Evan Koster has guided archery elk hunts in Colorado's Flat Tops for over a decade. This conversation covers everything that actually matters going into an archery elk season — and plenty of what hunters think matters that doesn't. Colorado is in a historic drought, and Evan breaks down what that means for where elk will be in September — it's not about elevation, it's about feed quality, and aspens are the answer. From there we get into how to search unknown country efficiently, why elevati...

We explain suppressors for the hunting use cases, from basic concepts to advanced. Most hunters obsess over decibels and a do-it-all can they move between rifles. This conversation makes the case that they've got it backwards — that length is the real king of a hunting suppressor, that the published sound numbers are mostly unreliable, and that a suppressor belongs to one rifle. We get into the engineering, the failure modes, and where this fast-moving market is actually headed. --- FOLLOW CL...

You almost always have a rock-solid rear rest on your body — and most hunters never use it. Cliff sits down with Mike from Tricer to break it down. This one gets into the weeds on glassing tripods vs. shooting tripods, stabilized binos vs. tripod-mounted glass, reading bullet trace, and the simple rear-rest tricks (a puffy jacket, your pack, even your bino harness) that turn a wobbly hold into a locked-in shot. In this episode: Why a tripod forces systematic glassing — and why stabilized bi...

Brian Gilroy runs Wildlife Partners, the largest exotic animal breeding operation in North America and a Cape buffalo herd that didn't exist in private hands a decade ago. He's also hunted Dall sheep in remote Alaska, muskox on Nunivak Island, and elk in New Mexico. This episode is a reality check on how the hunting industry actually works and why the free-range vs. high-fence moral war is mostly mythology from Brian's perspective. Texas is now on South Africa's radar as a direct competitor....

A 36-season Colorado wilderness outfitter, Scott Limmer, doesn't sugarcoat it: the new 50%-random draw is about to blow up point inflation and gut the predictability that made Colorado elk hunting plannable. We get into that, the big-bull reality most hunters won't admit, and a stack of Africa stories you won't hear anywhere else. In this episode: Why the 2028 draw overhaul tripled the exact point inflation it was meant to fix The hard truth about how giant public-land bulls actually get kil...

AG makes the most expensive and strongest flip-flops on earth. Sounds insane, but I like his business. This is a conversation about authentic materials, the economics of making something real, why almost everything in your life is fake, and what happens when an environmental group comes after you with a campaign. AG is the founder of Toehold, a Las Vegas-based company that sources elephant, hippo, crocodile, shark, and zebra hides — old-world vegetable-tanned leather, made in America, by han...

A decade-plus of guiding off horses and mules, distilled into a Q&A with Vince who is going on his first horseback elk hunt. Cliff doesn't sugarcoat it: horses are always a cost, sometimes a massive advantage, and never the shortcut people think they are. In this episode: Why packing horses is something you do after you have horse experience — not how you get into itBuying and culling stock: why disposition beats conformation every timeThe "herd effect" — using seasoned ...

Brian Poor, a former Marine scout sniper and SWAT instructor who now teaches Western hunters through Gunwerks sat down with me to break down what actually matters when an animal gives you an opportunity at distance. In this episode: Why truing your ballistics is the #1 thing most long-range hunters skip — and why a half-minute error means you miss half the time at 800 yardsWhy prone is overrated in the fieldLoading the bipod, cant vs. pan, and the rear-rest mistake that sends 4 of 5 shots hig...

Joel Turner spent 11 years as a SWAT sniper instructor before becoming one of the most well known instructors in the hunting world. His take on why hunters miss is unlike anything you've heard — and it applies equally to archery and rifle. We start with how bullets actually kill. From there we get into the pre-ignition flinch... why there's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system, what open loop vs. closed loop trigger press actually means, and why the fix isn'...

Colorado's Parks and Wildlife Commission now has zero experienced big game hunters on it. The chair is a former Humane Society attorney who spent his career suing game agencies. Six of ten commissioners voted to impose a commercial fur ban that their own agency and director recommended against — in writing — with five expert witnesses and a hundred years of combined expertise. Dan Gates was in every one of those meetings. Dan Gates runs Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management and has ...