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Brad Briggs
236 Plays2 years ago
“So your saying theirs a chance” Drew is Joined by Brad Briggs @babdds an AZ resident who drew a random draw Rocky Mountain Sheep tag this season with only 10 points. Not only that he put the time in DIY and shot a stud of a 186” ram. This story is awesome and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer dude.
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose
00:00:07
Speaker
You are listening to the Tricer podcast, where we talk all things hunting, gear, and the great outdoors. Before we begin, let's start things out right and put God first. Lord Jesus, I thank you for Tricer, and I ask that you can use this podcast as a way to bring joy to all of our listeners. We lay Tricer and this podcast at your feet. Amen.
00:00:31
Speaker
All right, another episode of the Tricer podcast.
Connecting with Customers through Stories
00:00:34
Speaker
I have a Tricer customer on here. One of the best parts about Tricer is I get to meet so many awesome people and get to live vicariously through their tags. And this lucky son of a gun drew an Arizona Bighorn sheep tag with 10 points. I said, I've got to have you come on because I love a good gripping grin.
00:00:54
Speaker
I'm not the kind of guy who wants the real artistic, just the picture of the horn. I like the grab it by the horns and tongue hanging out, gripping grin and shooting stuff. And he sent me a video of him just hammering this sheep and I was just pumped. And I was like, I was actually on an elk hunt in Arizona. And I was like, you got to come on and tell this story because it's just, it's a special, and we all dream about it.
Meet Brad Briggs: Hunter and Family Man
00:01:16
Speaker
And we hear the stories of the guys that draw this tag with
00:01:20
Speaker
one point two points ten points whatever it is and we're all gonna wait maybe a lifetime to draw it and brad briggs you are the guy brad briggs the dentist from phoenix she tagged in arizona so brad tell me about you i'm a dentist here in arizona i grew up here been hunting here my whole life.
00:01:36
Speaker
And I've got a wife and twin girls who are super excited to maybe get on TV on YouTube. So they wanted to step in and just say hi before I kick them out. So these are my daughters, Oakley and Finley, my future hunters. Hopefully we get some YouTube videos of them hunting in a few years. Yeah, I hope so. That'd be awesome. Yeah. You guys like to go shoot your 22s? Yeah, you're good at it. Yeah. Hey, girls. All right. Thanks for coming.
00:02:06
Speaker
They're gonna be famous on YouTube very soon They can show this to all their friends that they were on the lowly little tricer podcast and they are now famous youtubers So that's awesome. Yeah, so just a normal dude married two twin girls beautiful girls just live in life, right? Nothing just a guy getting out there and hunting probably when you can and even doing it your whole life my whole life my dad started us out bird hunting when we were little I was
00:02:31
Speaker
me and my brother's favorite thing to do is opening day of dove season and that light cracks get out there and pepper each other across the field and get some dove. So yeah, just grew up hunting with my dad.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, my favorite thing about dove hunting is there's always that one guy, like opening morning, we hunt Yuma. And so opening day, there's a million people out there and you're just waiting. And it's supposed to be 30 minutes before sunrise, you can start shooting. And there's always that one guy. And once that one guy fires off, you just start seeing the fire come out of these 12 gauges all in just every one. It's like a war zone. It's like a 12 year old kid. It's the coolest thing ever.
00:03:07
Speaker
It's the coolest thing ever. And you do getting peppered is part of it, but it's just, you're shooting, especially, I don't know if you're probably hunting out. I saw some really good stuff by Phoenix when I was out there actually, but you're hunting these fields and one guy's on this side, this guy's on this side. So as long as the barrels are up in the air, it's not the end of the world to get a little peppered. It's going to happen, right? It's just a matter of making sure you keep your guns about 30 degrees off the ground on opening day. Cause there's just a lot of people.
00:03:30
Speaker
But yeah, nothing beats dove hunting, man.
Early Hunting Memories and Lessons
00:03:32
Speaker
It's a fun time. Yeah. So hopefully that's how I start my girls out. Take them out and get some dove. Yeah. The cool thing about Arizona with youth, because we have a house in Martinez Lake out there in Yuma. My whole life I've been going to Yuma. We go to the Colorado River. It's Arizona. You can start hunting like seven years old, as long as you're with a parent or with a, they call it a mentor or something, I think it is. So you can start bringing them out. Like in California, you can't,
00:03:57
Speaker
What do you can you can younger but i know there is one i can bring my kids out and they don't under my license and we go rabbit hunting so it's seven eight years old like your girl's age they can shoot their twenty twos my shit my kid shot his first rabbit with a four ten and i remember him just being ecstatic just doing backups and.
00:04:15
Speaker
It's fun to get him into it like that, to get him into it with rabbits, with squirrels. He has some prairie dogs out by use. You head up north to Unit 9 and stuff. There's some prairie dogs up there and doves, obviously. What's that? I was going to say, I think the very first thing, my parents got me a bow and there's a big dirt field behind our house. My brother and I'd go hunt rabbits in and I got one with a field point and it took two or three arrows and I'm
00:04:39
Speaker
carrying it home crying and with holes all through it but kind of one of my parents deals was if we shot it we had to eat it so had to skin that rabbit with holes all through it and cook it up for dinner. I think one of the biggest problems with America right now is there's not enough kids out there shooting rabbits with field points.
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, but it's like life lessons only that but just getting out and you read writer BB gun or that little black pump Daisy how many sparrows I killed and blue jays and it's good boy stuff, right? It's kid stuff and now they'd rather play a video game or play Call of Duty than get out there and shoot something. It's just it's sad.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, but that is stuff that is just formative in a kid's life. And I think it's so important. It's awesome. Your girls do it as well. I have five kids and my, I only have one daughter and she don't hunt. She's, she's incredible, but she's just, it's not her thing, but the boys all do. So I'm excited. Your daughter's going to do it. We'll see if I can get both of them. I'm pretty sure one of them is going to be really into it. The other one I think is going to be into the fashion side of it.
00:05:42
Speaker
She'll look good in the pictures. Yeah, and it's important to you too as a dad and a husband to get your kids hunting because like you, especially as they get older, you have a role to be in their lives all the time, right? And to grow them. And there really is nothing better than getting your kids out in the field with you and forcing them into the truck with you for two hours, two to 10 hours on these drives. And then you're out there in the morning, sitting talking and just talking about God and the world and everything going on in their lives. And it's an important thing. It's really neat.
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah. Plus, it's really hard for your wife to say you can't go hunting when you're taking your kids. So just put that in your back pocket and hopefully your wife... I know your wife's going to listen to this, but she's still... Oh man. Yeah. They have a hard time saying no when your kids draw tags. I've just become a guide over the last five years and all I do is guide... I never get to pull the trigger. They're always blocking me. I'm looking forward to that.
00:06:34
Speaker
It's fun. It's honestly, it's more of a challenge getting a kid and animal. It's just a good time. It's everything about it's fun and enjoyable. Some of those youth tags are pretty good tags too, the timing of the hunt. Especially as a resident, right? So they've really tagged it as a whole, have gotten harder to draw across the West. But as an Arizona resident, you guys have a lot better odds than we do, right? Like we used to hunt coosier every year over there and it was 100% draw odds. Then over the last, that was five years ago.
00:07:01
Speaker
every year it's gone down and down to where now you have to have two or three points to draw these youth tags as a non-resident. But as a resident, they have some really good tags for the youth. They have some good, they actually have a really good tag for if you're looking to get a deer young and not have a hard hunt, like that Kaibab doe hunt they have is a really good tag to draw.
First Big Game Hunt Experiences
00:07:20
Speaker
Beautiful country up there. Beautiful country. You can go up there, you can get a hotel and go out and kill a deer opening morning because there's so many deer. Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
that's an awesome opportunity for kids and it's cool to see a state that's encouraging hunting right where california is the exact opposite right you can't show a child with a firearm or shooting or anything like that or you're evil right though they come take a kid away if they shoot a 22 it's good to get them out there so you dove hunted but obviously you've transitioned because now you're a big sheep killer but when did you get into big game like deer hunting and stuff
00:07:52
Speaker
I think the first thing I big game that I took was a ham handgun archery muzzleloader javelina hunt and I was probably 12 or 13 and that was an interesting hunt as a kid and my dad and my brother spooked some javelina around and they were running right for me and I had his 357 with 38 specials in it just unloading at this javelina coming
00:08:16
Speaker
And I guess it's a theme. I never thought of it. I put a couple holes in that javelina as well. And so that was a good lesson. Not very good smelling animals and my dad helped me skin that out and we cooked it up and I think that was my first big game.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, the trick with javelina is like Machaka, chorizo, over seasoning, right? Anything you put into a crock pot and cover in orange juice and carne asada sauce and bell peppers and onions is going to taste good. But that's a fun animal to hunt, man. I cannot put my thumb on those things, man. They are just like... It's not like a deer. Those things just wander around and they are where they are and then... Sometimes they're hard to find. Sometimes they're covered right for you.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes they come in right, because yeah, they're blind as a bat. They just, they're coming right out. You can smell them. It's almost like an elk, but they smell like a skunk, right? So sometimes you can smell elk. Oh, there's elk here. But with javelina, it's, oh, it smells really disgusting. There's probably a javelina around. But that's a fun tag. And you get some really good youth tags for that too. I think they get first crack at them, right? So you have the bow season for those in January. And I think the youth get like a late January or early February hunt before the ham and before the rifle hunt. So yeah, they have some good youth tags for those too. And that's a fun hunt to do with your kids.
00:09:27
Speaker
I'm taking a buddy out in January from high school who is a literature teacher and he's a high school teacher now. And so between me and my wife, we're big shooters and do some hunting. And so got him into shooting bows. And so he's got an archery, javelina tag and a deer tag. So I'm taking him hunting for the first time here in three or four weeks and excited to see if we can get him something.
00:09:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's a special hunt that you guys have too. That over-the-counter archery stuff you guys have over there is pretty special. It's getting blown out right now from podcasts like this talking about it, but YouTube videos. But you guys get to hunt them pretty much in December, January, and August. You can go buy an over-the-counter deer tag and pretty
Exploring Arizona's Hunting Opportunities
00:10:08
Speaker
much stay wide.
00:10:09
Speaker
Other than I think the Kybab and the Strip and a couple other units, you pretty much are statewide. You can go out and hunt these deer if you're willing to hunt them. I know that's a really good bucket they killed in August if you're willing to sit in a ground blind over water and drink 15 Gatorades because it's 120 degrees over there.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah. It's a neat tag. Even Northern Arizona, we got a cabin up near Pace and it's 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix. It'll be 80, 90 degrees up there, but it's doable. Yeah. I was just in Pace a few weeks ago and that is just a beautiful country up there under the muggle and rim and the whole area is just pretty and it's neat. There is a lot of snowbirds though. It's like dangerous driving. We were up there and it was like, man, everyone up here is over 90 and going to kill us. Yeah.
00:10:54
Speaker
It's definitely a retirement town. That's for sure. I learned that real quick. Yeah. So yeah, you are a big shooter, right? Like I know like just from seeing you a little bit on Instagram and stuff, like you're into like some tactical stuff and talking about that. So yeah, I like shooting everything. I do pistol matches or now that I have kids, everything don't get to do it as much, but.
00:11:14
Speaker
three gun matches. I did some of the precision rifle matches here for a few years, got into reloading, do tactical stuff, gone out to different training. I was just up with Clint Smith in Oregon doing some long range AR stuff. I love shooting.
00:11:30
Speaker
That's awesome. So what is your favorite? I've never done like any kind of competitive shooting. Like I'm always like, if I'm going to go shooting, I'll do I'm a funny guy. So I like bolt action rifles. I like over under shotguns. So I love reloading. I have reloading bench and I reload for almost everything. I shoot handguns included. What's your favorite discipline? Do you just all of it or do you like the three gun more, the long range?
00:11:52
Speaker
The three cannot so much this guy's getting too much in the gaming it and the competitive all the open class stuff it was fun to do but the long range stuff remember going out with a buddy and we put a cardboard box out there and five hundred and we're like no way are we gonna hit this and
00:12:09
Speaker
Fast forward 10 years, it's really cool to hit steel at 1,500 yards. Cold bore, it's just math. The more you learn it and refine your loads, the long-range stuff really floats my boat. That's awesome, man. I really do enjoy shooting long-range. It's fun to get out there and shoot steel. It's also very humbling, I always recommend, because I feel like every guy picks up a rifle now and they feel like they can shoot a deer at 700 yards.
00:12:34
Speaker
And then I'll go put it, I have these deer silhouettes that I cut out at my shop. They're the size of a deer and they have a heart gong and everyone's got shooting it and shooting the antlers off at six. And I'm like, see, elevation is not hard. Wind is the factor when it comes to this stuff from calculating that. Especially in mountains where you've got canyons where your wind is all over. Yeah.
00:12:56
Speaker
So, what are you shooting 1500 yards? Are you 338 and in? Or what are you shooting that for? Yeah, I'm going to get called a fanboy. I'd take that 5 Creedmoor out. Yeah. Oh, man. I've got one that I can load those burger 153 and a half in it real hot. Oh, yeah. And it's a tack driver. Yeah.
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, I actually, with the sheep, I took the 300 windbag. Did you? So yeah, I decided to go, but I just wanted to get it done. Just wanted to make sure that if you put it in the, there's no replacement for displacement, right? It's a little more, I mean, you got to put it in the right spot, but a little more marginal, it's going to do a little more damage. Were you shooting burgers in that as well? No, the Sierra Game Kings.
00:13:36
Speaker
See your game kings. Same kind of thing though. Those are like more of like a fragmenting. They're going to do like that burger thing, which is nice for those bullets. I make fun of the Creedmoor a little bit, but at the same time I shoot a 260 Remington, which essentially is a Creedmoor, but it just wasn't marketed well. So before Creedmoor was a 260 Remington, which both of them are 308 cases, just improved to a neck down to a six five. So I love that six five. Like my, if I'm going to Sonora next month, I'm bringing a six five. It's not the 260 and I'll show you.
00:14:06
Speaker
I went and looked at 6.5 PRCs every month before this sheep hunt. I'm like, I need to buy a new gun. I'm going to stick with what I got, what I've been shooting. Yeah, it's funny because people get really into guns, right? I pretty much have.
00:14:22
Speaker
a lot of guns with all the kids but I pretty much have two rifles. I got my 280 actually improved and my 260 Remington and I'd rather go buy tags than rifles. So many people get so caught up in buying a rifle or they spend $5,000 on a rifle and then don't buy a tripod or they don't buy good optics. I would much rather shoot a Savage and have a good set of binoculars on a tripod than anything or have that Savage and shoot it a lot. A lot of these guys just buy these rifles and then don't shoot them. They think they can do everything and
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah. And lo and behold, it shoots the same, you know, no matter if it's a $10,000 rifle or a $300 rifle, it's shooting the same round. And you need to know what you're doing when you pull that trigger. And stuff, cold bore shot is a big deal. The further you get out there, if you don't know where that first round is going to end up, you might be a guy who can shoot the lights out when your barrel's warm, but everything changes when it's 10 degrees out.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. One thing I really have enjoyed this year, I only got to do it on a couple of animals was using my Olin adapter. It's like a phone adapter so I can see where it's going. My kid missed this deer and I was like, oh, you got him. But I was going to go back and play it back and be like, oh man, you ricocheted that deer. You went right in front of his chest and I got to see where it hit because they jump and you can't see it. It's nice that you said, know where it's going. That Olin really has been- Dude,
00:15:42
Speaker
I couldn't find my case. I've got it on my Swarovski, the old one adapter, and I got up there and couldn't find the case to put on my phone. So all my video is me hand holding it and trying to line it up because I forgot the phone case. Really? So the video you sent me, how was that recorded?
00:15:57
Speaker
That was my buddy, so one of my buddies that went with me, he was videoing just next to me with his phone, no spotter. So on reloading, when you're hunting, are you shooting the 153 burgers as well, or are you shooting something smaller? Depends on what I'm hunting. I shot some deer in Texas with the 153.5 burgers. The sheep was 180 grain, Sierra Game Kings.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'm shooting in my two 60 124 version that hammer bullet the copper bullet. Okay. Yeah, it's weird. It's that bullet is incredible. I'm probably the easiest
Shooting Sports and Techniques
00:16:32
Speaker
bolt to load ever loaded. You go buy some oh, yeah, like they're so expensive though, but they're incredible and they kill so I'm shooting those now in both my both those rifles.
00:16:41
Speaker
I go back and forth between the burger and the hammer in my 280, but man, I'm telling you that copper bullet, I put my six, right on my six by my 260 and thousand yards. I put in three shots into a grapefruit. It's just a phenomenal bullet and it just, they just stack on top of each other and you have a lot more room with that. For some reason with that bullet, I don't know what it is. It has like these bands on it. Um, there's more room for air. Like finding the right note is so much easier and you could be off a little bit and it's still going to shoot really good. And they're fast.
00:17:09
Speaker
They're like 100 feet per second faster than lead because of the bands they have on there. I don't know why, but they are fast. It's just factual. You look it up and they'll be like, oh no, they shoot pasture. That's a fun round to load too if you ever want to load a hunting round. That 124 hammer for the Creedmores is really cool. Okay. We'll look into that for sure.
00:17:26
Speaker
But yeah, someone asked me recently, they're like, oh, because copper is better. And everyone just, yeah, California forces us to shoot them. So I think that's my issue with it, right? It's not that I don't think copper is good. It's just I hate when the government tells me what to do. Yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
So if I had to, I want to be able to choose what bullet I'm shooting. So when I go out of state, I'm almost, I almost am inclined to shoot lead because they force us to shoot copper here. Right. And it's just, but it is an incredible bullet. So I shot a lot of copper, right? I've shot a lot of animals with the like 127 grain LRX as well from Barnes. My boys both shoot the 168 grain Barnes bowl, the TTSX. It's a,
00:18:03
Speaker
Copper bullet. For 308. They both shoot 308. And I feel like that bullet is just a phenomenal bullet. It's going to penetrate and just do its job. Copper has its place. It's not just some gimmick. It really does. It holds itself together. It pedals and it just goes through animals really well. So it's a great round, especially for those 308s. I love that setup for my boys. All right, dude. So you have gotten into hunting. You've killed Javelina. I've assumed you've hunted. Do you hunt elk over there at all?
00:18:32
Speaker
I drew my elk tag 23 South last year, the archery tag, and I chased a monster bull for 10 days with some guides, and they never read it. Couldn't get
Elk Hunting and Future Goals
00:18:45
Speaker
closer than 115. I passed on some really nice high 300 bulls because I'll text you a picture of him, the bull of my dreams, and I couldn't get close enough. Oh, he was every bit of $400 or close to it.
00:18:58
Speaker
Oh no, way over. Oh, really? Yeah. He had three main beams on the right side. He might've been a state record for atypical. So pretty much everybody's just been pissed at me because I'm drawing tags. Last two years, the Archery Elkin 23 and now a sheep tag. So 2024 is going to be my year for Buffalo or something, maybe an Arizona antelope tag. Yeah. I mean, I had a buddy drawn antelope tag.
00:19:25
Speaker
Over there with six points if you want an archery is a little bit easier to get a tag over there, too It's another kind of a little side note if you want to put an archery on antelope Which I don't know if you're doing archery or rifle on those I've been putting in for rifle, but it's pretty amazing that you can put a decoy and walk right up to them arch Yeah, it blows my mind because they're out in flat fields. You're like how the hell am I gonna get a bowshot on them?
00:19:46
Speaker
It's a tough animal to hunt. I'm yet to shoot an antelope. Drawing them kind of gets word in San Diego, right? So California is like a 20-year tag plus. In Arizona, it's almost an impossible tag for a non-resident to draw. So like the closest opportunity really to draw a tag every year would be Wyoming. And I haven't really done it because I'm always like, oh, it's elk season. It's hard for me to make that commitment for a week for antelope.
00:20:09
Speaker
in Wyoming. It's not a lot of private land. No, it's going to be public land. There's not much public. There's a lot of private land up in Wyoming. There's a lot of space place up there you can hunt antelope on public. So it's not a super hard. I guess they just screwed the tags up for non-residents. They basically just took it from needing one point to two points. They just
00:20:31
Speaker
They used to be 20% of the tags, now it's 10% of the tags. They really just fleeced us. And the other opportunity that's real close to us is New Mexico. And a lot of that you can get on private land tags in New Mexico. So my son went last year with my father-in-law and they had bucks the first day and he shot almost 80-inch buck. He shot a great antelope over there in New Mexico. So that's a fun hunt. So you're putting in for sheep. We're all putting in for sheep, right? I have 10 sheep points in Arizona. Okay.
00:20:57
Speaker
every year we're all putting in for it. We all want to draw this tag and we look at it and it says 0.6% or 0.1% chance draw odds. Then when you get to max points, it's still 2% draw odds.
The Unlikely Sheep Tag Win
00:21:09
Speaker
But we all tell ourselves every single time we do it, there's a chance. I didn't even think there was a chance. I'm still at that place where it's, yeah, that'll never happen, but I'll put in anyway, get my points.
00:21:22
Speaker
So tell me about this. So you're using Go Hunt, right? How'd you pick this unit? So I koozdeer hunted back in there. I got some buddies that live up in Springerville, Cholo, and the unit 27 is it's no real roads. You don't have to deal with guys on quads or side-by-sides. There's one road north and south and one road east and west. So it's a pretty much backpack in and
00:21:47
Speaker
It's just a great unit. There's bear, turkey, deer, wolves are up there. We heard wolves at night. Oh, the gray wolves, right? The Mexican gray wolves? The Mexican grays, yeah. And so 27, I'm like, I'm not going to get drawn. So I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it other than that I got buddies up there, I'll put in for that sheep tag. And so that ends up being the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep in Arizona. What was your odds?
00:22:13
Speaker
0.06% draws, and there was one tag. I got the one tag in the unit. Is that like one in 6,000? I don't know. Yeah, probably that's the math. 0.1 would be one in 1,000, right? 0.06. I guess you put in for it. You looked at Gohan and you knew your buddies were up there. You're saying there's a chance.
00:22:35
Speaker
Let's do it. We'll put in. Then the way in Arizona, Game and Fish doesn't actually put it up on their website for a week or I don't know how long. I know, it's stressful. We're all checking our bank account and my card got hit for $309 or whatever it was, $300. I'm like, well, did I put in for me and four buddies for deer? There's no way it's a sheep tag. This has to be deer and start doing the math. I'm like, I think I got a sheep tag. Yeah, sure enough, there it was. Got a sheep tag.
00:23:05
Speaker
that's
00:23:35
Speaker
I'm doing elk tag, right? Or you're like, wait a minute. Like my buddy was trying to figure out like, what is this? And it ended up being an antelope tag. And you're doing the math and you're looking at it and that's just a cool feeling. So were you just doing backflips? Oh, just yeah. My wife just thought I was out of my mind. I'm like, I can't believe I got a sheep tag.
00:23:53
Speaker
And I know nothing about sheep hunting. It's not something that crosses your brain to prepare for because you don't know if it's ever going to happen and it's not like I'm going to go hunt sheep next year in some state. Yeah, my brain is trying to figure out, okay, now what?
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's a $75,000 tag, right? If you go to Mexico, $45,000, $45,000 to go to Mexico, shoot that animal. It's a big deal to draw this tag. I don't know about you, but my wife, every time I draw a tag, it's pretty much every year I draw tags. I'm like, I can't believe I drew this. And she's like, every year you draw tags. How remarkable is it that you drew these tags? So that's kind of the window for me. But with sheep, I always tell her, I think we talked about this. If I draw a sheep tag, like in California, it's a month long season.
00:24:35
Speaker
I will be gone a lot that summer and I will be gone that whole month. That is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We'll get into it, but we will talk about the scouting and the time spent up there.
00:24:56
Speaker
But a funny story was my daughter ended up being married and they go to a Christian school and so she's married in the first grade school play. And I'm like, I don't think I can be there because this is once in a lifetime. Dad can never. And she looks at me straight in the eyes. Dad, this is once in a lifetime for me too.
00:25:15
Speaker
Oh man. So I did make it to the play because I got my sheep for the first weekend.
Preparation and Support for the Sheep Hunt
00:25:20
Speaker
How many tags were there in this unit? I can't remember. One, me. Yeah. One unit, you. One tag, you. One thing, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe it's California. I know when there's only one tag, it becomes a random tag, correct? Is that correct? I don't know what that ran. What is that? You drew that tag on the random. You didn't draw that tag on points, right? You had to have drawn it on the random. Yes. Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
I know in California, when there's one tag, it then becomes a random draw, a lottery draw and not a points draw. So I always, for my sheep units, which I should say in public, I picked the unit to only have one tag because I know I have a chance, right? Because you drew this on the random, not on the, there's no preference points involved. You drew it, you could have drew with one point or 15 points, you drew it. 35 points, yeah.
00:26:06
Speaker
You did the tag. So how far is this unit from your house? 27 is not too far from Phoenix, right? Because there's only one road to get in, you go up to Alpine. And so it's about five hours up to Alpine and then an hour to an hour and a half down into the unit. Really? Six hours each way. Yeah, I looked in the unit for bears last year and we were all set up to go and then they made the quota and we couldn't go. So we ended up going coyote hunting over there, Mike, me and my boy. So you draw the tag.
00:26:38
Speaker
watching videos. Just, yeah, I just took in everything I could. I talked to, I got Cody Nelson with Go Hunt is, I've known him since high school and he's someone I've gone out with and taught me how to glass and so called Cody right away and he put me in touch with a couple of guys and just a couple of phone conversations and
00:27:00
Speaker
trying to decide, do I want a guide? I think I'm just going to go start spending time up there. Let's see what it's like and just start figuring it out. Did you end up going with a guide? No, did it with me and four buddies. I was up there every three to four weeks backpacking in. We found sheep every time we're up there and didn't see the sheep that I wanted, but I was confident enough that, okay, I'm finding sheep. I think I want to do this on my own.
00:27:29
Speaker
And when I say my own, there's no way I could have done it on my own, but me and Buddy's got it done. It is amazing to have guys who are willing to go back in with me, find them. My brother-in-law came from Florida. We went up for one long weekend. I got a buddy, Cameron, who I know through the rodeo friends and Cameron's dad had drawn that tag five years before. Ed and I went up and
00:27:53
Speaker
Ed pretty much took me to every spot we'd already found. He's got stories every hill we go over. He's been hunting in there. So I had confirmation on what I'd found with other friends and just made the call with a month or two to go that we're going to do this on our own.
00:28:09
Speaker
Now, were you in contact with the guide? Hey, we might, I might use you or are you just? No, just I guess I got hard headed and no, no, no contact with guides after. Just if I, Cody put me in touch with some guides that I talked to at the beginning, but that was four or five months before, before that. For one, Cody Nelson is an incredible dude. So shout out. Just Cody, shirt off your back. You're an amazing human being. Yeah, shirt off your back and just probably to the moon that you drew this tag and wanted to help you in every way, shape and form. I just know the guy,
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah. Every way, shape, and form to help you find a sheep and get it. Now, I'm not knocking guides, right? I always go back and forth on this too. If I draw a sheep tag, am I going to spend 4,500 bucks to get a guide? I think it's running right around that five grand mark. When you draw it, the hard part is getting the tag, not the guide for this hunt in that range.
00:28:55
Speaker
I don't know. I never talked numbers with anybody. I hunted with ground pounders, Cash Armstrong for elk last year, and amazing. Guides are awesome. They know where the big animals are, but I don't know. As we tell the story, this whole hunt was a God thing. I won't say it came easy, but everything was just right. I don't know if I'll ever have a hunting day again where
00:29:20
Speaker
but everything goes right the whole way up the mountain.
The Day of the Hunt: Success and Celebration
00:29:24
Speaker
I don't know, I had a feeling and I just wanted to do it with my buddies. That's awesome, man. Again, I'm not knocking guides, but it probably feels better that you did it on your own. There's something about that where you didn't get walked into an animal. In Arizona, a way people make money is finding sheep and then selling those pins. You can get 20 grand for a pin.
00:29:49
Speaker
I've been hearing some crazy stories of these numbers we were getting for elk or like that 400-inch pole you found. Someone finds that elk, that's a very expensive pin. They'll spend their off-season looking for animals to sell those pins to guides or to clients or whoever. Good on them. I don't have anything against that, but it does feel better to like, what a sense of accomplishment to check in at Game and Fish and they're like, who's the outfitter?
00:30:14
Speaker
It was just me and my buddies and they're like really yeah so i mean it just makes it we did it you did do it that's awesome and so how did that work when it comes to i guess you had. I'm always curious how the game of fish situation works with sheep over there so will you when you do this tag within contact with you like hey brad you do this tag.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, I got an official letter that says congratulations. It's wild when you draw a sheep tag in Arizona. They put on a clinic, a one-day clinic and everyone with tags gets to go to it and they talk about gear and sheep behavior and it's a day of teaching you how to hunt sheep. You have to go, right?
00:30:56
Speaker
I don't know. There's no way I was missing that. But yeah, I wouldn't say that they taught me everything that I mean, it's still hunting. And if you had never hunted before, maybe you would have picked up a whole bunch. But the experience was cool. It was cool that Game of Fish had game wardens from the unit there. And it was just a really cool experience to go and get to go to a sheep hunting clinic.
00:31:20
Speaker
As the hunt got closer, I went in and scouted. We backpacked in every three to four weeks and found my sheep. But then one of my dad's buddies is a helicopter pilot and he's a really good helicopter pilot.
00:31:34
Speaker
So he flew the Trump helicopter that would go upside down and have Trump printed on it upside down, and he's awesome. So I'm like two or three weeks before, let's go see if we can find some sheep in a helicopter that I haven't seen with my legs. And so we take off, start flying, the clouds are too low, and we just can't get up there. Once I go above the clouds, I can't come back down, so we're just not going to make it up there.
00:31:58
Speaker
And about two weeks before the hunt, I get a call from the game warden and I'm thinking, oh no, I'm in trouble. I don't know if you're about to eat it. I put a picture on Instagram and a helicopter and I think I'm busted. And the game warden was Callen is, I think that's how you say his name, but the nicest guy on the phone. And I think I'm busted by the game warden because I.
00:32:18
Speaker
went on a helicopter ride and no he's telling me they just did their survey and there's three or four class four rams and you might look around this area and they didn't tell me where sheep were but i had a 45 minute conversation with the game warden and that doesn't happen with an elk or a deer tag it was just awesome so game and fish was so supportive from the very get go can't say enough good things about game and fish
00:32:41
Speaker
That's awesome. It's cool to know that they're rooting for you right now against you. I feel like where I live, they're rooting against us almost. Trying to bust you. Trying to bust you. You're guilty until provenous in half the time with our game wardens. Not only that, it's run by a bunch of liberals who hate hunting. They're just putting out false stuff. They banned Lions in the 90s, they banned Bobcats a couple of years ago and in their commission meetings, they came in and said, I've never seen a Bobcat in the wild.
00:33:08
Speaker
I'm sitting there thinking to myself, I was on Hunt's last try, I saw six bobcats a day. Bobcats are everything I've ever left. You never seen a bobcat in the wild in Los Angeles County, maybe. I've seen a bobcat on my back fence. They're around eating cats in the neighborhood.
00:33:24
Speaker
Yeah. It's nice to hear that Game of Fish is rooting for you and helping you. You keep talking about backpacking. This was not a road hunt. This was not a canvas wall tent hunt. This was like you actually backpacked in? Okay. I was set up. Whatever way it went, we were set up to backpack in. If I had my teepee and my Stone Glacier zero degree bag and all my gear that I love my gear, the way it went down is I
00:33:51
Speaker
I found an area that I saw good sheep, at least a dozen sheep every time we were down there. I went in a couple days early and set up camp. I'm setting up camp alone with big tents, canvas tent. I got a buddy who brought his fifth wheel the day before opening day. I'm setting up camp and there's the biggest ram I've seen in five months. He's 400 yards just right across.
00:34:18
Speaker
I've seen some of the other Rams with him, but here's this monster. You got the little devil and the little angel going, shoot him and drag him under a tree for two days. I looked at him all day and saw him again the next day. I bedded him the night before opening day.
00:34:35
Speaker
and he's up at the highest little ice cream cone peak. He went to bed right there and I'm like, we got him. We'll go get him tomorrow. Look up the next day and we got snow and everything socked in. There's clouds. You can't see the mountains at all and I should have shot him before opening day.
00:34:53
Speaker
I'm joking about that. So opening day, it cleared up later that afternoon and we glassed all those mountains around us and couldn't find them again. So we woke up second day and we're cooking up some eggs and got coffee and my buddies are with me and I spotted him and he's no longer 400 yards away, he's at the top. And so we watched him for a little bit, made some breakfast burritos and we're like,
00:35:20
Speaker
I think we can hike. It might take us a couple hours to get to here and maybe it'll be a seven or eight hundred yard shot. I don't know.
Reflecting on the Ram's Significance
00:35:28
Speaker
He's got to come down because I'd seen him low a couple of days before and he's going to come down. So let's just start hiking and try to get up there. And my buddy Bray
00:35:36
Speaker
And my dad, who is 76 years old, they said they'd stay back at camp and keep spotters on them and we'd check in with them. And so we took off hiking and it took us two, three hours to get to that place where we thought we would have a shot. And you couldn't see him at all from there and we're checking in. He's still bedded up there. He hasn't moved. So it took us about five hours to get up to where my buddy Cameron made a little left
00:36:05
Speaker
and went up over some cliffs and so he's signaling that I see him right there and I don't like heights and I've spent the last five months of VR goggles trying to get used to it and I'm like screw it I'll climb it and so Cameron took an easy way and so I try to climb up this cliff with my pack and my rifle and a huge rock just starts to wobble and I'm like I can't do it.
00:36:30
Speaker
So we decide, we know where he's at. We hear he's still bedded and so we spent another hour down and up a valley on the other side and he never moved and that's what I say and it's a God thing. We were able to spot him in the morning. This is day three. No, day two. Opening day was socked in day three. We set out about nine in the morning and even the last
00:36:56
Speaker
So we took a different I'm like I think we can make her way around to this side and we'll have a shot across the valley at him. You're killing on day, this is day two, you're hunting right now or this is day three? Day two. You're on day two, okay. Yeah. So there's a little trough of snow and it's perfectly silent to hike up this trough of snow. There's a hill I can look over, see if I like it. And so we get set up and it's a pretty steep slope. And so he's still bedded there.
00:37:26
Speaker
I set up my Tricer tripod, got one leg way downhill, put my pack underneath me, and sit and watch him for a while. It's about 375 yards uphill, and he's just laying there looking over the valley. We watch him for a while and start to think, what's five hours up here? It's pretty cliffy. I don't want to be hiking down in the dark. We need this to happen.
00:37:48
Speaker
soon and I guess an elk hunter is somebody shot way off in the distance he stood up and he's just facing this looking downhill and watching for a little bit and finally he turns broadside exactly how we should set this up we should set up where he is look I've seen the video your shoes on a cliff
00:38:05
Speaker
he's on a cliff and you're shooting probably a 40 degree angle plus you're shooting uphill at this at the easily maybe more and he when i say he's on a cliff we're gonna get to what happens next but he came down like it looks to me like 100 feet maybe it could have been 100 it maybe 75 and he took a tumble
00:38:26
Speaker
It was further than I want to jump. Yeah. And I've taken a little bit. People have been like, oh, didn't you know he's going to break something? And I watched a lot of videos and they're sturdy. I've seen them fall on straight rock and not break. And I was pretty confident that he's going to take a tumble, but he's not going to break. Okay. So now here we are. He's 385 yards, right?
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, 375. 375. He has now stood up. You've been looking for this thing you've hunted all summer long. He is day two. He has stood up. He's broadside. You're set up on my tripod, which I think is bitching, on a four-ounce pan head. Just perfect. Yeah, and as stable as can be. What happens?
00:39:11
Speaker
375, I was confident this could be. I know I can make a shot at 375. Everything was perfect. The hike up there's perfect, the setup's perfect. I was planning on that I'm going to have to make a 700 yard shot on a ram in country where I'm terrified because of cliffs. I'm just waiting for him to turn.
00:39:31
Speaker
and he turns broadside facing downhill and so I took the shot and just hammered him. I got him right under his armpit, through the heart, opposite shoulder. He took one jump and came down and it's an impressive tumble. He takes a little fall and lands right where we can get to him and we start cheering and yelling. You can hear my buddy Cameron across the canyon and my dad and 76 year old dad said he could hear us screaming
00:39:59
Speaker
three miles away down at the base where we started. That was it. We got him. Was your dad able to see this from the spotting scope? Were they able to watch this whole thing transpire? Yeah. They saw him fall. Shout out to my dad and my buddy Bray. They spent five hours not looking away from their spotting scopes because we're counting on that he's going to be there when we get up there. They stayed behind their spotters all day watching for him and got to watch the shot.
00:40:25
Speaker
That is like, I don't know why I assimilate that with Arizona. Over there, I feel like having a partner you can trust to stay in the glass and not look away, not get up, not fiddle with something and actually watch that bedded deer or that bedded ram.
00:40:43
Speaker
is so critical all day and knock it out. It's nice having two guys do it, but what a cool experience having your dad come out at 76 years old. I get to have this whole thing. You have your best friends there. You've got your dad there and it just comes together on day two and you were planning on a 14 day hunt. Oh, it's the 31 day hunt. I should be hunting right now. My kids were going to be my girls. They didn't love it, but there's a chance dad wasn't going to be here for Christmas. I was going to
00:41:11
Speaker
13 days come home work for go back on three work for and yeah i was planning on being there till the very end if i needed to be in this room that you shot in the two was the biggest room you said you saw in the unit that you glass and all that scouting.
00:41:27
Speaker
in five months by far the biggest. Oh man. And I knew it the day I saw him setting up just right across the valley from me. I'm just, you know, shaking like I don't have my all in. I'm like, my buddies aren't here yet. Oh my God. Look at, there he is. That's what I wanted. And yeah, I got him. I don't know. I've been checking the hunting forums. He probably will be the biggest ram taken in Arizona this year. We'll see how that all plays out. What did he score?
00:41:56
Speaker
One growth score was 186 and I don't know what the eights was, but ends up 185 and three eights. A giant? A giant, yeah. He's amazing. 180 is like the goal, right? With sheep? Yeah. And just an old looking, got like the just warrior horns. He's got like a little bit of stuff going on top. Is he pulling off on one side?
00:42:19
Speaker
Oh, he's brumed off on both sides. He's exactly what I wanted. I'm not the guy who wants the perfect full curl with tips and he is an old warrior. We'll see because Boone and Crockett will score him here in a month or so. Game and Fish said he's 10, maybe 10 and a half. I think he may be 11 or 12. We'll get another opinion on that. I can't wait to see what Boone and Crockett scores on that, but he's exactly what I wanted. He's just an old warrior.
00:42:46
Speaker
That's awesome, dude. I'm over the moon for you. Again, you getting that tag makes us normal dudes feel like there's a chance for us to get it. It could happen for anybody, dude. You've got them out now. When you get them out, how does that work with Arizona? Do you have to bring them in, bring his horns in and show them? Do they plug in over there? How do they do that? At the sheep clinic, we take
00:43:09
Speaker
One of the coolest things with the sheep is the amount of conservation that goes into it. They gave us nasal swab kits and they tissue samples and I physically checked in at Game and Fish and she measured them, they plug them, something happened with their computer system. So I haven't got my official score sheet to send it to the Wild Sheep Foundation or
00:43:33
Speaker
Arizona desert big one society and I'm dying to get my official score sheet and we'll see when that happens but yeah checked in with them he's the biggest sheep they'd seen it at the Phoenix game and fish office this year and
00:43:47
Speaker
That's awesome. Are you going to full mount him or shoulder mount him? What are you doing with him? God, I wish I could have full mounted him. I didn't know how big he was. I knew he was big, but we were under a time crunch to get him cut up, quartered, and get down the mountain before dark because we didn't take bags and it'd be a pretty miserable hike in the dark, especially if you end up on some cliffs and have to hike back up and
00:44:14
Speaker
Pick your way out so we just told caked him for a shoulder mount. I think I'm gonna duplicate the horns and do a euro with his natural horns and do the duplicates on a shoulder mount. What a bitchin euro that'll be so so will the shoulder mount go at home and then the euro go to the dentist office or where's the euro going?
00:44:34
Speaker
I think that the Euro might go at home. I got some of my deer here. My wife lets me keep those up in my bedroom. We'll see. I just think that the Euro is so cool with those old, worn horns. I think that probably the shoulder mount will go up at the cabin.
00:44:51
Speaker
The whole family keeps our trophies up there, and we'll see what I do. Maybe I'll take that euro to the office and let patients enjoy it. Until you put your hands, my hands won't even fit barely halfway around. It's just so massive. Yeah, it's a really good sheep. It's a really good sheep, and it's everything you want in a sheep. Like I said, it's old, it's a warrior, it's groomed, it's just, man, good for you. Now that you've pretty much drawn the Mecca, what's next for Brad Briggs? You guys want a Disneyland? What's going on?
00:45:20
Speaker
I don't know, man. I do have the sheep fever now. And it just breaks your heart when you go look at, go hunt and what your odds are everywhere in the United States. So one of my buddies that was with me, Heath. So he's got a fishing lodge in Kodiak Island, the Kodiak Island Resort. And so we go black tail hunt out there and do some black bear hunting. And I don't know, I haven't fully started researching, but maybe we'll start looking at a doll sheep and how we do that next.
00:45:48
Speaker
I just had a guy on Brad Bovolton, if you listen to that, or Brad Bovolton, I'm sorry, and he just hit a dollar sheet belt last year, and he's got the bug bad. And he has a good opinion of it. And I think right now, probably the average rate is 27 grand to do that tag. And once you draw, I think you're out for four years. But the way things are going, you almost got to put him for it now and put a deposit in because you're not going to be able to get it up there for a couple of years because it's a popular thing. And
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah, man. You got to get that slam. No, I guess you've already got the mountain or the Rocky Mountain, the Rocky. You got to get the desert and then the doll and then you got to go do the stone.
Closing Thoughts and Community Engagement
00:46:26
Speaker
Are you part of the Washi Foundation? Are you part of the minus one club and all that stuff?
00:46:31
Speaker
Yeah, but Game and Fish still hasn't sent me my score sheet, so I can't send stuff to the Wild Sheep Foundation. But yeah, as soon as I got drawn, I joined everything I could just trying to get involved and figure this out. Do you have the shirt, the minus one shirt? I don't. I need to. I got to send in my score. I don't know. I've called them like three times just the day I got back. I'm excited out of my mind. I'm a new member. I got my sheep and what do I do next?
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully I'll get the, I guess you get that shirt and then you're supposed to tape it out. Yeah, you get it because it means you haven't got one yet, right? And then when you get one, you put the red tape over it, right? Yeah, you're doing it backwards. You just trawling sheep tags and killing sheep too quickly. Yeah.
00:47:17
Speaker
The other thing I didn't do is I didn't get amazing pictures. We're on a steep slope. We got 30 minutes to get them cut up and it's my buddies who just, you know, they're snapping pictures quick. But then you start seeing all the guys with guides and they have these beautiful pictures. They're laid perfect and so I didn't get amazing pictures, but they're special to me.
00:47:39
Speaker
The pictures are great, but really what's going to live with you the whole time is that experience of DIY in it, bringing your friends out and having your dad there. Pictures can't describe those emotions and that situation you just had and that experience you just had. That's something that's going to live with you forever and so awesome. It's so stoked for you. Dude, thanks for using my tripod. Dude, tripod is amazing.
00:48:05
Speaker
Thanks for being a solid Christian dude, having kids and just being out there and doing everything right, man. I'm happy for you and stoked for you. Let's get together again when you go hunt those doll sheep in a couple of years, right? Cool. I've been lucky too, so let's see what happens and talk one more time. Let's talk again, dude. All right. Talk to you soon. Cool. Thanks, man.
00:48:28
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Tricer Podcast. Do us a favor or like and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening on. Give us a follow on Instagram and Facebook at tricerusa. I'm going to check out all of our innovative gear at www.tricerusa.com. Until next time, shoot straight, have fun, and always put God first.