EP: 78 Hunting Arizona with Jason Carter and Adam Bronson

They got some of the best mule deer in the world. We all have heard of the strip and the kaibab. That takes away from a non-roser quarter of the 10%. Your first two choices get looked at. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. Hey everybody, Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here with the Epic Outdoors podcast, coming at you from Cedar City, Utah. So anyway, it's been a while since I've been on this podcast. We'll see if I can even get one out the door here. Jason's still adjusting to sunlight.

Been up in Alaska, yeah, I'm pretty much right. We had horizontal rain. Anybody ever experienced that? Well, if you've hunted brown bear, you have. But anyway, I experienced an abnormal amount of wind and rain. And I'm glad to be back here in 90 degrees. Well, there's stuff to talk about. Yeah, let's talk about a few things. One of the last states of the year. But before we dive into that, let's thank a few people. All right, let's thank Under Armour for sponsoring this podcast. That's all that they do for us, sponsoring Epic Outdoors in many different ways through the podcast or YouTube as well as in the magazine. So anyway, appreciate them. I also used some of their new 2018 gear up there on this brown bear hunt. Pretty amazing. Of course, we had to layer up, layer down. That's kind of the name of the game up there. But it was 30 degrees and rain nonstop. And it was awesome.

So anyway, look forward to that coming out here. Usually it comes out, well, usually forecasted for July. Sometimes we see it in July, maybe first part of August. But anyway, looking forward to that. So appreciate Under Armour and all they do for us here at Epic Outdoors. If you're like most of us, you're getting to the time of year where you're running out of potential draws. It's getting to that. Thank goodness. The stark realization is hitting us in the face. You may consider the Wyoming Super Tag. They've been a partner, sponsor, supporter of ours here at Epic Outdoors. Of course, they've got their Super Tag raffle. It is still open until July 2, 2018. They sell one tag per species for all the big game species. Sheep, moose, goat, deer, elk, antelope, bison. Good grief. What don't they have up there? About one of everything. And then they also set that. Those are $10 a piece.

And then they sell chances for a trifecta, which if you win that, that's a $30 entry. You get to choose what three species you want. So consider going online to wgfd.yo.gov backslash epicoutdoors. And again, you've got to tell July 2 to do that. And keep the draw dream alive one more way. Yeah. And while we're talking about their raffle, let's talk about our raffle. We're giving away a stone sheep hunt here. Here in about, what, two weeks? A week and a half. Yeah. Something like that. So anyway, you can go online, epicoutdoors.com, and buy some raffle tickets for the hunt. We're giving away. It just barely came available. It's a $40,000 stone sheep hunt. And it'll be very good drawing-ons because there's a short window to apply. And you have to be in sheep shape right now. This isn't something you can prepare for a year. It's going to come down the pipe at you here in the next few months.

So anyway, epicoutdoors.com, the Wyoming Game and Fish. Obviously, you can get into their raffle as well. Also, a couple other ways to win a hunt if you don't have anything going. All right. One other thing I want to talk about, I guess. I was up at Thompson Long Range Course this last weekend. Pretty awesome. Well, Mark Thompson's a good friend of ours. He's been a good friend for many, many different years. He's kind of what I consider one of the pioneers in the long-range shooting industry. He started doing it. He was one of the first that I ever knew that was doing it. And there was just kind of when the turrets were getting going and then the holdover reticles. Mark specializes in holdover reticle. He worked with Leupold, got his own reticle. I guess we could kind of call it a, you know, Mark's personal line of rifle scopes.

But anyway, he gets pallets of them at a time and works with Weatherby as well. And so he's developed a long-range system in several different calibers. And they're awesome. They're awesome rifles. You can go on to YouTube, check out our weekend. We had a great, great opportunity to spend a lot of time with them as well as some guys that were going through the course. So him and Scott Thompson, good people. Scott, he's another fellow mule deer freak, guru. He's knocking down some big old bucks. And so anyway, I wish him the worst of luck this year.

So anyway, you can go to ThompsonLongRange.com. Good guys, super good guys, good hunters. They're good people to be affiliated with. One quick, I guess we'll do, we usually do this time of year, a quick announcement of the upcoming application deadlines. By the time you hear this, you may think the Idaho deer, elk, and antelope deadline has come and gone. It normally is the 5th of June, but has been due to technical malfunctions of, pardon the pun, epic proportions. They have extended it by $40. Don't use our name with mistakes and otherwise frustrating situations. But it's been a cluster, cluster. Let's just leave it at that. And they've extended their deer, elk, and antelope deadline until midnight or 1159, I guess, on the 7th of June. So keep that on your calendars. Moving forward, that's about it. And then might as well jump into Arizona. Just diving right into that.

The deadline is June 12th. Coming right up here in a week or so. That is for the sheep, deer, and one of the bison opportunities. And so I don't know where you want to start, Jason, but let's tear that apart. You know, it is a great deer and sheep state from a quality standpoint. I mean, it's not one of those states that you can build consistent hunting plans around unless you're, frankly, unless you're hunting coos deer on the earlier hunts. Those can be done rather easily. But if you're a trophy, trophy mule deer hunter or a sheep hunter, it's a long time in between tags generally. That's right, 100%. Adam and I have been applying for Arizona for I don't know how long, ever since we were little kids, you know. Geez, I guess we were little kids in the 90s, it feels like. But anyway, maybe even a little earlier than that, late 80s, 90s, and still have yet to draw a sheep tag.

So we've got a lot of points built up. It is a great opportunity, a great state to apply in if you're looking to kill a desert sheep, which most people are. And so anyway, it's a must-apply for state in our opinion. Very inexpensive to apply as far as you don't have to, you know, front their tag fees. Because you are in a $160 hunting license and then a minimum, you know, state or application fee per species. So anyway, well worth gaining points. Once you buy that hunting license, you can gain a point for anything you apply for, for those three species. And so, except with, and kind of interesting in regards to the bison, you can get two points a year. And so this is one of those application periods. It's not like got their awesome wazoo units to apply for bull bison. It's more of like a cow and designated bison hunt. And so we've kind of explained that on page 61.

But nevertheless, well worth getting the point. Yeah, we recommend right now for bison just do points only on this application period. And come October, when the other one opens up, that's the time they offer the better hunts. Just real quickly, as far as maximum points and how the point system works, maximum points for sheep right now going into 2018 is 29. And there's only like 69 people left. And, you know, they're roughly taking 20 a year out because there's about 100, 110 sheep tags a year. Arizona issues 20% of their tags to the people with the most points. And when they run that sheep maximum point draw first, there's going to be roughly 20 of those people get their tags. And the rest of them go randomly. Now, in the case of deer, maximum points is 21. And when it comes to running the draw for deer in a unit with, say, 80 permits, and they run a maximum point draw,

non-residents are limited to 10% of an individual deer unit's hunt quota, which would be 8. When they run the maximum point draw first, non-residents can only gobble up half the non-resident available quota in a hunt in the maximum point draw and make the other half available to the random draw. So in a unit with 80 tags, non-residents could draw up to four of those in the max point draw and up to four in the random draw. It's really a great opportunity for guys that don't, if you don't even have zero points, you can draw one of these coveted tags out on the strip or something like that, where kind of a change, those guys that do have 21 points feel a little bit bad for them because when they did make that change, actually decreased their drawing odds of getting one of those max point tags. Nevertheless, they had to kind of fix it.

It was one of those things where, you know, there's two residents with 21 points. As the time we printed this, basically we pulled the data from March 15th of 18, and then there's 121 non-residents with that same number of points. And so as you can see, we pick up our non-resident quota entirely in the max point tier in the best units. And so there was just no opportunity for some of these better units. Let's call them the five, six best opportunities, and you just end up, you know, meeting our quota in that max point tier. And so anyway, they did have to change it at some point, and then they changed it. People that still had max were just, you know, kind of holding on. And obviously they still have, as then Adam talked about the 80 tags and the four, they would still have four that would go to them versus eight, which went to them in prior years.

And so anyway, kind of interesting, a little bit frustrating for people that have been waiting for a long time, but also a great opportunity for people like me that have kids that, you know, obviously would never have had max and never will have max. Yep. It's something to keep in mind. You can draw the first year. And in essence, how the draw works, I guess, your first two choices are considered for both sheep and deer before moving on to the next applicant. So a lot of states around the West, your first choice, it's kind of a one and done. There's a couple that do three or Nevada does five. But Arizona, your first two choices get looked at before moving to the next applicant. Now they will allow you to put a third, fourth, and fifth choice down on there for sheep. It's totally a waste of time. But for deer, if you put a third, fourth, or fifth choice down there,

it would be a unit that was 100% draw for all first and second choice applicants, and there were still tags left over. If you draw it as a third, fourth, or fifth choice, your points are still gone. Go to zero with a leftover tag. So be careful of that. So don't, you know, we highly recommend, unless you're really trying to get a tag, we recommend going for, and we're all, that sounded stupid, but we're all trying to get tags. But if you're trying to get any tag, whatever tag, you know, an average mule deer or coos deer tag around the state, fill it up with five, okay. But if you're protecting points to some extent and waiting for what you want, only list two choices. Like we said, they run the maximum point draw first and then the random draw for deer. Sure. Maybe let's dive into that unless you've got something else you want to talk to. Let's dive into deer. Oh, yeah.

Let's talk about deer before we talk about sheep. You know, they got some of the best mule deer in the world. We all heard of the strip and the kaibab and units like that that have the reputation unparalleled pretty much. And that's, you know, understandably where most of the attention and most of our questions get is, is how is the strip, how is the kaibab. And I guess in this year, how has the rains been? I mean, it's one of those, it's had spurts throughout this spring. Who knows what's going to happen this year. Of some flurries and when it rains at all down there, we've been excited, I guess, hopeful. But in general terms, it's pretty dang dry. I know we spent time, Jason, with our kids and walking down on the kaibab hunting turkeys. And we've been there the last five years or more in a row. And there was like nothing this year. No snow.

Usually you're busting drifts and there's roads you can't get to. And there was none of that this year. There wasn't. And, you know, it's been a little bit dry and tough down there this year. It'll be interesting. When they did get some rain, it did hit the strip. And so, you know, I guess we're going to find out. It's just a matter of time to figure it out. I know there's some of that country like that 383C has been producing some big bucks. You know, Juan has been producing a few big bucks. They're extremely dry, dealing with forest fire danger and all kinds of stuff, shutting down the forest already. And so, anyway, kind of interesting, you know. So, before we move along too far, I just want to note Nicole Rims' buck on the front cover. What a giant. Come off the strip. And then that Larry Wurton B in kind of my take there at the front article.

We spent some time with him and that was on 12B. And Adam and I both spent a lot of time on 12B, especially back when I drew my tag out there. And it was an awesome hunt. A lot of fun. And Larry, we killed a stud of a buck with Sam Derringer. We're Derringer Outfitters. He's a good guy, good friend of both Adam and I's. And we have a lot of respect for him. And so, as you can tell, I mean, there's just 200-inch deer in Arizona go together. You just can't quite talk about one without the other. And so, anyway, awesome opportunities for guys. You know, we do have, like Adam talked about, the Kaibab a little bit. There's some easier-to-draw archery Kaibab hunts. And those are just kind of tough. You know, guys see them or whatnot, but it's just tough to actually knock one down. They're just a lot of thick country up there. And they give a lot of tags.

I mean, the Kaibab archery hunt, you know, they give 450. That's down almost half of what it was four or five years ago. And, I mean, by all accounts and from the bucks coming off of it, the Kaibab, Jason, is probably in the last 10 years or so, it's not been better than it has been producing right now. This last year, those early hunts, like what we did on that 12B West early, produced some absolute giants. And so, and I don't know if there's a rhyme or reason to it. Guys are just, like, a little shocked. Yeah. Some of the best bucks came off the early rifles. Well, had a little bit of the right weather combination, got more of the deer drifting to where the mid to lower parts of those units. They're not high elevation to begin with, but they just got them moving. So, they weren't spread out quite as much from top to bottom.

And like we talked about earlier, they got the best genetics in the world there. And if you're in no man's land somewhere between 0 and 21, and you're not able to earn a maximum point tag, say, with 16, 17 plus points, and you see that coming on a muzzleloader or a late rifle, then you've got to be somewhat realistic because at least maybe put a late hunt as your first choice. But you might consider in the right year, a lean year, you don't have a lot of tags, putting an early Kaibab or early 12B West early hunt down, and strapping your boots on and going for it. I want to talk about the max point tag. Just kind of define that a little bit better for some of these guys that are listening. When we're talking about a max point tag, it doesn't just mean 21 points. 21 points is max, but it all depends on who applies with what points.

There's some of these units, and you can see in our magazine. You can go to whatever. Let's go to, you know, anything. Let me look here. How about a 6A Coos Deer Rifle? We've got a December 14th hunt. But, you know, in the max draw last year, it was guys with 9 points were max. So max points means 9. As relative to the unit you applied for. Yeah. So it's just based on demand. And some of the Kaibab late hunts, you know, the 12A West late hunts, I mean, they took one off of max, true max. Last year max was 20. You needed 20 to be in the running on 13A and 13B. But if you had 19, you were on the running with 12A West late. You did need 20 on 12B late, but 12B West late needed 19 there. So pay attention to the tables. If you're one or two behind, keeping in mind they've got the loyalty point.

If you've ever broken five years of consecutive applications within the last five years, you lost that until you get it back, you're not going to get that point. Or if you've never taken an Arizona game and fish hunter education course and gotten that point, you don't have max. If you're missing, you know, either one of those, but you have the ability to get it, it's a pretty big deal to go get it. So you would have needed to apply to have true max, 21. You would have needed to apply for 19 years, had the loyalty if you'd have done so, and then also taken their hunter ed course. So anyway, and their hunter ed course, I guess we'll just kind of run off on that tangent for a minute. That hunter ed course is well worth getting. It gives you a point for all species you apply for forever.

And so anyway, if you were to draw a tag and you had your loyalty point and you had your hunter ed course point, you would have two points the year after you drew. It's just a hoop you've got to jump through. It's their system. If you have a hunter education card from another state, it's easy to sign up for a, it's a one day, usually an all day, I don't know if it's 10 hours, but an all day Saturday deal. And we've all done it with our kids and ourselves. I just took my wife and kids down there this year and it was a little grueling, I've got to say. They called it a vacation and they called it something else. Exactly. But anyway, awesome opportunity. Another thing, I guess, while we're talking about the rain and the moisture and the levels, we're going to digress just a little bit, but they do have a point guard program, you know, where you can apply for that. It costs you five bucks.

And for one time per species until you draw, you can, you can participate in that. If you were to draw it and you go out there and you find out that it's a super bad drought and there's not the quality of elk, deer, whatever it is that you're looking for. You can turn that tag back and get all your points back. Plus one is if you never drew. But then the next time you draw, you're going to use that tag. They're not, it's not eligible. You're not eligible for that. Unlike other states, if you want like Utah or Nevada, if you want to surrender your tag, it's in your court to do that up until, you know, a couple of days before the hunt. And you do it. Colorado, 30 days. Here, you have to have enrolled in point guard by June 12th, the deadline. There you go. And you have to build your portal and enrolled in that. So if you haven't done it already, go online, create your portal account.

You're not going to be able to check your draw results normally or as early if you don't have your portal account. Anyway, it's just their way of forcing you to go do this. You're going to have to do it. And in a year like this specifically, if you have maximum points or 18, 19, 21 points for deer, you're going to want to have a point guard option on there. If you draw something and it turns out to be a really, really off year, because if you've drawn your 13B tag, we're not telling anybody right now to stay away from 13A or B. We're not. It's a little too early to tell. It's been dry, but sometimes you cannot totally predict what it's going to be like. That's 100%. And so apply for it, but point guard it. That's the safest thing. One other thing is we're talking about deer points or deer points. They can be used for mule deer or coos deer. And they have both.

And they have units for both. And they have limited entry draws for both. And so make sure when you're looking through these. Some of these guys, we've talked to guys all the time, Adam, 12, 13 points. And they can draw these late hunts that are awesome for coos deer. For example, that 23, guy has 12 points last year. He's got it for the 23 late season. And they're amazing hunts. I had a really good friend of mine, Russ Young, actually probably one of the first guys I ever guided clear back in year 2000. And anyway, he drew that 23 late. We hooked him up with old Ty Goodman. And he knocked down a freaking monster. One of the last very, very end of the hunt. And so anyway, great use of his points. He's the only other options he would have is one of these early rifle deer hunts. And even at that, most likely he's not going to draw for a few years. And so what a great use of points.

If anybody that's out there that wants a big old coos deer and you're kind of in that mid-range and you've got Colorado points, Utah points, Wyoming, whatever, Nevada, you've got other plans going, freaking go to Arizona and knock down a big old coos deer. Well, that's what we kind of encourage people to do, frankly, is if you're in no man's land, you're not going to get a maximum top end point tag in the max point draw. And you want to hunt mule deer, go for it. Draw an early Kayabab, draw an early 12B west. Draw the muzzleloader hunt on one of those same units, 12A east, 12B west, something. Go have at it and then either go back as often as you want or do the early archery hunt on the Kayabab or look at the coos. I mean, I realize there's half the United States or more that hunt regular eastern whitetails all year long and they look at these little western rats as dinks, as 100-inchers.

Bucks for a regular whitetail. Yes. I mean, we're talking about 200-inch bucks for mule deer. We're talking about 100-inch plus bucks for coos deer. But for us western guys that aren't as whitetail savvy, they are a lot of fun. They're a kick in the butt. You hunt them like we do sheep and giant mule deer. We glass and sit long hours just glassing for them. And they're really, really fun to hunt. And we encourage you to look at those. If you are caught in the middle, you're probably going to enjoy it. Even though, don't be too intimidated by never having hunted them. They are a different species, obviously, and they're not as, you know, they're not, you don't drive around in a pickup truck and hunt them like you can a mule deer. But there is a lot of animals in some of these units. But they are prolific. They are. There's a lot of tags. And don't let the tag numbers scare you either.

Some of these earlier seasons, I mean, you can see there's upwards of 400 tags in some of these earlier seasons. And just crazy amounts of deer. But anyway, just like anything, you're going to pull out of there what you put into it. I hunted one of those earlier hunts. Got my butt kicked. But not that I couldn't have killed deer. Just chose not to. And anyway, looking for something good. We also have, real quick, we'll talk about some of these over-the-counter opportunities. You know, worst case scenario, you come to the end. You applied for everything. You can get an over-the-counter, especially some of these archery deer hunts. They're archery coos in the rut, dead center rut. They're amazing hunts, as well as these archery mule deer hunts. So anyway, good opportunities, you know, in the state of Arizona as far as deer are concerned. They are.

You know, you normally will have an August or September archery season to hunt. If you're unsuccessful, that same tag can be used in some units in December. Or then you may have to buy a new tag and start in January. I just want to point out, you can kill one antler deer per calendar year. So if you did that last January and you killed a buck, you're going to be looking at doing points only now. Or likewise, if you want to go down this January and you kill a buck, it does pull you out of the draw, so to speak, for the next year. But, you know, that doesn't cost you a point. It doesn't cost you anything. You just got to do points only. But it's something to be aware of. Think about. But it's also, there's a lot of opportunity. They give you, you're able to hunt the rut for a lot of, all the desert units down there in December, January, either one of those months with a bow.

We both remember those days when you could hunt over the counter 13A. Yeah. And one of those things, it's just, this is the same kind of thing this is. We're all going to look back and say, how dumb were we? Why don't we do that a little bit more? Here we are. Now we'd do anything to get one of them over the counter, old over the counter type opportunities. So, anyway, pretty fun. I know we're going crazy, but we do get excited when we talk about big stuff. And, of course, we've been on quite a few hunts there in Arizona. Should we just jump into desert sheep for a minute? Let's do. You know, sheep points, kind of like deer, sheep points in Arizona are just sheep points. You can use them for either desert sheep or Rocky Mountain until you've drawn one or the other. Then you're committed to the opposite. That's your once in a lifetime. Then you're committed to the other one.

You can mix and match. You can do a desert first choice and a Rocky second or vice versa. By and large, 90% plus of the state has desert bighorn sheep. We generally label it as a desert sheep state, but only because that's what they have the most of. But if you're somebody that has a desert sheep from any other state and you need a Rocky, they've got some great Rockies. So keep that in mind and you can mix year to year. It doesn't matter what you do this year. It has no bearing on next year. Um, the one thing that they do a little bit different on the sheep draw is non-residents can only apply for hunts that have at least two permits. And we've listed all of the non-resident available units in our table. So there's no unit we left uncovered. Um, that's just, that's the way they do it. Um, and non-residents are also limited to no more than 50% of an individual hunt units quota.

So if there's four tags issued in a unit, non-residents could draw up to two of those. Um, now non-residents are limited. There's an umbrella. Further limited. Non-residents are just limited. Let's call that. They're limited to no more than 10% of the statewide quota. So, um, you know, you're talking about 10 or 11 permits. That's what we're limited. And we're not guaranteed. They're not set aside. And people ask us, what units are they going to draw on this year? It's a little bit like Idaho. You don't know. Um, it's simply, you apply for the units that meet the criteria you're looking for, whether that be the size of Rams you're looking for, or the drawing odds you're looking for, or a mix of both. And when your number is picked, if your first unit is filled and your second unit is filled, you're unsuccessful.

Or if your first unit is filled, your second unit, oh, you got a tag, but oh, they've already drawn 15 non-residents. So you're, you're kicked out and it's going to go to residents from that point on. One thing I do want to talk about. So we were talking about, uh, non-residents picking up some of those max point deer tags. It just isn't the case with the sheep. Opposite. You've got the opposite. You got 66 residents and three non-residents max points. It is possible. One of those three will draw of the non-resident quota or maybe even all three, I guess. But having said that very small chance that a non-resident is going to pick up one of those tags and that people that draw on the max point deer that are non-residents does take away from our non-resident quota. That takes away from our non-resident quota of the 10% in, uh, statewide as far as, uh, the entire state's quota.

And then they do give up to 10 or 20% of the entire, uh, statewide number of tags to people with max points. Now with that, Adam, and Adam spelled it out very well. When we talk about all of these things, there's all these stipulations, residents, non-residents, who's going to get kicked out, who's not. It's very simple in our tables. We tell you right in there, you know, that there was, uh, for example, here's your random drawing odds. And then number of potential non-resident tags in a separate column. And then we also have a column for max point tags drawn in 2017. Yeah. And you can see where there says there's no tags were drawn in the max point pool. That means they're available to everybody, which would be all of us. They were last year. Yeah. And there's no, they don't set that prior to the draw. We've had people ask us.

We've had people say, what units are all the, are the max point tags coming from this year? Well, that's totally based on those 69 people that we talked about that have max points and where they apply. Now we could probably speculate and we might as well a little bit. It's not hard to do here and say the units that those 69 people keep in mind, they're the 69 most unlucky people in the world for Arizona sheep. Or they just, yeah. Or they've been doing points only, but they're the last standing. And for the most part, Jason, they're applying for exactly what they want and they're not deviating. Well, it'd be like, once you have max points and it's like in deer. If you have max points, you're not going to go use it on a 6A early season. No. You're sticking to the unit you want or where you've been to with a family member or one that, you know, has giant rams and you only want that.

You know, 22 south. You know, that would be a prime example. That's right. Both of those tags are likely going to go in the maximum point draw. So it's possible and that's why we, it is technically eligible for non-residents to apply for. There are two permits and so it does, it is not, it is not impossible, but it's very, very improbable. That's right. Okay. So 22 south. Let's just take that one. Two tags. So you got two tags. Both of them have been drawn on the max point tier, let's say for the last five years, as far as I can remember. It's one of the best units in the state. And if I had max points, you know, I'd probably be applying there or one of the 24s myself. So let's say it is possible that nobody of those 60 some odd people draws the 22 south. Yeah. And they go somewhere else. And then you and I'd be available. Having said that, I would not make one of my two choices.

No, I wouldn't waste it. 22 south. That's right. 28, 28. And 28 last year only had one of the two tags go there, but that's one that's, they killed a giant. And it's got some big sheep, not a lot of sheep. And that's one that only one of two went to it, but that one is a little bit volatile. That one could go that way. We've talked, you know, 31, 32, Aravipa. It normally will have one. It's just because Aravipa has the name. It has the following. They aren't necessarily. It could be a 160-inch type potential. And at times it feels like it's a little bit off, but they still have, it still has the name. It's produced monsters. That's right. 37A on the first ton, obviously. I mean, there's just, and you can go through this. It's very simple, very spelled out. Adam, remember there was years that for some reason the people that had Max were really wanting Rockies. Oh, yeah.

And there was hardly even one Rocky available outside of the Max Point 2. Yeah, and that's changed fortunately a little bit. You know, you've got these ones we just talked about, the 22, 28, 31, 37A. Then you get to 44B North and South, and normally we'll have some Max Point applicant attention. Very popular the last few years. Very popular, but then, yeah, then you get to the pool of people that over the last 30, roughly 30 years of a point system or beyond that, before points, they've drawn their desert and they're locked into only Rockies. That's all they can do. That's right. And it can be volatile. You know, Unit 1 and 27, I know that bumped up to two tags this year. The tag last year went to a maximum point holder. I couldn't tell you with a whole lot of degree of certainty that both of those tags are going to be left for a random guy.

They killed 190 incher in 2016, and there's rumors of another awesome ram. And so, who knows, you know, you just never know what's going to happen as these go on. You've got a 185 incher killed last year in that 27 south, 28 north hunt. And, I mean, just, I think a lot of it, and again, I guess we get talking so fast and we're so excited and everything makes us, even antelope we could be excited about today. But anyway, you know, a lot of this is dictated, you know, is the swing kind of bends with where these giants are killed. And quite frankly, there's a lot of these rams that never see people. Yeah. That stuff is rugged. They're all awesome. Horseback, thick. Upper blue river. I spent time in that country last year hunting elk and scouting for elk and saw rams and saw where they're living. And there's plenty of timber. And you just can't kill.

There's plenty of seclusion and refuge, so to speak. So, who knows where the next 185 incher is going to come from. It could come from any one of those. And that's, I guess, what we're talking about. Some of these desert sheep you can see. You can look at some of the history and you can tell. And we made a few of these comments that are very personalized. You know, the known giants were harvested last year in the Tanahas Altas. It doesn't matter, really, because they move around so much. And they come from unit to unit to unit. There's a lot of travel in some of these places and whatnot. And so, you just don't know. Even though we do personalize it from year to year, as our research dictates, you just never know. But you can tell what you're available to draw depending on the points you have. And so, it does take a little bit of thought, but we do kind of break it out for you guys.

Of course, you're always welcome to call, Adam and I. We visit with guys every single day about this kind of stuff. And as you can tell, we kind of get excited about it. Well, and we're coming up on the deadline. And it's, for all intents and purposes, the last deadline of the year. There are some points-only applications and some kind of some oddball stuff for the summer. You know, things like that, Texas and that to come. But for all intents and purposes, Arizona Sheep and Deer kind of finishes it off. It's a little bit, it's nice in a way, but it's a little bittersweet if you're wanting to have, you know, more hope. I'm so excited to get out scouting. How about you? Yeah, it's good to be that time of year. It's getting hot. These desert sheep down in Arizona, they're starting to rut, believe it or not, here in June. It starts getting 100, 110.

And they start saying, hey, let's start running around, you know, chasing ewes and butting heads. I don't get it. You know, all that. 110 triggers something. I don't know. It's kind of exciting. And I know we've, you know, you've spent some time in the 22, 24 in some different country. Of course, 12B, we both spent time in seeing the sheep over there. 41 East, we've spent a bunch of time in, killed a nice 176-incher there years ago with my dad. We just, we have spent some time out there. Anybody that's looking to apply for deer, mule deer, coos deer, or desert sheep, we figure and, you know, say that Arizona is a must apply for states. So apply, apply, apply for that particular state. Well, and if you didn't apply earlier for elk or antelope, for whatever reason, maybe it snuck up on you, whatever.

If you apply now and you buy their license and decide, I'm going to apply for deer and sheep, your hunting license will be valid next spring when it's time to apply for antelope and elk and you will not have to buy it. It's not a calendar year license. So you can apply for both draws on one license if you time it right. You can't get a two-for-one like Utah, but it is one that if you set it out and you wish you hadn't, you want to do it now, you can apply for deer and sheep now and have a chance to draw there. Come February next year, you can apply for elk or antelope or both and only pay the $15 application fee. $160 license to apply, $15 application fee to apply, no permit fees unless you draw. So big something we might want to bring up that's kind of looming. It's happened in Nevada. Elimination of trail cameras in a certain degree of fashion. That's right.

That is looming right now in Arizona. It's still going through the public comment period. Commission has not met, enacted, or adopted. I think, Jason, both you and I probably feel it's whether it happens this year or it's going to happen this year. Something's going to happen. It's probably going to happen. Something's going to happen. It did in Nevada. And for those of you that are hearing that for this for the first time, August 1st through December 31st, trail cameras are off limits in Nevada. No trail cameras, not even on trails. Not trails, water, nothing. Nothing. No water cameras, no trail cameras, no crossing cameras, just no water. Don't even put a trail camera in your house, spying on your kids or something. So this could be a potential big deal for Arizona, obviously, with some of these very arid areas like the Strip and things like that,

where a lot of the inventory, at least, of what's there and the pulse of how antler development was that year. It's going to change some things. It's going to be difficult. So it's going to require a lot more effort and glassing and, frankly, getting a little bit more lucky. Arizona's still talking about they're trying to figure out the verbiage. And, you know, they were first talking about man-made water and springs were okay. And so who knows where it's actually going to end up. But it could be very challenging, at least in Nevada. You've got to quit August 1st, well, July 1st if you want to use the kind that throws pictures on your cell phone. But August 1st for any type of trail camera. But prior to that, you can put them anywhere you want. And so, anyway, you can still get a little scouting in. It's going to affect some of those later season hunts.

You know, we used to use them no matter what. But, anyway, I don't know. Chris is, for some reason, wanting us, I see here on this outline that we very rarely use, tell a story about a deer. And so, anyway, I just want to talk about this Larry Wurtonbee story. We've talked about Chief a few times, I think. I don't want to talk about Chief anymore. Although it was an epic time in Adam and I's life when we killed a buck that we felt like we had the governor's buck and we're out there by ourselves. But, anyway, Larry drew this tag out on 12B. It's a late hunt, rut hunt. And went out there. Sam did a lot of preseason scouting, did his work. And I was just there just because I love it out there. And I really like Sam and his guys. So, anyway, just, and they were gracious enough to let me show up. I took my kid out there and my brother-in-law, Matt Wolfley. He's a good kid as well.

Anyway, and they were showing me a few trail camera pictures. And I'm like, that buck is a good buck. We need to find that deer. And so, anyway, those guys, we all spread out. And we could not locate this deer. And you'll read in this story, but I don't know if it was six or seven miles away, you know, from where he was the night before he had walked overnight and was rutting a doe six or seven miles away. And, Adam, you know where we ended up killing him clear out on the end. Anyway, pretty impressive. Got way lucky. Ended up knocking him down in such a stud of a buck. But these deer walk and go hard. If you read that story in this particular magazine, you'll see where the sand had rubbed holes in his feet. All four of his hooves had holes in them. Just that abrasion of the sand, I guess. Yeah, it's like running on a beach your whole life in parts of that unit out there.

It's, you know, yeah, just, you know, just grinding on your feet nonstop, especially when you're trailing does or straight lining trying to cut a fresh, hot doe track that you want to run down. I mean, they're like hound dogs out there that time of year. They're just nose to the ground, and they're going hard. So it's an awesome buck. I just want to know where you're applying because it's something we talk about all the time. Every day we're just like, what are we going to do? Archery, rifles, coos, mule deer. You know, I've not got my one. I'm stuck to the mule deer.

But until I get my one, I'll call it my one big one. One big opportunity. My one big opportunity tag. Then I'll probably, like you have, Jason, you've either gone after the coos deer hunt or you've gone the early kaybab archery just because it's close to us and the genetics are there, just kind of whatever year to year you feel like. I'm kind of, I'm committed until I get that one. And I know a lot of people that call us with the, let's say, 17, 18 plus, that's kind of where they're at. And I've not done my app yet, so, but I'm. Me neither. I'm, you know. Me neither. We're running here to the deadline, but I usually wait towards the very, very end here like we're doing now. Getting some Colorado results out. Hey. Over these next couple of days. That's right. And so that might alter something. And getting some emails, so.

Do want to thank everybody for helping us put this magazine together as far as all the stories. It's incredible the amount of stories we actually, you know, even have to table for a minute to get some of these stories in. So we appreciate everybody that's willing to submit. Of course, you can always email john at epicoutdoors.com and submit your stories and pictures for anything you got. And as you can tell, these magazines are dang near 150 pages with very few ads and nothing but content. And so just really impressive. And the majority of that goes to thanks to our members. We appreciate you guys. Yep. Well, and one more shout out that we want to give, since we talked so much about sheep in Arizona, I want to give a shout out to the Wild Sheep Foundation. Big advocates, obviously, of bighorn sheep of all different species throughout North America.

They've dumped $13.4 million into wild sheep and wild sheep restoration efforts in just the last three years. And their mission is to basically enhance wild sheep populations and promote scientific wildlife management and educate the public on sustainable use and conservation benefits of hunting. Well, you know, promoting hunting and sheep and putting and keeping sheep on the mountain. We highly encourage our members to become members of the Wild Sheep Foundation. You can do that by joining at wildsheepfoundation.org or calling 406-404-8750. So, anyway, we love Arizona. I mean, California is done and gone. You heard that one. That's June Magazine covers California and Arizona. It's a listener too, but you guys have covered that. We covered that one a little bit, but we love Arizona. We love the dreams of Arizona. How's that? You don't hunt it as often as we'd love to.

The quality is off the charts, and it's great, and they got it for all species.

But it's one of those that we're never going to keep dreaming because the upside is so high if you get something. It really is. Anybody that gets a tag, it's like, I mean, you can hear us across three or four different offices for anybody that draws that calls in. Some of these tags are so hard to get, and they offer such great potential. Anyway, it's awesome. And so everybody should be applying. If you can't get around to it, give us a holler. We'll be happy to help you. That's what we do here at Epic. And I might say we're pretty good at it because that's all we do. So, anyway, I do want a little shout-out to Kings. Kings Camel, they're awesome, super good guys. We're friends with everybody that's there and have been for absolute years and years. They got the XKG series.

It was born from an idea that kind of used the most realistic camel patterns and combined them with lightweight technical fabrics. And they build comfortable, high-performing hunting gear. And it's very affordable. That's the one thing about Kings. They're here in Utah. We love them for that, obviously. And lightweight, great performing, very affordable, and just a great camel pattern. In fact, they were one of the first that came out with, you know, something that was really patterned for the West. We always had to use mossy oak and some of these other, I want to call them crazy patterns for guys out here in the West. And so, anyway, Western Big Game is kind of their specialty. They're obviously branching out, and they're doing all kinds of stuff with whitetail as well. But we love them for the Western aspect. And so, you can go to kingscamel.com, check out everything they got going.

They sell a ton of different things and products, as well as calling 1-877-705-2266. Appreciate them and their support of all of us here at Epic. So, anyway, I'm about wore out. How about you, Ronson? Yeah, I don't know what else. We could break them down unit by unit, but that'd take too long, and it's in the magazine. Our members get it. We could break them through the most boring podcast ever, but we kind of wanted to give a rough overview of everything, get you excited about it. We broke it down very well in the magazine, and then happy to visit about it as well. That's right. So, wish you luck. Got a bunch of draw results still pending right here. Give us a call. Let us know what you draw. You know, we've got Idaho moose sheep and goat pending. We've got Colorado trickling out all week this week. You know, moose sheep and goat results in Montana coming out here soon.

So, yeah, let us know if you get something great. If we can help you set it up however it is, whether it's putting you in touch with other Epic Outdoors members that have been there in the past, we've got a list of those. We can do that. Or if you need a guide or an outfitter based on the tag you have and the lack of time you have to put into the scouting or preparation or whatever, let us know. That's what we're here. That's what we do all day. That's our job. So, give us a call. 435-263-0777. Awesome. One last thing before we stop. If you don't have a hunt, or even if you do have a hunt, go to EpicOutdoors.com. Buy some raffle tickets for this stone sheep hunt. We're going to be giving it away in approximately 1.5 weeks. So, that's about it. Anything else? Nope. Chris, you don't have a mic. I guess you can't talk. Thumbs up. All right. That's about it. Talk to you later. Thank you.