The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 016

Episode Date: August 20, 2015

Scottsdale, Arizona. Steven Rinella talks with big game guides Jay Scott and Darr Colburn, along with Janis Putelis from the MeatEater Crew. Subjects discussed: the Gould's wild turkey in Mexico; what it's like to guide once in a lifetime tags; the Arizona governor's tag for Bighorn Sheep; the Mexicana and Nelsoni sheep subspecies; the importance of scouting; mountain lion sightings as a result of glassing your ass off; scouting for paying clients; the author Duncan Gilchrist; why Steve's not cut out for the guiding life; judging elk calling contests; and who really earned the kill on a guided hunt? Guests: Jay Scott & the Jay Scott Outdoors Podcast Darr Colburn Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. All right, everyone, thanks for tuning in. Even though you don't tune in to podcasts. Thanks for downloading the Meat Eater podcast. We're recording right now out of, I always think of this whole area as Phoenix.

You guys got it all subdivided. It's Phoenix. It's Phoenix, but it's Phoenix always think of this whole area as Phoenix. You guys got it all subdivided. It's Phoenix. It's Phoenix, but it's Phoenix, but Scottsdale. Greater Phoenix. Yeah, we're in the Greater Phoenix area, which is great, in Scottsdale. I'm here with Giannis Poutelis, who's often with us. And before anything happens, I want to tell, Giannis, plug your t-shirt company. We've done so many podcasts, you never plugged your t-shirt company.

Giannis has a t-shirt company. Yep. It's called Hunt to Eat. If everyone who listens to this goes and buys one of Giannis' t-shirts, who's a constant presence on the media podcast, Giannis will be rich. Maybe. Maybe give us just like 10 days. Oh, no airs it's gonna be that's what i'm doing it now perfect you're not even having printing problems but don't think that he doesn't put out the highest quality t-shirt possible hunt to eat dot com hunt to eat.com with a two though No. Oh. The website is T-O-H-U-N-T-T-O. H-U-N-T-T-O-E-A-T.

You go there. He's got different shirts. They say Hunt to Eat on them. You buy one. They're not expensive. They're cool-looking shirts. Yanni gets a bunch of money. You get an awesome shirt that says Hunt to Eat on it.

You can get different states. You guys still have Colorado. It's pretty slim right now. It's Coloradoado and then we have a generic hunt to eat we've got a couple coming down the pipe so hopefully we'll have them out before hunting season i don't know why i'm out selling yanni on his own t-shirt company but he's just go there and get a hunt to eat t-shirt i'm gonna start talking about that all the time the other thing you ought to do before we get too far into this is, uh, meat eater podcasts is in many ways, it's like the, it's the offspring in some way of a show. There's a TV show, meat eater. I'm in it. It's on sportsman channel. And if you want to go just get it without having to monkey around with TV, you can go to meateater.vhx.tv

and download and stream Meat Eaters until your heart's content. I don't know, we have, I don't know how many, there's, you know, how many, we've done 60 some episodes. Yeah, there's six full volumes. Six full volumes on there

and put in the offer code Meateater Podcast. You get five bucks off, you get five bucks off any volume so then you put your hunt eat yanni patel's t-shirt on watch me your episodes you're saving money you're helping the planet um we're joined by dar colburn and jay scott two guides that i know who operate down here and you guys colburn and scott outfitters guides that I know who operate down here. And you guys, Colburn and Scott Outfitters. That's correct, yeah. If you were going to go on a guided hunt, this is going to sound like hyperbole.

And I'm telling you, I have a vested interest in Yanni selling a bunch of T-shirts because I hang out with him all the time. I have a vested interest in you downloading meteor episodes um for various reasons i have no vested interest in saying that if you were going to go on a hunt and you manage to get jay and scott to guide you you're in the best possible shape because they don't do it for money they just do it because they like it. Well, we do it for money. Well, you guys, here's the thing. They do. They do. But once you hear about how these guys operate and sort of like what they do, you realize that it goes way beyond that. And give me what you guys consider yourselves the spokesman for Colburn and Scott Alters.

We're going to get into a lot of things that these guys are involved in. I'll do this before you get into it. You're involved in, I would say, four primary pursuits. Gould's turkeys in Mexico. Now, just to give you a thing, like turkeys in the U.S., all turkeys in the U.S. are regarded as, from a genetic standpoint, are regarded as one species okay it's like the american wild turkey but wild turkeys are divided up into rios rio grande turkeys miriam's turkeys gould's turkeys um eastern turkeys osceolas the osceolas are in south florida and it's kind of the most that's the most dubious subspecies because there's

no genetic barrier between eastern turkeys and osteolas there's just like a line you just draw a line like basically around orlando or something you just like draw a line across the state and we all just agree that it's osteolas on one side of the line easterns on the other side of the line and there are some morphological differences like they have some the blacker feathers yeah different color tones to them when you get into the goulds rios and miriams you did have real genetic barriers separating these different populations out the hardest one to get by far is a goulds and the best place to go to get a Gould's is in Mexico. And within that, the best place to go do it is the places that Jay hunts. So they do Gould's turkeys in Mexico.

Coos deer in Mexico, and coos deer are kind of the only real valid subspecies of whitetails. Then elk in a handful of select units here in Arizona, the numbers of which are? Unit 9, Unit 10, and Unit 23. That's Jay Scott talking. Now, Jay, I'm just trying to do a quick wrap-up, so let me keep yapping for a minute. I don't mean to, like, you're the guest and I'm doing all the talking, but I just want to lay the groundwork here.

So you get this thing where you get these units, but it's not like giving up a secret because it takes forever to draw a unit. When we get around to speak to that for a minute, about what it requires to be able to hunt one of those units. The fourth thing these guys are involved in is hunting desert bighorns that's correct but only a little teeny bit like only one or two clients every year right yeah well there's very few tags for desert bighorn sheep in the state i want to say there's probably only 75 tags that's a rough number and it's very hard very challenging to get the tag and you

know a lot of those people don't go guided but a few do yeah there are less than I counted it up and I can't remember what I counted there are less than a thousand bighorn tags in the US sounds about right way most these bighorn tags are given out they're given out through a lottery drawing where interested parties, interested dudes, send their money with an application, and they do like a lottery. They pull names out of a hat and give those guys tags. But there's a couple other ways.

There's two other ways bighorn tags. There's two other primary ways. Like everything just gets endlessly complicated. There's two other primary ways that bighorn tag is given out. You give out a bighorn tag through a raffle where you can buy as many tickets as you want for $5 or $10 a piece in whatever state you choose to participate in the raffle. And then that gives you multiple options. And then they draw a name out of that. And the odds on raffles can be dismal. Or they have a thing called a governor's tag or auction tag where to raise money for bighorn conservation.

It's very expensive. Like, bighorns are missing from a lot of their native range. It's very expensive to, like, get bighorns and get them where you want to get them and make the habitat right and protect them and have enforcement and research. And one of the ways they pay for all this is they sell a tag every state most western states will every year sell a bighorn tag and that's called the governor's tag or the auction tag and you guys have done that we have we actually three years in a row we guided the raffle hunter here in arizona and the interesting thing in a, the raffle tag, you can only hunt a Nelsonite sheep.

In Arizona, there's two types of bighorn. There's the Mexicana and there's the Nelsonite. The Nelsonite primarily are located... Those are both regarded as deserts. Both deserts. There's no distinction in like Boone and Crockett or Pope and Young or any of the record books. There's no distinction between the two.

But the Nelsonite primarily are in the north and west part of the state kind of northwest by kingman is basically the epicenter and um the raffle hunter can hunt nelson i sheep there's one little section down in a unit 16a that there are some mexicanas that that move back and forth but for three years uh dar and i both uh guided the raffle hunter and um how did you find the guy like just i just want to clarify real quick when we say the raffle hunter meaning the the tag in arizona that was given out to the guy that won like the door prize type raffle thing how many of those raffle tickets do they sell i don't know exactly how many they sold i know that last year when the third year we did it, we harvested the largest ram ever shot, not only on the raffle tag, but the largest Nelson I ever shot in the state of Arizona.

Because of that, the following year, when the raffle tag sales, I think it raised $160,000, $170,000. Oh, so it was almost as good as the governor's auction. Well, and that was the thing. I think it brought $30,000 or $35,000 more. And I don't want to say it's because we shot a big ram, but I mean. People took, you got people's attention. Yeah. So you got, so go back to that year.

I guess we're going to talk about Bighorns first because it just came up. Go back to that year, like how that went down, where a raffle guy, like how did you, how did the raffle guy come to hire you and what did he hire you to do well the first year was um donnie young from mississippi and he had actually called around and talked to several outfitters and talked to both dar and i and emailed us and we sent him photos and such and he kind of interviewed us and he chose us and uh we actually went out on that first year and shot he got the largest uh ram uh shot on on the raffle tag and um the second year we had um larry spillers from texas he interviewed us the same thing interviewed other outfitters and um went out and he got a really nice ram he had just chattered his ankle and i think it's his ankle and his foot and stuff

didn't he have screws yeah playing softball and he actually made a great stock even though it killed him to get up there and shot a really nice ram i think the third largest ever shot well then the third year that we did the tag uh claude warren from maine um called us and hired us pretty much pretty quick and he's a raffle winner. He's a raffle winner, and he's from Saco, Maine, and just a great guy, and he's the one that shot that really giant desert bighorn, the Nelsonite.

What do you, when a guy like that, what is the package you bring to someone when he's won this thing he's won this tag it's a once in a lifetime tag you're never going to be able to do something like that again what do you guys do to go like guide that trip like talk about sort of the time you spend and how your schedule plays out over those months because that's the thing that's most interesting to me yeah what's so cool about those tags is they start August 15th and go to August 14th of the following year. So it's a 365-day tag.

And what's a normal bighorn tag? Like, there is no normal bighorn tag. 30 days here. Yeah. 30 days. So if you actually drew the tag... The month of December is the sheep season here in Arizona. But the raffle guy gets a year.

He gets a year, gets a year and they usually find out in july um i want to say mid-july for the fall for the upcoming year so he knew a month ahead of time that his hunt actually started on august 15th well the raffle uh starts on august 15th well obviously here in Arizona, you know, and over by Kingman and Lake Havasu and some of these places where the Nelsonire, you know, it's 115, 118, 120 degrees out. So what's that country look like? Oh, it's very beautiful country,

but very rugged, jagged cliffs and cactus. Some of it's pretty desolate. Yeah, very desolate. I mean, a lot of times you go out there and you just you can't believe that a sheep even or an animal could live there um but just rock and sand rock well not as much sand but granite and rock and i guess there is some sand but you know real steep um jagged peaks and um just beautiful country but but inhospitable for sure so you can't do it in august that's the thing i mean you know your hunt starts august 15th but what we try and typically tell those

raffle hunters is about october is not only a great time to go out and see a lot of sheep and the nelson eyes typically are rutting really good from like oh the whole month of october and the whole month of november they're still rutting really good and so all three of those hunts we generally hunted from like the 15th of october to like november 15th that was kind of the window the 30-day window when we wanted to get our hunts done and that's the main thing is prior to the general season starting so since they drew a year-long tag that's great but we also like to be able to hunt before the general season starts so you know for a fact that you will not see another hunter well

you won't see another desert sheep hunter you might see some guy hunting deer or whatever yeah but we never saw really hardly ever see anybody ever which makes it awesome because you know the sheep are rutting and there's a lot of them the units we hunt a lot of the 15 units and and such there's just a lot of rams i mean we would see sometimes 100 sheep in a day and see you know what 30 40 rams in a day maybe more. And they're rutting, and there's nobody else out there. So it's just a mess. But I should point out that during much of this, the hunter's not even out there. Well, the raffle hunt, let me back up.

Usually, Dar and I would go and scout for 10 days to two weeks prior to the season. And we would just go up there, and we would just scout until the hunter showed up up and then we would go and hunt from there and we you guys camp out and just look at rams yeah just evaluate and look at rams video photograph absolutely it's awesome they're rutting around it's a great time so you just like have a camp set up get up in the morning go watch wildlife yeah we actually yeah go to bed wake up watch sheep and just keep a tally of what you saw hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew.

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX

here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit

on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all so how many rams it during that during that pre-hunt period how many rams might you locate i mean it i would say you could look at 50 60 70 80 rams um depending on whether you know you're seeing 10 anywhere from let's say uh you make a big hike and maybe you go into country and there's not many sheep maybe you see seven or eight, and you could see 30. It just depends on really where you go. And one thing we really try to do is photograph and video different rams. So we have basically a catalog, video catalog. An inventory of all the rams, characteristics, the flaring ones,

the ones that curl and tip up um so that when the hunter gets there he can go that's the one i want to go after what country was that one in and that that's the one we really like do you feel like you find all the rams oh absolutely not no way i mean oh so there's stuff you don't know yeah even after all that and i mean that that's half the fun of it is having where you don't know what's there and what's around the next bend and what's up over the next hill. I mean, the country's way too rugged to feel like you could have inventory of every ram. Now, there are certain units in Arizona where after a certain amount of time, you can probably get a pretty good inventory of every ram that's in there but these sheep move too so you could i mean you could be there for a week and go back a week later and some different rams have you know moved into that area do you feel like

there's bighorns in there that no one's that there could feasibly be a bighorn in there that no one's ever looked at i doubt it i doubt it too but i mean you take like 15d where we actually um harvested uh two out of three of the rams well i guess 15d south um the unit got split but there's you know i think they surveyed 500 and some sheep in the last survey we were there actually three years in a row for their surveys and i want to say they surveyed between it's by a helicopter anywhere between 450 and i think the last year we're there it was close to 500 and something sheep so i mean you're looking at a lot of country and you know with the raffle tag you can hunt anywhere any of those units yeah so you could basically go from you know the bill williams river at the bottom into 16a and you could go all the way up

through the Kaia Bab and literally cover hundreds of miles of country if you wanted to. To back up a little bit, the first year we went out there and we actually set a camp, Dar and I. Then we actually met a guy there in Golden Valley, Fred Ashurst, who Dar and I is now a dear friend. He just basically has got this awesome property friend and he just basically he's got this awesome property with this house and he's got this garage and concrete floors and he invited us hey just make base camp out of here so actually the last two years we did the raffle hunt we just

stayed at fred's which made it great because he actually built a shower for us in a bathroom and um i mean i think the first... Just bring our cots out. Yeah. I mean, we're there for anywhere from 21 to 30 days straight. And just looking at sheep, it's great. Without getting too... I don't want to get too personal. Not personal like your personal life.

But how in the world do you bill for something like that? That's the thing. I mean, if you break it down by per hour what dar and i charge i mean we're you know we're doing it because we love it and we're doing it because really that's an opportunity to hunt and really look out there and find what's the unknown yeah and basically it covers our expenses to be out there is that right yeah but i remember like just to get a sense for how much these guys look around, I remember a conversation that I had with Jay, I think when we were hunting Gould's turkeys in Mexico,

I was talking about how I've seen, while out hunting I've run into three mountain lions. And I remember asking Jay if he sees many mountain lions. And I think at the time, I think you said, right now I'm looking for number 32 or something like that. And now it's looking for number 38. We saw two down in Mexico, Cooster Hunt. I actually just saw the one. Dar saw them both.

But, yeah. mexico coaster hunting i actually just saw the one um dar saw them both but um yeah if you're gonna have a way to measure how much time someone spends um if you're if you're like you're gonna like try to like quantify not just quantity but quality of hours spent hunting in this kind of area it would be like a good way to measure like well how many mountain lions have you seen because it's like not only is it how much you're doing about how good you're doing it you know well yeah i mean i will say that probably 80 of the lions that i've seen have been in mexico maybe 90 is that right and you know it it i've i've seen a bunch of them, most all of them with my binoculars. You know, we're getting up on big perches and looking over tons of country and doing it, you know, days on end, looking for deer.

But, you know, people think, you know, the lions would be hard to see. Most every lion I've seen, I mean, as soon as you see it, it's just boom, that's a lion. Is that right? And it's not like they're hiding. I mean, you just see them playing this day. That reminds me of something that the writer, there's a really good hunt writer. No one really knows about the guy, Duncan Gilchrist.

He's got a book, Hunt High. With that, he doesn't mean hunt stoned. He means hunt the high country. Duncan Gilchrist was sort of like an accidentally good writer i think he accidentally almost wrote like hemingway like really sparse and kind of beautiful but he was a timber cruiser by trade but he was a big game guy too and he um in one of his passages he was saying like all the time you spend he used to hunt bears a lot all the time you spend being like oh is that a bear you know because like there's never been a time when i've seen a bear where i thought oh is that a bear and had it turn out to be a bear

it just is and you know it you know like a stump don't turn into a bear it's like you're like there's a bear yeah and that's what it's like i mean i think dar would agree with lions i mean you just see them and there they are it's just like that's what it is man there's no you know interesting about duncan he was really big into bighorns filming them you heard of this guy oh yeah he died filming bighorns that's a friend of mine more like an acquaintance of mine an outdoor writer named Daryl Gadbo was writing a thing and was with Duncan when Duncan had a heart attack and died. And I remember Daryl had said, it was like he just left, like Duncan just left. And he looked at him and said, Duncan, where'd you go?

And just like was just gone. Yeah, on the mountain, filming bighorns. What a way to go, though. He was big into it. If you haven't looked at his stuff, you should look at it, because he was huge into that stuff. So when you're out surveying the ground for sheep, are you looking at stuff that a lot of guys would maybe miss?

Is it hard to find sheep when you're up glassing for them? The country can be hard. I mean, it can be pretty physical. But I think with sheep, one of the things Jay would probably agree, we don't spend all the time sitting in one spot looking. We cover a lot of country.

We glass for a little bit. If we don't see something, we're on to the next spot so they're not really like coos where you know we're at coos we still move but you wouldn't sit all day looking you know at one hillside we look if we don't see him we're off so you feel like you can rule out areas definitely one of the biggest pieces of advice i give people all the time on sheep is and and i'm notorious, Doris, too, for having 10-power Swarovskis around our neck or whatever we're using. And you just pop up, you pan it real fast, and a lot of times you're going to see them right away, those white butts of the sheep that stick out.

And I think from a coos deer mentality, you hike up to a high spot and you sit there and you work it over in glass meticulously all day as a sheep hunter i'm kind of the opposite i go up to a high point i cover it all i move over a bit i cover this area i turn around so i basically cover 360 and maybe i'll do it twice if i don't see them boom i'm going over hiking over to another high point and do the same thing but because sheep are nomadic and because they move around very very much more than any other animal we hunt um moving and because it's such big country you have to move with your eyes and with your feet and you know rule out country move cover the back side cover the front side go to a whole new area yeah because it's just like unlimited amounts of stuff to look rams will be you know

here one day and you know 15 miles away two days later the the i always say the the worst place to look for a big ram is the last place you saw oh really not saying they won't always cycle back to that area at some point in time but they just they just move here and there they have their nomadic and they're not like they're not like a deer i would say where they're hiding from you or laying down there they're just sheep they're just up moving around and like jay said if you see them you see them if you don't move yeah they're not hiding from you you just can't see a deer when they when a deer sees you a coos deer they'll either hunker down or they'll take off running. Sheep are curious animals, and they do have that barrier like an antelope where you can get 400 or 500 yards from them as long as you keep that distance.

They're just going to let you—they feel comfortable at that range. Do you ever go out and find a bighorn? You're like, wow, that's a giant bighorn some guy i'd love to kill that bighorn and then you never find them again oh i mean absolutely as nomadic as they are yeah i mean they're very hard to keep track of depending on the country um and their habitat you know eventually you'll find them again if you look for long enough i mean so you got a guy just to get back to how this whole thing plays out you get like a guy you got a client he's gonna come out and hunt how many days is the guy gonna come out and hunt compared to how many days you guys are gonna be out there looking so when he gets there you know

what to show him it depends like on the raffle hunts or the general season hunts you know we put in usually a minimum of you know a couple weeks of scouting before they get there on the raffle hunts we always like our thing is we like to be there like the 14 days before they got there so that we knew immediately what the sheep were doing you know scouting a month earlier two months earlier the sheep are going to be completely moved so it's not like scouting you know a deer that's got a home range or an elk that has a home range you know like i said if you spotted a big ram you're probably better off to go to completely different side of the mountain so we feel like right before the hunt is the most important time with sheep to be scouting

and then how many sheep might you find like you know what the guy wants like like like you know the way like at this level when someone wants to go hunt bighorns i'm talking to the audience that's jay at this point level when someone's gonna go hunt bighorns they got like a they get like a number in their head you know you're gonna do this once right and they'll want a ram of certain size so like what's a giant or you know what's the bottom at like what would be like a big you know like a big desert big horn that everyone would agree is a big big one but sometimes it's a look thing too right it's not always just a number well and it can vary unit by unit i mean some units don't have what we would

say are big rs and they just never have and but the raffle guy is not going to go to that unit though no but big in the raffle units it's you can't compare big in a raffle unit versus some of the general units yeah like years ago like i think it was 2005 my brother drew a bighorn rocky mountain bigh horn tag in montana now the biggest you know some of the biggest rocky mountain big horns in the country come out of unit 680 on the missouri river montana he didn't draw one there he drew one far away that you're just you're never going to get one of those rams where he drew a ram so like when we showed it to the biologist down there he's like wow it's a big ram no way is that a big ram in Unit 680.

Right. It's the same thing here with like the Nelsoni typically. The Nelsoni are not near as big as the Mexicanas. The Mexicanas are basically from that same line, Bill Williams River, to the south. You've got western Arizona by Quartzside and Yuma. And then some of the biggest rams in the world desert desert sheep are right here out of phoenix in unit 22 and 24 right along these lakes there's uh saguaro canyon and apache lake and some of the biggest most giant mexicana rams ever be taken or come

right out of here just you know 45 minutes from our house here. But you can't really compare a Nelson Eye with a Mexicana. They're separately, like what you were saying, you would show what is a big Nelson Eye to someone that hunts Mexicana, and they're just not as big. The Mexicana rams are just a bigger ram, bigger base, just bigger score-wise. Even bigger than the big ones you guys have gotten. Well, when Claude Warren shot his ram, to give you an idea, it growth scored 185 and 3 eighths,

which that's a giant even for Mexicanos. Okay. But it was the largest Nelson I ever shot in the state of Arizona. So, you know. That's's a freak it was a freak i guess normally about 168 170 inch nelson i is a really big ram that you've really done something like dar's hunter this year we had a hunter in the general season um and we hunted in the same unit where claude shot his ram and he actually got a really big ram the biggest nelson hunted in the same unit where Claude shot his ram, and he actually got a really big ram, the biggest Nelson I in the state of Arizona this year. And it was 175 and, what, four-eighths gross.

And that was the biggest Nelson I shot, which last year was 185 and three-eighths. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. It's a huge difference. Even our ram this year, Bob O'Connor's ram was a giant, but it's 10 inches smaller than Claude's to give you an idea. All right, everyone. I know you're enjoying the Meat Eater podcast, and you're especially enjoying it because it's free. And to keep it that way, we've got to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. This year's podcast is supported by Wealthfront, the automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the proper way.

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you're going to have a lot more time to do the kind of stuff that we talk about here on this podcast. Visit Wealthfront.com slash meet and you can get $10,000 managed for free. That's wealthfront.com slash meet. Get your money managed for free. So if you guys didn't have a client coming out, would you go down and look at all those sheep still? I don't know if I'd drive four hours. I'd probably drive out here an hour and look at sheep.

I got you. Or just go way over there. Yeah. And then when the guy comes out, the client comes out, you present him with your findings. Yeah, we show him all the pictures and the video. And a lot of times we'll be emailing them and sending them little snippets of video the whole time when he's at home when we're off scouting. And what's his take on this? Oh, they love it. Yeah, they eat it up.

They love it. They start naming rams. And I think that's one of the reasons that we've booked that hunt so much and people like us because they talk to the hunters before and they're saying i got emails every day of all the rams and they just love it you know the documentation it drives them crazy though because they're back home and we're out there looking at cheap but why are they back home well they they could be out there but when we set aside like let's oh because he's not gonna have a month that he doesn't right yeah so who's got a month we actually set aside two weeks for that hunt and we say look if we don't find what you want um in that time frame then we can always come back out and keep hunting gotcha um but it

kills them when we're out scouting and sending them pictures of rams and and uh they're at home so so you tell the hunter he he's so you tell him to come out for two weeks we usually plan two weeks on that hunt yes minimum i mean and by that point do you know like this is this is a two-pronged question at that point do you know the ram you're going to look for when the guy gets out there and in square miles how much how do you know where that ram is well what we try and do is see where the ram a lot of times we'll watch him and he'll be here and he'll be here and he'll be here and he'll be here and we kind of connect the dots that this is the this is the mountain range or this these are the certain peaks that we've seen the ram on. You know, Claude's ram, you know, I found Claude's ram.

Fred and I found Claude's ram together. And I saw him that day, and I saw him the next morning. And then I was scouting ahead of time, before I was even planning to come scout. You were scouting for your scouting trip. Yeah, You were scouting for your scouting trip. Yeah, I was scouting for the scouting trip, and we had him scheduled to come out November 1st to hunt from the 1st to the 15th.

Well, I found this ram, and I brought him back, showed a video of Dar and everything, and we started looking, and it just started eating on us that we need to get up there. So I turned around and went up there. Well, I looked for 14 days, and we couldn't find the ram. You're kidding me. So they're like.

Well, they move around. Yeah, they cover a lot of country. Did you ever find him again? That's the one we shot. Oh, that was the one. The day he got killed. 14 days later. So the hunter was there for 14 days on that one.

No, the hunter showed up on, I think it was his sixth or seventh day. Because we actually bumped his days up. So you had seen it. You had seen the ram, saw it again. Videoed him. Then lost it for 14 days. Couldn't find him for 14 days. And how hard were you looking for it?

As hard as, it's darn hard. And you guys do stuff hard. The only way that these two look at stuff let the sun down as if we lost our wedding ring out on the side of the hill i mean i like just to give you a figure i hunted turkeys with these guys and jay likes to leave about 3 a.m for If it's a very short drive on private property, Jay likes to leave about 3 a.m. and get out in the woods. And we had a camera with us, as we're wont to do, and we had to put tape over a little red light that's the size of a pinhead on the camera.

And then Jay gets in what best be described as sort of a lotus position against a tree and just sits there and doesn't even kind of move until daybreak. I think a lot of times you could say what we do is a little extreme, but I think the reason that dar and i have the success we have is we try and cover all the bases and we try and leave no stone stone unturned and we you know the little things like the light i mean i don't want to ruin the morning hunt for you because he sees you know the little because it's the controllable stuff no i totally understand

like i'm not i'm not like hacking at you i understand it respect it and it's like there's so many things you don't control like where that ram's gonna wander to why not have it be that everything you can control you just address so that it's only going to be the non-controlled that's right and you never have to be like oh i wish i hadn't i mean you can do that in your own way like i should have gone in that drainage and not that drainage. Like you can second guess. I'm always, but it's not like, I wish I hadn't been a dumb ass, you know, or I wish I hadn't taken like a shortcut or I wish I hadn't decided to sleep in a little bit late and then have it be that, you know, you're the causefitter standpoint, you know, there's always someone that will outwork you. There's always someone that's better than you. There's always someone that can spot better and do whatever. And so our job is to just try and do the absolute best job that we can and be the most efficient and most effective that we can. And, you know, let the results be what they may.

But you've got to give it a hundred percent on every hunt period. But you guys have never gotten into, um, anything that like the buzz, not a buzzword, but the people are talking about, is it scalable? Is it scalable? You've never gotten into anything that's scalable. What do you mean? Like, okay. a guy becomes the elk guide right and then one day he says you know what i should do is i'll build a lodge and i'll hire 10 guides and i'll have you know 40 guys come through this every year and kill elk and then we're making real money but you guys do like boutique yeah i mean that's a good word for it is boutique because we've talked about it a lot. If you want to make money and earn a living as an outfitter, it's a volume game.

You got to do a lot of volume. But when you do a lot of volume, you lose control over the quality and who's guiding. I mean, it's not me or it's not Jay. It's somebody else. And it's hard to control that. And Giannis is just out there. Yeah, I should point out that Giannis Vitellis, you're supposed to be out buying his Hunt to Eat t-shirts right now. Giannis Vitellis, who's a producer on Media to the Show

and who's always here on these podcasts worked never on the bighorn end of things but worked the elk end of things with jay and dar colburn and scott now i want to i want to talk about some other stuff you guys do but i want to finish up tell me about tell me the story of where last year you guys did the uh like the governor's tag and and you the audience remember i was saying that there's like three basic ways that bighorn tags get distributed where you have the general lottery where you pay an application fee and send your application one application and you get picked or not. Then you have that raffle where you buy an unlimited number of raffle tickets at five or ten bucks a piece. And maybe it's, you know, a percent of a percent chances of being winning, but you win the tag.

Or you just like got deep pockets and you buy the governor's tag. So after doing after killing these like giant rams with these auction guys the governor guy comes to you on the raffle you mean and then the governor oh sorry yeah after successfully three years very successfully doing three raffle guys you get sort of the you know the crown jewel of the governor guy so tell me how that plays out you know i think one quick question so i'll just interject so you answer it while you talk here is i do want to know is it the crown jewel for you when you did get that call and um if it's all right to say how much that tag went for and so we know how well even if he doesn't want to

say it i'll just look it up on my phone yeah no the the actually the tag this year the the um the tag went for 225 000 um the the year last season when we guided the tag it went for 180 000 now the beauty of that is all of that money goes to our sheep in our state it stays here and goes into you know conservation and building water water for the sheep and transplanting and helicopter surveys and it's earmarked that money is earmarked specifically for sheep which is great yeah yeah but it is and I support you know I mean doesn't matter what I think but as far as the grand scheme things things goes, but I support the thing. But the paradox, and everyone admits to this, is we have, like, the reason our country has such phenomenal hunting opportunities and such phenomenal wildlife, despite the fact of a huge population and technologically advanced and all that, we have, like, wonderful wildlife, wonderful wonderful hunting because we have what's called the North American model of wildlife conservation.

And people often criticize that term. Like it just makes people fall asleep hearing someone say North American model of wildlife conservation. But what it means is wildlife is held in public trust. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated.

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As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps dot com slash meet. Welcome to the to the on X club, y'all. The reason you do a lottery to get a bighorn tag is no one has any more right to the bighorns as anyone else. And you are democratically allocating bighorn tags the governor's tag when it's criticized it's criticized on on those grounds meaning you're throwing out this idea of like democratic wildlife of publicly owned wildlife and making it a commodity that goes to the highest bidder but you got to keep in mind too sort of how many tags we're talking about like you might

have a state that issues several hundred bighorn tags they do one for the governor's auction and there's the issue of the fact that that money and they can pull some out for administrative purposes but i think it's like in the 90 percentage points of that money goes on the ground. So you could hit, and it happens every year in every state, people hit bighorns with cars. It's like one bighorn isn't necessarily, it's not like one bighorn is of vital importance to the population of bighorns. We're not talking about bigfoots here we're talking about bighorns right like you can kill a bighorn that doesn't have any especially an old male has no real difference on how many sheep are going to be living in that state okay so it's not like you're like giving this the guy some finite resource that he's now going to remove and it's

no more you're killing a bighorn one of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of bighorns that live around here. And it's a bunch of money. But I am sympathetic to the criticism of it. I understand where the criticism is coming from. And if you paid me to advocate on that behalf, I could make a pretty impassioned argument against governor's tags.

But I could make a better one in favor of them as it's currently run because this kind of stuff's expensive man they shot out bighorns off most of their range in the 1800s shooting them for meat for whatever reason and it's not like you don't just like wave a magic wand and get all those bighorns put back where you want them it takes tons of time tons of resources so as you guys get this guy he calls up he bought the big he got bought the governor's tag for 220 no he paid 180 180 this year's tag paid 220 okay 225 i think and how's that conversation go you know dar and i have talked long and hard about wanting to have the governor's tag for Desert Bighorn Sheep.

And, you know, it's an honor to be able to guide that tag. And I always looked at it as, you know, because a lot of the scouting of some of the biggest rams in Arizona are right here 45 minutes, you know, from our house. And it was something that I've always wanted to do. And I would say I had just an incredible time. We had an incredible time scouting. I think we each had 40 days individually into scouting. Is that right? And we saw some incredible country.

We found some incredible, beautiful rams. And, you know, I think it was everything as a guide that I wanted to do. It was just awesome to be out there basically photographing and videoing and filming these rams and nobody really was else around. And it was awesome. We found, you know, if you're familiar with the scoring system, I mean, we found seven rams that we thought were between 180 and 184 inches. Our target ram score-wise for the hunter wanted 185-inch ram. And you can tell me the difference between a 184 and a 185 no but what i can tell you is um there were no rams that we had found prior to the general season that were definitively over 185 there was a seven

of them uh two of which got killed there were seven that we thought were between that 180 to 184 inch range. Now... The two that got killed, did they prove you right or wrong? I think both. The two that got killed, I think Dar and I were both under. We thought they were smaller. Oh, so you guys are conservative, not the other way. I always like to be, yeah. The worst thing that Dar and I could ever in our mind

is be over on a score. The thing that would crush me most is if I overestimate, and it's happened before on animals over the last 20 years or whatever doing this, but it's one of those things that I never want to be over ever. That's part of credibility, and that's part of, you know, Dara and I like to be credible, and we like to make sure that if we tell somebody something that that's what it is and you found so you found seven rams that were in this area of 180

to 180 to 185 inches 184 we didn't find any that were one what we thought were 181 184 we found seven two of those got killed by other hunters two yeah on the general season on the general season because the general season starts december 1st and it usually runs the whole month of december so just like in the raffle situation we wanted to hunt and be done before the general season okay this is a little bit different though and our conversations before the general season with the hunter and his representative was, we have not found what you want. That we could say definitively is a hunter need. You know, of the seven, we probably could have went out with them and killed any one of the seven pretty much at at any time um or put an effort in to find

that ram and okay let's go get them um any you know the hunter was like well what do you think and we said well you've said from the beginning you want you know a 185 or better you know that in 2012 um i i helped a hunter that had killed 186-inch ram, and the raffle ram the year before, Claude's ram, was 185-3, and we felt like there was probably a ram out there that was bigger than 185. We didn't know of any, but we had all year to look for that ram. Did other guys know of one? I mean, it's hard to say. say i mean obviously we're not privy

to some of the scores and stuff that that other people and and we certainly don't ever want to say that we know every ram in the state at all well and the other thing we talked about is there was only so many tags in that area where we were looking they couldn't kill all those rams on the general hunt oh even all the even if everyone killed one of the giants they wouldn't be yeah we still would have some rams that if we didn't find something else we could potentially go hunt after this you know the general hunt so after the general hunt and we could hunt through the general hunt you know his tag was every bit as good as any one of the general season tags he can hunt in basically any of the units

but then he would have you know february march april may june july and half of august which the desert bighorn in this area where the mexicanas are they typically rut in june and july and the first part of august so you know we were going to be probably the first auction tag to ever hunt during the rut and um because it'd be the first auction it'd probably the first auction tag to ever hunt during the rut. Because it'd be the first auction guy that actually waited that long. That actually waited that long. So from our perspective... Why do they rut so different than the other ones? In the same state, you've got some sheep that rut October, November,

and you've got sheep that are rutting late summer. You know, it's like, why do the brown trout feed in this time in the rain? You know, it's just the way it is. So we knew that we had a great opportunity, even if we didn't kill before the general season, that we had tons of time to find a true giant. And if we didn't, we would have taken the chance and hunted the whole year to try and find that monster of a lifetime. giant and if we didn't you know we we would have taken the chance and hunted the whole year and

to try and find that monster of a lifetime and if not he we're pretty confident that you know he could shoot a you know a ram around 180 inches with you know two weeks to go three weeks to go in the season yeah so we're thinking we shouldn't settle now when we can settle at the end and have the same result. Yeah, and I mean, the hunter asked specifically, he's like, what would you do? And I said, well, if I had your tag and I wanted to kill a ram over 185, if we haven't found one that's over 185, let's keep looking. We have all year. Did you ever start to worry that there wasn't one in existence in the state?

Oh, I mean, I think it's not a worry, but I think that's what motivates you to go out every day is to try and find it because it's plausible that there's not sure oh absolutely it's absolutely plausible that there's not over over 185 but my thing is with this tag why not exhaust every possible resource and if there's not you don't find one you gave it a great shot and within let's say the last 30 days of the hunt you could probably go out and still kill a tremendous ram yeah and you get to spend all that time in the field looking yeah i mean you the the amazing photographs and video

that gar and i were able to capture was is is awesome and we'll always have that and we learned so much from it too i mean there's parts of the unit that we learned now that you know that we didn't hadn't gone in that now we know really well and um you know it it's nobody would do this unless they loved it you know you got to love it to want to be good at this and to do it I mean if you don't have a passion for it you don't stand a chance I mean you can go out and shoot a ram, but you have to really, and there's a handful of guys that really love it. Yeah, there are. From, this is something you're never going to be able to answer. Because you're honest, but you're tactful.

At least enough to survive. How could it not be that like, just hearing this for me i'm just curious how what goes on in your head with it how can you not think after a while that that it'd be like no i killed that ramp like i'm the one that was out there i covered all the ground i went all the miles i found the thing i showed you where it is and then one might say one could argue he just shows up and pulls the trigger i mean how does do you mean like i'm not saying i'm not criticizing what he did like he's doing his own thing and he's within the law he's he's does right by you everybody's happy but in your head do you wind up how do you how do you wind up feeling glad for him and not

kind of like and not kind of like territorial about the animal are you talking the specifically the auction tag yeah like i think anyone who's not out there like if the guy said no i'm gonna be right there with you man like if you stop fast you're gonna feel me bump into you because i'm in this i want to do this i want to learn what you guys know. But to have it be that you do all that and then a guy comes out and shoots the thing, I must not be as big of a guy as you guys are emotionally or psychologically. Because I would want to be like, you know what? I'm not going to show you where the sheep is. Because if you really wanted to know, you'd have been here well i would feel that way about it i certainly think and dark

and speak for himself but i certainly do like taking hunters that want to go scouting and want to be there for every experience and let's face it though i mean i can argue both sides of the auction tag i can argue both sides very well um Our state relies on this money. And quite frankly, the general Joe Blow, as much as I love him, they're not going to shell out of their pocket five bucks. They just it's just. Yeah. And we need the money. And so get to your question, I think when we decide that we're going to be Colburn and Scott Outfitters and we're going to be guides and we're going to do this, I think you have to take a level of professionalism in the field that says, I've been hired to do a job and my job is to sweat. My job is to get struck by rattlesnakes. My job is to do whatever it takes, have the boat break down,

change flat tires like we did out on the 60, and that's my job, and nobody hears about that stuff. My job is to find, our job is to find the client the biggest ram possible and have them have the best hunt that they can possibly have. I think part of our goal on our general season hunts is we want yes we want a great trophy but more than anything we want the great experience we never want a hunter to leave thinking that they just came out pulled the trigger and they were done okay almost all the hunters that we ever hunt with with all the different

species they they text us they email us they call us they invite us to their house we're friends with them and we build that bond and relationship so i certainly don't want this whole conversation to be taken that it's all around the trophy to us it's more about the experience but yeah i mean is it feasible to think that you could go through all this work you know 110 degrees and you're out there hiking up and down peaks and, you know, sleeping with the, you know, the fleas biting your ears all night and, you know, all that stuff that we do. But that's also the job we chose. Yeah. I think at some point that's your duty and you just do it.

Yeah. I think the other thing that I could see how i'd feel about it is that it facilitates you being able to do something that people would only dream of doing yeah i think the people here's what it is i think people think they i think people think they wish they did what you guys did they think yeah until they do it yeah until they do it but yeah steve what i was going to say too is most hunters like jay said were become lifelong friends with and then you get the the person you know our sheep hunter from this december he shoots an unbelievable ram he never once mentioned score prior to the hunt and he gave me a hug as he was leaving with his family there and broke into tears and was just like,

thank you for this unbelievable experience. It was more than I could have ever imagined. So, I mean, that's pretty special. It's more than money at that point and the size of a ram. It's a bonding life experience you've just shared with this person. I think there are guides out there that I think all of us have run across that aren't nearly as professional as you two, and that probably out of the realm of the public eye,

they do walk around boasting a little bit how probably, and they take it into possession as in how much they've killed talking about what their clients have killed well i agree with you but i and certainly i don't want to come across as someone that's saying that darn i don't have pride and don't have our own ego we all want to kill the biggest stuff we can yeah i mean we want to kill the biggest thing on the mountain um because it's a once in a lifetime deal but i think we have to always check our own egos and and and you know kind of humbly approach this because you know we're not perfect by by any stretch of the imagination you know it's funny about what

i was saying earlier about sort of like who did it like whose possession it is talk like when you talk with guys like i have a lot of friends that hunt a lot and like i know you know we know guides and you know many of my friends have been guides so when we talk about like when yannis would tell me what he's always telling me what you guys are up to because he's in touch with you all the time yannis would never say um yeah jay and dar's client did whatever. It would be Jay and Dar as like, though somehow you guys are both like sharing. You each got your finger on the trigger. It's like Jay and Dar killed blank.

You know what I mean? It's like it never, like hearing it, no insult to your clients. Hearing it, it never even enters into my head that it's something other. I just like hear it and I'm like, that they did this thing. And granted, for sure, you have someone there and you're doing your job. But when I hear it, that's honestly what I hear. I don't picture you guys joint doing it, but I just picture you guys out there. We get to go the whole experience and do it all.

We just don't get to take it home. In the end, we get to go on a sheep hunt every year which is amazing do you guys go years without hunting personally oh personally yeah yeah a long long time yeah and i i think speaking to that you know when dar and i started even before we started guiding a lot I mean we've always kind of guided but um Dar and I hunted together for all sorts of animals and um you know I think one of the things that made me hunted like hunted yeah like our own tags together yeah I think one of the things that made us very effective is we always acted as a team and there's numerous trophies that that um dar shot um that you know i'm as happy about him shooting that trophy as if i am and people say oh that's not true you but dude i can back you up on that 100 man like when i hunted like the handful of times i've

hunted doll sheep it's always been with my brothers and it's like it doesn't you you don't talk about it it's that we you know you guys come off the mountain saying like we got a ramp yeah and that's the same thing with guiding though that's the same thing what'd you guys get it'd be like oh we got a ramp and that's the same thing with guiding out so we've taken that same mentality into guiding and you know with with the coos deer hunting and the mule deer and the elk and turkeys and whatever we just darn i operate we we know how each other we know how we act we know how when one person you know may get frustrated we know how we know how to read each other and we work almost as one. And people that hunt with us,

they say that. They're like, you guys are unbelievable because he knows what you're thinking. You know what he's thinking. And I think that's, we've become pretty effective that way. And I think we took that into the guiding

and we're able to produce very well because we work as one team. How did you guys meet in the first place? It wasn't like a fly fishing shop or something? Fly shop. So it was, I think, in 1995, I believe, maybe 94, so 20 years ago, I actually had a doctor friend that owned a fly shop. And I remember walking in

and there was this kid up on this ladder and he was stalking actually we were moving the fly shop to a new fly shop and I came in and he'll tell you his impression but um a little later that day he was like so you hunt and I said yeah and he says so you hunt? And I said, yeah. And he says, do you bow hunt? And I said, yeah. And I think ever since those words were uttered, we've been lifelong friends. You've been Jay and Dar. Oh, yeah. And then the owners of the fly shop left for the summer, so left he and I in charge, which was scary. Dar was actually my boss.

Oh, is that right? Yeah. I can actually remember one time on a Saturday morning getting a, I don't even know if we had cell phones back then, but to make a long story short, anyway, I called into Dar because I'm like an hour late. And he's like, where are you? I'm like, I'll be in. I think I had overslept or something, but he was my boss. So after all that, how much time have we been, yeah, before Yanni? We're at an hour right now.

It would be a good time to take just a quick break. Oh, announce it. We're going to take a quick break. Be right back. So after you guys met, like you guys meet at a fly shop, how did it go when you started bow hunting together? Yeah, we started hunting together, fishing together. How did it go from that to being like your guide in desert bighorn hunts? Well, it was 2001.

Hold on, but at this point, neither of you have guided hunting. No, I had a guides license, I think in, I think 1997 was the first year that I had a guides license. So after you guys met. Correct, after, yes. Yeah, Jay started guiding some hunts, late 90s. For what? Elk, right? Elk and coos deer down in Mexico, kind of started that.

And was that just because you'd been hunting on your own and liked it and had a knack for it? Yeah, I think, to be honest with you, I was just trying to get more time out there hunting. In Arizona, you know, with our draw, it's, you know, limited tags and living here and not having, you know, a lot of resources early on to go hunt. I thought being a guide was perfect because I could go tag along and, you know, actually go experience all these hunts because Dar was actually raised in a hunting family since he was little. I shot my first deer when I was 15, but that was the first real hunt that i had ever been on so i was one of those kids that grew up my grandma got me field and stream and outdoor life magazine but i absolutely wanted to hunt as a little kid worse than anything but it's funny

because usually those people don't turn into real good hunters and it's usually the people that have you have to do it your whole life you know yeah and i mean some would argue whether i'm a good hunter or not i guess that the thing is is i wanted to hunt and fish so bad as a little kid i think even today people ask me why i love it so much is because when i was little i really didn't have the opportunity i was the kid that literally when field and stream came you know like six seven years old, would read it cover to cover and literally have like the pages flip to the things that I liked. And, you know, so once I got introduced to it, I was hooked. That's all I wanted to do is hunt and fish. Yeah, you know, Jay brings up an interesting point where like how if you want to hunt in Arizona, you oftentimes just have to go with someone who's got a tag.

If you notice, when you see pictures from Arizona, there's always seven, eight guys in the picture. Because you've got your guys you hang out with, and you're hoping that one of the guys draws a tag. That's right. If you want to go every year you gotta go with your buddies yeah like if you live in montana it's like if you're a montana resident absolutely antelope tag every year absolutely elk tag every year absolutely a buck mule deer or white tail tag every year as many doe tags you want to get absolutely a bear tag every year you can hunt more months than you can't hunt yeah here i mean it's just a different

place it's like it's just not as productive of a landscape you just can't you know there's there's not over-the-counter hunting here so much yeah i mean i think we do have lots of opportunity here if you're you know we'll do archery and just do different things there is a lot of opportunity yeah but you're not walking around because your wallet's fat with all the tags you gotta like figure out somewhere to put all your tags you know no so yeah you fall in with someone and and you know i mentioned that like in in this this the hunting guide but we have coming out i mentioned there's a lot of things that if you want to go hunt them like i say like if you want to go on a on a big horn hunt start hanging out with guys that are interested in big horns because the chances of you ever actually drawing a tag

you know it's not gonna happen but if you fall in with the right crowd you might go on a handful of them i've been on a couple big horn hunts i've never drawn a big horn tag but i've had i at least had the experience of going it's they're incredible it's a blast man and you know i i still sit here feeling like i gotta remind myself that I didn't shoot the thing. You know what I mean? Because it just felt like being there. That's exactly how I ended up here working with you is because I found out you had a doll sheep tag.

Yeah. And I volunteered my time just so I could fly in an airplane into doll sheep country, join you and Dan. I think I hooked you two up by email like yeah you were like yeah steve's got a tag you should talk to him you were moving to alaska he was in i was in i was in fairbanks yeah and so just by going you know by wanting to go and see sheep country and see a sheep hunt and and experience a sheep hunt here we are yeah i, yeah, I had a tag for something called the Tote Management Area. Now, you guys have never hunted doll sheep, right?

No. Want to. You do want to. Oh, yeah. I remember one of you was complaining about that you're a little bit afraid of cold weather. I think it was wet. We're in Arizona. I would say that any time the weather gets under 60 degrees, I grab for a sweater.

So, I mean, I'm definitely a desert rat. But, yeah, I would love to go doll sheep hunting, stone sheep hunting. Oh, is that right? Yeah. All right. Definitely not saying I'm the toughest critter out there. Well, no, you got to be, though, now from doing all that sheep scouting. All right.

So, you guys, we're going were in this fly shop you'd like to hunt or you'd like to hunt a lot and just got into guiding and started out doing elk and coos you're down in mexico i loved video i i want to say that last year um was my 20th year would have been my 20th year of taking the entire month of september off to video elk and it started out videoing elk and guiding elk hunters and just my my love for elk and bugling and all of the parts of the game of elk hunting from calling to you know all of the different facets of elk hunting i was just enamored with it yeah jay Jay even judges elk calling contests. Three years I was a judge for the Rocky Mountain elk calling contest.

But I didn't judge this last year, actually, because it was during sheep season. They bumped their expo up into December, which was right at the beginning of the general desert bighorn sheep season. So doing the elk deal deal how did that lead into like how like kind of like give like a quick crash course and how dude becomes a sheep guide um to be real honest with you we hunted all sorts of stuff in 2009 my friend glenn hall darn eyes mutual friend glenn hall who we just think the world of actually drew a desert bighorn sheep hunt i had never been on a sheep hunt until then and so he drew the tag and his son tyler and i uh basically we wanted to know everything there was to know about sheep hunting so i talked to every single person that would

listen to me that would take a phone call um tyler and i both scouted a lot for glenn's hunt and from the first time just as friend you're just doing this as a friend my friend and i wanted to be there for the whole thing i took the whole time off and you know that was i wanted to that's a good guy to know i hope i draw an arizona sheet and so i was watch you won't even take my call what i have just get the tag get the tag. Get the tag first. Yeah. So from the first ram that I ever saw, and I was just hooked, the yellow horn, just the country they live in, I was just hooked on it. And so, I mean, we became almost obsessive about.

So did you guys have a good hunt that year, the 2009 glenn shot what at the time was the number three muzzleloader ram uh in the long hunter book 176 and four eighths net which was a barge ram for that unit and um we looked at a ton of rams but i mean at from that point from that season um just absolutely hooked on sheep hunting and that was over in western arizona and we had already been guiding you know for coos deer and elk and all the other stuff and um we learned so much about that unit um how many days did you put in when your friend drew the tag oh i mean i would say we put in 21 days at least. Just go. Maybe more. But videoing and photographing them

and just documenting them, I just fell in love with it. And as fortune would have it, the next year, actually, a guy from Wisconsin, Ron Orndorfer, drew the same unit. Oh, okay. Well, when he called me,

he had found out that that um we we i was in there the year before he had the same hunt and i said look you know i might not have the experience on judging rams and what have you but i know the unit and i know some of the rams that are in there and we got a great one last year and and i think darn eyes expertise and glassing for coos deer just i mean when you're trained to hunt coos deer and and and and glass for coos deer sheep is in desert sheep is nothing compared to coos deer so i felt like we fell right into the sheep game um we took ron out actually guided ron in 2010 he put his faith and trust in dar and i we did it together and he got a beautiful ram that

that we had nicknamed the logo ram that we had actually found the year before and um we spent i think we scouted um it was either every wednesday or every tuesday for like two and a half months um steady every morning that day we for like two and a half months, steady. Every morning that day we would drive two hours from here. But then before the hunt, we spent a bunch of time and Ron killed the logo ram and that was 2010. And then I just was in love with it even more. And Dar then was all in, you know, and he was loving it too. And 2011, Eric Swanson's Ram, he got a nice one.

And then, you know, then 2011, we took our first raffle. So we kind of went from zero to 100 real quick. Yeah, yeah. But I think Dar and I's analytical nature and it seems like everything that we get into, I just want to know everything there is to know about it and be competent at it. So I think the way we went from being elk guides and coos deer guides to being sheep guides was just loving the game and wanting to be in the game and know everything you could about the sport. Do you guys think you'll keep going after sheep? Definitely.

It's fun i mean there one thing about sheep that i would say is different than deer and elk there's a lot of interaction with them um when we're taking pictures and video a lot of times it's close i mean you're can be 50 100 yards from sometimes is that right yeah so we've gotten some phenomenal video yeah the pictures and video it it's really enjoyable documenting all that stuff. So that aspect of it is different than elk and deer. Do you guys put in for tags? Oh, yeah. How many bonus points do you have now?

I have 20. I think I have like 18. Do they give any tags? Just to, I feel like we've talked about this so many times just to like bring people up to speed and what i'm talking about when i talk about a bonus point is in when it comes to limited draw permit allocation which happens when let's say you have you know 100 deer and 500 dudes want to hunt deer, you got to be fair about it and not everybody gets to go.

And so everybody starts applying and they reward loyal customers. Thinking of a person who applies for a tag as a customer, they reward loyal customers by every year that they apply without success, they are given a bonus point or a preference point.

And basically these are like rewards points, which enhance your chances in the subsequent years to draw a tag. Some states handle bonus points in different ways where some states, and this is true for everything from bears to bighorns, right? But even turkeys, there's bonus points for turkeys in some states. So some states will give a certain number of the tags to whoever has the maximum number of points in that given year. Some states just treat a point as a point and your name goes in once for each point you have. So if you have four bonus points, your name goes into the hat four times. Montana squares your bonus points. So I have right now 12 bighorn sheep bonus points in Montana, or 13.

My name will be going into the hat 169 times this year. I will not draw a bighorn tag this year. And until that state does the thing where you give a certain number of tags at a max point holder, I'll probably never draw. But you have a chance. Always a chance. Yeah, I have a chance up into almost a percent. I think.

I have about a 1% chance with 13 bonus points. So anyways, you have 18 and 20 bonus points. Are you in a situation where they're going to for sure give you a tag when you get a max or don't they don't do that max holder thing we're so far behind i think i think 25 is max um i could be wrong it might be 26 but 25 i think is max and are there more max guys every year than there are permits available to meet all the max guys they're all right are the max guys still in a drawing? They're not just automatically given? I think rough numbers,

I was going to say there was like 150 people with Max for sheep, and they give 20%, well, 150 residents, I believe, with Max for sheep. And let's say they give 100 sheep tags in Arizona, 20% go to the people with the most bonus points. So 20 tags right off the top go to those max point holders. So, I mean, Jay and I are behind that so far, behind that.

Well, I think the thing you need to look at when you don't have max points in Arizona is you need to apply for units that don't go in the max point draw so so you need to pick some of the lesser tier units that might not have as bigger rams but might have a sleeper ram and that's what i always try and i always try and apply for units that there's still a chance if i draw of getting a really nice ram, but the tags aren't going to go in the max point pool. Yeah. Because the way Arizona does it is they give 20% of the tags to the people with the most

points, but they don't give 20% of each hunt. They just let those 20%, they pick those tags out of the pool. So those people with the max points are picking the best units. So the best units aren't available by the time it comes to the general draw because they only might have one or two tags, and they're gone in that 20%. So if you're applying for those units, you're wasting your – you will not draw. But a good story, last year I took a girl on the general season, Avery Elms, cutest little thing you've ever seen, 12 years old, from Oregon,

Baker City, Oregon. She brought her dad and grandpa down. She started hunting on the 19th once she got out of school, but she only had two bonus points. And it happened to be in the same. And drew a big one, too. And as a non-resident. As a non-resident, but she drew in that unit where I hunted in 2009 and 2010 where the Glen Hall's big ram was and the logo ram.

And subsequently, one of the seven giants that, I shouldn't say giants, but one of the seven big rams that we found scouting for the auction tag was in that unit. And it actually got killed. And I think it was 183 inches um and she drew a two bonus points so don't ever think that as a non-resident you can't draw because she drew with two points yeah and and she got a beautiful ram and um was a pleasure to hunt with so you'll do more you'll do more than one sheep hunt you did you were involved in several sheep hunts well doc dar had a client in uh 15d north and and i had avery elms and 44b north and then we also had the the auction hunter um so technically i guess we had three hunts so you guys will split up now then yeah rarely but but we do

so jay and dar didn't kill it i found the big one and i called called Jay because his hunter wasn't coming. Oh, really? He said, my bags are packed. I'm headed your way. All I had to do was just say I found a big one and I was scrambling for my stuff to get up there to just help him out any way I could. So now, I meant to talk about it, but I wanted to talk about all the things you guys guide. We burn up tons of time on bighorns.

But to put it in terms of points, the elk units you apply, the elk units you hunt in, are arguably the best elk units in the country because arizona is widely regarded as you know it makes like the if you're gonna if you ask anybody who's really into elk to name like the top two or three elk states arizona's always on the list and they're the best units in the best state how many years have the guys you guided been applying for the tags that you guide it's a great question you know our draw just came out the actual draw hasn't been released but they've hit the credit card so the guys that have applied on a credit card uh they know they've got a ding on their card so they know that it hit for whatever the amount is the non-resident fee what day did that come out uh like friday four or five days ago or three days ago um so i have a guy bob reed from bend oregon uh 68 years old he has 17 bonus points he

put in for unit 9 archery so he's been faithfully applying for an arizona elk tag for 17 years yeah and going it apparently hasn't come out because he wouldn't have his bonus points if he'd come out right and and going into the draw you can look at the numbers and see how it went last year and we were pretty confident that with 17 points he was going to get the unit nine archery tag so he applied for unit nine one choice and he did get a ding on his credit card so we know we're going elk hunting is that right 17 points 17 points when you're in those units like how good is good like how many bulls you like to call like you call a lot but dar you don't like to call too much not very much you more just like to get out in front of elk and just see if something happens so when you're calling like in one of these primo units

if you're like how many bulls might you see you know when they're really, like in one of these primo units, if you're like, how many bulls might you see? You know, when they're really rutting and really going, you know, you can get out of the truck and make a little walk. And, you know, when it's really hot, you can hear 12 or 15 bulls bugling when it's really good. You know, and in a given day, whether you're just trying to glass them or if you're actually trying to work those bulls and get in on them, I mean, I would say on a good day, you could see in a morning, I mean, you could probably see a dozen bulls easy. If you were just glassing, just trying to spot elk and not really move in on them, when it's good, you could see, I mean, you could see probably 15 or 20 bulls, no problem. Would you agree, Dar? What's that YouTube video? How would people find that YouTube video that bull comes up and screams in your face and you try to scare it off? Oh, yeah.

It's Encounter with Crazy Eye. I was in Unit 23 with Chad Converse and Richard Sprague in 2010 and this bull was bugling and I kind of we snuck up and they got out in front of me and I cow called and you could tell he was just coming and then he kind of comes and then he kind of turns and looks in their direction and I kind of called to him and he just came like on a string and he ends up coming around trying to catch my wind and he circles me around over here so you'll see i kind of turn the camera and he comes and i'm just sitting like you know kind of on my knees and he comes up bugles into the camera and i thought that's cool and then he takes like five or six more steps and he's literally as close or maybe closer i can't believe you didn't try to spook him before that. You know, I've been very, very close to elk before.

And it's just one of those things. I'd be worried that he's going to all of a sudden just get scared and all it would take is him just to punch him. We always laugh that, you know, whatever you do, keep the camera running if that happens. It's probably not the smartest thing. I don't condone people doing it. But I love it. Yeah, I mean, like all the safety stuff. I love doing condone people doing it. But I love... I love being close to them and

sometimes literally you can if you play your cards right, you can literally probably reach out and touch them as they walk by. But you've got to tell me your heart had to have been racing though. Oh yeah, I was on full alert. I'm thinking he's got me if he wants me for sure. Oh, that's a great video.

Jay's face is pale. When you turn the camera back on you, your face is pale. I just have my little camcorder thing. You're talking about the same video I'm talking about where you wind up saying like, shoot, shoot, shoot. Whoa, whoa, bull. Whoa. Yeah, whoa, bull.

Yeah. And he hesitates and he looks at me and I'm going, whoa, bull. Whoa. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah and he never really spooked no he doesn't know it's on youtube you can it's on our youtube yeah he doesn't spook no he's so and like i know that in that you like if you're gonna go there you've been put in for 17 years all that like you're gonna go and you're gonna try to kill a giant you know why not i would um but that bull's like like like a normal like a public land hunter in

colorado dude it's getting shot yeah well it'd be a dream yeah and i think that's the thing the beauty of arizona is you know it's such good hunting and a lot of guys have waited for so long you hate for it to be over with quick yeah we. We, you know, we book 14 day hunts. We do the whole archery hunt, you know, one-on-one. That's, that's, you know, I'm taking this guy in unit nine. He's my only hunter and I'm as committed to the hunt as he is. And we don't, you know, we don't split the hunt up. We feel like, you know, we want the hunter to be as committed as we are to the hunt.

So you guys clients will sometimes have you are here like when you're looking at guided hunts there's always like two to one meaning like two clients one guy but you guys sometimes do the other way around yeah well most of the time uh for elk dar and i each have a client you know there's certain times when we maybe not we might each have an archery client but we I each have a client. You will. But, you know, there's certain times when we maybe not, we might each have an archery client, but we don't have a muzzleloader or an early rifle. And most every situation like that, if I don't have a client, I stay and help Dar with his client.

If he doesn't have a client, he stays and helps me. Yeah, or if we shoot one bull on the archery hunt, then the other guy's got two guys helping him. Yeah. And it always seems like there's somebody else from your community yeah that's like up hanging out and it's like glassing and so if you don't like the call what do you like how do you do it like what's your elk philosophy i just like to get in front of them and it's not that i don't call because i do

jay's got me calling some. Use mouth calls. I'm not as good a caller as Jay. If I was, I certainly would call more, but I'm not. So I have to use stalking to get in on them. My theory is that if I can get in front of them and they don't know I'm there, I'm not calling to them so they're not looking at me. In front of them meaning when they're traveling to what? Yeah, when they're traveling or when they're out feeding.

I'm trying to stay parallel to them and then just keep getting closer, hooking in front of them and they're going to pass by, like on an archery hunt. I think one of the biggest challenges with what Dar's talking about is the elk, no matter what, are always walking into the wind. So when Dar says get in front of them, he never actually gets in front of them

because their wind will hit them. He parallels them. And then at the last second, you close in. And so that's the trick that, I mean, definitely hunting in the southwest, a lot of times we'll chase out and line after these bulls and line out after these bulls. And we'll go for a mile, a mile and a half before we even just decide to hook in. I mean, we'll be patient, be patient, be patient and then hook in. And you might hook in and you might be 30 seconds late or 20 yards late.

Or it's just all cows, right? Yeah. And then you got to loop around and do it again. And the challenge too is, you know, usually the cows are in the lead and the bull's always in the back, and the cows are so wary and such, you've got to hook in enough that the cows don't wind you, but get in close enough where you have a shot at that bull when he comes by. So, I mean, it's truly, Dar's phenomenal at it, but it's truly something you kind of have to learn how to do. And, you know, if you get in front of them and you you win them you've now spooked them and they take off and now you got to find new up the group of elk to chase but you also got to if you don't push the envelope you'll never

get a crack at them it's a fine line because if you if you stay too far back and behind them you'll just never catch up you know i in my own years like, I bow hunted for elk heavily for almost a decade. Where he kind of, like, my brother and I, like, had a place we hunted. We knew it well. He still hunts. He does much better now than he did when he was with me. But we talked about that line all the time with elk. Where on one hand, you can just sit and plot

you know like at five o'clock you know like the sun gets there they always come over it takes about blank time and then the whole herd's over then you can kind of come in behind them and get on the ridge and you know and you watch that whole thing for a day and then like you go to make a move the next day but the wind's not right, you know, but you're only hunting a three day weekend and you're always sort of like, at some point you just got to get in there and risk doing it. And then you get in there and spook them and you're like,

man, I should have waited. Yeah. You know, it just seems like such a situation, you know, like you, like you just run it.

It's a fine line. Definitely. It's a fine line. And every now and then you get lucky where you've been paralleling for so long, and instead of you hooking, you get dealt that nice wild card, and all of a sudden, they just decide to hook in front of you. Or another bull bugles, and the cows keep going, and the bull stops and rakes a tree, and boom, you're right there.

Yeah. I was watching an episode of the show Western Hunter, and that show has different hosts, but Matt Simmons was on there. Nate Simmons. Nate Simmons. Yeah, yeah. And, sorry, and he was like, he kind of like summed up his elk hunting strategy in like such simple terms but

having done some elk hunting it makes total sense he basically said like i like to get close and wait for something to happen yeah and that's just kind of like flip it but then you're kind of like i know exactly what you're talking about dude you kind of get in there and it's like it's dynamic like things are changing you know and now and then like i remember one time it didn't work out but i remember one time like doing that and all of a sudden realized that the bull I'd been sneaking up on just got totally engrossed in thrashing a tree. You know, and I could have driven a quad runner up on him at that point, you know, because it's just like something happened. Like he's super worried, bedded down. There's no way you're going to get anywhere near him.

And all of a sudden he stands up and you're like, that dude is just oblivious because he's shredding that tree and then you know there it is like something happened you know yeah you got to just shadow them and hope they make a mistake i mean that's what you're doing well and i think our terrain too is a lot different than other states um you know we can travel with the elk a lot better down here we're not running through the you know broken down blue spruce you know um blow downs and stuff you know yeah you guys got that nice you guys often have that nice bed of pine needles too yeah and it's flat and fairly flat not so we can really run with these elk and it's just a lot of fun if you haven't experienced arizona you know it's something that you got to apply for and and

you know there are units that you can draw with five or six seven points as a non-resident that you can have bugling bulls and maybe they're not the giant you know 350 360 plus type bulls but a lot of you know 300 to 320 bulls which most people are just tickled pink with and there's a chance at a 350 bowl in every unit in the state yeah so it's always a chance i have some number of points but i'm still kind of saving them up you know how many points do you have for i could tell you by looking it up i can't i mean four or five. Yeah. I think. So I'll be calling you guys in 20 years, I guess.

All right, man. Yeah. All right. You guys are going to have to sit down again because we didn't get to talk about the things I'm actually most interested in is hunting Gould's turkeys and hunting Coos deer. So I guess think of this, J j and r tell everybody your website uh j scott outdoors.com colburn and scott outfitters.com is it the same website no two websites oh they're different oh i didn't realize that i thought they were just like the same just two ways getting so our guiding our guiding uh website is the ColburnAndScottOutfitters.com. And then all of our other adventures, fishing, all the hunting, all the gear stuff, what have you, is JScottOutdoors.com. And then you can go on and look up Encounter with Old One Eye.

Crazy Eye. Crazy Eye, yeah. So check that out. It's good stuff. All right, guys. We're going to have to do it again and talk about more stuff. But thanks for listening, everybody. Best of luck.

Make sure to get in here. It's too late now, but the 2016 application season. Well, Deer and Sheep is coming up in June, so get your Deer and Sheep applications in. Get your Deer and Sheep applications in, and in 20 years, you might be on the phone with Jay and Scott. Talk to you later. Jay and dar jay and dar hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada you might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law but hear this on x hunt is now in canada it is now at your fingertips you canadians the great features that you love and on x are available for your hunts this season Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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