EP 82: How to Scout a New Area With Jason Carter and Adam Bronson

We know what the rut's going to bring, we know where the migration's going to happen, we know our glassing knobs. Because those bucks are in the pattern, they're in velvet, we're just barely coming out of velvet by the muzzler season. Anything to do with Western big game.

Welcome to the Epic Outdoors podcast, powered by Under Armour. How's everybody doing today? It's Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here at the Epic Outdoors office. I'm sitting here with Chris Peterson, of course we never give him a mic because he might talk about us. So anyway, we get to talk about him and he can't talk back. So Adam and I are sitting here, we've had quite a few requests the last few days. Actually the last few weeks as people are starting to prepare for their hunts on how do you go about hunting new units, how do you go about scouting, what to do, when to do it, and what gear to use and what not. So anyway, we're going to crush that today before we get started. We do want to thank Under Armour. They make great gear. We'll talk about that a little bit later. They do sponsor our podcast as well as some things we're doing here in the magazine and other facets of our business.

So anyway, we do appreciate them. Also like to give a shout out to another one of our advertisers and sponsors, Red Rock Precision. Make awesome long range rifles for all different types of uses. They've got ultralight sheep rifles, mountain rifles, extreme range. You know, if weight's an option, they can trim that down. If it's not, you want just the best shooting gun that you can, best scope setup, they can set that up. Versatile in all calibers. Great guys. Todd and Kurt there at Red Rock Precision. So give them a call or visit them online at redrockprecision.com if you're looking at upgrading what you have or adding to your arsenal with a great long range rifle. It's getting kind of bleak for a lot of draws being done. This last week it seems like a lot of hopes and dreams are shattered for some of these remaining states. Not a whole lot left.

But if you're still wanting to keep, I guess, the slim dream alive of winning something great, the Wyoming Super Tag is an option for you until July 2nd. They sell their tickets online. They're for every big game species. You know, sheep, moose, goat, deer, elk, you know, bison, antelope, all those. They give one tag each for those species. Entries are $10 each. Or they give a trifecta away for $30 a piece per try, which allows you to choose any three species you want. So another way to apply, get your name in the hat for something else, dream big, so to speak. Again, the deadline to apply is July 2nd. Go online at wgfd.wyo.gov backslash epicoutdoors and buy your tickets to that. Right on. Well, let's see. When you were talking about that trifecta, I guess a guy could choose deer, elk, and antelope. Or he could choose sheep, goat, or moose. Maybe black bear and wolf and antelope.

How's that? All right. I'll bet you that's never been done before. No, I'll bet it's never been done, nor ever will be done. Since two of the three of those are general tags. Mountain lion, maybe. Maybe. You never know. But nevertheless, it's an option. That's an option. I want my freedom. That's what we can't do. People that want the predator package, pick all three of those. No grizzly bears. I want to make that disclaimer. Grizzly bears are not allowed in the trifecta. Hey, but it looks like grizzlies are going to be available to apply for coming up here shortly. Stay tuned. We'll talk about that here in a few days or next week, perhaps. You can't even see an email from Epic Outdoors talking about it. Today, we just wanted to go through a little bit about how you start. Not all units are created equal, and not all species require the same preparation and scouting for them.

You know, elk versus deer versus antelope versus sheep, moose goat. So, we realize we may not cover every single niche and every single species and every single scenario, but we're going to dive into that a little bit in terms of where do you start, best ways of doing researching a unit, maybe if you can go do scouting versus if you live too far away and it's just not practical and you've got time to only go show up and do the hunt. Yeah, so this isn't a podcast. We're not telling you that you should hire a guide necessarily. This is for everybody. And mainly, the DIY guys. A lot of guys that are going to be going guided generally, you know, don't need to get as much information and really go over everything because their guides are making a lot of the decisions for them with their experience and that's why you're hiring guys.

So, anyway, the first kind of thing, Adam, you know, and obviously we both work side-by-side offices and we're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of guys every year, but, you know, the main thing is to get your paper maps. The first thing to do is get your paper maps.

And so, we do go, generally go to mytopo.com and they'll sell you the maps. You can click on Nevada or Colorado and click on a specific unit. It's a 1 to 100,000 series, very broad overview. And, generally speaking, that's enough. But get those maps and then give us a call. And if we've hunted there, we'll definitely start to help you. And, of course, we can help you find other members within Epic Outdoors that have had experience in that same unit. But the first key is to get those maps. Yeah, definitely. And a lot of units, like Jason said, 1 to 100,000 scale that shows land ownership and all that is probably what you're going to need. Now, if you're going in, say, the backcountry or somewhere that you're going to be on foot and you're hiking trails and you're using landmarks and all that, definitely might look at the custom map feature in the 1 to 24,000 scale series there.

You can make it how you want it. Make it in the datum you want it. And the... Rolled or folded. Rolled or folded. All, you know, sizes, you know, all that. Landscape portrait, all that. Those are something you maybe use on a sheep hunt or a goat hunt or a backcountry mule deer hunt where you need more detail for the actual basins and canyons you're looking at and things like that. And then, like you said, I mean, there's initial calls that you can kind of get the ball rolling on your research. But when you really start wanting to sit down and call people on an Epic member experience list or maybe you're going to call the game and fish biologist and things like that, having had experience as a DWR biologist myself, the tendency is for myself or others, they're going to help people that have done a little bit more preparation on their own and they're obvious as they're asking the questions.

They've done some homework in terms of the unit, in terms of the layout of it, maybe study some of the general canyons, the access points and things like that. And I highly recommend getting a little bit familiar through the map, through Google Earth or whatever, prior to you making some of those calls to biologists or game and fish. Because if you're just simply calling up, expecting them to tell you, where do I go kill the biggest buck or bull? They get that call all the time. And I don't know, it's going to be pretty hard to just throw out, you know, something that's going to mean something. But if you have leading questions, you know, if it's a later season deer hunt, where do the deer tend to gravitate to my time of year? You know, if it doesn't snow and I don't get weather, should I go higher? You know, all those types of leading questions.

Have some of those written out and thought out prior to calling or calling to your Epic Member Experience guys because you can pick up on that vibe. And Jason and I talk to guys every day, all day here at the office. And we notice when guys have done a lot more of their homework and it's just a lot easier. You can get to a little bit different layer of information versus somebody that's just asking for, hey, you know, where do I kill the biggest buck in unit 16 or biggest bull in 16 deer in New Mexico or the biggest buck in 231 in Nevada? That's such a broad general question. You can't even start to answer. But I think, like you said, Adam, doing a huge amount of, and we call it huge, but really familiarizing yourself and doing a little bit of research prior to talking to these guys, you're going to do yourself a huge favor.

All of us, if somebody calls me and says, hey, what do you think about this area? And what do you think about this area? And this is kind of what I'm thinking, what I'm seeing. You realize that that guy's invested already. He's really serious about it. And I'm kind of more, have more of a tendency to help that guy. And it's just a subconscious thing. It's not that I think somebody's earned it more than another. It's just, wow, this guy's getting serious. He really does want a big deer. He's not just going to be happy with anything. And he's thinking. He's willing to process the information that I'm going to give him. And biologists are no different. They're saying, you know, like a guy calls you about when you were the sheep biologist. If he had some initial thoughts going through his head and he had studied some of the maps, he's like, well, what do you know about this ridge?

What do you know about this draw? You're like, all right, I'll sit down and visit with this guy. Get him a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a natural tendency to do that. But somebody that just calls and asks a blanket statement and said, hey, where's all the 375 bulls on Mount Dutton? How do you answer that? They are where you find them. And what's your next question? He might need a horse. Like, let's really talk about what you want out of this hunt. Talk about drainages. Talk about, hey, I don't have horses. I'm going self-guided. What are the areas that I could maybe hunt on a day hunt basis and not bite off more than I can chew? Or, you know, whatever the situation is. Or, hey, you know, I'm going to stay in a town, a motel. You know, water areas like that. I don't, I don't, I'm coming from a long ways away. I don't want to bite off more than a couple mile hikes a day.

Things like that. Anything you can do to kind of have a series of questions that probably characterizes your hunting style. And then also gleaning information from them about, you know, more general. Ask leading questions about water sources. If it's an earlier season deer or an elk hunt, obviously. In a dry year like some of Utah and Nevada's having. That's going to be an issue. You know, what parts of the unit tend to be drier and don't have water or dry up. Or in other places that tend to be, you know, anything that might be unique to the specific year. You know. Kind of to pigtail off of that same idea with the water situation. You know, I've used some of my maps in New Mexico as well as Arizona. And if you get the 1 in 24,000, you can actually see ponds. There's a lot of these maps that will show ponds, windmills, and different things. So the 1 to 100,000, they're great for springs.

They show the basic springs. The biggest springs. Yeah, the biggest springs. The 1 in 24,000, now I'm seeing ponds. And I found a lot of ponds on the Arizona and New Mexico. And ponds mean water. You know, half of them or a third of them or whatever. Some are dry. But check the ponds. You go to the ponds. Elk, especially. Elk and deer, they need water. And you're going to see sign. And so now you're setting up trail cameras. And, of course, you've got to deal with trail camera laws, especially in Nevada now. But that gives you a starting point. The elk like to water. The cows, when the bulls come in with the cows, they're running them around. There's a lot of activity. And cows water. And bulls follow cows. And so there's just a lot that goes into that process. Now, if you're just hunting like Adam, like you were talking, depending on the season,

then you're hunting a late season Colorado hunt or something. Yeah, third season rifle or whatever. One to 100,000 is just fine. You're not needing to know water. I don't care about water. It means nothing to me. Who knows when those deer are going to water, if they water, depending on snow on the ground and whatnot and the temperature of the day. And so, and in a lot of cases, there's streams and whatnot. And you'll find that on some of these maps as well. But just to kind of pigtail off that, I don't want to spend too much time on the maps. But, you know, guys did visit about Google Earth a little bit. And we can talk about that. It's a very good tool to stay in age. For a lot of you, perhaps you live more than a day's drive away from some of these western states that you may draw a tag in. If you live in one of the western states, you know, a lot of them are within a day's drive

of you and you can get to them. But for some of you on the west coast or Midwest or east coast, and you're a do-it-yourself hunter, we realize that's how you're going to have to play the game. Cyber scouting, you know, Google Earth, making some of these calls that we're talking about. It's a very useful tool. The imagery, it just continually gets updated on Google Earth. You know, you can look at burns. You can look at a lot of different things of how it looks on the ground. And if you use it, the more you use it, the more you're familiar you'll get with interpreting the lay of the land, the way things look in real life and things like that. It's a little bit different if you're first getting on there to look at and train your eye to what you're looking at. But you can pan and tilt and do a bunch of different things. Great tool there. You can put pins on there.

You can import your own GPS coordinates to it. If you find a camp spot in a ridge, blah, blah, blah. Or if you have places from other people that they've given you, hey, I camped here at a certain place, it's a great tool to use, especially if you, you know, everybody wants to see their unit. We talk to people this time of year all the time. They're just wanting to go out for, even if it's a Colorado third season deer hunt, they're wanting to just try to get out there if they can, just to see what it looks like. We're the same way. We like, there's just some, a level of uncertainty that gets wiped away once you go and see your unit. And you say, okay, now I know what I'm dealing with. I've got to lay the land. I maybe, you see things through your eyes and hey, that, I kind of like the looks of this country over here. That's right. I don't like the looks of this over here.

It doesn't look as deery or elkey or whatever like that. And to kind of pigtail off of that again, you know, we've used Google Earth a lot for the trail system. You can see trails on Google Earth. You can see guzzlers. So you might have an idea of where you think a guzzler is. And some of these states produce a guzzler map. And then you can actually go, and if I got the basic area, I can go pinpoint that on Google Earth and see that guzzler. And now, obviously, you can't see the water within the guzzler. That's probably coming in the next few years. But you can go and check and see if it's dry or whatnot. And so it just kind of gives you that overview. We use Google Earth. It's a definite great tool. We even have the app on our phone. And a lot of times in the hills, midday, you know, and we've done a podcast about this earlier, but you never quit thinking.

Things are, you know, when things are slow and you're at the camp trailer, you're at the camp or whatever, you can, you know, if you've got 3G or 4G or LTE or whatever you've got, you can kind of open up that Google Earth. And it might, something might trigger something. You're having a tough go in the middle of the season. We would get on Google Earth and say, oh, I didn't even realize there, this is a chaining over here. There's a chaining. Maybe this buck's moved from this chaining to that chaining with pressure and all the pressure we're putting on him and stuff. And so we use Google Earth in a lot of different ways, but it's not an end-all, be-all. It's just a tool. You can't see bitter brush and the health of the bitter brush and things like that. You've got to see that with your own eyes. But it does give you that basic broad overview. That's right.

Big picture stuff and stuff you can key in on. Burns, you know, open areas, glassing points, saddles, ridges, you know, anything like that. Water sources occasionally. Little old two-trackers you didn't know were there. Yeah, yeah. Logging roads, yep, things like that. So then I guess it comes down to, all right, you think you're going to go maybe set foot? Should we dive into that? If you think you're going to actually go set foot in your unit. You know, we've got some questions about that. You know, scouting a brand new area versus an area you've been in the past. Now, generally, if I'm going to a unit that I've been in the past, I don't normally go to the areas I already know. I usually, if I have some history there and I know there's usually always some deer, elk, or whatever in this country, I'm always trying to add to that by finding a plan B, C, and D option.

Another question we also get is, you know, if I start scouting then for mule deer or elk, when do some of these deer or elk patterns start to change? And if I'm going there in July or early August, what can I plan on? If I see something I like, what can I plan on if my hunt's, you know, in August or in September, if it's in October, November? And maybe I'll just address the elk a little bit and then Jason can talk a little bit about the deer. But when it comes to elk, our experience has been, yeah, I mean, right now from June and July, these bulls are in a definite pattern of just feeding. I mean, they're feeding bedding. They're in their summer patterns. Putting on inches. That's all they're doing. That's all they're concerned about is eating. They're the fastest growing antlers of any deer in the deer family. So that's all they're concerned with right now.

Long about the 20th to 25th of August, those of us that run trail cameras on water sources and things like that, is when you start to see bulls start to get muddy a little bit. And so some of the states like Utah that has an early archery season that opens the 15th to 20th, there's a window of time you can hunt your bulls right off the bat where they've been living. Other places, most every other places, that's not the case. And I don't know, in my experience, about 50% of the bulls or more sometimes completely leave the area that they've been summering. Just completely leave. Even though there's cow and calf herds there, you think they'd just move into the nearest cow calf herd. But elk just don't do that. They're roamers and they can roam long distances, 20, 30 miles sometimes. You look at units like Southwest Desert where mountain ranges have a 10-mile open valley between some of them.

And they cross them and they're never to be seen again. You find a bull all summer long, don't count on them if you've got an early rifle hunt. Don't count on hunting that bull. You might. He might stay in that range, but he might not. So for elk, that end of August time period is when everything starts to change. Early August, sometimes maybe late August, early September. Deer, maybe a little bit later than there, but I'll let you talk about deer. Yeah, and I want to jump into that. But I do, I really like what you said there as far as August, that 25th time frame. We watched a bull we killed Joshua. We actually tracked him down and watched him leave his summer area August 25th. And so some of these seasons do get into that, you know, 20th. Maybe they open around the 20th, 23rd, something like that. And so we have guys, even the 19th some years, and we have guys, you know, saying,

do I put a bunch of time into pre-scouting elk and then kill them right off the bat? Well, yeah, ideally, it would work out. But generally, you will not see these 400-inch bulls, and let's just call them 370+, whatever. You will not see these big bulls die early. They generally die when they move in with the cows. And so all that scouting is just kind of, I mean, it's not wasted, but you're learning country. You're learning trails. You're in there. You're knowing where the cows are, but these bulls will move. And they, like you said, Adam, they move along those. Real scouting for elk, if you have an archery hunt that starts September 15th, is really that 10 days right before the hunt. That's right. As they move in with the cows. And we're seeing in Nevada and some of these countries, we'll see 380 bulls standing with cows as early as September 1st.

And so anyway, and, you know, we've hunted New Mexico quite a bit, and those bulls will be rutting September 5th, September 7th. And so anyway, but there again, sometimes you don't have the movements, but a lot of times you do, and that's what we're finding. So I like that. I think we covered that well. Obviously, we've got a, you know, we've got late season elk hunts that happen, and they're moving, and that's a whole different subject, and we could probably tee back into that a little bit later. As far as deer, and Adam, you've hunted a lot of deer as well, but they, you know, these, the deer hunts, I mean, when you, pre-scouting is for early season. You know, heavy pre-scouting, trail cameras, all of that kind of thing is for early season. You're going to really get the most use out of it. Now, all scouting is good. Scout everywhere, all the time, that's best.

But generally speaking, the most bang for your buck is going to be that early season scouting for those early hunts. And like Adam, we've hunted, I don't know how many, we listed them off when we did a Colorado podcast last year. You know, maybe it was 30 or 40 different units, or it feels like 30 or 40, maybe it was only 25 or something. But we've had to learn those from scratch. Yeah. And they were third seasons generally, second, third. It's never, hardly ever an archery a month. That's right. So it's unlike maybe Utah or Nevada, some of the places we hunt a little, well, Utah every year, maybe Nevada a little bit more often, where the archery and muzzleloader hunts that are August 10th, September 10th, everybody you're scouting is 100% viable and useful information for those two hunts. That's right. Because those bucks are in the pattern, they're in velvet,

or just barely coming out of velvet by the muzzleloader season. And even there, you've got to use it a week or two before they really start changing. But I don't know, my experience has been, you start getting late September, early October, that's when bucks start acting, they're like big bucks. That's when they become smart. That when they shed the velvet and they're moving into October, they're super smart. Toward the end of October, they kind of come dumb again. And by November 15th, they're really dumb. So anyway, you know, and when you've got a later season rifle hunt, generally speaking, the best time to scout the rut is in the rut. Right, before you hunt? And so close to the season, yeah. Go in there three or four days. And I did that on a buck that I killed there by eagle, the 212 buck. I saw him preseason. And he stayed there.

He was on a group of does, and he was happy, and he felt like he was fulfilling his rutting needs right there. And so anyway, I ended up harvesting him within 100 or 200 yards of where we had pre-scouted him. And so anyway, the later hunts, you know, aren't going to do you as much good to go in and pre-scout. But it is nice, again, to go lay eyes on your unit. When you're talking to us, biologists and other members of EPIC, you can say, hey, you know, I went into such and such, or I went up on such and such ridge, and that looks like good winter range. And by the way, I've overlaid some, you know, traveling corridors that you can find on Colorado's website for winter range stuff. And it looks like these bucks are coming from here into here. And how well do they really load up? And does it take snow to move them? Or is it a day on a calendar where they move?

And we see that even on the Ponce Gont here in Utah. Sometimes it's a date versus weather. That's right. So just depending, it depends. And I know that's a very generic answer, but that's the moral of that story. If you've got a later season deer or elk hunt, it's more critical to just get familiar with your access, glassing points, where deer or elk will tend to gravitate to in the October, November seasons after the rut, than finding a specific bull. The other reason is you can't get your heart set on a specific buck or bull if you've got a November late rifle elk hunt and you've got archery, muzzleloader, rifle stuff ahead of you. Could be dead, but no question he's going to move somewhere. So anyway, but no scouting is bad. But it's just a different mindset. We tell a lot of guys, I tell a lot of clients myself, they want to come down, even clients

that maybe I'm booking or Jason's taking in Nevada or somewhere that they want to come see. And I just tell them, all right, just come down. You're welcome to come through, come through, go out with us looking for sheep or deer or whatever. But don't get disappointed when you don't see anything. That's right. It's 105, 108 degrees. These sheep aren't moving much or the deer aren't moving much. It's a different timeframe. But I understand, we all understand excitement after burning a bunch of points or getting lucky and drawn, you want to go set eyes on what you're hopefully there to hunt. You wait a long time. And that's what I think this kind of ties into a little bit of an outfitter plug. The nice thing about some of these tags is there's outfitters out there that know it very well. And at times, if you really want to capitalize on your tag, and again, let's quantify that,

capitalize meaning have the best chance at killing a trophy, then you might want to hire an outfitter because he has the conviction to hunt one specific area and hunt over and over and over for a specific buck, a specific bull, or knowing, like there's places in Nevada that their seasons go until November 5th. He knows October 28th those bucks are going to start moving in. Now, if you and I, Adam, even you and I are out there and it's a new unit for us, we don't have that conviction. We've never seen it. And so we might end up getting nervous around October 25th, October 20th. Start bouncing all over the place trying to find something. And killing an inferior animal. Instead of being content and knowing this is where I've been told over and over, this is where my guy's taking me, we've killed bucks here three years in a row here. At any moment, there's going to be bucks trickling in here.

That happens all the time in Nevada and Colorado. And that's where I think this member experience program comes in. And you'll get guys, and we find this ourselves, it's really sad to draw the best tags of your life and never have been there. And when the season ends, if you could do it over again, you would kill something giant. You learn, you learn it by the end. As you go. As you go. Yeah. And so, and you and I both have so many tags over the years, especially in the late 90s, mid to late 90s. If we could do turnbacks and go back in time, we might kill something. A couple of them we have, you know, and you do better the second time because this, all of this stuff we're talking about is a layer of knowledge that you use the next time. And a lot of that happens on maybe our general season units here in Utah.

I know some of your big deer, you didn't kill them the first year you knew about them. It took a year or two and then boom, boom, you know, but that layer of information and building upon that in the areas that you can draw tags easily enough to do that, that's not always the case. Some places in Wyoming, you know, for deer or Colorado for deer, you can draw it quite often. But if you're drawing something, you know, if you don't have the time to do what we're talking about or you don't have the time to commit to it, you just got to weigh it out. Points are worth money. They're worth landowner tag equivalents, things like that. So one thing I wanted to kind of talk about, and it just, it's just like what you were saying as far as this information goes, we'll go in and find areas that this burn is good or this chaining is good or whatever.

You know what we're finding a lot of times, at least I'm finding in some of my scouting and you and I've talked about this, is these specific areas are good year after year after year. And I don't know why. I've got plenty, lots of country that it does not produce. But the same 10 cameras every year have the 10 best bucks every year for the last 10 years. And you find that out. It's just like whether it be on a unit that you're glassing, because there's some units that have too much water to trail camera. You just simply, I mean, we're not talking about Nevada, isn't that it was dry, but there's other places in Utah or Colorado that trail cameras are worthless. There's too much water. There's running water in every 500 yards from you. But there's always pockets. Or maybe it's a feed thing. Or maybe it's a pressure thing.

But there's places that you can always say, if I go here, I'm going to see a good deer. That's it. And there's only one way to find that out. And that's to have experience being there. And being able to get tags year after year. And you build upon that experience. There's some places, you, especially here in Utah, some of our Colorado units. We don't, even these Colorado units that we've hunted multiple times, there's places we don't need to go in and pre-scout. We know what the rut's going to bring. We know where the migration's going to happen. We know our glassing knobs. Same thing in Nevada. We've got Utah. Some of these places that are our favorites, we could go in there and be successful 10 years. From now. With the exception, if some major moonscape burn come through or something like that and totally change the dynamic.

You get weather like we've had the last couple years in Colorado that's 75, 80 degrees. And it's not on quote par to even close to average. And these deer can be at 10,000 or 12,000 feet still down to a few of them at 7,000 or 8,000 feet and everywhere in between sprinkled. How about that four season hunt that you were hunting at 10,000 feet? Yeah. Killed deer over 10,000 feet on the 18th, 19th, 20th of November. Retarded. Yeah. Shouldn't be hunting there. No. You know, other years we've been there, there's four or five feet of snow in that country. Yeah. I mean, you get a big snow. And if that happens, you know where to go. Yeah. Then you know where to go. So, yeah. You do have to be able to react on your feet too with current weather conditions, whether it be drought in the case of early season deer and elk hunts or in the case of, you know,

early snows or lack thereof on late migration hunts. So, maybe give a quick shout out to another one of our sponsors, Canna Trek Boots. Been with us from the start. Got a great new out-sew product, the K73 out-sew on their new Desert Guide and Mountain Guide boots for 2018. The K73 out-sew combined kind of their old K Talon out-sew with this new one that they got. Great boots. Been using the Desert Guides and Mountain Guides myself for a long, long time, depending if it's early season or later season. And I encourage you to give Canna Trek Boots a call or check them out on the web, canna trek, K-E-N-E-T-R-E-K dot com or 800-232-6064. It's that time of year. Get a new pair of boots. Get them broke in, used to what you're going to be putting them through before you need to actually put them on in your hunts here. Speaking about putting boots on the ground, and these guys are good guys.

They're hunters themselves and personal friends, so we appreciate them. You know, as we're talking about this stuff, I mean, it just gets me fired up and we keep, you know, we just, there's so much to talk about and there's so many facets to all this scouting. I don't know what we go into next, but I was almost thinking about, you know, when I first go into a unit, let's just say I first go into a unit, and Adam, you can tell me what you think. But I like to cover the entire thing. I want to go around it, in the middle of it, and everywhere a road will let me go. And I'm just basically, there's just, just like we kind of let off this podcast, we just need to get an overall feel. So feed, burns, chainings. Deer and elk, they like to feed. When you feed and sleep, you sleep where you're safe, and you feed where the feed is good.

And so, anyway, just to kind of get that general overfill of the unit. Yeah, that's, you know, I guess just take last year, for instance, I had an Arizona elk tag, and my first day and a half down there, that's all I did. I drove like a maniac, burned a taker to a gas through the whole unit down there. That big old Chevy probably burned two or three times. It might have, yeah. But I just was wanting to see it, you know. You'd done everything on Google Earth, and studying maps, and talking to people. But that gave me a, I guess, ground truth, some of the stuff that I had found. And also, you know, you always have a few things that, boy, that looks different, better or worse, whatever, than I thought it did from Google Earth. I get calls from hunters, you know, from time to time here at Epic Outdoors, and they're

asking about a unit that maybe Jason and I have personal knowledge having hunted before. And, you know, we can cut some corners for them. I've talked to people saying, hey, these areas in this certain part of the range have found some ponds and waters. It looks like a great rutting area, and I just fell out to them. There's like no elk there. I mean, despite what it looks like from Google Earth or whatever. Yeah, but out of them, I'm seeing elk right now. So, yeah. And I'm just like, there won't be any there. Just save your time and move somewhere else. But, yeah. I like the overview, too. And then what that does after a day, day and a half there. Then I like to go back in and get a little bit more. Put some boots on the ground. You know, hike. Whether you lay cameras out or actually just get out on glass. And then you're trying to key in on the areas that you think.

Everybody has their hunting style. Everybody likes a certain look of a mountain range, a ridge. You know, you're used to what you're used to. And you like what you like. And everybody has different preferences. And so you just gravitate to some of those. And if you're not seeing any sign or anything like that. And it is a season that you think you should be seeing stuff there. And it's going to be indicative of what you're going to find August or September. You need to move. You need to adapt. You need to do something different. That's exactly right. And what I liked about what you were saying as far as you're covering that country. And you're seeing what looks good. Part of what looks good to me. If I have an elk tag that's an archery elk tag in the rut. What looks good to me is rubs. And so elk, when they rut and play, and Dan Evans really grilled this into me, they make a lot of sign.

They trash things. And so you can, you know, even in the season, in the rut, obviously you can tell where elk are rutting. You know, especially if it's a full moon or whatever and they're doing it at night. Maybe you're not seeing as much activity as you think you should be. You can drive around and you can see where the elk are rutting, wallowing. Of course, wallowing generally is a little bit earlier in those early archery hunts. And then just spending time chasing cows, rubbing, and the trees that are just trashed. You know, that's another thing you can look at in the summer. Generally, we like to say you can't scout the rut except for in the rut. But at times, Adam, we're keeping track mentally, even on these deer units, of where we're seeing rubs, even deer rubs. That's telling you rut. I mean, that's telling you November hunts for deer. Elk rubs, that's September for elk.

And so there's just a lot of tracks in sign. That's right. Well, that's a good tip. Just simply because, I mean, elk will rub trees, you know, out of boredom throughout the year. But they go to town day after day during that two, three-week period in September. So if you're seeing a lot of year-old rubs in an area, it's got water and it's got a lot of sign. Maybe not a lot of elk sun right there. Right then when you're there, you know, it may change here during the rut. So keep that in mind. So I'd like to talk about maybe just a quick experience and maybe it'll spur on, you know, some thought and a few tactics here. And then also I know you talked to a sheep hunter that talked about, you know, when to do, what to do in regards to a sheep hunt. But I did talk to a member. He was going to hunt Colorado, the high country, in a unit for elk.

And he says, you know, I know you've killed a few bulls, you know, a few good bulls. And I'm just kind of wondering, I want to just bounce a few ideas off you. And he says, so let's just say, like, you know, he was in particular, let's call it unit A. He's in unit A. And he says, I mean, how do I know that one grassy hillsides not as good as another grassy hillside? How do I know all of these things? And I said, yeah, you know, you're not going to know until you go in. Google Earth is just going to show that it's grassy hillsides. But you can always tell when you go in, you're going to see sign. I said, if you're sitting down and you're starting to glass and you don't have any elk tracks around you, you should move. You know what I mean? Because elk do make a lot of tracks and stuff. And so I think one of the things, you just don't know how pressure is going to affect elk.

You don't know how predators or whatever it may be, it may be water drying up. You get hikers, you get non-consumptive people in some of these high country Colorado units. They don't affect maybe the goats and sheep as much because those animals tend to get a little bit more habituated to them. And they'll stand around and take an arrow from you at 40 yards because they think you're a backpacker. You know, an elk is not going to do that. So if I'm during a season, if we're during a season and we're not seeing something for, like, let's say we backpack in and we're going in for a night and a morning. Generally, a night and a morning, if you're not seeing stuff in a night and a morning, you move. You don't waste another entire day, you know, on something that's not working. You move. I'm of the opinion you move.

And you move midday when there's not a lot of things moving and there's not a lot of other things to go. You never waste a night or a morning moving. You're glassing night or morning. You're hunting or scouting. Move during the middle of the night or the middle of the day. That's right. And don't be afraid to move. Move and get after it. And then that's when I might use Google Earth and say, well, geez, I'd be best off to backpack myself out of here and come around to a different trailhead and access some of this different country. Do that during the night and be at daylight the next morning doing that. Yeah. You know, when it comes to deer, I guess a couple of things that I've learned, though, whether it be in Utah or anywhere else, is if you see a good deer, and I mean a real good deer, like an all-in deer. Let's call it a book both ways. Just, yeah, anything.

Or something 30 inches smaller than that. All right. We're talking just a big deer. Just a 200-incher. You know, a deer that has got all your attention. And you see it. And, again, you have an earlier season hunt where you think that that deer, where he's living is where he's going to live. And you go back and you don't see him. Don't move like what we're talking about here. That's a good point. I'm talking about general. You're talking about learning a country for the first time and picking up signs. Or you don't have a specific animal graph. Yep. But when you find something, especially like a deer, where they have a lot smaller home range, you know, elk will move. You know, you find an elk in July and August, you better kill him right off the bat or who knows where that thing's going to be. A deer is a different story. So don't give up.

I've been, I've had specific deer that we've found or killed with people on limited draw units or that here in Utah. And you find them and it's taken me five trips back looking for the same deer. And then he just steps out of the timber. I knew it was probably in a thicker spot. It's going to be prone to that. And so the visibility and how we can see in glass always, always plays into how much I really stay in an area. But I always usually, I've had the things creep into my mind that, oh, maybe a lion killed him. Maybe I'm looking for something that's not here. But I usually, that happens on occasion. We all have heard of that and seen it happen and things like that. It's not fun. Nobody appreciates it. But I don't, until I find a carcass, I don't give up, you know. The one thing, and I think that's 100% true, especially during the season.

The one thing I did have a guy ask me the other day, he says, let's say you find a giant. And, you know, it's July 1st or July 15th or whatever. And you can tell he's going to be a giant. Obviously, they're growing. Do you stay on him? Do you check on him every week? Do you check on him every other day? And I'm like, no. I pretend. I don't care if that deer is 220 inches, 200 inches, 190 inches, whatever it is. I pretend there's a bigger deer in the unit and I don't quit. And I assume, especially if I have an early season hunt, I assume he's alive and well and I'm not going to keep checking on him. I want to kind of check on him and sometimes I will to see how he turned out. But I am moving. I've got one in my back pocket. Exactly. And I'm moving. I'm going to find 15 of them if I can because you might need 15 backup plants. Yeah. Mule deers are hard to hunt. Yeah.

What happens opening day when you blow him or another hunter knew about him and he gets pushed hard. And you realize, all right, my deer is no secret. I need a plan B and C buck. And so couldn't be said better than that. Don't, don't. There's some deer that you find that you know this is the deer I'm hunting. Yeah. But keep looking for a plan B or C because you always are going to have to have something like that. And we're not saying you give up on B or C if he doesn't show up the first or second day of the hunt. Oh. But if things go way south and the orange army shows up or the foot soldier army shows up. Let's say the fire runs through there. Yeah. It's January or July 20th. Yeah. Or whatever. You don't know he's going to be displaced. Yeah. It's always better to have more options than one option. That's probably just the moral.

And I think part of this too is we get hunting these same areas and guys get to be, this is my camp. I camp here. And we've done this for 20 years. And this is our family tradition. And we hunt this hill and we hunt this mountain and we hike this. And this is always good. And they get into a rut. And I like to, I like to every, in my mind, the entire unit is my playground. I'm willing to hunt on one end or the other end depending. And I don't, and I don't discount areas just because I like the way this looks. It doesn't matter. Deer don't care if I like what, what looks good. They care what they think looks good. What they feel comfortable in, what they feel safe in, and what they like to feed on. That's right. No question. They're habitual. Much more habitual. Tied to it even year to year. Elk, a lot of times, they'll live on a different mountain range from year to year.

A bull, specific bull. I mean, it's just, they're not quite like deer. Same. Yeah. And some of these elk we'll find, you know, guys are pre-scouting. And even from July through September to illustrate some of this movement, we've had bulls go from Utah to Nevada and get killed in Nevada. And, you know, guys kind of had him in their back pocket, so to speak. But those elk are never in your back pocket. You know, it would be like hunting deer as they migrate to November. You know about something in the summer range. And he's not in your back pocket unless you really know where he migrates to. And we do find that they will rut in general in the same geographical location. Yeah. You find that. You find a shed or something like that on a winter range of a buck or something in late February, early March. Okay. And you have a later season deer tag.

That at least lets you know the part of the unit that deer goes to to call winter, you know. And so there's been a lot of big deer killed, like on the Ponce Gont and other places like that, where a guy will find a shed of a buck. Sheds kill bucks. And the next year they know, all right, that's at least the direction that thing's going, whether he gets all the way to where he shed before, you know, October, end of October hits in the hunt. But it's all predicated on the season you have. And so if you ever have questions like that, you can call Jason or I just in terms of, hey, I've got this tag. What do you think is worthwhile doing ahead of time? Or what kind of things should I be looking for? Because we realize we're talking to ourselves here in this room here that maybe have grown up in the West and hunted deer and elk our whole lives.

But we realize that if you've hunted whitetail your whole lives and you're from, you know, Kentucky and you're wanting to hunt mule deer and you love hunting on your own and love the satisfaction that comes to that, you realize there's just a lot of natural questions. Just like Jason and I would have would say, hey, we're looking for some whitetail property in Kentucky on there. You know, what are we looking for? Kentucky? Where's that? Yeah. I mean, exactly. I'm going to have to get a map or I don't know. I guess I'd start with a map. So anyway, I just think and why we're starting to talk about this a little bit, but just don't be scared to try. It's your hunt. Nobody's going to be judging you unless you care about what people are thinking and saying about you and you shouldn't be doing that anyway. Don't be scared to try. Get out there and make it happen.

Some of these guys, they're scared of failure. They don't want to feel dumb and ask us dumb questions. And no question is a dumb question. Just like me and whitetails. I don't really like talking about whitetails because they're not my wheelhouse and I know nothing about them. That's right. I know nothing about them. Might as well be talking about hunting, you know, narwhals or something. Like the people in the narwhal. Remember Jim Wendham was talking about the people in Nineveh hunting seals and narwhals up there in Nineveh. You know, and I'm like, okay, I wonder how you'd kill one of those. I just shoot them in the hunt. They live under six feet of ice and they have a blowhole now and then. Tannerite. That's what I'd be first seeing. Man, 80s and Tannerite. So anyway, yeah, I just think, anyway, don't be scared to try. You might waste a tag or two here and there.

We've got a whole drawer full of tags. Wazoo Awesome tags that took 10 plus points that we've eaten. And so, and it's just a matter of going out and doing it and learning as much as you can and thinking all the time. One thing I think, Adam, that we take for granted is because we live it and we don't think about it a lot. When we're away from our house and we're out there doing it, we never quit thinking. There's rams you've lost and you found five miles away, seven miles away. And you found them because you didn't quit thinking. Yeah. And when we're sitting there having lunch, we're thinking. If he's not here, where's he at? Where's he at? What am I going to try? Yeah. You may remember, I mean, you talk to a lot of different people. Remember the podcast with Jake Franklin? He had a big gram glass. There was something with Jason Harrison last year. He, they had exhausted.

And they just started, he started thinking out of the box. Where could they be? He knew they had some weird monsoonal rains that went through an area, found a little bit of a green up, a bunch of quill. He's like, all right. He started, we're going to glass an area you never have. And like you said, found some barrel cactus, broke open. And there's only one thing that does that in the California desert. So just, there's no, there's no substitution for trying. And we've failed way more times than we've succeeded. But that hopefully allows us to succeed more now in our hunting careers because we know, all right, what, what doesn't work or what wasn't enough effort? What, what taught me a lesson? And there's no substitute for just being taught lessons, good or bad. And so another thing, I just think like just working hard during your hunt.

So let's say you're, you're right in the middle of your hunt. There's not a lot going on in the middle of the day. If you're not moving to new country, you should be. There's a couple of things. You know, we run, we run trail cameras during the season if we can. And it's not going to be legal in Nevada anymore. But like elk in, in Utah, we're running them during the season. These bulls, remember, we talked about them moving into rut. They move in with different cows. Maybe they're establishing a pecking order. Some bulls get run off and they pick up a new group of cows. Checking these cameras every day. Check them every single day. There's nothing else going on. And it might be 80 or 90 degrees. And they've got to water in the middle of the day in September, especially in some of these lower lying units. And so these, it's a, what else is going on? Learn country.

Learn where these elk are. And, and when they start coming into water, I killed a bull that came in for the first time September 23rd. And, and who knows where he was prior to that. He's probably rutting a cow three miles away and I didn't know it. And then, and he came in and he stuck there and I killed him. And it was because we were checking cameras in the middle of the day. That's right. Another, I mean, we can't, I guess, talk about scouting without, we've mentioned glassing a little bit just in terms of thrown out glassing, but really need to impress.

I mean, trail cameras are tools and certain places they're very effective. Other places, they're not at all. Not at all. I don't even use them in certain places because there's either too much water or the animals just don't depend on, you know, too tight of a place like that. You can get a, you get a picture. There are a lot of sheep areas in Utah or for instance, they're just not, not that way. Buy the best glass you can afford. Obviously not all hunts. Archery elk hunts in the rut generally isn't probably going to need it and need as much of an investment in, you know, 15 power mounted on a tripod and highest spot and scope you need. But when it comes to hunting mule deer or sheep, absolutely it's going to because they don't scream and make noise like elk do in the rut. Now, if you're going to hunt late season elk, no question. Optus become a big deal.

And a lot of the seasons around the West are late October, November. And you're talking about bulls that are worn out. They're tired. They're not moving a lot in some states. I mean, in certain places like Wyoming and Montana and other places, they can migrate long, long distances. But in other places in our mountain ranges in Utah and Nevada, it's just a little bit of an elevational shift. And they're tucked away in pockets and thick timber. And it's sitting on your butt all day long. And so you've got to have great glass. I mean, we've, Jason and I, for whatever reason, but we've never had a reason to change. We've used Swarovski pretty much our whole life, 15-power mounted tripod binoculars. There's been a lot of hunts that I don't even pack spotting scope, and I would never trade those 15s. And when you're looking for one specific deer. I love 15s. Yeah.

And you know you're going to recognize that deer the instant he steps out of the brush at 1,000 or 1,500 yards. You don't need a scope, but you need to tear stuff apart with your 15s. So press that upon your minds. I mean, there's a lot of techniques we can get into glassing, and that's probably just for another podcast or something like that. Everybody has their own personal, you know, methods for that. But have the best glass that you can find. A lot of these units, even in Colorado, third season, you think they're just going to be standing around rutting with the does. But a lot of times, they're in the standing quakies or spruce fir timber, and you're sitting on the hillside all day long waiting for that white butt patch, you know, to face you the right way in the timber or, you know, pick up a buck that's coming down out of the high country and he's bedded in there. Whatever.

You just, you need the best optics you can have. And if that's Vortex or Zeiss or whatever it is, Zeiss does make a great pair of 15s. I know Vortex come out with an 18 power. Some phenomenal optics, by the way. Kent's Optics, we work with them. We'll throw a little plug out for those guys. They are intense hunters. Kill some amazing animals. And they sell a lot of different brands of optics from Night Force to Vortex, Strauss, Zeiss, whatever. And they've got an incredible inventory. Super good guys just to visit with about hunting experience as well. They kind of have a fetish for giant antelope. I don't quite understand it, but they do. And they kill a lot of book heads. They're responsible for a lot of book heads hitting the ground. Deer, elk, and antelope. And so super good guys. Give them a holler. If you need anything, they sell tripods and all kinds of different gear.

But it would be kentzoptics.com, 435-257-7014. David Harrow, his brother, super good guys. So anyway, we've covered a lot of stuff. Is there anything? I know we're missing a ton, Adam. Can you think of anything we should be talking about specific?

I know we've got some questions about wind, you know, and the differences of hunting animals in maybe, we'll call lower elevations, 5,000 to 8,000 feet. Even though a lot of you sea level people might think 8,000 feet's high. Us Westerners. There's brain cells of 8,000. That 5,000 to 8,000, we would call the low to mid-range. And then you get the 10,000 to 12,000 foot high country stuff. And how wind plays a different role. And it's not just a role in, you know, if you've got a bow and you're trying to stalk an animal and keep the wind in your face. It's a lot of times trying to, whether you're hunting spring black bears, they have incredible noises. And you're trying to glass a canyon, you've got to be paying attention to that. You've got to be just the prevailing winds. And I know we're talking about stuff that sounds very basic. But it changes with altitude.

And it doesn't stay as constant at higher altitude either. You get a lot more convectional currents swirling and different things like that. And I think the old, I can't call it old, I guess the podcast we did last year perhaps, that's not too old. No. With Randy Ulmer, he talked about that. How he has a different approach when he's hunting Nevada versus when he's hunting the high country of Colorado hunting deer. Because of wind usually will stabilize in these higher deserts of Utah, Nevada quicker in the day as you get that prevailing generally south wind. And versus Colorado or anywhere in the high country, Wyoming, Montana, the high country, where you get a lot of thermal building or cloud building. And it creates its own weather. And it can cause problems. So there's not a, just bear that in mind, I guess.

Before you make your, decide to go all in and stock something, sheep, goat, billy or ram or whatever. You're after a big buck under a cliff ledge. Depending on where you're hunting, you may, don't rush in there. So I'm generally a very patient guy when it comes to that, especially when you're hunting one animal. If you're hunting just deer, just go for it. Yeah. If you're hunting one deer, you try to make it count. And if you're glassing 360 degrees, you don't know where the buck is. You don't know what you're looking for. You know, if you're just scouting and you don't have a specific buck you're onto and you don't know where he likes to bed. You know, but a lot of times just one little tip. And I know we're not talking about glassing much. One little tip. A lot of guys don't like to glass in the sun. I don't like glassing into the sun.

But when you glass into the sun, you're looking at the shade. Into the shade. It's the hardest thing to do because it's squinting. You have your hat over your eye or your optics. You got glare. I was listening to a podcast. I listen to a lot of podcasts because they're addicting, including ours. And anyway, they were talking about they don't glass into the sun. You choose to have the sun to your back. And they do glow. And right when the sun first hits everything, everything glows. And it is nice to have the sun to your back. But in places that we're going, a lot of times those deer will let the sun hit them for five to ten minutes. And then they're headed shade. And so anyway, just, you know, if you set up for an evening glass, glass into the sun. That buck's been sitting there in the shade for the last two to three hours. And so anyway, you might not be right, have the sun on you.

You might kick off to the side of a tree or do whatever you can to get into that shade. But it is going to be a little white in there. You're going to be having sun rays. Generally different for sheep and goats and things like that that don't have an aversion to it as much. They're on their feet up and down a lot more throughout the day. But when it comes to elk or deer, it's both a thermal thing and it's just a seclusive. I think they know. They know when they're popping out like a Christmas light. Yeah, they know it. And if you watch enough big deer live on the shady north-facing slopes or whether it be the east or west-facing slopes on either morning or night, you'll realize that an older deer or an older bull picks up on that. And they like it. That's an added level of security for them. That's it.

I think we could obviously talk about some more mapping with your phone and your GPS and some of these chips that are available and whatnot. Just know that we are huge fans of that. You should, for maps, get your paper maps right now. But Google Earth and your GPS chips are amazing tools. And anyway, so do that. Call us. We have the Member Draw Experience Program. We're obviously going to put you in that program as well. And then you'll be able to help the next guy. And that's a service, a member benefit for the $100 a year you spend with us to get the nine issues a year that's heavily detailed in all the research part of our magazine, as well as, you know, partaking in this Member Draw Experience Program. It's thousands and thousands and thousands of entries in there and guys that are willing to help you out as long as you're willing to help the next guy. That's right.

So take advantage of that. We're here. It's that time of year when most of the drawings are all taking place. There's a few states left. But Idaho, deer, elk, antelope, and what, Arizona, deer and sheep, that's about it for the most part. So if you find yourself with a tag or two that you want to try to help put something together with, use the Epic Member Experience database Jason talked about or give us a call or, you know, some of the other things we talked about today. It's also the time of year. We've talked about several pieces of gear that we don't live without, you know, here in our podcast. And it's the time of year where good gear, you should be on top of it. A lot of places, if you're shopping retail in different places, as you get the week before your hunt, you're going to have a hard time finding the sizes and things like that in.

So I encourage you to get your gear early, whether it's boots, whether it's camo, whether it's new rifles, bows, guns, whatever, tents, things like that. So give a quick shout out to Hilleberg. I know we've loved our Hilleberg tents, you know, whether it be single man, two man, depending on the type of hunt we use. They've got something for everything, whether you've got a late season hunt, huge variety of applications for their tents, group hunts, individual hunts, things like that. Hilleberg, H-I-L-L-E-B-E-R-G, Hilleberg.com, as well as check them out online. And love their tents, great products, four-season tents for the most part. They are, they're awesome. Okay, well that wraps it up. I think we pretty well covered it. There's obviously a lot more questions out there, and feel free to call Adam and I.

Maybe we might even talk about how long we glass and when we move and a lot of different little, dive into some of these little things. But we may even do a question and answer podcast. Maybe we do some kind of a live feed somehow. I don't even know how to spell live. I don't know, all I know is I just start scrolling through my phone on Instagram and Facebook, and I don't even know how that stuff gets there. But we might do something with the help of Chris and somebody else that's more savvy, you know, with this new age stuff than I am. So anyway, maybe we'll do a question and answer and kind of dive into a few of these things. Again, there's a lot of different techniques that work. Just because we do something a little different than the next guy doesn't mean he's going to be unsuccessful. There's a lot of techniques that work. And so anyway, appreciate all you guys out there.

Feel free to give us a holler. I think one of the biggest keys I can leave you with is don't be scared to fail. Get out there and make it happen. Don't be scared to fail. Just do it. You've got to start somewhere. We eat tags. They don't taste good, but we're all going to eat them. That's part of doing business within the hunting industry. And I call it a business because you're spending a lot of money and there's a lot of investment there. So anyway, it's just part of the game. Learn how to eat tags and not be scared of it. And you'll do well and you get a lot of satisfaction out of enjoying these tags. That's right. If you want, you can obviously give us a call. Shoot us an email if you want to send some ideas or some talking points for a podcast, Q&A podcast. We did one a few months ago. Hopefully it was beneficial. If you guys like it, you had some great questions submitted to us.

If you want to submit something to us, you can send it to chris, C-H-R-I-S, at epicoutdoors.com. We'll put something together here in the next maybe month or something that can hopefully be used, tailored to scouting or hunting tactics specifically with some of the hunts here looming here in the next month or two. So chris at epicoutdoors.com. Or if you happen to call and for some other reason, get an Epic Member Experience Database or something like that, you can give us an idea. We'll pencil that down as well. And we're lined up to do five podcasts this week. I just want you to know you can guarantee yourself new content you wake up Friday morning. And check out the Epic Outdoors podcast. We load content for sure every Thursday. Now sometimes Chris makes it 11.59 p.m. on Thursday. But Friday morning, you know, you can be sure you're going to have new content.

And if not, we do, once in a while we'll put out a couple a week. But anyway, we're cranking them out like it's our job. Everybody get out there. Find a big deer. Find a big elk, big ram. These same tactics can be used on moose or goat or anything. But heck, if you have any questions, give us a holler. We're happy to help in and around our own scouting. We will be closing the office on Fridays. It's just time. It's that time of year. So let's get out there and find something, boys.