Running Water Podcast with Jordan Budd

Nebraska's Deer, Tag Applications and Jordan's Bow

• Jordan Budd • Season 1 • Episode 7

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We're talking about multiple topics today. First we're catching up on our latest activities, which include attending a Nebraska Game and Parks meeting discussing current harvest statistics and low deer populations. Then we tackle a couple listener questions giving our input on application strategy and optic magnification. Rounding out with a bit about Jordan's bow setup including the Dialed archery sight and Pelican hard case she uses for travel. 


Speaker 1:

Merry Christmas, everybody. As we record this, it's December 26th. We went through a snowstorm today. It didn't snow on Christmas, did it? Or was there a?

Speaker 2:

skiff. It was a skiff.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it was a skiff. So, yeah, now it snowed more, I don't know for three inches probably, yeah, and it's been just windy, Maybe four it's been windy. Yeah, it is kind of drifting in, like we won't have too much of an issue. But that is an issue. Here is like we don't get that much snow in here, but it drifts so much that it'll just like lock you in.

Speaker 2:

It tends to drift over the roads Because that's where the like flat land has a dip. These are where the roads are, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So since it is Christmas, like our outfitting season is wrapped, I feel like we did pretty good. Overall numbers in Nebraska are down. We actually you and I went to a game in parks meeting like a week ago. And got a little info, like some data, which was kind of cool to see, but it's pretty much that way throughout the whole state. It seemed like like just numbers in general are down.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean they mainly were talking about how it was like quite a few years of drought and then so, like you know, reproduction wasn't doing great because of the drought and then last year with just such a big winter, it was kind of the nail in the coffin as far as like bad things happening to deer and then each day and stuff like that. It's like a bunch of factors.

Speaker 1:

We had a couple of bad HD outbreaks in 2020. We, you found a buck. Actually Was it 2020?.

Speaker 2:

I can remember if it's 2020 or 2020.

Speaker 1:

No, that was fall of 2020. You found a good, like one of the, like a really good buck.

Speaker 2:

Actually, you found like a unicorn buck is super cool has a. It was a brow time. It's almost like another main beam that it started swinging around, but probably 11 inches, or just like real thick main beam that just kind of like unicorns out in the front Always sucks to find a deer that has died from disease or you know anything like that, especially like we have game camera picks and stuff from this year.

Speaker 2:

But like kind of cool that he actually gets to stay on the place Like he's in the hunter house now and yeah.

Speaker 1:

So we like we get to look at deer all the time but they don't. If we get to shoot them, it's with a client and they get to take them home, we don't get to keep them. Yeah, which is kind of you know. Have you seen those little? What do they call those? They're like mini mule deer mounts. You can get them of anything but you can like they'll make you like a miniature replica, like a tiny miniature replica you could get them of like shoulder mounts, so it looks like they're shoulder mount on the wall, but they're just tiny. I'm pretty sure you can get full body ones. I thought about getting one of the sheep.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, or like other big deer Christmas ornament or something.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Or just something like if we had some like really cool memorable deer on the place it'd be cool to like get those little mini replicas and we could just have them, you know, somewhere in the lodge, just to kind of like I don't know.

Speaker 3:

It'd be cool to just look at them, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Those are the little mini versions of the cool deer that we've shot out here before.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, they're kind of they're super cool, um. So yeah, overall what we're talking about just, oh, just the numbers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So just from looking, I mean it took half our deer out at least.

Speaker 2:

So you think you guys were like bouncing back from that and then the drop in the next EHD like a little bit.

Speaker 1:

I feel like we were starting to get back from it, and then it seems like we had more deer last year too, but I mean that's after the winner, so yeah, like this last winner in this part of the country, anyways, was really bad. It was just like basically from December they were talking about to December 13th or something like that 14th is when it started and it never really led up until you and I came, which was the first week of March.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It was bad and it like like we bought a snowmobile bad. Yeah, yeah, we literally, cause I thought we were going to have to snowmobile in.

Speaker 2:

You don't really need a snowmobile.

Speaker 1:

Not that often, yeah, no.

Speaker 2:

Until until you do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so what? It would basically snow and it would melt off a little bit, blow really bad and then so it just made a really, really bad crust and I'm sure there's a lot of deer that couldn't break through. I mean, just couldn't handle breaking through it. A lot of makes you wonder. There's a freaking ton of coyotes this year, like they probably went through there. You know they probably ate good. Yeah, this winter they, I'm sure they just skip drag across the top. Yeah, they can run across the top.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, hard to say but definitely seems like the numbers are down and fishing, game and parks kind of said that it's been a steady decline. But this year was pretty bad but we we did pretty good. I think that our numbers are really good on on our harvest rate. We did really well on our I guess, inch inch ratio per deer.

Speaker 1:

If you want to call that yeah. And this is something that's interesting too is people oftentimes they'll talk about like I feel like we don't have as many deer as we used to, but I feel like our quality is better. So I mean, that could be just like more for the bucks to eat this year, because there's not as many of them, so they're not competing, but then maybe they're just not spreading out as much. So I don't know, you don't know.

Speaker 2:

There's a ton of biology that goes into that and and like getting a true biologist on to talk about that would be really fun because they can deep dive into that stuff. But there's definitely science behind not having as many animals on the landscape so the ones that are on there can thrive. Yeah, I think that this year was a really big spring too, so then we have a ton of foliage, that everything was able to eat on.

Speaker 2:

And so I think that they they had an opportunity. Like the ones that did survive were probably the age class of like prime deer that, like the old ones, probably didn't survive Maybe the super, super young ones and survive funds and stuff like that. But the ones that did were of the age class that they were already, you know, four, five, six year olds and then came in and ate a bunch in the spring that had a big spring and they were able to just grow, I mean it was, it was great we had a lot of fun this year.

Speaker 1:

I guess we'll just talk about it now. Um yeah, so that that meeting that we went to is, I don't know, hit the high notes. They have 33 mountain lions captured, or?

Speaker 1:

not Sorry, not captured, collared, and they're doing all kinds. I mean they're. They seem to be pretty lax on. First of all. Going into this I didn't really know what to expect. I thought it would be really frustrating for some reason. But it seems like the biologists that are, and just the people that are kind of they're recommending these things which I believe are biologists they're recommending like season changes and adjustments and all this stuff they're recommending that to, to the Commission. I don't know any of the commissioners so I don't know where it goes after that, but Like how that process goes. But it seems like the bio, the guys that were recommending stuff, that were at least giving the presentations. They seemed really on top of it and it was a breath of fresh air.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like you could tell that they Were all hunters themselves. They had the same like concerns that people that were in the room did and they were like we are working on it. You know, like numbers are down, we're cutting doe hunts numbers are down. We, like they in Nebraska, used to have two buck tags that each resident could have. Now you can only do one.

Speaker 2:

So, like the last couple of years, they've really cut back on tags and you know, trying to do their best to like mitigate, I guess what nature is given you, because you can only do so much.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then they like have to pay attention to a lot of different I mean there was a lot of different kind of people in that room. Like I looked at the sign-in sheet and Like about half of them were landowners, about half of them weren't Most of the people in the room like they just have a lot of people they got to pay attention to and try to figure out how to make adjustments off of, and like I feel like a lot of the hunter feedback that they're getting isn't so much Because of low, like it is, some of it is because of low numbers. There was a guy there who had People from who knows where I was out of state, come shoot just like a bunch of two-point little mule deer and he's like how do we just fix this thing? How do we? How do we keep people from shooting fork at horns?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so he was like why don't we do like an antler restriction or something? And the biologist was like you look, the antler restrictions, like they just aren't really proven to just leads to other. Otherwise issues.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like leads to other issues which I don't really understand that Robbie has some good. Robbie has a really good podcast through the Rockcast. He has a good episode on that. That they talked just about antler point restrictions and a lot of it seemed to be it just made people feel better so they had to, but that's well, that's what this biologist said too.

Speaker 2:

Was that Wyoming has a two-point restriction on a lot of their units, or maybe it's statewide, I'm not sure, but yeah that they did that just because the hunters wanted them to do it that there's actual no data that supports it.

Speaker 1:

It's actually I think there's actually data that kind of supports it the other direction, like it, just leads to different problems.

Speaker 1:

Yeah like pushes the problem somewhere else. But yeah, that was like. Anyways it was. It was an interesting sit. We got to go through some stuff where we are at in the planes. We're kind of split between the planes and Pine Ridge, but just on the planes in general.

Speaker 1:

This year, so 2023, rifle harvest so far Is down 13% from last year, which the season is technically still a week from over. It was two weeks from over when we were at that meeting, so that could have changed. But yeah, 13% from last year I mean that's Kind of significant and it's down like about 43% I think is what I think he said 43% Over the five-year average. So you're like knocking on 50%, you're probably over 50% in some areas, under in some other areas. I mean that's kind of a lot like. You know that's you're used to seeing Whatever. You're used to seeing 20 deer day, whatever you're used to seeing 20 deer day or 50 deer day, depending on where you're at and how far you can see and you're you're cutting that in half All of a sudden people are like, oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Especially in this state it's got. It's kind of hard because I'm from Idaho. We have ton of public land. It's it's great, right, Not saying Nebraska isn't great, but it's yeah, I don't say that 97% private.

Speaker 2:

It's a high 90s, yeah, and so they. You know there were talking about overpopulation in the Areas that are public and there's only X amount of deer in those areas and so, especially when the population is going down, you're gonna notice it in the, I bet, the general population of yeah hunters that aren't able to get on private land but, like I Want to say to the people that are overcrowding the public, or not resident hunters, no, they're non, non resident hunters resident hunters are gonna all have a rancher buddy or somebody that they you know from India.

Speaker 1:

They've got like some of them are going on, you know some of them are going on public but like I Feel like a lot of residents are taking advantage on those places in different seasons.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm so they're not just like it's not, they're not at the war hammering during the nine days In the nineties a rifle, because I know I mean Whatever this way it is.

Speaker 1:

But game and fish has to figure out that. And then People don't like to cut the private landowners any slack, nor do they the outfitters any slack. But now you've got, you have them. They have this split now to where 15% of the tags go to non residents, 85 go to residents, which for a resident of Nebraska is great like it cuts down just kind of on everything like and. But then you have like outfitters that are like only 15% go to non resident.

Speaker 1:

The truth of the matter is I've never had a resident, besides an elk hunter, come like to hunt ever. So they're all non residents so it's like all right, well, then they start selling out of tags. Then what do you do? And it's not really just like an outfitter thing there there's a guy at the meeting who has like there's some, you know, people like clients of his through his business. He owns land, he has a it sounds like he has. He has like he sells bowls in the spring, so or I guess it'd be, yeah, I'd be coming up here in the winter. So he has like bull sales. He has non residents that buys bulls and da, da, da and like cool, you can come hunt, and then his friends aren't able to get tags, so then you have that going on. But people want to cap the non residents because they're just like over. For the most part they're just overflowing. You know, they're just flooding the public. There's just not that much public to overflow here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's hard because there is not a ton of public land.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So you have all this stuff going on that they're trying to manage and I just I don't. After going to that meeting, I was like thank God, I don't do this.

Speaker 2:

No, I thought the same thing. I was like man. I'm glad I'm not a biologist, because I mean they had. They were talking about how there's like actual Biological, like numbers, and then there's social, like social socially acceptable numbers numbers right. And what's like biologically okay for an ecosystem and what is socially okay Is like two different things and they're trying to manage that, you know right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was. It was very interesting. I'm glad we went.

Speaker 2:

I don't wish that job upon anybody, because I'm sure they like there isn't, it's there in a no win situation. They're either like landowners or either mad at them. Or hunters are mad at them or non residents are mad at them. It's kind of like being a breath in sports You're always gonna be on the losing side of someone. Yeah, I'm glad that there are people that are doing it and I'm glad it seems like these guys are actually really passionate about it and they're trying to do a good job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I think so too. Um, if there's any Like Nebraska residents that are interested in it or I guess, even non resident people, they're having a zoom meeting like January 17, some. No.

Speaker 2:

Seventh or something. Okay, it was a single.

Speaker 1:

It was a single digit, so it must be the seventh. If you just go to Nebraska and fish Game parks sorry, you scroll to the bottom hit the news I think it's in the news somewhere and it'll show you how to get into the zoom meeting. But yeah, be great. The podcast is brought to you in part by first light technical clothing, keeping me dry and comfortable from the duck blind to the bat country. Check out all of their offerings at first light comm, sig sour, from the popular cross rifle, which I love, to everything optics, handguns, ammunition and accessories. Visit SIG sour comm for their full lineup and on ex hunt maps. I use on ex maps to plan and execute my own hunts plus keep everything organized and accounted for at the outfit. I'm always scouting with the app. Check them out at on ex hunt comm.

Speaker 1:

I think last time we talked we were getting ready to go it. Yeah, we were getting ready to go to the meteor life, so we went to that. We went down to Denver and did that. That whole thing is completely wrapped up. They did their last show. If they do it again, I would recommend people go. Like it was pretty fun. I thought it was super fun.

Speaker 3:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

I was just in the in the stands hanging out and from a viewer's perspective, I thought it was great.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was too scared to look out into the audience, but I did. I took a scan right before I walked out and the first person I saw was Logan works at first light.

Speaker 2:

He's the duckmeister yeah, first light.

Speaker 1:

I was wearing my duck sweatshirt and I was like dude.

Speaker 3:

The girl. I can't remember her name, but she was the artist actually drew it was with Logan.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm, and she was also stoked that you had it on before the show. Actually, yanni also had the sweater on and you guys almost had rock paper scissors on. Who got to wear the sweater? And he was like, oh, that's all right, I got other stuff to wear.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, I know, it was super fun, a little interaction with the crowds and stuff.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, we did. We did the little VIP meet and greet thing before, yeah, which was kind of fun. So, we got to talk to a lot of people. It's kind of funny. There was like some people that were asking what we were doing, like oh, how's this how the season go this year? I was so wrapped up in guiding. I was like, oh yeah, we've had a pretty good year. Actually there's you know, start talking about guiding there like no, like your year.

Speaker 2:

And I was like I forgot we hunted at all I haven't talked about my year in a long time. I don't really know what I hope We've been guiding for the last like month and a half strong. That we kind of forgot that we, that we hunted as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah seriously.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so it was fun though Jordan got to do a lot of handshakes, couple what I thought was really cool was a couple of young girls come over and we're like starstruck a little bit and we're just like oh man, I'm so glad I get to meet you yeah what are the one one girl asked you something Like super cute.

Speaker 2:

She was just like oh, she asked if she could come and hunt at the ranch or something right?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I give him a business card. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what it was, but yeah she was.

Speaker 2:

She was super cute.

Speaker 1:

It's just fun to like actually see people like come and chat with everyone and like oh yeah, I did about it yeah it's all like all good people to, oh for sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was kind of it was it wasn't kind of fun, like it was super fun. I'm not good in social situations and I surprised myself a little bit on just like Loosen it up a little bit and just being able to talk to people and mm-hmm, yeah, it was fun.

Speaker 2:

I think you knew what to what was coming, slash what to expect type of a thing, and so you could like prepare for it, compared to like when we're just random. Yeah like run into somebody, like we ran into someone at an ice cream parlor one time, and Jordan did not know what to do with herself and was just like cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thanks, thank you.

Speaker 2:

I thought it was a great time yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we did. Uh, we got a comment there that it wasn't a negative comment. I just want to talk about it just because it's not true. There was. We were talking about going to Arizona and, just like you know, hunting ourselves in general, and there's a guy that is like it's gotta be awesome. Like now You're under the meat your name, like you can just go on any private that you want.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I get tons of access like it's gotta be awesome and we were like wait what?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I was like, oh no, I mean we've got the outfit Nebraska, that's private, cuz that's my family's place and I lease Like around it some neighbors that I grew up with, you know, but as far as like Western states, I it's, it's all been public. Yeah, there was one time that Leah Basically like pulled my ear and got me to drive into these people's driveways. So she can go ask if she could hunt, and I just wanted to crawl into a whole she was very upset with me, yeah it was like I'm going to, I'm gonna sit in this vehicle and I'm not.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going.

Speaker 2:

There was there was a big buck on this property and I grew up in Idaho, where I guess it doesn't matter where you grew up, but I grew up not having a place to go all the time, and or I would see ducks land on a field and I would just walk up to the house and ask if I could go go hunting somewhere, and that's how I got permission. All the time helps when you're you know, I was like in college, like young girl shows up Asked to go hunt on your place. A lot of times it works, probably better than maybe you know 40 year old man shows up or something. I use that shit to my advantage and I am proud to say that I got a Lot on places I shoot. I did it like a couple years ago for turkeys, mm-hmm. So I'm used to asking for permission.

Speaker 1:

I don't like it.

Speaker 2:

Jordan was like absolutely not, it's like 20 minutes.

Speaker 1:

For me that's not just a permission thing of where I got to grow up hunting.

Speaker 2:

No, it's just like you just don't like doing it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm just like there's all this public figured out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1:

And then, where did we shoot the deer the next day on on?

Speaker 2:

public on the public, but it was right next to where the private was and if we got permission on the private we wanted, we literally had like, talked about, like okay, on the top of this ridge is public, on the bottom of it Is not.

Speaker 2:

If there's any chance that that deer is pointed downhill when you go to shoot, type of thing, probably shouldn't do it because it's gonna run down to the private land. So it was a little more of a like okay, we're watching lines, we're doing all this stuff, compared to just like if we had, if they weren't home they didn't say no, they weren't home, but if they had given me permission, then we wouldn't have had to worry about which way the deer is facing when you shoot it or anything like that type Of a thing. So I'm a little more brazen like that, but Jordan's not, and that is that is fine. But anyways, these guys were like really surprised to hear that we were like oh no, we're always on public, like Idaho's public, utah's public, like everywhere We've hunted is always public and they're like no way.

Speaker 2:

We didn't realize that we figured like once you're on. Me you're you're just like, you're just always on private. No it's not the case, and I don't think that's the case for a A bunch of the other people that are on the staff either. No, I think predominantly they're all hunting public land.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I think especially like all the Montana hunts and like all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Like there's exceptions, you know, to every rule. All right, we're gonna do a couple Q&A or a couple questions. These are all from Instagram, but you can. You can leave like a voicemail to ask me a question, which I would love, because I've got one person do it so far and that's embarrassing. So let's try to pump that up a notch. If you go to Jordan dash by calm, you'll find your way. Okay, first one is from in dot nor quest on Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Best way to apply for out-of-state tags. There's a few different ways of doing this. There are some Systems out there or like not software, but there were some websites that can really help you with it, like Eastmans has one now. This is their tag hub. I Haven't been around that one a lot. I looked at it when it first came out and I think that they've. They have like a 2.0 version now.

Speaker 1:

But then there's like go hunt. Everybody's heard a go hunt, a little more expensive option to get you in. I think it's a hundred bucks or a hundred fifty dollars, maybe something like that. But it just basically lines out like you can. You can go to a state and say, hey, I want to hunt a freaking wherever Wyoming and I have this many points and where can I draw that's, it filters the units down for you. So just kind of eliminate some steps for you then, like epic outdoors is another one. So epic outdoors, great it'll. You can Like it'll, it'll tailor you all the things that go hunt tells you. But if you have that epic membership you can actually call and talk to people that know what they're doing. It's kind of like a hunt and fool ish type thing. And there's other things there too, like hunt and fool, like there's a lot of them out there. So you can go that route to help you like narrow down units and all that stuff at least see it started like if you're a noob, completely like Pain.

Speaker 2:

To talk to those guys would probably be like the best thing you could do, because they're gonna give you so much knowledge the cheapest option.

Speaker 1:

It's a little bit of a elbow slash, eyeball grease and just like pick a state and Get on their website and just like dig into it because all their like draw.

Speaker 2:

Odds are harvest. They all have. Everything should be on there.

Speaker 1:

It might be harder to read than some of these other ones, but it's gonna be a lot cheaper. And in some instances, like Sometimes, I've relied on some of those websites too much to get all my information and I think I know it, and then I get on the website like before we go or something I'll be like oh my god, I didn't know that or something.

Speaker 1:

So sometimes it's good to dig into that website a lot. So there are some different resources for the cheapest one. I say like pick the state you want to go to and then I Mean you know that could be, go do some different states, like that could be even like it's closest to your hometown or your home is to get to or yes simplest to get to.

Speaker 2:

Me personally, I would pick the one that you're most likely gonna be able to draw more often, because you could choose the next state. That's right, like, say. Say you're like right in the middle of your state and you could split either direction. Yeah, the one might be known for bigger deer or something like that. But the other one you're gonna like, that one You're only gonna draw one every ten years and the other one you're gonna draw every three years. Right, go with the one, you get a hummer.

Speaker 1:

Well, this is where strategy comes in, mm-hmm. So a strategy with that would be like the one that's bigger deer, like you're gonna draw way less often, like you just apply for points there. Yeah, like every year you just get on and you eat the 50 bucks or whatever and you apply for your points and then you get in the other spot that state exists.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that's Essentially what we're doing like we can hunt Idaho. We're a residence, so we're lucky. We can hunt Idaho every year on OTC tag. And Then we can take some of the other states, like Colorado, wyoming, and we can like build points in those states and we can be like a little more choosy. I say that but like we're at that choosy, I'm just buying points until I can get up to enough to actually make it worthwhile because unfortunately there's a little bit of a Entrance fee.

Speaker 2:

If you will, like most these states, you're gonna have to have three plus points, if not more. Unfortunately and so it's better get on it now and just start buying points, because it's not gonna make a difference Until you get down the road always. Yeah that is Unfortunate because the point creep and all that kind of jazz.

Speaker 2:

And so if you're limited on your supply of money or when you think you can go or whatever, just like pick your one state like maybe Do your research, figure out which one you're gonna be able to draw more often and I think, anytime you can go honey more often, you're gonna learn that area better, you're gonna, you know, be able to get out more and you're gonna enjoy yourself more than waiting for that one state that's gonna take you ten years to draw right and then you get there and you're like oh and it, and it isn't as good as you have like hyped it up to be a lot. Yeah, a lot of times, yeah, I feel like yeah, you think like I don't know, everyone can.

Speaker 2:

You can see a Article in Eastman's about a big buck and think I got to go there, like type of thing. If you've I don't know you figured out where it was or something like that or it's just whatever state it was, and Then you go there and you don't have that same experience, but the guy that shot that big buck on there you might have had 40 days of scouting or might have hunted that.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah life or you don't know, you know type of a thing, and like an out-of-state person just showing up With no scouting, with nothing, is probably not gonna be as successful, like 90% of the time, and so it's just better to like, go somewhere that you're gonna be able to draw more often, yeah, and be able to get boots on the ground more often, and the closer you can get to home the better, because then you're probably gonna scout it.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, if you're for sure if you're putting in for points five states away, you're not gonna scout it Mm-hmm Like, so your odds of getting me to my is gonna be less yeah yeah, it's.

Speaker 1:

I mean, it's beginning to be like let's just pay to play. It's unfortunate, like yes, it's unfortunate. I hate to go down this rubble, but we don't really differ on this. We differ a little bit maybe, but like this whole pay-to-play thing, so like Wyoming, for instance, they I read a thing the other day they they increase their tags in the resident. So there's a in Wyoming, there's a regular draw and then there's a Special special draw and Basically what that is is like Wyoming says, if you want to pay more money, you can get in your own pool to draw and and the draws should be better, they should be better.

Speaker 1:

That's not always true, but they should be better because it's a smaller amount of people that just want to pay more money to Whatever your draw. It should be better. Not always the case, but that tag is now going to 1900 and something dollars, whereas, like, the regular draw is 700. I think Mm-hmm, which is right in there for elk, I think, not the 1900. Yeah, that's pretty expensive, but like Some people were like oh, this is like a rich man's game, pay-to-play, but like that's for non-resonance, that's going out of state, like if you really want to hunt there and you like. You know it means that much to you than like move there. Yeah, be resident by a $30 tag and have all this. We have friends that have done that Place to go to.

Speaker 2:

We have multiple friends that have moved to a state because hunting is better there. The whole reason they're raising the rates is to try and, unfortunately, lower the amount of people that are trying to go into the states. To non-resident hunt because, non-resident hunting has blown up recently.

Speaker 2:

It's, you know, there's just a lot of pressure and a lot of people trying to get these limited numbers of tags. So how do they combat that? They keep raising the rates. You would be better off if you lived in, you know, any state that has what you want to hunt. It sucks if you're, if you live in Iowa and you want to hunt giant mule deer you're out of luck.

Speaker 1:

That's not going to work. Yeah, you got to come, but if you say say like us we live in Idaho.

Speaker 2:

If we spent what it's $800 for an out of state tag in Wyoming. If we spent $800 on gas, food and equipment to be able to go scouting more often and boots on the ground in Idaho, we would harvest more and have more fun in the same state that we're in, instead of spending $800 for a state away that we don't get to do all that stuff in.

Speaker 2:

And so it's like pros and cons, right? Like you might have this ideal image of like oh, I'm going to go to Wyoming, I'm going to shoot this bull and it's going to be great, and you get over there and you don't know anything about it. And then you're on the struggle bus the whole time and you could spend that same amount of money on being able to know your own state even better.

Speaker 1:

So there's that which works for Western but for Eastern. Like you said, if you live in Iowa and you want to shoot a big mule deer, you got to come this way, at least a little bit.

Speaker 2:

But then we're in Idaho and we're like, dang, I kind of want to shoot a big whitetail and it's like you got to go East. So it's like pros and cons.

Speaker 1:

Or we got to go to Nebraska. Yeah, that's East, that's East, that's true.

Speaker 2:

We were hunting public whitetails in Montana, yeah, and for us it's more of just like the fun we have fun hunting and so, yeah, we were going to like hunt in Idaho and then we're going to like go somewhere else. And, like we, love to explore and try new places.

Speaker 1:

And I don't really have any other like. This is really what I do. I don't have any other hobbies. You don't like unfortunately, I had to get another hobby called snowboarding, yeah, and I had to buy an expensive ass snowboard. You didn't have to.

Speaker 2:

I gave you my old snowboard. Yeah, but it sucked. It did not suck. It was great snowboard. It was not like I bought it. It was a Burton.

Speaker 1:

It's not like I bought it as a thrissure. Yeah, no, no, no, I know, I know, I know, but it didn't quite fit me. Yeah, it was too long, and she likes things, new things. Yeah, I got a SkyLog aboard.

Speaker 2:

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, geez.

Speaker 2:

I mean you have two hobbies. I'm proud of you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but my main one is hunting Is the old deer Living, breathing, hunting.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it's true. What do we do on our spare time? We go glassing there, we go there we go.

Speaker 1:

Now let's get into the rest of the thing. All right, here's the old deer. It's much smaller than that. Alright, yeah, so that's fine, just what we do sometimes. Yeah, okay, next one by from entertain underscore Matt, we're going on the optics train a little bit here.

Speaker 1:

Is there really such a thing as so much magnification that your binos aren't useful? There's two different categories for this. I'm going to tell the one. The tolerances aren't quite as tight. Maybe they didn't put as much development into the coatings and stuff like that. It's still probably a pretty good pair of binoculars, but if you're going to be looking in them all day, they're just not going to be, as Usually their top line is like these are the tightest tolerances we can get. We put as much development and time into figuring out the coatings of how we want those things situated. We put a lot of thought into the ergos, the ergonomics of the thing. This is as good as we can make, and here it is Oftentimes just the lower tier ones that just end up being cheaper because they did things like made some of the things plastic and whatever, as you go, just kind of as a general rule of thumb as you go up in power on those things, the glass quality tends to go down or you're just not going to be as impressed.

Speaker 1:

The clarity is going to go down, kind of everything is going to go down. If you need to really go on the cheap side and buy a really cheaper, like a lower line set of binoculars or whatever, because they're cheaper, go with a pair of 8s or, at the very top, go with 10s. If you go on the lower powers, just the less you're going to be able to see those differences. Is that an awful explanation?

Speaker 3:

No, that was great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I know, jeez, yeah. So we kind of talked about this in the journey. I told him the question before we started. But there's two ways of thought. It's exactly what you just said, which was the higher power you get. If you don't have great glass, you're not going to be able to see as clearly. The other thing is stabilization. The higher you get, the more that hand holding is going to become impossible.

Speaker 1:

That's kind of just like in general.

Speaker 2:

Yes, it doesn't matter if you have great glass or bad, not as good quality glass or whatever. The higher you get you're going to be able to start seeing your heartbeat when you're trying to look at picking a part stage brush and stuff like that. You physically cannot hand hold a pair of 15s and be able to see as well as even if you drop that down to a 12 or a 10, because you're going to have so much motion and then your eyes are going to start to get tired because they're trying to make up for that motion and stabilize yourself.

Speaker 1:

You're just not going to be able to pick up as much either.

Speaker 2:

It's just going to be shaky. That's when, if you go higher, you could have the nicest glass in the world. If you're hand holding those, you're hamstringing yourself. You need to put those on a tripod and get a nice, stable base and then you'll be set. If you don't do that, you could spend all the money in the world on a really nice pair of binoculars and you're not going to be able to see as much as someone with a lesser power, cheaper pair of binoculars on a tripod. That would be my thing is you got to add stabilization into it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, kind of wrapping it up, we're headed to Arizona. My tag opens January 1st. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of. I didn't know this. We made the internet mad. Oh yeah, I haven't got to the internet.

Speaker 1:

We did make the internet all half of it anyways. Really, what would this be? A third, that's like a quarter. Anyways, over the counter archery tags you can get for Arizona yes, they are over the counter but they're quoted. The units are quoted for it. You got to get on and you got to look at all these quotas.

Speaker 1:

I've been getting on and being like, all right, well, that unit that I wanted to go to is out. Got to go to a new unit. Anyways, we're getting ready to do that, which will be fun. We're just going to go for a week or something like that with Cole. We talked about it when Cole was on the last thing and I put a little snippet on Instagram about I said I said, kuz, you're suck. I was like just kidding, just kidding. We were laughing about it and talking about yeah, for us, if there was a Kuz deer standing right next to a mule deer, we would shoot the mule deer just because we like it more. We were poking some fun at it and, oh my God, it pissed some Kuz deer people off.

Speaker 2:

There's some solid Kuz deer followers, religious followers of the Kuz of the cows.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and some guys were, just like you, never hunted Kuz deer before. I was like I have. Actually I have filmed them and they are. They're fun. Yeah, they're really hard to hunt, I get it. I was on two of them and just saying like they shot like really big Kuz here for Kuz deer. Yeah, but they're like really big. So like I've been on the hunt, so like I know and it was fun, but I would just rather you'll do honey.

Speaker 2:

So okay, so we did that and we put up a little thing. What was?

Speaker 1:

our poll.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what was our final stats on that?

Speaker 1:

Kuz deer versus Meal dear 920 people voted for meal dear and 193 people voted for coups dear. We had a guy take our reel and he made it into his own. He like talked at the beginning of it and then showed our reel and he's like so for all you Arizona guys. I'm quite sure that all of his people went coups deer over, meal deer probably. But like somebody said, he's like it's cool with me if you like meal deer, more coups deer for me. Mm-hmm, I said, yep, more mule deer for me.

Speaker 2:

So it's all good guys.

Speaker 1:

Don't freaking, like literally that Blow their tops.

Speaker 2:

It was so funny, I loved it. It was just like people were bickering and it was hilarious it was funny we also got a sensitivity Screening on Instagram for that one too, and we were sitting here at our kitchen table talking about this because I said shots fired and then I did the squirt gun.

Speaker 1:

the lime green squirt gun, yeah, the lime green squirt gun, but I took that off and it's we were still flagged. So I don't know. Hmm, that's because the coups deer people were mad.

Speaker 3:

Be, nice, yeah, okay.

Speaker 2:

So with that, huh, it's an archery hunt. Yeah, you have a tag, Cole has a tag, cole's dad has a tag. Yeah, you got your bow all set up.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I've, I've got a sighted in. It wasn't sighted in last time, we all talked, but it's sighted in and yeah, I'll go through that a little bit, little bit here, let me, let me grab it. Okay, so this is a Matthews phase four, as we talked about before. I kind of got my bow swiped when we were in Colorado and that was a v3x and I loved it. I was gonna buy the exact same one, but the dealer, I went through how to phase four for literally the exact same.

Speaker 2:

I thought you'd gotten the exact same one.

Speaker 1:

No, this is a new one.

Speaker 2:

I didn't know that. I see that. Now phase four oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I did black limbs with I think this is called buckskin, I don't know and I went with yellow strings. So we got everything all set up here. The dialed site I talked about it a little bit, I got it all shot in and got my tape all figured out. It was pretty easy. It's a little different, like I'm used to. I was using the black gold before, which I really liked, like the SNS archery black gold. I think it's a backcountry SNS, I don't know, but it I really liked it. But dialed had sent Yanni and I one of these and each one of these when we were doing the podcast and already had it, and they're really good sites. There are a lot of money I think they're 515 but they do a lot of stuff. There's like a little cover here for your pins so you can Pull the cover over and like cover your pins or you can push the cover back and it'll. It really does it to lights.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, look at this, it's gonna be hard to see. So that's off and that's wow, just letting light in. Yeah, really does your pins up? So yeah, and the way it ended up being, I have three pins. My top pin correlates to my slider at 20 yards. My second pin ended up being at 35 yards. My fourth pin ended up being at like 46 yards. So I've got those other pins, like set up different.

Speaker 2:

Um, and then you can dial accordingly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and then you dial and my, my top pin is what I use for my dial and I mean I'm, the other two pins should core them. They should kind of correspond as you go down. They're gonna start getting inaccurate as you go out further in In distance. But anyways, yeah, I mean so far it's okay. There's like a little bit of like a. You hear that little.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's like tight.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what the hell. I Don't know why. I don't know why it does that, but anyways it seems, needs a little box to be okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you knew.

Speaker 1:

I went back to a tight spot. This is like a new version of the tight spot quiver and I don't know. It just seems super adjustable and they just made some upgrades from their previous one that I tried, so decided to Try it again. It fits super, super tight to your bow. I.

Speaker 2:

Like that. It's got the hanger on the top of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you can like pop it off hanging a tree Yep, I think is what they wanted to do with that. And then they, they did the same kind of dovetail deal with the quiver, with the. Yeah, so my stabilizer, um yeah, like slides in and out. It's okay. I kind of wish I wouldn't have got it, it was and I.

Speaker 1:

Have this one, which I don't remember who makes it, but it slides in and out so it kind of like a tripod leg. It's a stabilizer like goes on your bow and then you can use like the quick detach and and then you can extend it out if you want. You can put it wherever you want and you close. The little deal Just seems more adjustable. I can take these weights off if I want. I could take, you know, I can just like really fine-tune it. You're in a blind, you can have it compact. You're out in the wind in the open country, you can have it out a little bit more to help you stabilize. So I Don't know if I'm gonna end up taking that thing, taking this one off.

Speaker 2:

They really should put their brand name on my so we could actually remember literally don't, I don't remember somebody'll come in.

Speaker 1:

No, yeah, but yeah, it's okay. The this, it's the bridge lock stabilizer Just doesn't seem like enough weight for me. Pretty lightweight, yeah, even when you get out of distance or like when you get it slid all the way out here, mm-hmm, still seems like it's like not quite enough for what I was wanting. But I don't know, they all screw that thing on maybe tomorrow and mess with it a little bit. So the case it's a pelican, it's a pelican air. It's like literally there they call it their bow case, like it's our bow hunter case. It's pretty expensive.

Speaker 1:

I bought this thing before yanni and I went on our archery hunt for caribou in Alaska a couple years ago. But it has like a foam spot for arrows up there you could pop your arrows into. Then it has like this internal Soft case, so it's just kind of a soft cover. You can like put your bow in there and strap it in if you want, and then this Goes over the top of it, so it kind of keeps the top of your bow like oh, what do you, what do you? Whatever you want to call it protected, yep. And has a little case or a little zippered pocket that you can put some stuff in your zippered pocket, has, like, these little bags on the sides that you can remove or not, and so you can keep some regular stuff. What I typically do it's like I put my bow in there, put the Soft cover like over the top of it, and then I'll pack other stuff in around it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, 1745 bow case from pelican. It's their pelican air series, I don't know, seems to work. That's pretty much all I have.

Speaker 2:

We're an hour and 11 you guys are probably really sick of listening to us talk, so I am sick of listening to us talk. We have anything else we were gonna talk about no.

Speaker 1:

That's pretty much it. We'll just uh, yeah, hope everybody had a good Christmas and probably the next episode will be with coal Down in Arizona, talking about the hunt that's going on down there and a little more about outfitter stuff.

Speaker 2:

Um and yeah yeah, that's it Everyone. I hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Speaker 4:

Mm-hmm. Thanks for listening to this episode of jordan's toolkit. If you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes, please visit the website Jordan dash budcom and follow the links to submit an email or voicemail to be played on air. If you're listening on an audio platform, you can also watch this podcast on youtube via jordan buds personal channel.

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Jordan Budd

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