Early Season Unit 10 Arizona Elk with Rifle & Handgun Editor Jeremiah Polacek

We catch up with Jeremiah Polacek the editor of Rifle & Handgun and Handloader magazines to talk rifles, optics and hunting elk in the desert at the end of September when bull elk bugle in the early morning. Visit https://www.riflemagazine.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

And now, here's Gary Lewis. Next on Fox. But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Intellectually, um, analytically.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

And you have found a podcast called Gary Lewis Outdoorsman. I'm Gary Lewis. This is where we talk about big game hunting around the West and around the world. We talk about rifles and ammunition, talk about bullets. And sometimes we talk about steelhead vision. We're not doing that today. We're talking Arizona Elk with JP Jeremiah from Rifle and Handgun Magazine from Handloader. You can find them at handloadermagazine.com, riflemagazine.com. They have great publications with the experts on great subjects. You can find Jeremiah at handloader TV on YouTube and on Instagram. He's at cowboy underscore JP. Want to thank our sponsors. The podcast is sponsored by West Coast Floats. And our TV sponsors are Nozzler Incorporated, Warren Scope Mounts, Hoodoo, Ski Area, Crescent Lake, Lodge, Crescent Lake Resort, Carson, as in Carson Oil, T S Ford Madras, Brocure Bait Fence, the Dall's area chamber of Armor Spring Island. Aquaz USA Parks. They take care of that great website, GaryLewisOutdoors.com. I just got to go. Let's get right into it when it's talking to Jeremiah from Rifle Telecom Magazine. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Uh too heavily. And that's kind of just goes with the territory where you're at in Wyoming, wide open, rolling hills, and so the sound travels really well. However, the first day it was pretty windy, so those stands were a little bit closer. I think we hit eight stands the first day, and that was just kind of rough with the wind blowing 40, 50 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

It's really hard getting coyotes to come on windy days for me. Were you successful on that day?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

I think the first day was by far the roughest day. And I think maybe we got between all of us in the group, maybe three dogs that day. And the second day the wind calmed down, and that was where most of the productivity happened.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah, because they're hungry that next day because they haven't been circulating as much. And then you you get out there with those sounds. One time I watched a coyote come on a prey distress call and it stopped and sat down. And so then I started switching sound to sound, and then she just at one point, I don't remember what sound it was, but she just got up and started coming. And it was like six sounds I'd switched before that one triggered for her.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

I you know, I I try to be a student of the coyote and figure out how they think and how they work, and just about when I think I've got it figured out, they beat me at my own game. So I'm no expert, but one thing I I have noticed is there are certain sounds that seem to set them off, and that was kind of Jeff's thinking too, and that's why he just rolled through the sounds so much with us, because there's usually one sound that they they want to react to, and it kind of makes sense. I don't know how closely related uh coyote is to a lab, the yellow lab, which is what I bird hunt with here in Arizona, but I've tormented him with these calls, practicing and stuff, and it seems like watching watching his reactions to it, there always seems to be one that just sets him off. And it can change from day to day too, which is kind of interesting. Now, whether that relates directly to a coyote, I don't know, but it is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 4:29

What did you bring for a rifle?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

So it was uh alongside Lucky Duck and Hornady, so I decided to bring out my uh custom built 22 arc. It's built on a Pacific tool engaged Dracar Action Proof Research Barrel, just a really, really nice rifle. I wrote about it some time ago in handloader, and it's arguably one of the most accurate rifles I own. So I wanted something that was kind of foolproof, and if there was any misses, it wouldn't be on me. It would be on me, not the rifle. So I put that up there and uh really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

For for your optic, did you have the right optic or were you compromising with something you had on there already?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

No, it was an optic that I had mounted on there already, and thankfully it was a good fit for what we were doing. It's uh loophole Mark IV, I believe it's uh I want to say it's a four and a half to eighteen optic, a 52 millimeter objective lens on it. Really, really nice optic, kind of built for the PRS kind of game, but it worked really good on some of those longer shots out in the Wyoming flats and stuff. Still had enough low-end magnification. If the dog came in close, there was no issue there. And then uh a Harris bipods, but I prefer to use on that rifle because it's uh it's easy to move. If something sneaks in behind you or something like that, then that way you can quickly readjust and shift your position, get on them.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Were you sitting down or laying down most of the time?

SPEAKER_00 6:09

So I was personally sitting down most of the time just because uh been thrown off one too many horses and getting up from the prone is not not my forte. So I can sit on the hunt and kind of scan left to right and check behind me. We did have a couple of guys that were prone out though, and that's definitely more solid. It's a it's a good shooting position to be in, but you sacrifice your movement, time, and speed if something does okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Now we didn't talk about this last time because I think it was before the hunt was scheduled. You and your wife had an early rifle bull tag last year. Yeah. So I wanted to follow up on that story and find out how that went down and and what you learned from that.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Lessons learned from that hunt was many, many. It's not every day you get to go out and hunt bull elk in the rut, especially here in Arizona. And what was kind of neat about that hunt is we had a little bit of a leg up. My family's been here for three generations, and we've been hunting that country for about that long. And uh so we kind of knew the area already, put a lot of time in scouting, talked with other friends, ranchers in the area, and uh got a good idea of where to go. So that was helpful. But uh boy, it was it was a lot of work, a lot of fun, a lot of ups and downs on that hunt, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience. How long was the season? So we had seven days to hunt. Seven days to hunt. Um, and my wife harvested her bull on the fourth day, if memory serves me correct. Uh and it was it was a little touch and go there at first because it would the weather was a little bit warm, it was a little bit off. Uh, the first couple days we didn't see anything, didn't hear a bugle, couldn't, couldn't find them, couldn't glass them up. We spent all morning glassing the opening day and the day before we went up early, uh, settled in to camp and did some glassing that evening with no luck. But she found her first big elk shed, so that was pretty cool. That was exciting for her. I think we got her hooked on hunting shoes. And then uh the about the third day things started kicking off. The rat finally started getting into swing in little pocketed areas, and so we dialed in on a couple of areas that we knew bulls had been hitting water. Uh, they were doing it likely early, early in the morning based on what uh another buddy was saying. And uh so we kind of found them where they were hitting, sent out some location bugles, and those were the bulls we we hunted. Uh, finally got eyes on some of them. They were there was a good hard bull in there, about a 340, 350 bull, and so that's kind of what we were hoping for, knowing the unit, knowing the area, and just the kind of year we had with the Arizona droughts and everything. So we went after him, and there was a there was a lot of decisions made to try and put him on the ground, but it all worked out in the end.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Okay, so you did you not hear any bugles for the first few days, and you attributed it to weather, and you just stuck with it and get up real early and and then listen, or do you have places you walk to or drive to?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, the unit we were hunting is really, really big. Um, it's one of the larger units in Arizona, it's unit 10. Um, there's a public land agreement with the Arizona Game and Fish to get on to one of the ranches up there. It's uh big Bokias ranch. And we did that and also hunted public land. There's the open national forest and that kind of stuff. Anybody can get on the ranch, you just have to request permission. So it's open to the public, which is really cool. It's neat that Arizona has that opportunity. But as a result, the unit is massive, and there's so many different ways you could go. So mostly we were driving around, sit and listen for a few minutes, send out a couple of location bugles, see if anything responded. And we were doing that uh on and off pretty much all day, the first and second day, and didn't hear anything or see anything until about the third day.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Mm-hmm. And you so you you're getting some locate um bugles, and did you have a pretty good map? And and were you able to figure out where those locates were coming from?

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Yeah, we had a really good map. There's actually a local company in Arizona, um, friends with the owner of the company, and uh it's called Flatline Maps, and I'm I'm kind of still a fan of paper maps, I enjoy them, but they also have a phone app, and uh you can use them on there. And I got both of those.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

And they worked really, really well.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

And were you using so you probably then had that uh aerial photo option as well with your mapping system?

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Um no, it's mostly topographical maps. Um kind of what I was born and raised on using, so I kind of got used to using those. I do enjoy some of the aerial photography and and stuff like that. Um, um, to be honest with you, a lot of that stuff I just use Google Earth for that. Um I also use Onyx quite a bit. I enjoy their mapping software. Um I like their hybrid map. Uh I use that quite a bit because then it's kind of the best of both worlds in my mind. I I'm used to reading topographical maps, and that that hybrid program works really well for me. It kind of makes sense. There's a lot of little ravines and and gullies and washes and stuff that if you just look at the aerial photography, you'd never know it was there. It looks like wide open, flat country, but then when you look at the topographical lines, you can kind of see, well, there's a wash here, and there's little rises and then that country getting getting the elevation on the animals sometimes is the difference between spotting them and never seeing them.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

So you're able to sometimes get up above them and then look down from a different from a different bandage? Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah, for sure. Definitely a lot of spotting stock. Uh, I'm personally a big fan of that. I like setting up early in the morning and first light or even in the dark on top of a hill, doing some glassing, seeing what I can see. And that was a little bit of a challenge for me because this was a little bit more run and gun than what I'm used to. A lot of my hunts are are late hunts, and uh let's just say there's there's no bugling, there's there's no rut activity usually. Usually, yeah. Getting the opportunity to to call and locate bulls like that is a huge advantage. And I kind of had to change my typical hunting strategy up and avoid sitting in one place too long glassing, because if they're not bugling, it's gonna be pretty tough to find them, especially country.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

So then how many how many elk were you able to locate by hearing them bugle? Do you have three or four or more than that?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

So once it started kicking off and we kind of had an idea of where the the pockets of bulls were, you know, we'd we'd pick up on a satellite bull bugling over here. Uh there might be a bull over there, sometimes miles apart. I'd say on day three, we probably heard picked up on six different bulls bugling, only put eyes on two of them, chasing them down. One turned out to be smaller than he sounded, which I don't know. There's a lot of debate on that. Can you tell how big a bull is by its bugle? I couldn't tell you that. I don't know the answer to that. But I I will say they do have distinct sounds, and you can pick out different bulls by their bugle.

unknown 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

I'm gonna leave that up to anyone's guess.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

That was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

And then when you um when you were bugling, you were, I assume you were bugling and locating back to them. Were you giving them the same sound they were given, or were you being a little aggressive with your uh responses?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

So we started out initially being pretty aggressive. Um, and as time went on, we kind of learned quickly that that was not the right approach. They hadn't fully kicked off yet, like we were hoping they would. And uh, so they were actually, we had a couple bowls we probably scared off by being a little too aggressive. So we kind of toned it back, and uh thankfully I had a good buddy, lifelong friend. We've been hunting together forever, and he was he's an excellent elk caller. So he'd kind of hang back a few hundred yards while me and the wife could move forward. He'd stay back there just hitting the location bugles on them, figuring out where they were, and we got real close to quite a few bulls doing that. That seemed to work out much better than trying to draw them into us.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

Yeah, okay. So then not using cow sounds then?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

No, we did try using cow sounds too, uh, for sure. And that had mixed results.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Results, yeah. Yeah at that that time of the season, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yeah. It was it was hit or miss. We had a couple bulls close the distance, but never fully commit. They always kind of wanted the cow to come to them, kind of thing, rather than the cow. And it got us close, but never close enough to seal the deal.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

And so then when when it all came together, what happened?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Well, I'll give you the the whole story on that, because it's it's kind of neat. We we kind of had an idea where these bulls were rutting. They had little pocket, and we decided to go down there, location bugle them first thing in the morning, which seemed to be when they were most active. We had gotten on a a herd of them with a couple of satellites floating around. We knew they were in that area, drove down the road right at first light, let out a location bugle, and we heard them, drove closer, let out another one, heard them answer back, and we had kind of tracked these bulls through some some thick, gnarly stuff, where it was it would have been a real tough area to hunt them, but we knew the direction they were heading based on the water they were hitting. So we made a tough call to turn around, get in the truck, and go back and try and cut them off. So we did that, got ahead of the direction they were heading yesterday and where they seemed to be heading this morning, and we made the tough call of not making a sound. They were pretty fired up, you could hear the satellites going, so we just kind of followed that sound, the couple location bugles we let out, kind of fired them off, and we followed that, got in, and it was foggy, it was thick country, visibility was down to about 50 or so yards, and that's what made the whole experience truly once in a lifetime. It was just peak, Arizona, bull rut, elk hunting. And uh me and the wife and the friend group, he had his wife with him, and we all four of us snuck into this one little area. We found a an area where there was bulls to our left, bulls to our right, bulls in front of us, and we could hear cows going off. So we figured this is a good area. We have decent visibility out to about 50 yards. Let's just sit here quietly and see if we managed to get ahead. And there was a bull we called Growler to our right, and then another bull to our left that sounded real similar to him, but not quite as deep and throaty. So we kind of waited there, and uh then we made another tough decision to move just a little bit closer to the weaker sounding bull, because we'd had eyes on the growler bull before, and he wasn't quite as big as you'd think. He was probably about a 330, 340 class bull, and he wasn't the herd bull. He was a satellite bull trying to steal the other cows from the herd bull. So we snuck in, got in this lane, got my wife set up, and we could hear at this point that bull creeping in closer and closer, and then everything went quiet, and we just sat there. And with the fog rolling over, and the stillness and the silence, we were just waiting for something to something to happen. And three cows popped out through the fog, through the thick trees, and kind of moved off directly away from us, and that just kind of devastated my wife. She goes, Oh, we've been we've been spotted, they don't like it, they they're out of here. I'm like, just wait. That's the herdbull, it's got the cows, just wait. And of course, uh hunting with your wife, depending on you know the dynamics there, it can always be interesting. So she was pretty devastated, and I was just keeping my fingers crossed, hoping something, something else happens, because it's all quiet at this point. And uh sure enough, about what seemed like 30 minutes, but was probably three minutes later, a bull starts walking out of the fog, and he's a good bull. She gets her eyes on him, likes him, settles in and makes a shot at 38 yards. Oh my hit, rears up on his hind legs, kind of walks off, and disappears behind a tree into the fog. Now, based on how he reacted and everything, we figured it was a good hit. My buddy got it all on video. So we were watching that, making sure everything was good, gave it some time, and eventually found the bull.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

So it was it was a pretty awesome experience being that close. You could hear every step he took, you could hear his breathing, see see the breath out of his nostrils. It was truly an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

So you call that an early season um elk hunt, but what month would that have been for you? November? It would have been uh late September. Late September.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:35

Okay. All right. Yeah, I just wondered how much different it was would be from when our elk go into the breeding season up here.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

So when is the rud up there in Oregon?

SPEAKER_02 21:47

It is usually gonna kick off um on the first full moon of September.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

That's when we would look at or if or Or if that f last full moon of August, if it comes in the last week, I mean that can happen too. So you guys are actually a little bit earlier than us. Yeah, which is what I expected. So we're probably a a month ahead of you guys.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Okay. Yeah. But you know the rut can continue all the way for us, it can continue all the way through November as cows come back into cycle.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

Because the rut's all on again when a cow comes into cycle. And it that might happen up to four times.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So yeah, yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. Okay. That's kind of an amazing thing about elk is you know that that rut hunt and the cow cycling. It can be a little bit of an emotional roller coaster as you're riding that cycle out.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Yeah, because you you really have to carve out the part of the season that's gonna work. And it doesn't always coincide with what's going on in the field, you know, to you know, it was for what's the reality in the elk woods. Right, right. You play the hand that you're dealt. But what rifle did you use did she use on this hunt?

SPEAKER_00 23:23

She was shooting a uh nozzler, uh mountain carbon rifle, chambered in 28 nozzler, and she handloaded her own ammunition for it, and I think she was shooting a 139-grain Barnes LRX bullet at about 3,200 feet a second, maybe a little bit more.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

That is smoking. Well, that's a nice rifle to carry for sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Oh, it's nice and light, fits her really well. Actually, the the rifle fits her better than it fits me, to be perfectly honest. Um lightweight, it's it's hard to beat, and it's accurate, most importantly.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Did you have shooting sticks or a bipod on it?

SPEAKER_00 24:04

She actually shot off a tripod. Um, same tripod eyeglass off of. It's one of the uh Leophoto tripods with uh arca rail. I added an arca rail to her rifle so it could just drop right in there and she could be rock steady.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Which uh probably didn't need it 38 yards. We were set up to shoot a lot further, but uh anybody who's hunted with me knows I I prefer to get in close if I can, and it's always a lot more fun.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

I took one of those long-range shooting schools with Daryl Holland, and it was you know, it was a game changer for me. And then the first thing I did was take the rifle that was all set up with Daryl's system, which I still think is the greatest. And I go to Hawaii on a pig hunt, and I shot a pig at 30 yards with the long-range rifle.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

Uh I would do it all.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Nothing wrong with that. I I kind of do the same thing. The first custom rifle I had built for me was a 280 Actly improved, put a really nice optic on it, arca rail, 26-inch barrel, and I uh I shot a deer at 38 yards with that thing, so you just never know. It's true. Got a cute nose.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Okay, how far did you have to trail that elk? Did you have to trail it? Did it go very far?

SPEAKER_00 25:39

It went a lot further than I would have thought, but it wasn't too bad. Um, yeah, I think part of that was a fog rolling in, and uh, we kind of sat there and gave it some time and waited because we we knew it was a good shot, and he had gone about maybe, let's see, we could see about 50 yards. She shot at 38 yards, so quick math. He went maybe 100 yards tops.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Yeah, not bad at all. And sometimes they're a little bit amped up, and so they're going on adrenaline and they don't even know they've been hit sometimes. They don't know anything's wrong, and they just keep right on going until they they just run out of gas.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Yeah, that's very true. And that it was kind of extraordinary because we we had it all on video, so we watched it back frame by frame, you know, trying to figure out exactly what had happened. And he just ever so slightly reared up on his front, just a couple inches off the ground, and then he just walked off like nothing had ever happened to him.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

So we we went down, checked the blood, there was blood there, not a whole lot of blood, but there was blood. So we figured he was he was hit pretty good. He didn't go much further than that. So that was good. But elk extraordinarily tough animals.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah. Did you still have fog when you recovered it or had the fog lifted?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

We actually were fortunate and the fog had lifted. Um it was clearing out. Uh probably about we waited about a half an hour, and then maybe another 15 minutes after that, it was pretty much completely gone. Which made recovery much, much easier.

SPEAKER_02 27:28

When when I'm trying to figure out where an animal's gone, if I can't see the area, it makes it more difficult because you they're gonna go if they know they've been hurt, they're gonna go somewhere where they can lay down or or escape to a place where they can look back from. And if you can't figure that out because of fog or dark, then you've gotta wait, you know.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah. Well, and then the the last thing you want to do is you know he's he's not dead yet, and you will you don't wait long enough, and then you kick him out of there, and he gets and win, and then uh your job just got a whole lot harder. So having that patience is as hard as it is, it is critical.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Now, and that's I was looking at some maps while we were talking. That is a big unit to hunt, and it helps to have some intelligence about where to go, but you're also in country um that's split up a little bit by some reservations, isn't that right?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah, yeah, you cannot hunt the reservation. So a lot of guys like to hunt the the border of the res, which it's definitely proven to be successful historically speaking. But boy, you better hope you anchor that bull if he's on the on the fence line, because all he's gotta do is jump across there and and you've lost the trophy of a lifetime. So it it can be a little tricky hunting that area. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Yeah, that's what I understand. We did an episode of a few weeks ago with a guy who told some stories out of out of uh New Mexico, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sometimes those units they're they're really neat because there's not as much pressure and you know they have that that safe area that they can go to. There's quite a few units in Arizona that are that are like that. We have uh four different reservations, and it seems like uh just looking at the areas and talking with folks about it, it seems like the closer you are to those reservations where they're generally speaking safe, uh there's a lot more bulls or or bucks or whatever on those border areas. But hunting them there can be pretty tricky.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yeah, and elk have this way of getting into people's heads too, is so they'll do things for elk that they wouldn't do in this the rest of their lives, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, yeah. Just when you think you get them figured out, they'll do something that surprises you.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Yeah, and and that's people. People will be the ones that surprise you more than the elk.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah, that is true too. That is very true.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Okay, so are you you got any elk hunts planned for 2026?

SPEAKER_00 30:33

No, nothing in the queue yet. Still keeping my fingers crossed for a couple of out of state draws, but didn't draw anything in Arizona, unfortunately. But uh pulling back-to-back tags in prime units, that that would be uh that would be more than a stroke of luck. It'd probably be a miracle.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah, that that would be a miracle in Arizona, wouldn't it? Uh okay, so what about um are you hunting any species this year that you haven't hunted before that you're hoping to get to complete maybe the goal that you had?

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Nothing nothing really striking me this year. I am gonna devote a little bit more time to hunting a mountain lion in Arizona. There's uh been a couple I've seen that have kind of been wandering close to the areas I hunt. So I'd like to hit that hard this year and devote some more time to kind of predator control and coyote hunting and that kind of stuff. So but uh mountain lions on the list.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah, it is for me too, and I think the people that are hunting mountain lions right now, they're they're doing good work if they're being successful, and and um we certainly need them to do that to be successful here in Oregon. We have too many, and so I my hat's off to the people who've learned how to do it and are are committed to it and doing it well.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yeah, yeah. Now I've got several friends here that you know they run run dogs on lions, which thankfully is still allowed here in Arizona, and that seems to be probably the most effective method for hunting them. Um personally, I'd love to kind of track one down, do it, do it myself, but uh we'll see. I might be calling a friend with some dogs. We'll see how it all goes.

SPEAKER_02 32:26

Yep. Yeah, what I'm looking at in with the areas that I've been hunting the last few years that I'm really getting to know, I'm seeing way more bears than I want to. And it's it's because I w I want to be hunting deer in these places, not hunting bear. And when you have too many bears, then the little black-tailed deer fawns aren't gonna make it.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

They're they're not gonna make it. And it's bears and lions that are having the the effect. So um I as much as I talk about it, I need to focus harder on on that predator control, that large predator control.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Yeah, man, well, I can relate wholeheartedly, and that's why lions on the list this year, because uh there's a lot of areas where game and fish really does a phenomenal job of managing, in particular mule deer. There's some very well-known areas up north of me, kind of in that strip area bordering Utah, and very well managed up there. But then some of the more uh opportunity type units, which is closer to where I live, um the management is kind of left up to the sportsman. And uh not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, but if you don't have enough guys in there hunting predators, it can definitely lead to an issue. So I'm I need to put the rubber on the road and actually do some hunting.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

Yeah. Okay, well, you're challenging me, you know. When you're saying that, I'm thinking, Dad, you're talking to me.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

No, it's uh I'm right there with you. I I gotta get out there too.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

So Okay, well, it's been good talking to you. Have you killed a black tailed deer yet? It's on the list, not yet. Okay, well when when the time comes, then we sh we need to talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

That sounds great. I I would love it. I got my first uh Eastern Whitetail last year. So I think black tail is probably the next one.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Yeah. Yep. Okay, well, tell me when when the time is right, Jeremiah. Okay, how can people find you? How can people find Wolf Publishing?

SPEAKER_00 34:53

Uh so they can go to handloader magazine.com, uh, riflemagazine.com for rifle and handgun magazine. We also have varmintrifles and cartridges magazine, uh, websites there, and then handloader TV and my personal Instagram is uh cowboy underscore JP. So you can check me out there as well if you want a more close-up look at my life. It's not all that interesting, but it's fun.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

All right, well, Jeremiah, thank you. It's good to talk to you, and uh well, we wish you luck on killing a mountain lion, and I hope that I'll be your second phone call when you do.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Sounds good. You can count on that, Gary. I appreciate everything. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

All right.com. Thanks to our sponsors, Nazareth Corporated, Warren's Gold Mount, Camp Cha, Voodoo's area, Ratzelake Resort, Arson, Arson Oil, T SNS, Ward Madras, Procure Bakes, the Dallas Area Chamber of Commerce, Ring Highland, Aquas USA, Smart, West Coast Float, Frontier Roast Coffee, High Desert Tactical, and Thanks for listening. Uh, we appreciate you out there, and uh, we want to bring you good conversations and tune in again soon. We're gonna have another episode up quick.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Hey, it's Barack. Listen, can we get together?