← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep. 168 | Wyoming Arizona and New Mexico application season breakdown
01:09:13
Remi breaks down his thoughts on applications and what to do this year.
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Remy Warren
Foreign I'm Remy Warren and I've lived my life in the wild as a professional guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days perfecting my craft. I want to give that knowledge to you. In this podcast we relive some of my past adventures as I give you practical hunting tips to make you more successful. Whether you're just getting started or a lifelong hunter, this podcast will bring you along on the hunt and teach you how to live wild. This podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. A lot of the tactics I talk about here require you to be in top physical shape, so I partnered with Mountain Tough to help get you ready for the mountain with their science based hunter specific training app. You'll get in shape and mentally tough able to tackle any hunt. Because we really believe this will help you be more successful as a listener to this podcast, we're giving you six free weeks to get you started. Just use code livewild Foreign welcome back to Live Wild Podcast. Now it's that time of year, especially for Western big game hunters, where application season is in full swing. And I call it application season because if you're planning on hunting, there's going to be a process for applying and obtaining tags. It's just the nature of the beast and really just a necessary way to allocate a popular resource. It's getting more difficult to obtain tags, find hunt opportunities, and that's just part of it. Now the question might be, are there still some great options? And the answer is yes. Do you have to play the game well? Yes. And are there ways to increase your opportunity? Once again, yes. So we're going to do a dive into the application game and some of the things to look at for various states in our annual application season breakdown. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at the first few states that are coming available to apply for. We're going to go state by state, look at maybe some big changes and things to look at or strategies for applying in the future. This time of year is exciting and as well as in some ways time consuming and stressful for many people. Because if you're a western hunter and you're planning on hunting out of state, you're going to have to apply for tags as a non resident or maybe you're somewhere else, you live somewhere else in the country, somewhere else in the world and you say I'd really love to go on an elk hunt. Well, how do I do that? And the first part of the game to even Getting out on the mountain. Any of the tips and tactics for elk hunting is you have to obtain a tag. And that's one of the reasons that every year I try to take some time to break down some of my thoughts on applications, some of the states and where to go and what to do. Now, I don't like to point to specific states or units, but I do like to kind of address the application game, go over some of the rules regarding applying and just give you the idea of this is what I'm going to have to do. And these are some of the things to think about. You know, if you read too much on the Internet, there's a lot of doom and gloom out there, right? It's like impossible to get tags over the counter. Tags are gone, there's no more hunting opportunities or non residents are infiltrating the state and there's too many tags being issued and the hunt is terrible. And, you know, while there's truce to everything, right, There's. There's certain truce. Areas have been getting overrun. Maybe, you know, getting tags is getting more difficult. Things that just used to be a certain way aren't that way anymore. And we're in a new world where we have to figure out the system and identify ways that we can continue to go on hunts. And it's. I'm saying that because while it might seem one way and you know, you maybe have this outlook of like, oh, it's terrible, there's higher elk populations in many places than there's ever been. There's some incredible resources for people showing up in a place that they've never hunted, hunted, and having a lot higher likelihood of being successful. Tools like Onx, where you can escout from home, you've got the boundaries in all your maps right on your phone. There's things with information even. I mean, you could even reference podcasts like this where hunting information is widely available, information on the Internet's widely available videos and other things, courses like outdoor class, where it helps you break that learning curve while you're in the field. And so of course, like, there's a give and take to all the situations out there. But my goal today is to kind of break down some of the things to think about and some of the things that I think about when it comes to obtaining tags across the West, I will, I'll kind of lay my credentials out there. I'm very well versed in applying. I've applied in nearly every western state and it's probably gonna put an age to me but like before it was cool, before it was popular. I have 20 some odd points in most western states that have points. I've been applying most states since I was probably about 16 years old and some states even longer since I was 12. So I've been acquiring points playing this game. There's so much more information out there now. There's so many more resources now when it comes to applying. But I will say that, you know, I'm in one place right where I. I've got a lot of points. I've been sitting on a lot of points, a lot of them on my personal, you know, point sheet or whatever. I haven't really been able to cash in a lot of them because I've guided for 20, I think 21 years. And so a lot of my hunting season was spent guiding and I couldn't, I didn't want to draw a once in a lifetime tag in some other place that wouldn't have time to hunt. However, you know, I've cut that back quite a bit and allowed myself some time to go get out and maybe cash in some points here and there as I see fit. Now I will say that and I will also say over the last, I don't even know however many years that I've been doing this kind of stuff, hunting, going out of state. I've been hunting out of state for a long time, finding hunts in different places, filming hunts for things such as solo hunter, my own YouTube stuff, just my own personal hunts. The majority of my hunting tags and things have been on what I would consider easy to get tags, mostly general units, a lot of over the counter stuff, maybe some things that people weren't looking at. I've hunted, you know, outside of my home state. Very few limited entry draw tags. I mean, I could count them on one hand and most of them happened within the last year. So I've hunted out of state in a lot of places. A lot. I've had a lot of great hunt. I mean, you can roll through my catalog of hunts and say like, wow, he's been on a lot of awesome hunts. A lot of opportunities, majority of them public land, easy to obtain tags, some of them in areas that were very difficult hunts. And there's a lot that I've been on that aren't videos that, you know, maybe I was successful on, maybe I struck out on. But you know, I've played the game for a long time. There's some things I've picked up over the years, but the first is just kind of being aware and Having a plan when it comes to making applications or submitting applications and looking for the things that maybe other people aren't looking for. And now I could say that. And then, you know, a lot of people that listen to this podcast are gonna. Well, if you say this and then everybody jumps in and it changes the game. So I like to talk in. In a way that, you know, doesn't give out everything, but gives you enough information to make some. Some pretty good decisions and let you know that there are a lot of opportunities to be had. If you're just getting started or if you've been playing the game for a while, now might be a good time to cash in on some stuff. Now might also be a good time to jump in on some things. So we're going to go through some of the states here, and there's so many nuances to every state. This would be. I think sometimes I try to cram it all into one episode. So I'm going to break it down and just do the first states that are coming up for deadlines first. So actually, I guess what's today? Well, tomorrow. So this podcast is released on Thursday, the 30th, Friday, the 31st, Wyoming Elk applications are due. Then after that comes Arizona, elk and antelope. Arizona's split, so the elk and antelope are first, and that's February 4th. And then after elk and antelope, then you can apply for sheep and deer and some other stuff. So that's the way that's split up. And then, you know, following that, I guess you have New Mexico would be the next big one to hit. And that's like in March, March 19th. After that, then things start really picking up. So April 1st, you've got Montana. April 1st, deadline for Colorado, April 15th, I think South Dakota. Then you've got Utah in April, mid April, like April 24, if I recall right. Idaho is the end of April. You've got Wyoming, sheep, moose, goat, bison in April, end of April as well. And then you got end of May, Montana, sheep, moose, goat. Then you got Nevada, beginning of May, Oregon. Oregon's open now. It gives you the longest time to apply. But it's like open now. You can apply now. And then it goes till May 15. And then you have stuff in Washington, end of May, Montana, antelopes, June 1st. California's June 2nd. That's kind of like the last in Wyoming, deer, antelope and resident elk is June 2nd. California is also June 2nd. And then Arizona for bighorn sheep and deer is June 3rd. And then you've got your Idaho ones June 5th. And then, I mean, that's kind of where I, you know, then there's some second draws and other things going on after that. So from now through summer, essentially into almost July, mid June, there's something you can apply for. And so there's a lot of options and opportunities. And then there's things that have passed like Idaho over the counter tags which are, I mean, they aren't really over the counter anymore. It's a draw for the most part. If you're online, it's like a randomized number and you got to get in line and whatever. So honestly, it's been, you know, it's been fun to be able to pick up tags, but it's also probably better for planning if it just became a draw in the future. You know, I'd hate to see it go. But as things change and as things adapt and the situations change, states have to do things to make it equitable to issue these tags. And so, you know, a draw is a good way to do it. It's been working in a lot of places and a lot of places are running into problems where the systems were set up and the demand never was expected. Right. So it's like they set up a system that worked for a while and then the demand kind of started to outpace the way that that original system got set up. So a lot of states are probably going to have to revamp the way that they're doing things. But there's people that have bought in for like myself, 20 some odd years, you know, so it's a delicate balance with the way these things go and it's just kind of, it's interesting to see it, you know, and I see it from both perspectives, from a guy applying as a non resident in states and wanting an opportunity to hunt some of that stuff. Then as a person hunting states where you see a lot of non resident influence in and influx in areas that maybe you've hunted a lot. So I've seen it both ways. But I also think that, you know, it is good to dive into some of the nuances and some of the changes and just kind of knowing the game is half the battle. So we're going to go in right now and we're just going to kind of dive into a few of the states individually. These first states, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, we're going to look at those right now and then we can dive into some of the other states on a future podcast. Now I will talk a little bit about states as a whole and applications as a whole, because when you're thinking about what hunt you want to do, and I try to touch on this every year, but it also goes. It's important to revisit because, I mean, I do these podcasts and I forget what I've said. So even people listening to these podcasts, I assume you go, okay, you remember what happened last year or a couple years ago, but maybe just understanding the entire man is hard. And you can always go back and listen to old podcasts as well, because I'm going to give you some new information. But a lot of the same tactics kind of ring true. So there's three kinds of states for the most part. There's states that are on random draw. There's states that have a preference point system. So a preference point system. So random draw, everybody's in the same pool at the same time. Now, a preference point system is everybody with the most points gets issued tags first. Most of these states have turned to a form of modified preference point system, where everybody who has the most tag most points. Preference points, sorry, gets the tags. And then there's a couple left over for random draw. Now, on most of those random draws, points aren't accounted for. So if you have one less than the guy with the most, you're in the same pool as everybody else applying for the random slots, which you. You can try to target some random tags and preference point states. And then there's bonus point states, which anybody can draw at any time. But often in bonus point states, the number of points you have is often exponential, so it'll be like squared. So Nevada and Montana, for example, they square their points. So you'll have, let's say you have 10 points. It's 10 times 10, which is 100 plus one for that year's application. So you go in with 101 names in the ha, theoretically, the theoretical hat, I guess. And the person applying for the first year has one name in the hat. So you have a hundred times greater chance of drawing after 10 years than the person with one. But the person with one could also get lucky and draw it on their first or second year. It happens all the time. So that one allows anybody to draw in any given year, but the people with more points have a statistically higher probability of drawing. So there's pluses and minuses to all of them. One of the great things about a preference point state was used to be able to kind of gauge when you were going to be able to draw a tag. And that Meant, you know, oh, this area takes three preference points to draw. When I get three preference points, I'll draw it. Now, the drawback to that now is we're seeing something called point creep, where it used to take three points, but now this year it takes four points. So everybody that's a little bit behind is never catching up fully to be able to draw those tags. Or people that are sitting on a lot of points are jumping in and causing the people that are expecting to draw to not be able to draw. And so the, the amount of points it's taking is continually rising because there's more applicants with a lot of points than tags available. And that kind of messes up the thought process behind the preference points in some way, but it also rewards those that have waited the longest. So there's a give and take to every system. And then the random draw just says, hey, you're all in the same pot. You're all in the same pool. Which is great because a person applying the first year could have has as good a chance of somebody applying for 10, 15, 20 years. I drew a moose tag last year in a random draw state. State of Idaho, as you're a once in a lifetime moose tag. And I've applied for those limited entry tags there for, I mean, as long as I can remember, really. And so, you know, it was just, hey, it was just my time. I got lucky. But you're still in that random draw. The guy that applied for the first time had the same chance that year as I did, which is, you know, good and bad. You know, I think part of it is maybe the longevity. You're more likely to potentially draw it. If it's one in a hundred odds and you apply for 100 years, well, statistically you'll probably draw it, and hopefully you draw it before 100 years. So that's, that's the way the games play. Now, if you listen to my podcast for a while, you'll know that I, I think that you need to have a plan and you need to know what you want to hunt. And when you go in with a plan, you kind of come out with more opportunity and more options. So what I mean by a plan is when it comes to application season, I really think that you need to decide, hey, what am I looking to get out? If you're a guy that's like, I want to go on my first western big game hunt, or I want to elk hunt. Every year I want to get on an elk hunt where it's a really good tag and I have a good opportunity at really big bulls or I'd just rather get out in the field. Those are going to be the things that we're going to look at, you know, as opportunity increases. I would say trophy quality, and we're calling it's a buzzword, trophy quality. Anti hunters love to jump on the word trophy, but what we mean is like the size of the elk, the maturity level, the quality of the bull is often lower in areas with higher opportunity. So you're exchanging quality for opportunity in a lot of places. It's not always the case. Sometimes you get higher quality when the opportunity is lower because the barrier to where the elk are is more difficult. So it's like elk are in a wilderness area or it's a long ways into the unit, or it's a very rugged area, or there's fewer animals, but they get better age class. All those things are a little bit subjective, but generally the more opportunity, the lower the potential trophy quality, the higher the potential trophy quality, the limited amount of tags, and the harder to get the draw. So you kind of have to say, well, what am I looking for? What do I want to hunt? And then once we identify that, then we're also now going to build out a plan. And I've given this tip quite a bit, but I say if you're building a plan, you kind of want to think of something for now, something for in the intermediate and something for down the road. And I also suggest applying for if you, if you're going to limit it. You know, it is very expensive to apply for all these states. I would say I'd pick a random draw state, like one that takes no points. I'd pick one that's a preference point state, one where you can kind of almost guarantee a tag at a certain level. And then I'd pick like a bonus point state where you could draw any year and get lucky. But as you apply longer, you're kind of rewarded for that consistent application. And in those ones, you can kind of think out, well, okay, in the random draw one, I'll put in for areas that I have a good likelihood of potentially drawing. In the preference points state, I'm going to look for that intermediate where I maybe could draw in a couple years, but maybe not think about it long term. And then maybe in that bonus point state, like, hey, I'm going to shoot for the moon for that better hunt experience, trophy quality, whatever, and I might randomly get it. But as I get more down the road, then I can kind of decide my application Strategy from there. Then the other thing we're going to look at is finding. Let's say for me personally, I just like to get out in the field. I want to have more opportunity. I want to be able to draw tags or go on hunts. And so I look for those hunts where it's a lot easier to obtain a tag. I'm looking for more general area hunts more in some ways, in some places, over the counter tags. One of the things that we will talk about is like, is over the counter dead? And we will talk about that when we start to dive into Colorado and some other states. But there are still over the counter hunts across the west for elk, for mule deer, four whitetails for black bear. There's still plenty of over the counter hunts available. Like you could fill up a season still with tags that are fairly easy to get. You may have to hunt harder, you may have to kind of look around a little bit. But there are still over the counter tags available. It's not all gone. There are also a lot of tags in general units that are fairly easy to draw that you could regularly draw every one to three years for the most part. And so it is possible to go on an elk hunt somewhere across the west every year. You just have to play this application game. You have to figure out where those tags are, you have to highlight those areas and you have to kind of go down the list and play the game. And that's just essentially a part of western big game hunting because it's a limited resource and it's a desired resource. And so that's unfortunately, unfortunately the way that it goes. You know, the west is. Has some incredible hunting opportunities, also has predators. I like to think about New Zealand where it's like a place with no predators and how those game populations just continually explode, explode, explode. And I don't even know if hunting could actually like decrease the population size. I mean like actual sport hunting. Without calling, I don't even know if it would be possible. Right. It's like that's how much predators take off of the landscape. But that's, that's what we've got. So we're going to dove in now to some of these different states. We're going to first talk about Wyoming because that one's due here tomorrow. And I think it's like, it's a good one to talk about. I had a elk tag in Wyoming last year. I cashed in my points, man. I actually had way more points than I needed. But I had an opportunity to hunt somewhere with Some friends and I just said, you know what? I've applied for some of those hunts that it'd be like I'd have 11 points. And now this, this one was 60% with 11 points last year. And then I applied and it was like 0% with. When I got that point, you know, I just. And then whatever percentage above that, you keep chasing it. The point creep. The point creep got me. But also, I didn't necessarily have the time. So sometimes I'd shoot for the moon, sometimes I just get points. Just depended on the year. But we're going to dive into Wyoming. So what I did, I ended up just kind of cashing in a strategy that I call buying down where I had enough points and I was able to go, okay, let's go find an area that takes a lot less points than I have and just cash them in. Know for a fact that I can plan this hunt and say, okay, cool, I'm going to hunt elk, archery elk this year. And I could actually plan it ahead of time and know that there was a pretty much 100% option that I would draw that tag. And that is, you know, nice to know that you're, hey, I've got a plan and I'm going to be able to go. The thing about Wyoming elk application, which, you know, love it or hate it, I kind of hate it. But you have to apply so early, but the draw doesn't happen until after a lot of the spring counts, which is in, I think, may. So you do have an opportunity to change your units around a little bit, but you're still locked into the application. So if you, if you applied for something and you go, hey, something else came up, I got another tag, you could switch your application to a unit that you would, would be impossible to draw. And that's part of what I mean by playing this game. You've got limited time, limited resources, a lot of this. You might even have to front the money. A lot of them, you do have to front the money. But Wyoming in particular, you do. And they just hold it until, until the draw is over. And so, you know, you might in that meantime have gotten another tag. Whether it's a over the counter tag, a return tag, an application in another state that ended up posting draw results before Wyoming. There's a lot of states that you apply way later and you get your results way sooner than Wyoming. So there is that opportunity and you go, hey, I don't have the money or the time to hunt these two different states. So, you know, you could, you could find out you have an elk tag in Montana before Wyoming does their job. But it gives you an opportunity to potentially change your application and you can change it to something that you would have 0% chance of drawing, which definitely happens. So I'm going to dive into a little bit about the details of Wyoming and some of the things to look for. One of the notable changes as of, I guess last year was the price increase. So Wyoming breaks out their tags in two categories, regular and special. Now in the past, the prices of those were fairly comparable and now there's quite a higher price and a little bit bigger gap in those. So right now the regular elk tag price for Wyoming as a non resident is $707 and the special price is $1965. That's expensive. That's a, that's a very expensive elk. And so, you know, in some ways that has made the special draw more. So what, what it is, you're essentially paying a little. You're paying a lot more, I guess over double, you're paying double the price for potentially better jobs. So you're saying, well, say you're getting into it now in this particular area takes a lot of points. Well, you can get in to that tag potentially sooner by paying more. However you feel about it, that's the way that it is and that's the way that they decided to do it. So there's. That's something to think about because when you're talking about draws for preference points in Wyoming, there's two different prices. And also if you go into the special draw and you, I guess, draw it as a random tag, you're still paying the special price because it's kind of two separate pools is the way that they do it. So there's regular tags and special tags and then they're allocated that way. So your odds are a lot better sometimes. And the last, last year was the first year. So I looked through the, the draws and they. It kind of bounced it back before last year, I would say that it was kind of getting to a point where sometimes the special was actually harder to draw than the regular because the prices were fairly comparable and the price of elk tags was kind of comparable to other states. By using this price increase, it's kind of balanced it back to what it was probably five to seven years ago where the special is harder to draw or easier to draw. The regular, you know, takes more points but is cheaper. So that's something to think about. Now they also, the kind of confusing thing about Wyoming is they break their elk tags into different types. So you've got type one, type two and type nine, Type one and type two. Now, let me preface everything that I'm saying here. You need to check the regulations. I'm just going off of what I know. And obviously things change all the time. But don't be like, Remy told me that I can hunt this particular date because I had a he said type two tag on a podcast, you know, six months ago, nine months ago, whatever. But just to break down, the Type is Type 1 and Type 2 are often Rifle tags, so. Well, they are rifle tags. Now, some areas you can archery hunt with those tags, but you need to get a special archery like I guess, I don't know what you'd call it in it, permit enhancement stamp, something like that. Like it's an archery stamp kind of thing where you get an archery. I guess it's an archery license. And so you need the archery license to hunt the archery season with your rifle tag, if that makes sense. So you draw a limited entry tag. And on those areas, they probably don't have like an archery only season. So those are actually, if you're planning on bow hunting, some pretty good options of. Because not everybody that draws that rifle tag is planning on bow hunting and some of those don't have other bow hunts on the unit. So there's type one and type two. Think of those as like rifle hunts where you could potentially archery hunt if you want as well. And then there's type 9, which are archery only. So an area that has like a type 9 archery hunt, if you're a bow hunter, that's like you have to apply for that particular archery tag and there might not be other archery hunts going on at that same time. So it's a good option for like limited entry. Often, you know, could be good archery hunts. But that's just something to think about because the different types don't necessarily mean only rifle hunts or. Well, the type 9 means only archery hunt. But there are different types in there. Now the difference between type one and type two and sometimes type three is like season dates. So one might be beginning of September, one might be middle of September, one might be beginning of October, another one might be an entire month, one might be 10 days. So. Or one might be a certain portion of the unit or a different portion of the unit, like north of river, south of river. So when you dive into these, you know, this application, know that there might be a unit that you're interested in and different types of tags. One of the things That I talk about a lot is if you're looking for opportunities, sometimes you can find a good area with less desirable season dates, which provides better draws and better opportunities. So you might have an area that has multiple types of tags, say a type 1, a type 2, type 3, and season dates that are not ideal, or a shorter season, which might lead less people to apply for it, and you can get into a better area sooner. So these are some of the little things that I often look for. Looking for those different types and saying, okay, well, what other opportunities are in there? I'll find a unit. I'll look at the types of tags available, and I go, oh, okay, there's a type one and a type two. And you might go, okay, well, you're gonna. You're gonna have to read some regulations. And you go, oh, the. The type 2 had better draws. Why is that? Now it's got crappy season dates for. It's after the first rifle hunt, and it's at like a time when it's not as ideal for this unit. Okay, so it's got draws that aren't as good. But you Notice that type 1 and type 2 also both allow you to archery hunt. So you go, well, I was planning on bow hunting anyways. I'm planning on bow hunting. I will apply for the unit has better. The tag that has better draws, because it's not going to affect me because of my plan to hunt with a bow. Or if I'm unsuccessful with a bow, then I could go hunt that rifle tag later on in the season and have some good incentive of knowing where the elk are or have scouted the area. Now, another thing is, you know, you might have that same scenario, and you go, well, at least I can get out. I can get a tag sooner or easier. And then you can also balance the opportunity of or the potential of regular versus special draw. So you can go, okay, well, here's a season date that's not as ideal, and I could pay the higher price and know that I could be on a hunt sooner. What's the opportunity cost of applying for multiple years and gaining points? And that point creep keeps catching up to you because every year you don't apply, you have to get a point outside of the draw in Wyoming. So if you apply, you don't worry about your preference points till later, which you got to remember that. So you kind of have to apply a lot of different times in Wyoming. It's kind of annoying, but that's really annoying. But that's how it works. And Every year, you know, it's a $50 preference point fee. So it would take you quite a few years to stack up the preference point fee versus that special and regular price. But that's just something to think about, something to kind of consider when it comes to the Wyoming application. Now, there's limited entry tags in Wyoming, and then there's also. So as non residents, you have to apply for everything. There are some units that, for residents are general, what they consider general tags, where they can hunt this large block of units. Recently, you know, Wyoming actually split out some of those general units and made it where you have to apply for like a certain particular. You can't just hunt the entire state's general units. You're applying for a block of units or a certain section of units. So what that's done is it's actually in some ways, I think first off, it made it maybe less desirable, but in other ways, I think it made the draws for some of those units or places a little bit better, especially for some of those early archery elk seasons. So that's something to think about as well as there is some general area units that aren't necessarily these harder to draw ones. Where it's going to take, you know, now a couple points maybe to draw some of these going into the draw. I was looking at some of these stats yesterday, and there are, you know, some places that you can get in, places that you could pretty much be guaranteed a tag, you got to realize, are probably all private. And then there's places that the more public land there is the. Or the more area to hunt there is on those general tags, the harder that tag is going to be get, and it's going to maybe take a few more points. I will also say one of the things that Wyoming does is wilderness is essentially off limits for hunting for non residents. Now, there's some ways around that, and this is a little bit of a strategy, if you can kind of figure out or have a friend that lives in Wyoming, is you can hunt wilderness as a non resident with a resident. So does it have to be a friend of yours that says, okay, I'll be there with you? They have to be with you, and they kind of are acting as a guide for you in the wilderness, or you can hire a registered guide. So if you have a Wyoming friend or somebody, a resident friend or family member in Wyoming, this is something to think about because those wilderness areas are a lot easier to draw because it limits the amount of people that can, you know, do the hunt that aren't willing to people that maybe aren't willing to hire an outfitter or don't have anybody in the state of Wyoming. There's a little bit of a hack is like if you know somebody in Wyoming that will go on the hunt with you, make some friends, find some friends friends in Wyoming and do a hunt or apply for a hunt where you guys can hunt the wilderness together. It'll increase your odds of being able to get a tag and you'll give them someone to hunt with. Maybe they can return the favor or you can return the favor in your hunting area somewhere else. So linking up with somebody is a. Is a great option. I've. I've kind of tossed this around. I've got quite a few friends and I had so many points. I was missing out on a lot of great opportunity to hunt some iconic places in Wyoming with people that, you know, I've hunted with in the past in other places or friends of mine. And you know, but I was sitting on so many points, it's like, well, I don't want to burn my points for that. So that was one of the reasons kind of that I wanted to burn my points and say I gotta get rid of these points so I can open up opportunity to do some really cool hunts or you know, the opportunity to maybe get in on hunts sooner without worrying about sitting on so many points. In some of these states you got to kind of make those decisions of a lot of the places it's better to cash in your points and hunt and be out in the field than it is to kind of sit on piles of points and always chase that top end hunt I've drawn. I've had a few hunts in my life that would be considered great units and man, I've had better hunts on areas that were crap units to be 100. My biggest bull came from an area that wasn't a necessarily a great unit. And yeah, it's a, I mean a fluke, a one in a million probably kind of thing, but that was my biggest bull and I've had tags in areas where, you know, by all intents and purposes on paper they're great and the hunt didn't pan out as, as good as, you know, Was it worth 15, 20 years of applying? I don't know. I'm not really sure. So that's something to kind of think about when it comes to applying. But that's kind of the rundown of Wyoming elk. You know, we could talk about units and other things, but I think, you know, it's Best to just. You can, you can dive through the state. The state publishes state of Wyoming on their website, has all the odds and how many people applied with how many points and what the random odds were and all that stuff. So you can kind of use those resources. There's a ton of resources out there. I don't need to be the one to tell you exactly where to apply, but what I will do is I will kind of look at. We'll look at a couple of places in the past and we'll just. I'll give you kind of an idea of the draws and how they compare based on some of the different license types. Okay. So. Oh, one more thing that I will kind of mention about Wyoming is one thing you're going to want to check is see if like, let's say you don't have enough points for a certain unit and you're like, I just want to go for broke. Make sure that there are licenses available to non residents in the random draw. Many of the top units, I would say any unit that has. Well, I guess it'd be less than. Or is it less than. I'm not 100 positive on this number. I think it's less than 50 licenses available. I'm just looking through some that did and didn't have. Yeah. So any unit that has less than 50 tags available to non residents, you're not going to have a license in the random draw. That's just. It's going to be impossible to draw. So you could apply for an air. You could hear of an area, you go like, hey, I don't have max points. Right. Like, I'll find a unit here that took way too many points. Like it's not giving away a secret. Let me see here. All right. Yeah, I mean Unit 59, one of the top units in the state, takes 18 points to draw, essentially. That's a lot of points. There was 10 non resident tags available so that there was 0% chance of a random draw. So if you didn't have 18 points and you applied for that unit, you were not even. There wasn't even a possibility that you could draw. But then there's other areas like, I don't know, unit 61 here. This is just, I'm just picking, you know, units at random. 11 points to draw has 150 non resident tags available. The draws for the regular license random draw was 1%, but there was tags available. So because there was 150 tags, there were some available in the random. And then the draws for. Let's Say a special license, 5%. You know, I'm just picking this, I'm just literally looking at units and numbers right here. Just that's all I'm looking at, 5%. So there was 5% chance if the special license of drawing that as a random. There's a 1% chance. Otherwise you needed 13 points in the special license and 11 in the regular. And that's for 20, 24. So in that one everybody's like, oh, maybe I'll be able to buy down and pay the more money. And everyone thought the same thing. It was actually more difficult to draw with this more expensive license in that unit last year than it was with the regular priced one. And that happened in quite a few units actually. So, you know, you just don't know. I guess it's like it's sometimes a gamble. But there are other units that I'm looking here and I see that the odds were a lot better. Like there's some units that took 13 points in the regular and then five points or five and a half points with the special. So it was half the time to get the tag. So you can, you can cruise through all these stats and kind of look at things that way. There's also plenty of resources to kind of look into some of the units and the other things like where do I apply? And part of it too is just saying like, okay, what percentage of public land's there's is there a lot of wilderness? Areas with a lot of wilderness are going to be a lot easier to drop, but might not even allow you opportunity to go hunt if you don't have someone to hunt with. So those are some of the things that I think about when it comes to Wyoming and elk hunting. Now we're going to touch a little bit here on Arizona as well. So when we talk about Arizona elk applications, I mean Arizona is one of the biggest, best bull producing states in the west. I mean there's some phenomenal elk hunting in Arizona. And it, if you're applying for somewhere, it's probably a place that you want to think about. It's a place that, you know, I actually hunted for the first elk. I've hunted it a lot but for over the counter deer. But it's the first time I've hunted elk. There was this last year and I ended up just getting kind of a non permit tag there, which is like an over the counter tag. It's a very difficult hunt, but there is a lot of good draw opportunity in the state of Arizona as well. So one of the things that is kind of interesting about the draw in Arizona is, you know, non residents are allowed, like, they're allowed up to 10% of the tags for any given hunt, but that doesn't mean that they're guaranteed. So it's kind of like there's a lot of states where they might be in the same pool. But if a non resident doesn't draw, then that's okay. But if, let's say there's a hundred tags, up to 10 non residents can draw, but maybe not that many will, maybe one does or maybe two do. And so that's how those tags are allocated. And then the way. So Arizona is actually a preference point state. And what that means is the people with the most points are kind of guaranteed those tags, okay? And then non residents, so what they do is they break out the quota of, I think it's 20%. So the people with the most points automatically get 20% of the tags of that non residents get 5%. So if you're someone with max points, you know who you are and you're like really playing the game and going to cash in when you want to cash in. And you can essentially pick certain units and know that you're gonna guarantee those tags. And one thing that Arizona has instituted now is there is the opportunity for some random draw as well. So you've got 10% that could be given to non residents. Essentially 5% of that 10% will be available in the random draw. So 5% of the potential non resident tags in a unit are given to people with the most points. And then another 5% is in that, like, random quota. And you get two application choices in Arizona. So the first two are looked at before the next applicant's drawn. So it's always good to put two choices in there. One thing I will say about Arizona is it's probably good to, you know, shoot for those tags apply, and as you start to gain points, maybe, you know, there might be a tag later on down the road that you could draw. But I will also say that there is the potential for random draw. Now you want to see how many units, like how many tags. Just like Wyoming, you need to see how many tags are in a particular unit. And then also is there a random draw? The ones that are, like, more desired, the units that don't have a lot of tags and are highly desired, often there will not be a random draw for non residents. And so you could be applying for a unit that says a zero percent chance that you could even be in for that draw. So one of the things that you'll want to maybe look at is the number of, of bonus points permits that there will be, and then the number of random permits that there will be and then the number of points needed to draw that in the past. And so let's say you're sitting on the preference point thing again. So there's some units where, hey, I've got nine points. Okay, well as a resident or non resident, this is what it drew last year. And then you can also see how many people applied and what the random draw odds might be for a particular unit. So any of the units where there's, I guess, what would it be like where there's only one potential permit? So one of the cool things about Arizona is they've got some interesting season dates for their elk hunts. So they've got an early archery elk hunt, which is in that September, like actually prime rut, which I like. It's like, that's a cool thing about summer tags is they have early archery hunts during the best times, like September 12th to the 25th. A lot of states like Nevada, Utah, a lot of the archery hunts are in just like early and they end by this like mid September time frame. So you don't hit the rut as well with some of those tags that might take a lifetime to draw. And yet the rifle seasons are kind of in that prime rut. So Arizona does have some great early archery dates for limited entry, like once in a lifetime type elkons. They also have some September, right firearm like early firearm season, which also hits the right. It's like right after that archery season, which is September 26th, October 2nd, I think this year. But then what they do is they also have some late hunts on their top units. So these late hunts are like November, beginning of December for both firearm. And there are some late archery hunts as well. Now the thing about these late archery hunts, late rifle hunts is you might be able to hunt a unit that's a great unit, has great potential for big bulls. It's just a lot more difficult hunt. So what you're getting is you're potentially getting into a top tier unit a lot sooner, a lot easier to draw, and you're exchanging, you know, the challenges, getting in, finding the elk, getting in on an animal. But you're also in a unit that has massive potential and a lot of other states are doing that as well. I think Utah has some late archery hunts and things on some really top tier units as well. So that's something to think about is there are the potential for those kind of hunts where you can go, hey, here's a really good unit. This is a unit that might take forever to draw really bad odds, but then here's a later season unit where I can have potentially better odds. And then remember, you get two choices in Arizona and they're looked at before the next guy. So you could put one go for broke and one that maybe gives you a little bit better opportunity, and you might have better chance of drawing a tag and getting out on the. In the mountain sooner. Now, I will also say that some of those units that are easier to draw, they just require more time and more knowledge of the area, so they can be a difficult hunt. But you also. It's like you're saying there's a chance with the tag in your hand and being out in the field, there is a chance they're going to take more time. And also know that you're exchanging the time to draw for time and difficulty in the field. And that should just be noted as something to think about and look at if you're kind of considering that opportunity. And then another thing to think about with Arizona is they do also offer antlerless hunts, and that's an option. It's important to note that because elk points in Arizona are for all elk, meaning that if you draw an antlerless tag, you're using your points. They do have some great antlerless hunts. There's. It's a good opportunity to fill your freezer because it's the same amount of points. It won't take as long or it's the same points. It doesn't take as long to draw some of those tags, and they tend to have pretty high success rates. I will say, though, that this is an unfortunate event that happened for me many years ago. I had. I can't remember how many points I had racked up for elk, like 10 or 12, something like that. And there was an archery hunt that I was. I believed that. I think I had. Yeah, I had 10 or 12 points. My buddy had like five or six points. And there's an archery hunt that we could combine our points and still have enough to draw it. I believe that we would. We would have enough points to get this particular archery hunt. So I applied, both of us, and I did the application, whatever, check the draw results. I drew the tag. I was like, okay, cool, we got our tags. You know, this is however long of applying. And I looked and it was a cow tag in a random unit. I think somehow the box had been highlighted I used the scroller on the mouse and it just randomly selected a unit for me. It was like, unit that I didn't know anything about. It was like an archery cow tag and a unit that I knew nothing about. And during, like, good season dates to be hunting something else. And at the time, they didn't have the point guard, which is. Which kind of saves your points if you make a mistake or need to return your tag, you can do that once. At the time, they didn't have that. So I lost all my points, all his points. And there was no refunds paid for the. The whole thing. And I did not have the money to do that at the time. So it was a major hit to me. And I lost all my Arizona points and lost my buddy's points. I had a lot more than him. And then, you know, had to start back over from ground zero and start applying again, which I have quite a few points racked up now, which maybe I'll cash in. But be very careful when you're applying your. Your. If you want to hunt bulls, make sure that you're applying for bulls and not cows. And if you want to hunt cows, good on you. There's. There's a lot of opportunity for that as well. Now, the final state that we're going to talk about here is New Mexico. New Mexico is on a random draw. So everybody in New Mexico. Well, theoretically, everybody's on a level playing field in a way. So. And I say in a way because I'll kind of divulge a few of the little secrets here with New Mexico. Did I say New Mexico? Okay, so New Mexico, we're talking about New Mexico now, and New Mexico is that kind of everybody's in the same pool. Now, the one thing that kind of separates. It can be separated out in New Mexico is the fact that there is a sep. So for non residents, there's a non. Non resident kind of draw quota. And out of that, there's people applying by themselves and then people applying in the outfitter draw. And there's different percentages allocated to both. So New Mexico, 84% of their special draw tags for everything go to residents, and then they attempt to issue around 6% of the draw tags to non residents. But it kind of depends on how many tags are in the unit and the way it's separated and everything. Right. So 6% to non residents who aren't applying with an outfitter and 10% to somebody applying with an outfitter. So that could be residents or non residents, but the odds are never Better in the outfitter draw than the resident draw. At least I don't think so. It's mostly non residents. Now. What that means is there are hunts that you could apply for, just like the other states that. And I didn't really. I mean, I guess I did realize this, but there was hunts that I was applying for in the past that there was zero percent chance of drawing because there weren't essentially any tags available for that non resident, non outfitter quota. And so there's, you know, or it'd just be like extremely unlikely for you to draw a hunt with. If there's six or fewer tags for non residents, there's going to be no opportunity to draw that tag in the, in the random draw and a hunt code that has 12 or fewer tags. Oh, sorry. Six or fewer for the outfitter draw and then like 12 tags for the non resident random draw. So in order to. One of the things you want to make sure. I think I kind of said that confusing. But if you're applying by yourself, you need to make sure that the quota. If you're not applying with an outfitter, you need to make sure there's at least 13 tags in the unit you're applying for. Otherwise there's no chance you can get a tag. And if you're applying with an outfitter, you need to make sure that there's at least seven tags in the unit to make sure that there's at least an opportunity for you. If you're applying as a party and I've applied and I think this is probably why in some years in the past I hadn't drawn because I'd maybe apply with my dad or a friend. You need to make sure that you're applying in a unit if you aren't doing outfitted that has 25, at least 25 tags and there's like a random chance that you guys could draw tags and if you're with a guide, at least 19 tags. So that's to be eligible for the draw, there has to be that many tags in the quota for you to be able to draw a tag. And that's for elk and deer. It's a little, I think it's a little bit different with sheep because there's just a certain number of permits that'll be available in those. It's essentially a really long shot. But for elk and deer and all that stuff, those are the numbers that you're going to want to look for and make sure that there's at least those many tags when you're Applying. So if you're, if you're looking like, hey, I'm going to apply, there's 25 or let's say there's 25 non resident tags, okay. And you're like, I'm going to apply as a party of three with me and my two buddies. Don't do it because there's zero percent chance that you guys could draw. So that's just something to think about. But it is a random draw and there is the opportunity to pick up a tag in some phenomenal hunting. I mean, in my opinion, New Mexico is one of the, the great states for chasing elk. Like some incredible action, some awesome units. Most of the units for archery are split up into two seasons. They got an early and a, like an early and a late man. Every year it's a crapshoot which one's going to be better in in my opinion, like some years they go off early. Some years it's better to hunt water. Other years the rut's like hot and weird moon. And oftentimes the later season dates have harder to get draws. And so sometimes you can get in on the earlier hunts. Traditionally the second hunt's better, but that's not always the case. And every unit's a little bit different. And oftentimes the draws are a little bit better for those earlier seasons than by maybe a few percentage points. But if we're looking here, like I'm just picking a random unit here and comparing the draws between outfitted draw and standard draw. Some of them like the resident not or sorry, the non resident random draw is like around 2 to 4% and the outfitted draws are like 10 to 20%. So it's substantially better if you're applying with an outfitter. Now I will say, you know, obviously there's, you have to have a signed contract with an outfitter and then you have to hunt with the outfitter and or his guides for two days. After hunting for two days, then you are free to go on your own and continue hunting the tag in those units. So it is something to think about. I have in the past utilized outfitter and gone in that outfitter draw and the odds were much better. And I ended up drawing a tag and then hunting with some guides for a couple days and then ended up killing a bull, I don't know, four or five days later on my own. But that is something to think about. Is like, it is an option. It does add a little bit of a cost to it. But just like say Wyoming where they're the price of the tag is double. You know, there's an additional cost to increasing the odds in many cases. So New Mexico is, is kind of an interesting state. If you're already, you're, you're already kind of committing to. One of the things you got to do is purchase a hunting license. And that hunting license is non refundable, it's $65. And so if you're already purchasing that hunting license for the application, you, you might as well apply for everything that you want to apply for, in my opinion. So they've got a lot of different species. They've got pronghorn elk, deer, They've also got some exotics like barberry sheep. They've got oryx and they've also got ibex. The prices on those are, you know, pretty expensive on some of those bigger animals. But there's a couple different prices for their elk licenses. Like the standard elk license, which is less desirable units is $500. And then the higher quality units are about 700, 773. And then antelope license, $283. And deer license has split prices $283 for standard, $368 for high quality. But one of the things to think about here is you do have that kind of random draw opportunity. You can check out the draw odds for that and say, okay, where's somewhere that I have better odds? The thing about it is it's essentially your first choice is what's looked at. So when you apply in New Mexico, you have three choices and when you're drawn, all three of your choices are looked at before it moves on to the next. Now there's a fourth and fifth choice which might be offered, but these are like often leftover tags. Population management, maybe like a doe or a cow or something like that for population management. But your first three choices are looked at. So when I'm applying in New Mexico, I always do three choices and I kind of put them in descending order of like hardest to draw first, next and next or in the order that I want to potentially draw. I have drawn my third choice. I've drawn a second and third choice in New Mexico because what happens is if your first choice is full, then they're going to look at your next choice if that's not full. So one of the strategies that I do in New Mexico is I actually apply for three choices and then I put in kind of descending order what I would like. Often the hardest to draw first and then kind of go down from there and often Those last two choices, the easier to draw units to kind of help me maybe potentially guarantee a tag by trying to pick those off season dates or potentially less desirable hunts. And you can mix and match weapon types. You could do an archery hunt, a rifle hunt, whatever you want, which gives you a good opportunity to kind of play with the draws a little bit and, you know, stack your deck is as the best possible for potentially drawing a tag. And then there's also a lot of units where you can kind of use as your third choice where the draws are pretty dang good or maybe potentially even leftover tags in some of those units that aren't as desirable. But if you're like, hey, I want to get out and I want to go hunting, there are a lot of opportunity hunts, especially when it comes to deer, where, okay, there's tags that are fairly easy to draw, could be a little bit tougher hunts weird season dates kind of in those off seasons, those times when deer are hiding. But it's a good opportunity to kind of get out and get a tag. You know, by playing this application game, you can definitely almost guarantee yourself a tag somewhere every year for whatever, you know, for the deer and elk type deer, elk, antelope species, can't do that for sheep and moose and goat. But, you know, by applying in multiple states and kind of looking at the odds and, you know, knowing how the draws work, you really can kind of fine tune and pick some places where you'll be able to obtain tags. And so that's kind of the rundown of those three states, the first three that kind of come up, man, I, I mean, I probably could dive into each state as an hour long podcast, but I just wanted to kind of glaze over those three and kind of give you an idea of what you're looking at, what you're thinking about or what you should be thinking about. I know these are kind of long podcasts, but every year I get people say like, thanks for that because it gave me, you know, incentive to look into this and, and look into that. I think just understanding, like the second thing is saying, well, where do I go? Where, where should I apply? Right there. There's enough information out there telling you where to apply. I don't need to be the one doing it. And that's how I personally feel, like so much information out there where you, you can figure out some of these years. And honestly, for me personally, sometimes I look at that stuff, I look at all that stuff, I look at everything. And then I sometimes make informed decisions like, where are people not looking at? One of the things that I think is the most valuable information is, is just looking at the odds of certain things. Comparing potentially harvest statistics, comparing, you know, well, comparing harvest statistics, draws, looking at those season dates, kind of like, okay, and then, and then just pulling out my Onyx map and looking at a unit and going, okay, how much public lands here? What's the access look like? Oh, okay, yeah. Or, hey, it's a lot of private, but, oh, dude, there's a highway hits this particular like a legal access point on some. A big chunk of state land. Looks like there's no roads back there. Okay, I think that it's surrounded by ag. Whatever. Doesn't matter what it is. I'll start that E scouting and go, okay, this is somewhere that I want to apply for and that's what I do. And I, and I look at all these states and kind of. I don't look at individual states, but I look at them as a whole and think, okay, where's my roadmap for applying? Knowing how each state operates and some of the things to think about for down the road and places I can get into sooner rather than later. When you start looking, you go, okay, there are places that I can potentially draw randomly. There's. There's preference point states where it doesn't take that many points and there's still random tags also available. That's another great option where low point preference point units. And then you go, but there's also random draws. Your odds are also pretty good of drawing those tags. It might be better than drawing general tags in other states. So something to think about, something to look at. And I think that, you know, this application season stuff is sometimes tedious and boring and a lot of just data and other things, but something that we got to talk about because you can't go hunting without that tag. And so it's. It's very important for our western big game hunting lifestyle to understand what's out there and what might be potentially available. Man, I hope you guys enjoyed that podcast. You know, I think that it's good to talk about some of this application stuff. And then once you get a tag, you can stop worrying about this and you can focus on the task at hand. Finding animals, getting out in the field, finding success. You know, I really believe that this podcast helps people do that. I thank you guys so much for all the messages and other things that I've got of success from this past year and stories. I'm still going through a lot of those Another great resource. If you aren't subscribed to the outdoor class, it's an incredible resource for essentially hunting information. It's very specific. You can go by species. You could go look for stuff for mule deer. I've got two mule deer courses in there. I've got like a intro kind of to archery, but not looking at it through this is how you shoot. Looking at it through this is some of the things to think about for bow hunting, like through a very hunting focused lens. There's stuff on cooking, there's stuff on pronghorns, there's incredible courses on survival, elk hunting. Elk calling like it's, it's got it all right now. Outdoor class. And I wanted to bring it up because if you're thinking, if you think you might want it later, get it now. Because I just noticed that they have reduced cost right now. It's normally 99.99. So essentially $100. They've dropped the price to $70. 69.99. And then as a little top secret thing, I've got a code. You can use my code code. It's Remy 15R E M I15. And that'll give you 15% off. And it works while it's discounted. So whatever that puts them, it'd be 15 off the 69.99. So that's about as good as it'll get. And if you aren't, if you haven't subscribed to it, do it because it's, it's definitely. Now's the time to cruise through some of those videos. You can binge watch them. You can watch them now and then watch them right before the hunt. I think some of this stuff is best like to marinate. It's good to, to hear it and see it and kind of just continually go through the process of learning this stuff and getting those tips. Because when you're out in the field and a situation arises, you just now have this catalog of experienced people being like, oh, I ran into this situation and this is what I did. It just gives you so many more options to kind of help you find that success. So incredible resource. I really like what they're doing at outdoor class and I'm planning some new courses now. So excited for all that good stuff. Another just little reminder. Montana Knife Co. Dropping my live Wild edition. Remy Warren. You know, this I guess version of their knife, which is the Elkhorn. I truly believe it's like the best knife Montana Knife Co. Makes. I'm a little partial to it because I Had a hand in it. But it is a. It's a phenomenal knife for the entire process. Like, I think that when you think about breaking down, I love that bigger belly on it. Like, it's a unique shape. It fits good in your hand, but you can also do everything. Like I've done. I don't even know how many animals with it during the testing phase. Like, a lot. Client stuff, my stuff, family stuff. Like, you know, testing it for a while. And I mean, it's all skinning, gutless method, you know, whatever. Breaking down an entire elk and it just flies through it. Like, it just. It's an incredible knife. And they're very limited because, you know, they do the drops, and when the drop happens, they're gone. So if you want to get one, you got to try to get on the drop tonight. Go to Montana Knife Company's website. I think it's montanaknifecompany.com and you get signed up for their emails, too. So, you know, the drops. They'll probably do a couple other runs of it in the future, hopefully. But, yeah, if you didn't get one last time, now's your chance. Jump on there. Be on there on time. Like, once that turns, whatever time they do it at, I think it's like 6pm Depends what time it is. So look at the time and get on the drop and be ready, and then add it to your cart fast. Know what you want and then know what you. It's kind of like getting tags in Idaho or something. You got to know, you gotta have a list of like, okay, if they don't have this color, I'll get this color, and if they don't have that color, I'll get this color. If they don't have this unit left, I'll get that unit. But it's. It's awesome. And thank you guys so much for, you know, everybody that's. There's a lot of people that picked up that knife, sent me pictures of it in action that have loved it, a lot of great reviews. So thank you guys so much for all the support. Until next week, I'm going to say keep applying. We'll catch you guys later.