Ep. 97: You Drew a Tag, Now What?
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As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance.

Well, it's that time of year where maybe you applied for a limited entry tag, maybe even just a general tag in a state that might have been hard to draw, maybe not. But it's that time where draw results are starting to come out. You're checking the mail, you're checking your email inbox, you're going to the state website and see what you got. So you log in, you check it out, and lo and behold, woohoo, congratulations, you got a tag. But then the first question that comes up is, now what?

Well, you're in luck because I'm going to go through my four steps that I do after securing a tag to take you from a tag in your pocket to steaks in the freezer, burgers on the grill, and a rack on the wall. This week, we're going to cover post-draw research, looking over maps, gaining intel, and scouting around. But before we do that, I figure I might as well share some fun draw stories and my first moves afterward.

I always feel super fortunate when I end up drawing some kind of tag. One, because it means that I'm going to be hunting. Two, many times it means I got pretty lucky. And three, it's like, you know, you apply, you wait, you're just anticipating. Every time I've applied, there's states that I've applied for for,

I don't even know, maybe 23, 24 years, a tag that you're like, man, maybe I'll get that tag and still haven't secured anything. So every time that happens, you kind of have this anticipation of like, man, it's not going to happen, but you got to think that it does. Otherwise, I would stop applying.

You know, for the most part, I actually just honestly, I haven't been super lucky in a lot of draws. I have drawn some great tags over the years, but I do apply a lot of places. There's a lot of places that I've been, I've just struck out and been on the unsuccessful side more often than not. This year I got lucky and I drew a New Mexico archery elk tag. Not a crazy, I mean, not a crazy hard to draw unit, probably even better than 50%. And I've applied for it many times and not drawn it. So this is the first time that I've actually drawn there.

I've gone on hunts with other people down there a lot. I've drawn some deer tags and whatever, but I haven't drawn an elk tag. So I started putting in for tags. It'd be a little bit easier to get and happened to get lucky this year, get a tag. So I'm like, sweet. When that actually finally says successful, you're like, heck yeah, man. Also, I, you know, I pulled a few more just like general type tags in a

places that I've hunted before and not necessarily hard to draw, but man, this year it's been crazy because it seems like there's a lot more people applying in a lot of places. So I don't know if it's because of podcasts like this, it probably is. So I'll probably just have to stop doing this podcast so I can go back to drawing tags.

I say that jokingly serious. No, it's good. It's all good. But one thing, you know, it's always fun to just kind of check and see successful by your name. But that thought always comes up like, now what?

One draw that I always look forward to is just my home state of Nevada, because it's just one of those things. It's just like ingrained in our tradition. There are no general tags here for big game. You have to draw it. Ever since I was a kid, you had to draw a tag. And there's years where you will get nothing. Many years that you won't get anything. And years where you'll draw something and you'll have an incredible hunt. This year, like many other years, actually, they started releasing as of, I think maybe last year, they started releasing

ever since they switched the system, they started releasing results around midnight. They used to do it kind of in the middle of the day. We'd, when it was internet based, you used to be able to look up your name and like, you'd be, I'd sit there refreshing pretty much all week. It was just like the most unproductive work week in the state of Nevada. Cause there's a lot of hunters just waiting on draw results. And we used to like wait. And then you'd scroll through the list and man, everybody had their own system for scrolling through the list. And

And you could see what your friends drew, what you drew. It was a lot of fun. Now they release them around midnight. So of course I'm like waiting up, seeing what I drew. I got lucky. Drew a deer tag and a spike elk tag, archery deer tag and a spike elk tag. I'm like, sweet.

Pretty stoked. But then I got to go check all my family's draw results as well. So I started looking for their results and I found out my brother drew a desert sheep tag. So I'm like, heck yeah, man. I'm so pumped. This is his first sheep tag. He's been applying forever. And I mean, I can't, he probably, I think he probably had like 20 points or something like that.

And I'm like, oh, sweet. And I did a lot of research. I kind of, I pretty much lined out like, okay, here's your choices. I think these are going to be your best chance of actually drawing. And sure enough, he drew this year. So I'm like super excited. So

It's late. I'm like, okay, I got to talk to him. I'm sure, I don't know if he's asleep or what. Well, his phone wasn't on. So I'm like, okay, well, I'll just wait till the morning. I can't wait to talk to him. So I sent him about 500 texts. Call me, call me, call me when you wake up. Give me, you know, draw results out. I mean, he knew they were out, but I think he just turned his phone off so he could check in the morning.

So he texts me like just standard text, like, oh yeah, unsuccessful goose egg. And I'm like, okay, he's definitely messing with me. So I'm waiting for him because I saw his draw results. I was like, he drew a desert sheep tag. So I'm waiting for him to like text me like, just kidding. But I'm like, he's got to know. I clearly know his password to check his stuff. Like he definitely has to know that I already checked and know. So like, why is he messing with me?

So I call him and I'm like, hey, you know, you check your draw results. Yeah, I didn't get anything. And I was like, I could tell you serious. Somehow he didn't realize like that he'd actually drawn. So I'm like, oh, this is, this is the best of every role. Cause I wanted to be there when he found out. So I'm like, all right, I'm coming over. I was going to, I was like, I'll come over a breakfast or whatever.

He's like, sweet. So go over there, have the results ready. And I'm like, okay, hand him the results. Like, take a look at this. Here's your draw results. You missed something. He looks at it like what desert sheep successful. Somehow on the email, he'd scrolled right, like right at the top. We actually went back to make sure right at the top successful. He just scrolled right past that part to all of the unsuccessful stuff. Kept scrolling, didn't see any successful and just assumed that he didn't draw a tag.

So I was like, man, that was so fun to be able to actually like see his reaction and be there when he found out that he drew the tag. Cause I was like, that was, uh, that was worth it, man. It couldn't have worked out any better for me. I mean, cause I got to share in the excitement. So that was pretty cool. I remember, you know, I've been fortunate and drawn a couple of different sheep tags, but, uh, one in particular, when I drew a Nevada, California bighorn tag, you know, I remember thinking, okay, you know, these are places like this is an area I've never hunted before.

same with my brother's tag. Like we've never been in this, I've never hunted this particular unit, but what I, I mean, I just kind of went through the same checklist that I do with everything. And it just kind of started with, okay, what can I kind of expect in this area? When I drew that California bighorn tag is like, all right, I started going through checkout summaries again, even though I do all this stuff when I apply, like really now focusing on it because it's different ball game. When I had tag in my hand, if,

kind of going through the checkout summaries, reading maybe where some of the animals are taking the sizes, kind of just giving me a picture of what to expect. And then it's like immediately, well, at that time I didn't really have a online mapping system. So it was just like pouring over maps of the unit, mostly big map books. And then there's like almost like road atlases, but they had, they came up with some that had units in them and all that kind of stuff, which is pretty sweet. Um,

pouring over that and just really getting like, okay, I've been, you know, checker hunting in this particular Canyon, but you know, not really focusing on sheep or not having had a sheep tag in there. There's places I definitely been, but not places that I knew where the sheep were at. And it was just like reaching out to people that I'd seen draw or had heard of hunts, gaining a bunch of intel and,

And then really spent most of my time for that tag in particular, just out there scouting out there. I made quite a few trips early in the season to really get a good lay of the land, but

you know, I actually didn't see as much in my first initial scouting trips, but I wasn't really scouting for animals. I was just like, okay, where's the water? Where's the access? Where, where's this spot that somebody maybe had talked about or like the kind of type of terrain or type of area that I'm looking for? How do I get there? Where's the roads? Where, where would I hike in from all that kind of stuff? And then I started, you know, really putting more and more scouting in. And because of it, I ended up with what I think was probably the best sheep in the unit.

based on just starting out pretty much doing the same thing that I do every time I draw a tag, because realistically for most of my Western hunts, they're in areas that I've never been. So that, okay, I drew a tag. Now what, where do I start? And that's what I want to go through this week and kind of break down my process for the next steps after you draw a tag.

I think to just kind of get you and make it easier to understand the process. I think of it in, if I were to think of like, all right, I drew a tag, what I do. And I don't necessarily, when I do it, I don't really think of it in these steps. But when I really think about it, I'm like, yeah, this is absolutely exactly what I do. So I kind of broke it down into four steps. So the first would be some post-draw research. The second step would be pouring over maps. The third would be reaching out to people. And then the fourth step would be scouting.

Let's start with the first step. So post-draw research. Now I'm the type of person I love. I mean, I put a lot of time into researching the tags, researching the units, really kind of understanding what I'm getting into or where I'm applying. But sometimes that research is more geared on getting a tag, not necessarily planning a hunt. Because if I went into the hunt planning, I mean, I might have five or six choices, multiple states.

Most of my research is what are the draws? What's potential success look like? What kind of terrain is in there? What kind of public land percentages? What type of animals might I be able to expect? You know, but that's completely different than kind of some of the research that I start to look for once I have that tag. Once I've secured that tag, it's like, man, now I can narrow in. First thing I do, I hop online. There's a couple of services that I use where I can kind of look up the unit and just read a little bit of information about it.

But I also like to just, you know, gather as much info as possible. That includes searching documents that might be on fishing game websites, might be on, you know, any anything that I can find on that unit. A lot of the stuff like let's say I drew a sheep tag. Most states would have checkout summaries of the sheep. And I'll really start pouring through those, even though I'm crazy about sheep and look through every state's checkout summaries like that.

Like that's just my nighttime reading. I've probably read through them 4,000 times just looking over stuff. But I really start to kind of look at maybe like some harvest statistics and some anything that I can find relating to like, oh, here's a article that was written about this particular unit on the biology and the migrations in the area. Any kind of little tidbits of information, because what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to build a picture of,

like what to expect. Cause I think really the first step after you draw a tag is like, what should I reasonably expect on this hunt? What is it going to look like? And what am I going to be looking for? You know, if I start finding, I start going through, I'll even go through things like in state record books, looking at that County, uh, Pope and young record. If it's like an archery hunt, I'll start looking through some of the Pope and young records. Um, all pretty much all the organization records and say like,

okay, especially for this is primarily for limited draw entry units where I'm like, okay, man, this year here was, there was a lot of entries. I go, okay, maybe in 2008, there's a lot of entries. And then I'll just even start looking up some data of like, what was the rainfall and water like that year? What does it look like this year? And I start to build out like this, like I kind of create like this Intel board. You ever see those crime shows where they've got like

you know, they've got the criminal and they've got that big board in the background and they're like putting all the info and all the data. And I just start a file and start just doing research because what I want to do is I want to build out a good picture of what's the potential of this area. You know, is this an area where it's like, Hey man, there's some really big bucks in here. There's some really big bulls or it's like, man, I'm not really seeing it very much. This might be more of an opportunity. Cause based on like, look, it's got pretty high harvest rates, but there's not a lot of

large animals coming out of it. You know, maybe it's just more of an opportunity hunt. I'm going to have a good opportunity, a good hunter. Maybe it's like, man, there's a lot of big stuff here. Maybe I should hold out. Maybe I should target a really mature animal. Maybe this might be kind of more of a one chance at something for really quality hunt. So I start to do that kind of research. And then I like to kind of pair that with

just any kind of data that I can find on the unit. I'll look up fire maps and switch on layers of like, okay, was there a fire in the area when there was a lot of good animals harvested? What's kind of the kind of feel for this area? Also just try to search for pictures just from other hunters, maybe get an idea of maybe some success.

And even just like videos, man, I'll go through YouTube videos, just trying to find anything I can. It's like maybe about that unit or just kind of that general area to get a good feel of like what it looks like, what I can expect, what kind of, you know, if I'm seeing a lot of pictures from this particular area, I go, okay, this is fairly popular. This is the kind of terrain that things are being taken in more open country, more timbered country.

Just kind of know what to expect because once I build that really good picture in my head, then when I start my scouting, when I start my planning, when I start moving into the other steps, I've already, I'm building like a really accurate picture of what I want to be looking for. So that moves us on to step two, and that's going to be going through your maps.

The first thing I do, like any unit, it doesn't matter. So this is a great step. It's like, hey, you've got a general tag. You've got an over-the-counter tag. You've got any kind of tag. My first kind of step is going over maps, and it's looking for these tags.

sort of thing. So the first thing I look for is I find somewhere to hunt and that's looking for public land. And I look for those access points. I got to know how do I get to the hunting area? Where can I go in from? Where can't I go in from? Where's the public land where I'm going to be hunting?

You might even draw a tag and you look at it and you're like, oof, that's rough. There's 95% private land. Okay, well, I've got this little amount of public land. And then you could even maybe look for, you know, some places that you could get permission on. But it just gives you a place to start because you need access. You need somewhere to hunt. So that's what I do. I look for that public land first.

And then I start to kind of key in and look at habitat, but also really want to familiarize myself with the area. I want to understand, okay, what are the main creek names? What are the main range names? What are the main canyon names? And what are some of the main roads and access points? You know, you can always see like, okay, here's a number, like a main road that goes through the middle of the unit. Here's a road that goes around the unit on the north side, on the south side.

And then there's these roads and other things, these trailheads, and really just kind of build an understanding of that area. I also like to get on some 3D map action and fly around that unit, just cruise around and really get a feel for it. Say like, okay, there's mountains here. There's some valleys here. Here's some good habitat. And then how do I access that? And I'm just kind of taking this broad approach, but really just mentally familiarizing myself with it.

There's a lot of reasons for that. And I would do this before there was even any online stuff. I'd just get that map book out and I'd pour over, okay, here's a mountain, here's the range, here's the names of the peaks and the other stuff. Because what's going to happen is as I build out this plan, if you don't know, like if I don't know the canyons or the creeks, if I end up talking to someone or if I get...

have some ideas of where I want to go. I need to be able to converse with the people that might be helping me or some other people that I reach out to about the area. And I want to have that kind of picture. So when somebody says something, or if I'm thinking about something, I can kind of put areas and names and things together in this puzzle because it's going to really help me build that picture that's on that wall where I went from that research of, okay, there's this, I'm building out like a really accurate picture of what to expect. And that's going to really help me build out an accurate picture of

of my final hunt plan. So I'm really learning those names of roads, those different places. I'm looking at places maybe people were successful in the past. Now, I don't always like, oh, this is a concentration where people are really successful. Sometimes I'm like, okay, that's a good area to look at and understand, well, a lot of people hunt here. Why do you think a lot of people hunt here?

Maybe I'll start saying like, okay, I'll pinpoint a few areas and say, okay, there's been a lot of success in this particular canyon. Well, is it just because there's really good access and more people are hunting there? Maybe that's an area to avoid and I find somewhere else. Or maybe that's an area if it's really limited tags that I kind of focus in on. But I like to be able to build out this picture and then really understand the unit looking at the map. Of course, I'm going to now kind of start map.

map scouting but before I really even get into the map scouting these are just my initial steps when I know that I drew that tag I'm going to first learn kind of everything I need to know about the area if I see stuff that's cool I'm going to start dropping pins and pinpointing things that I like basins springs canyons road accesses those kind of things as I see them but primarily just trying to learn what the area is about what it looks like and build that mental picture out and I'm

And before, so once I've done that, now we're going to move on to step three and that's the reach out portion. And this is like with all the map scouting and digital stuff out there, I think that this particular thing kind of gets left out. And this is probably one of the most important steps. And I like to do this after I'm a little bit familiar with the area and looking at the maps.

And that reach out is trying to find people that have actually been boots on the ground in the area and just ask them some questions. And I'm not the type of person, like I don't ever, I don't ask people like, where should I go? You know, that's not a question that I ask.

But what I do like to ask is things that kind of help me understand the unit, what I'm getting into and how that I can best build out my hunt plan based on what other people know about the area. Because in a few minutes, you can understand more about an area from somebody that's been there, whether they were successful or unsuccessful, it doesn't really matter. Just kind of getting a good picture of what you're going to expect there and maybe what you should be looking for when you start building out that plan to start scouting. I think one of the ways I

There's so many ways now that you can kind of reach out to people. I've seen, I mean, I use them all the time and I see a lot of people use them as well. Just message boards. There's plenty of websites and apps out there that have message boards where you can say like, Hey, I drew this unit. Anybody have any kind of insight or hunted that I could maybe chat with for a little bit? Social media is like a great way. I mean, there's people, people reach out to me on social media. Unfortunately,

I don't actually see all the messages. It's kind of difficult now, but you know, when I do see something, when it gets pinged, I try to the best I can answer. But I think that there's a lot of,

I think there's a lot of ways to reach out to people on social media, especially when if you drew like a limited entry tag, there's not as many people that want to be tight-lipped. Now, if you drew a general tag and over-the-counter tag, it's going to be very difficult to get information from a lot of people, but you don't necessarily need spots. You just need some kind of information to kind of let you form your own decision. You're going there anyways, but just being able to talk to somebody that's been on the ground there.

is a great resource to have. Now, of course, friends and friends of friends, those are the first people that I reach out to. And generally, like if you hunt a lot, there's somebody within your network or somebody that somebody knows that can point you in the right direction. Just today, I was on

phone with one of my good buddies. I'm like telling him some of my hunt plans, some of the tags that I have. He's like, Oh yeah, dude, no, I haven't hunted that area, but I've got a, my boss hunts that area and he's got some cousins that live in there. You know, and it's one of those things it's like as hunters, I'm always stoked when a friend of mine connects me to somebody that drew a tag. I mean, I've got this time of year, it's like I'm on the phone to friends and friends of friends all

all the time, just chatting over spots, ideas, things that I've seen, places I've been, places I haven't been, but things that I know about the area, that kind of stuff. As hunters, collectively, we're a pretty awesome group. And I think that one of the cool things is like, we're all the same tribe. We're all love the same thing. And hunters love to tell stories and they love to help other hunters out. I think there is a stigma of like, oh, that's my spot. I'm not going to help you. But

This isn't talking about giving away spots. It's talking about connecting with people that might be able to give you a positive intel on an area, especially when it comes to limited draw areas. I think most people are pretty apt to kind of share knowledge of something. It's like, hey, I probably won't draw that again in my life or it might take me three to five years. Here's kind of what I know.

And talking and physically talking to someone is a great way to do it. You know, back in the day, you used to be able to kind of reach out to fishing game offices and biologists in the area. I'm sure you can still do that. I don't know. I mean, they might get inundated in some of that information. It's like, hey, that's the information that's already published online. And a lot of that information is you got to play it by ear. There's people that I've run into. You start talking to at a party and you start saying, oh, I got a tag here. You start finding people to talk to.

But there's a lot of resources out there now that weren't out there a long time ago that you can connect with hunters, other places, and start kind of sharing information. O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you, the other day, I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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Now, like I said, I'm not the type of person, I don't want to be like, hey, where should I go? Where's a good spot? I like to ask different questions. I like to ask questions that really help me build my own hunt plan because I don't want to

Um, this might sound weird where it's like, okay, I don't know the area, but I don't necessarily want influenced, um, a hundred percent one way or the other. Sometimes, you know, somebody can give you a hot tip and it's like, oh, cool. Especially when it's a tag that maybe they've hunted in with some friends. It's like, there's no chance that they could get it again or whatever. You can get some pretty good tips that way. But for the most part, I just kind of like to ask these questions, like what to expect, um,

you know, I like to ask them about their hunt. Like, how did your hunt go in there? Um, there's hunts where I've gone on and I was like, man, I had a great hunt, but we barely saw any deer. It was really tough. You know, this is how we hunted. We hiked in really far. We were glass and pretty hard. I've hunted there before I've had success, but dude, this last year, I was just like two years ago, we didn't see anything. I just like to know, like, what did they see and hear their hunt story.

and just kind of build a picture of like, oh, this is maybe what I'm going to expect. I always ask them kind of what they observed. And then one thing is like, would they do anything different? Especially if it's a really limited tag. Because those kinds of questions, I don't want just check the spot out. I want to really understand the area. I really want to understand the hunt. And I really want to be able to build something

kind of like my own hunt plan based on the things that I've learned. So would you do anything different? I mean, there's times where I've actually, that was the one thing that I learned when I drew my California bighorn tag. I talked to some people, I was like, Hey, would you do anything different? They're like, yeah, man, I got out there. I scouted a couple of days. It didn't see much. I wanted to spend most of my time hunting. He's like, I would have, I wouldn't

I would have put all my time into scouting because, you know, I feel like the, the guys that put in the time scouting got the big Rams. And I really took that to heart. I scouted, I thought, Hey, if I have two weeks to hunt, I essentially spent that those two weeks scouting and really one day hunting, even though I could have hunted more days, but, um,

Um, because of that, you know, that advice and that, like, that's what I wish I would have done. I really took that to heart and was like, that makes sense. You know, there's guys that are going to be scouting hard and those are the guys that are going to find the mature Rams and they're probably going to be on them opening morning. So, um, you know, having that kind of intel and just really understanding the unit and what to expect is great advice. And it really helps me then go into my final stage of this beginning planning is like scouting, um,

And that could, and I kind of, I mean, step four is two parts because it's a lot of map scouting. If I can get there or not. And it can also be some boots on the ground scouting, which is preferred. But now I kind of take that map scouting to the next level after I've talked to people and really understand the area.

They might mention a canyon or like, hey, we went up this area. This is the type of terrain you might see in there. I can kind of then pinpoint those areas. I write everything down. And then I go into in-depth stuff. I start looking at different areas, different types of places that I like to hunt. Maybe they said, dude, we were hunting the road system. There was dudes everywhere. You know, we hiked off a couple days. We saw, we didn't see hardly any elk, but we didn't see any hunters either. Then I take that intel and I go,

all right i'm building that into my scout plan there's going to be people people ripping all over the place it sounds like a really busy unit but they didn't really see many people getting off the roads

Hey, I'm going to, I'm going to find some spots. Now I'm going to locate and pinpoint spots where I can build to the type of hunt that I want. I want to get away from people. Hey, seeing fewer animals is fine, but I, you know, as long as I'm seeing fewer people. So now I'm going to start focusing in on those areas. I've had the same thing happen where I, you know, drew a tag, talked to people who were like, yeah, man, we packed nine miles into the wilderness. It was a zoo up there. It was like tremendous.

trucks at the trailhead everywhere. Everyone was hunting in the back country. They're like that. We pulled out, we hunted a couple of days on the way out. Oh yeah. You know, my cousin shot a, a little three by three, but we wish we had more time to kind of hunt this other, this front country stuff. Cause everyone was packed in like, okay, that's a good, that's a good hot tip. Maybe I kind of want to plan off the same thing. Maybe I'm going to find a few glassing advantages that are easy to get to, you know, maybe this is an area where it's like, man, I want to stay away from people and maybe this is the way to do it.

find those pockets that aren't in the wilderness, but aren't necessarily close to the road either and plan my hunt that way. So I'll do that by map scouting. I'll look for that habitat. I'll start narrowing in. One thing that, you know, depending on the type of unit you've got when I'm hunting Southwest, I'm

One thing that animals are pretty tied to and there's not a lot of is water. So I start pinpointing water and I start saying, okay, here's where the water sources are. And then I start to think to myself, okay, what kind of year is it? Is it a drought year? Is it a really wet year? Is there going to be plenty of water or is there not? One thing that's nice when you're in this more arid stuff is you go, okay, well, animals are going to have to be tied to water, but you know, you got to be able to find that water. So I'll start pinpointing water.

and those access points. Then when it's boots on the ground scouting, let's say I've got a weekend. It's best. I mean, if you live in the East Coast and you've got a Colorado elk tag, it makes it pretty difficult. But I mean, if you can get a little summer vacation trip and go send the family out, take a little motor home trip and get a couple of days out scouting, sweet. But what I like to do

I'm just more investigating places that I've pinpointed at this point. So this is kind of the next advanced step of like, all right, I did everything at home. My first steps are done. Sometimes I'll just run out and hit up the unit, even if it's five to seven hour drive. Like I'm going to drive all night on Friday. I'm going to get up. I'm going to scout a little bit Sunday or all day Saturday, scout a little bit Sunday morning and drive back half day Sunday.

And what I'm doing is I'm just like ping, I just call it like ping pong around the area. I'm just fact checking ground, checking places that I've scouted digitally or places that I've heard about, but really just kind of like learning the access. I'll go into like check water sources, especially if it's more arid. Like, okay, is this a, is this like a good water hole? Is it dry already? Is this somewhere that's, or is it a tank? Is there a good spring? Is that spring running a pretty long Creek? That's like going to be flowing all year round. Um,

cool. That'll, that'll start narrowing down. Cause there's times where I've gotten into a place where,

I've had everything planned out. I'm like, sweet, this is going to be awesome. Oh, I know exactly where I want to go. This is beautiful habitat. I get in there, you know, maybe don't have a lot of time to hunt, get in there and it's just bone dry. There hasn't been water in there in three years. And you're like, well, that sucks. If I knew that, if I just knew that one thing, I could have completely changed, not wasted a day, like a precious hunt day. If I just known, hey, I could have spent one day just cruising around the area and checking the things that I checked at home.

So that's my step process for when I draw a tag. And by doing that, I found a lot of success, you know, hunting a lot of, I hunt a lot of places for the first time each year, but I do put in a lot of time. And there's many places where,

look, I understand it's like, I haven't got out and scouted or I can't get out and scout. I've got five days and I get a, I'm going to use those days hunting. I'm going to start maybe four days after the opener is the only time I can get there, but I'm going to use those five days during the season, but I can do all this like due diligence ahead of time. So when I get into the area, I have a good plan. And by doing that, I found a lot of success over the years.

I hope that helps you guys. Now, if you have drawn a tag, whether I don't care if it's a general tag, whether it's a limited entry tag, whatever, reach out to me via social media, leave comments on my, any posts, just where you drew a tag or what you're looking forward to. I don't need the specific units or whatever, but maybe it's a limited entry tag and you're pretty excited about it. It's always fun to share in that excitement with hunters and you never know. Maybe you could mention a little bit about the state and reach out and maybe somebody will have some information for you. Um, you

you know, that, especially if it's like a pretty hard to get tag, there's always, uh, there's always people willing to share information. I know like that information always comes back to you. If I've been in a hunt or whatever, I like to share some of that info because inevitably I'm going to draw a tag somewhere that they know, or someone knows that they know, and I'll be able to get a little bit info on the backend. So that's always awesome. You know, if you guys, uh,

think about it. You know, you could also kind of do something similar on the comments and the section wherever you listen to the podcast and help each other out. If somebody drew a good tag and you guys want to help each other out, uh, let's, let's all help each other listeners of this podcast. I think that like, we could be the most successful group of hunters if we all put our minds together and, uh,

and kind of help each other out in ways that we can. So that'd be pretty sweet next week. I want to jump into, I mean, kind of this kind of on the same vein of, Hey, I drew a tag now what? And jumping into a little bit of like off season, summer archery practice. Cause that's going to be the first season that hits. It's, it seems like, I don't know for me, it seems like it's just going to happen tomorrow. I'm always like, I always feel like, Oh,

oh man, there's, I, I practiced year round and I'm like, it's already season. I got to go. I got to be ready. I got to do this. I got to do that. So that getting ready and just give you some ideas of some cool practice ways, ways to practice like you're hunting. I talked about some of this, this time last year, but just a couple of different ways to prepare yourself for this upcoming archery season, shooting your bow and getting better and better every day. All right. Well, we'll catch you guys later until next week. Good luck in the draws and help each other out.

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