it dates as well uh so you've been doing a lot you've been doing you've been doing optics what 20 years or 15 years of that or the full-time yeah a full-time optics probably about 15 out of the out of the 25 the first 10 was just kind of for funsies here and there when people come in call it was funny when we first started you know rifle scopes i could count on one hand how many rifle scopes we would sell a year you literally couldn't sell a rifle scope people bought one rifle one scope that was it they were done for life

and now rifle scopes are the king of the optic market you know you just you there's so many different options people are building multiple guns they've got a gun to go hunt pronghorn with and a gun to hunt elk with they got long range setups short setups it's just it's really changed the optic market oh yeah well and you guys seem like we live down here so we know of you and we've known you for a lot of years as hunters and whatnot and we'll get to that maybe in a minute but for a lot of utahns especially up north you guys kind of have the reputation of i mean you guys do a big volume i know we've talked to paul over years about some of the volumes you guys deal with and and some of the deals you guys are known to be super competitive on your pricing and whatnot and so tell us just a little bit about yeah why you're maybe a little bit different than just your normal box store you

know place to go buy optics and maybe that'll lead into a little bit about us having you there at the expo with us and what you maybe have there well one we really focus on inventory you know being in being not just in the optic business allows us to have other revenue sources so it allows us to have keep large large quantities of product on hand and so and so we buy it in bulk we get a better price rate when we buy it in bulk we try to turn that into our turn it over into our customers um so one we try to have it when they when they need it when a customer's trying to set a rifle up or they need that particular pair of binoculars or a spotting scope or tripod or whatever their needs we try to have it that's uno number one in our importance levels try to have what they want when they need it get it to them get to them quick whatever well and i can attest to that i've been out in the field

many times and you know you've gotten a phone call from me and i remember we shipped something across the country once you were on the other side of the country and we had to ship a pair of yells or something yeah and it was like next day air and of course my credit must have been all right because you guys just did it and so anyway we just uh i can attest to that you guys you guys well that's important just to have in stock what people want so they don't have to wait and wonder there's nothing worse than somebody's waiting for you know going on a hunt that they've really looked four two burnt 17 years of bonus points or or or whatever one got real lucky and they're here they're waiting for something and then they and they may not get it that we try to you know get rid of that worry and then uh like i say we try to buy in as large quantities as possible from them

we try to we sit down with all of our our brands at the beginning of each year try to say what can we buy that you can give a special special pricing on or you might be able to help us on if we do if we buy a certain number and then we always we always turn that over to the customer we don't we that's something that's uh important to us is to try to give our customers we're hunters they're hunters we try to give them the absolute best deal that we can give them and still survive one thing i i want to you know i guess going back a little bit as you were talking about that you had this modest little uh you know sporting goods side and i just want to i've seen what you call modest and yeah what what the customer sees is modest but the back room is loaded you know with with crazy amounts of optics

and inventory and so you know i just kind of want to interject that is is i've seen the inventory i know what you guys are packing in that store and it's not just all pickles and jam you know what i mean so anyway it's it's pretty pretty impressive and so and i can attest to that so you know that helps with keeping our costs down you know we don't spend a lot out there we try to keep it all in in back in you know purely what the customer's after so yeah i think it's helped us we've like i said we've done it enough years we really try to get feedback from our customers we listen to what our customers tell us they want and we listen to what our what our vendors and our our brands are saying hey this is what this is what you guys are successful i keep keep doing it let's keep doing it and they they work really well with us they if it wasn't for them we wouldn't be able to to do the

things turn around and and be as beneficial to our customers as we are so we let's um we want to transition a little bit and and we do want to hear you guys have killed some amazing animals you picked up some amazing sheds yourselves but we do want to i guess i guess it just feels like the time to kind of jump into what you've got going for the expo um some of the different inventory that you're going to be bringing as well as the shed tours so i just kind of want to jump into that and then and then as you talk about that maybe we can dive into what created this yeah wear this off why you like deer sheds i mean how do you like killing 200 inch bucks you know well let's jump in let's jump into the expo first the expo me and me and jason have actually talked about it for a couple years actually you

know jason would stop by and look at antlers and and we talk about uh doing doing some things and we've we've done very little advertising very little pushing and doing things as far as optics are concerned so this was kind of one of the it's getting a very competitive market with online sales everybody's competitive on prices so it's just one of those things we thought you know what let's try something new this so this year we just committed to doing some new things the expo was a perfect fit with you guys we've known you guys for years we've done business with you guys for years we've killed some giant mule deer because the landowner tags we purchased through you guys so it's just kind of you had to you that was i think adam's personal tag you had to bring that deer you had to bring that deer up but well i didn't say i could have sent him a picture he could have

been looking at during this and i didn't so i kept it to it we'll get to that in a bit low key okay all right it still hurts a little well yeah yeah exactly but going into the expo we've we've worked hard at you know there again we've we've worked hard at having some products that i think uh people have had a hard time getting a hold of we will have the the new btx i piece available at the expo we'll have some killer deals on all of our optics we'll give as good as prices as we can give but we'll have some fantastic prices for families if families want to show up and and dads and moms want to buy a pair of vinyls for their their kids we're going to have some unbeatable prices there um we're going to have i don't think there'll be anything that was introduced last year that we won't have available there this year for at least to see um or to purchase we pretty well have all the

product that i think people are going to be looking for we're going to get rid of some some discontinued items vortex and some other companies are coming out with new spotting scopes we've held on to some of their older models to be able to blow some out down there so some people can get some really good prices so that's pretty awesome buy and get the best of the best see the best of the best if they're not sure they're what they're after they'll get to look from night force roski um zeiss vortex all their different rifle scopes binoculars and spotters their new range finders are coming out they're going to be fantastic you know so i just want i just i just want to let people know so we're sharing a booth with you it's 20 by 50 um but we just don't want to be the little guy in the booth you know what i mean like you're gonna you're gonna come in there blow things out

people are going to come visit you and adam and i are going to be over there in the corner trying out these btx's yeah well yeah and i want to yeah i want to emphasize that you kind of rolled through that because anybody jace and i have had ours since last summer but anybody that has tried to get your hands on one of those they're not easy to get and you've you rolled through that fast but say it again you're gonna have some bt we will have btx i pieces at the expo we will have we're gonna have as many as we possibly can i'm not gonna throw out a number yeah you might sell some but you might sell some double digit of some sort never know depends on what sells between now and then yeah it'll be double digits we'll have objectives there you won't have to worry about getting an objective if you need the magnifier we'll have the magnifiers there if you you know we'll have it all we'll have

you know we'll have different tripods we'll have swarovski tripods manfrottos pro gts from vortexes we'll have multiple tripod options and so there you go you guys take you guys take cash personal check i mean how are we going to do this we're going to we're not going to do check we're going to do uh cash and then we'll have bill take credit cards we'll be set up to do a credit card any any type of transaction i'll ship it to you i don't care pretty much where you live in the united states we'll get it to you um no problem well i want to get to i want to get to the part i'm most excited about as you kind of blew through i've been to your place in your your house and and and uh where you've stored some of these sheds there's going to be a major amount of giant sheds there and and what i want to it's hard for me to explain to people i've talked to maybe just a couple of my

close friends even even adam and some of the guys here in the office i mean it's unbelievable i've never been in in uh one room that had more big sheds and bone in it than than yours ever in my entire life and i and i don't know you would know it seems like it's number you got the number one shed collection in the world i i don't know how it could be beat i don't know how many uh but shed sets of sheds over 300 inches you have how many sets of sheds over 250 but it's a lot and that's going to be at the booth right yeah that's you know that's been a passion of mine since i i started collecting sheds when i was about 14 15 years old i had a book i was down hunting the book list back when it was just a general tag and i found a grumble of sheds and so it just became a passion of mine then i went to

school in st george uh was able to hit the strip and all of southern utah back in the in the middle and late 80s when it just nobody was shed hunting and then and then me and my brother had the good fortune all of southern idaho basically from boise over to wyoming nobody was really shed hunting so we just had it to ourselves through the 80s and 90s and and just had a blast we found some giant sheds um but just learned to just have a huge appreciation and love for big mule deer just hands down we just you know found out that there it was mule deer i there was very little big elk at the time so we didn't really get into big elk but big mule deer just became a passion of ours and then we started kind of going to jackson hole to the antler cell and kind of seeing okay there's bigger there's bigger out there than what we've been able to find and and started getting getting into the

collecting end of it and we've been collecting big antlers for probably 30 30 or so years too maybe even longer 30 35 years we we have been collecting some of the biggest and the best and not just there's always it seems like there's a bigger antler out there but we've tried to acquire some of the the prettiest best shape dark brown from from the providence of saskatchewan all the way down through new mexico i mean wherever they were wherever big milder sheds existed if we could acquire them we've acquired them we've put the collection together it's been a lot of work we're exceptionally proud of it that's this will be the first time that probably you know that anybody's ever seen it and we're hoping people enjoy it we kind of want it to be uh uh entertainment we you know we're gonna hopefully people come with their families and they're going to be able to see

something otherwise they've never seen not only just see it one thing i told jason that i thought was important when we talked about doing the expo together was that if a dad brought his dad or mom brought their their son or their daughter in there that we they could have the opportunity to not only look at i say 140 inch single but maybe even get a chance to hold that 140 inch single and get to hold what a you know three to four pound shed with 20 plus points on it would would feel like and get their picture taken with it and get to see multiple 300 inch sets of sheds we'll have three different sets of sheds there that have growth scores over 300 another one that's pushing the door of 300 we'll have a half a dozen or more 260 70 class sets of sheds and most of those are all brown solid brown cherry brown color hard white uh things like that and they're going to be able to see them up

close and uh you know see what 210 inch typicals see what 215 inch typicals look like well everybody i know say they saw one but when you put it in your hands it's something else yeah exactly and i think too one thing i wanted to mention but you know before i forget because i forget a lot of stuff but anyway basically you've got named bucks like there's bucks of our generation that adam and i have watched governor tags kill or this guy kill or that guy kill and you're like you'll pull something out of the pie i'm like well this is so-and-so's buck and this is so-and-so's buck and by the way here's the second year year and a third year and and just stuff that my jaw just hits the ground like these are bucks we know about these are bucks we've read stories about we've seen them on the on monster muleys or

any other forum that's out there bow side or whatever and and stuff that we you know dream about and then and then we go up to your house and you pull yeah the actual sheds out and i'm just yeah how does this happen we've worked hard at not only acquiring the sheds but we've worked hard at acquiring the literature or the magazine or the some photos of these particular bucks we'll have that at the expo so they'll get to so the so in case they're they're looking at it and they think all that kind of looks familiar well boom there'll be a picture of the buck and go oh yeah i know which buck that is they'll get to see the sheds and see what the buck and and a lot of times the sheds were actually bigger than what the buck was when it was killed they killed it a year after and you've gone downhill a

little bit and things like that that's what i say about all my bucks is that they were probably bigger but you kill them on the downhill i kill all mine on that's what i say you know but hopefully nobody steps forward with sheds of my buck david and jeff will be able to show you shit i'm kind of scared yeah they might have well they might not even have them at the booth like our our bucks aren't big enough for these guys that's right when you walk when you i'm serious when you walk into our booth which your booth my our booth whatever it's going to blow your mind there's nothing like it you just tell me david and jeff you just tell me somebody that's got more big sheds than what you've got i'd like to see it well i haven't seen it i haven't seen them personally you know there's a couple

guys i know that have some tremendous shed collections i haven't actually seen them i've had people so a lot of it's rumor here saying things like that but hands down we've worked hard at at acquiring the antlers that we have um i know individuals that have one or two that that you know that i'd love to to have someday but as far as somebody being able to come and see what they're going to see i'm looking forward to seeing them together because i i haven't been able to see them put up together like that and and i've got different uh i've got a i've got one little trilogy it's there was a 237 deer that was officially scored and killed in saskatchewan and then uh in that was in 2003 in 2001 his sheds were found and they score 301 in 2002 his sheds were found and they score 272 and then in 2003 he was killed and he net scores 237 so we'll have all three of those on one pedestal

there with the story in the big buck magazine that a canadian big buck magazine with different pictures uh something like that those are that's just something i have pretty unique yeah pretty unique and i haven't even been able to put it together yet at my house so it'll be interesting i'm looking forward to seeing it put together at the expo and people are going to be able to come in and see that see if i mean he's got 22 points on the one side that on the one year and they're cherry brown um canadian brown they have that chocolate color to them um lots of 220 bucks 230 bucks uh we've got and we've got you know those are really hard sets of sheds to come by but what are really hard to come by is 210 inch typicals that's i think one of the hardest hardest set of sheds to to find to stumble across to see somebody in somebody's collection is a is a legit 210 typical set of net typicals

we'll have multiple sets of them there uh doc meyer killed a buck on the poncy gone that uh that uh we we have his sheds we have a lot of different pictures of him we'll have his sheds there there was a governor's tag this year that we have his sheds too that uh is a high 200 gross mid 200 net typical um we'll have his sheds there brown and and a couple others that are out of wyoming that have those 210 208 type net frames they're all just golden color and beautiful wide bucks you know some of them are 35 inch typicals and things like that so just a real basically basically if you're a trophy hunter you like big animals you'll love this booth if you're not a trophy hunter you shouldn't even walk by well and that too yeah and coming and just didn't you know enjoy it appreciate it for what it is i'm hoping people you know we're not we're not bringing it there to to kind of you know

throw a lot of stuff i probably won't even have scores on it as much just i want people to enjoy it relax have a good time spend some time talk talk about antlers uh and uh just really appreciate what giant mule they're rare they're hard to come by they're hard to find they're hard to kill find it a huge set of sheds anymore is it's so competitive and so hard so i hope people can come and and just enjoy theirself while they're there and get to get to see what otherwise i think is pretty tough to come by well there's no doubt about that and it's it's going to be awesome i'm looking forward to it myself just just you know maybe before the expo opens so i can fondle and drill a little bit in private you know some of those sheds and and enjoy them so looking forward and appreciate you guys uh want to team up and make an awesome booth and encourage everybody to come and see us

but you also i mean there's no question that collection for you and jeff has amassed a lot and taken a lot of time effort you know money all the gas all that type of stuff but you guys are also hunters yourselves and that's you know that's probably how jason i first got to know you back you know in the day when we were you know selling landowner tags or talking hunting and whatnot so tell us a little bit about what really you guys i mean you love big mule deer sheds so it's a given it's not like you're not going to want to hunt them too but i've heard you love to hunt antelope as well but tell us what you guys what do you like to do as far as personal hunts the most and and let's maybe dive into a couple of those hunts well it's there again yeah it started with chasing big mule deer back in the in the 80s southern idaho was phenomenal general season tags that ran into

november november 10th november 13th so i had the good fortune of killing some really big deer when i was young and and was it was hunting and chasing mule deer when tags weren't the bonus points and tags were a lot easier to come by so i grew up just total happiness chasing and hunting big mule deer and same with my brother and then as we started kind of mule deer started getting tougher and tougher after the 91 92 winter mule deer got really tough um a lot of tags and in places got cut back getting a good tag got really hard so me and my brother got really uh involved in chasing boon and hunting boon and crockett antelope and went crazy at it i mean we we we chased them everywhere some years three or four tags a piece from new mexico colorado idaho we didn't care if we could acquire an antelope tag we chased antelope and we were very successful uh at harvesting a lot of boon and

crockett antelope love hunting boon and crockett antelope we've our boys are we got young boys now most of them been successful in killing antelope and killing some big antelope uh my brother's boy uh killed the 84 net pronghorn here a couple years ago and it's probably one of the biggest that uh that somebody under the age of 15's harvested so we just we really enjoy hunting record book antelope big elk we've we've killed some big elk our dad's been fortunate enough to draw some tags and some great units and we've had the opportunity to hunt and kill some boon and crockett elk with with uh our dad i killed a boon and crockett bullock fish this past hunting season in idaho just had him officially scored so just just love hunting wait wait what do you what don't just spring that on us like i did see after i did the see the picture of that but i didn't know it netted

it it grossed 399 and five eights the the official measure could not come up with a couple eights to get me over the 400 mark but he ended up netting right at 368 inches well 367 and six eights is what i think his official net was he had a lot of frame deductions he had like 16 inches in frame deductions and he has a nine inch cheater on him but just an absolute gorgeous bull i killed here in southern idaho you're working on a i know you're working on a story for us right oh yeah i've been writing it since uh last fall it's an unbelievable bull this uh i don't know what what's the fifth on that on the on his right side going i mean it's 20 25 yeah he's got it crazy longer than the sword yeah he's got a crazy back in so there's lots of questions that we're going to have to talk to you about after

this podcast is over regarding this bull the tag you know the whole situation there that adam and i want to know and then i'll we'll we'll bring it up let's bring it up i'm back in probably about 2000 and i don't know if it was eight or nine uh i acquired a deer tag through adam and went over to colorado and had a blast it was a four season hunt had to work pretty hard didn't have a lot of weather had to work around private property uh but adam had given me some uh great info on the unit and it uh worked out and i killed a buck that gross scored 218 inches with a 202 frame yeah i remember it i've been to that unit probably i don't know three or four years prior and that was my first trip there and got lucky and killed the 200 inch or kind of you know 2004 or 5 when colorado was really ripe

you know the tag allocation system changed in like 99 98 or 9 i forget now to a draw unit by unit and things just blossomed you know as harvest was reduced and this was a leftover tag unit at the time i was hunting third season and anyway i remember that tag and i joked about it earlier in the podcast it still stings a little bit when i see it the buck not that i'd have found that deer but it's like i end up buying the tag for myself and that was back when you can buy a tag and resell it and whatnot and i ended up just had had a sheep hunt that just kept lingering on and on and it was one of those the writing was on the wall i've i've got to go back into the escalante desert with this guy and that's not just something you go do for a quick weekend hunt and so i remember you know unloading it to you you took it off my hands

and uh so i get i had to go take care of that and then you killed an awesome awesome but inline one of your best one of your best bucks yeah i've killed some wider deer but as far as just absolute stud buck palmated just a beautiful buck it was a fun hunt my me and my brother were able to go over you know three or four days early and then scout it hard and learn new country and had just a great hunt it's just you know i've hunted colorado for 20 years basically and it was just one of those hunts that everything fell together just the way it should not not only did we kill a giant buck we just had a great time had a great experience well and adam and i have teased ever since about this hunter that he had to take and that whole i don't know if you ever been out in the escalante desert when it feels

like it's negative 40 you know those deserts can get really cold and that sandstone and he's chipping away at ice trying to get water i mean it kicked his butt from the time you killed that buck all the way through basically to christmas yeah we killed around like december 17th i mean it was just one of those hunts that it was a grind yeah the hunter would end up he missed rams every time and just kind of ended up going that way and the writing was on the wall after every trip in there i'm gonna have to come back and i'm not gonna be able to call it go to colorado david take this tag it's yours and do good things with it you did and he did well and he did you know i think to me personally yeah some of my some of my most memorable hunts have kind of ended up that way just short kind of short notice didn't have you know it seems like some of the times when i've had all

i killed a really big record book antelope in uh wyoming one year and i it took me 17 days of scouting before i finally found it and it literally the night i i actually threw up the night before the hunt i couldn't sleep weeks before the hunt i look back at it and think wow how tough and you know i mean yeah do i do i i love i mean it's one of my favorite bucks but it was tough on me and now i look back at some of these ones that things just kind of seem to fall together this elk tag i had this year kind of fell into my lap short notice and i was able to go and have a great elk hunt there again it was eight the morning i found the big bull my son my 13 year old son was with me and my brother was able to come out with me that night and kill it with me that night and we were able to take our boys out the next day and we had to backpack him out so some of those things just

kind of i look at things with a lot different perspective than i used to um and so it's it's funny how we get a little older how we think about things and we evolve but it's all getting out there and enjoying it with friends family and that's what we're hoping shed tours and what we're able to do with you guys down at the expo it's just everybody have a good time and come and see something and kind of like getting to go to colorado and and seeing a giant buck will come to the expo and you're going to see you know a 306 inch set of beautiful mule deer sheds you know so we're looking forward to it well we just uh we kind of wanted to get you on the line i know you've got to go um we just kind of wanted to introduce you guys basically let the world know what's what's going to be in our booth um both you guys and us as well and then anyway just talk about a few things

just let people kind of get to know you a little bit know that you guys are hardcore hunters you're out there doing it um there's a lot more than just selling optics we can come talk about hunting and and all kinds of great stuff and so we're really looking forward to i know everybody i've talked to there's a lot of serious hardcore hunters but uh you know mule deer hunters especially that are way looking forward to coming and wasting a lot of time at your booth well and that's what we're hoping if you're if you're a if you're a mule deer enthusiast and you love mule deer sheds and you love really big mule deer sheds hey just come have a good time ask us ask us questions about them um we'll have quite a few uh some really big singles like the lopez but kyle lopez killed that giant non-typical we've got the single off of him from the year before scores 145 inches just a

absolutely gorgeous shed so you know come ask us to look at a couple of those if you if you've got questions about them feel free to ask and and uh and we deal with that we'll grab them and they can even hold them and look at them yeah and we deal with kyle a little bit over there uh guiding hunters and stuff so he'll probably be over there fondling that deer shed too yeah i'm not even sure he's actually seen the shed to be honest i don't know for sure that he's actually ever seen the the shed antler off of it wow that's crazy that'll be that'll be interesting if he's if he makes it here and he can he can look at it so yeah wow we'll tell uh you know i know jeff's there in the room of course we were having a little complications with the audio up there wanted to wanted to introduce him as well but we didn't get to we'll have plenty of time we'll do more podcasts with you guys as we

continue our relationship with you i just wanted a little shout out to jeff i know he's right there and let everybody know yeah he's sitting right here by me smiling the whole time both both you and uh jeff will be there at the expo and and have a lot yeah we'll be there the whole time hey we want to thank you guys too for inviting us uh we couldn't ask to to be with a better group of guys we're looking forward to it we're a little nervous about it just that's our first time but i think we're prepared i don't think we're going to come down unprepared but uh we want to thank you guys uh we epic outdoors you we've been we've been doing business with you guys and knowing you guys for years and we look we look forward to being down there next week with you guys yeah that sounds great so yeah we appreciate you guys doing that and and appreciate you spending some time with us

today i think it'll cut to the chase get people more excited to come see what you got that's kind of what this was maybe a teaser you guys have huge wealth of information when it comes to you know optics what's best for people their setup and all that so invite everybody to come to the expo and talk with jeff and david and their crew and yeah we'll we'll have some we'll have some other guys there with us that know as much about long range shooting long range hunting doing it ethically doing it smart we at least how to set your rifle up you know it's up to a customer decide what they're what what they're setting the gun up for but we'll do our very very best to help them set it up correctly so yeah right on well we sure appreciate you guys we'll uh okay we're packing the trailer as we speak so that's what we're heading to do this afternoon get the trailer and get it packing

okay sounds good guys we'll see you next week all right thank you guys you bet you you