Time is of the essence when you’re hunting. With an app called Scout the Hunt, Branden Labrum and his team can help you zero in on your efforts and increase your scouting capacity. Through the app’s Advanced Scouting Platform, all fresh intel from the field will instantly be available for to incorporate into your scouting strategy. Looking to receive alerts and images of your preferred game when spotted? Not a problem! Along with their corresponding unit information, spotted location, time and other necessary data, all of this will be outlined on highly-detailed maps conveniently searchable by units and species.
With Scout the Hunt, you’ll know exactly where to focus your scouting. Every hunter knows that life can get in the way when trying to research and prepare effectively for your hunt. With the most up-to-date unit data ever, harness the power of DigitalGlobe, NASA and USGS with high-resolution satellite, aerial and topographic mapping and imagery. This advanced scouting platform is verified by 13 organizations and dozens of datasets. Planning your next hunt has never been this smooth and seamless!
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Discover Amazing Scout To Hunt -Branden Labrum
Coming up is Brenden Labrum with Scout to Hunt. When you become a member of Scout to Hunt, it will tell you the type of game, the quality of game, in unit 501.Pick a game management unit someplace in the West. They’re coming in a lot of states in the west and they put people literally on the ground. Yes, they get people setting trail cameras. If you’re hunting elk in 501, then you’re going to see what kind of elk are coming into that waterhole, coming into that field, that park. With that, you’re going to gain confidence. It’s going to save you time. Brenden Labrum and his crew had developed a great app called Scout to Hunt. You’re going to find it informative.
I’m excited to have Brenden Labrum. Who is Brenden Labrum? He’s Scout to Hunt. What’s that all about? A good friend of mine, Sam Ayres said, “You need to get this guy on the show.” Sam, if you don’t know has Living Country in the City podcast. He’s a country boy deep in the heart of LA. Sam, a shout-out to you. Brenden, let’s talk about Scout to Hunt and how that can be applicable to guys and gals who are living in the Midwest or whitetail hunters And they want to come out west. What’s your tool going to do for them?
Thanks for having me, Bruce. I appreciate it. In a nutshell, Scout to Hunt is a new research tool for big game in the west, were hunters from distance can’t get boots on the ground as much as they want or they have time constraints or financial constraints. They’re able to optimize their research before there you go scouting if they can, or before the hunt in order to help them know where to put their draws and after they get tagged, where do they focus their scouting efforts. The way they are able to do this is with the hard data, the hard proof that we provide them or that they are able to gather through our platform, which are trail camera images. They’re able to see actual game and where they are being spotted at and where they’re able to focus their efforts from there.
I live in Wisconsin. I’ve always wanted to hunt elk. I got a couple of bucks and I got a couple of buddies and we are going to come elk hunting in Colorado. How can your resource help me specifically where I should put in for tag? There are a lot of companies out there saying, “Here’s the odd, here’s this, here’s that,” and they all do a great job of it. But now I’m sitting here saying, “I want to hunt in Colorado and I want to take a 300-bull.” Walk me through how Scout to Hunt can help me find out where I need to hunt. Forget about hunting, let’s start off first, what units, the game management units, would be applicable to my goal of getting a 300 bull?
The premise that we are an intensive system. We’re not quite into the Colorado yet. At the moment our coverage consists of Utah, eastern Nevada, and northern Arizona but we do hope we’ll have Colorado. If you’re looking to see where to apply your scouting efforts and what units to focus on, you’re able to log in as a member to our platform and you’re able to explore this map, we have these high resolution, highly detailed topographic satellite maps to help you with your planning as well. All across these maps are all locations that game had been spotted, a comprehensive private network of trail cameras.
You’re able to identify with the unit boundaries that we have on the maps, which units are holding the best game. If you’re looking to see where you should put in for, you can go ahead and spend your time researching and going through these locations and these images and seeing for yourself. It’s not just numbers, it’s not hearsay, it’s actual hard proof, hard data that you’re seeing for yourself. That unit is holding that particular type of game. if you’re looking for that 300 and you’re searching through these units and you find a few images of game that are meeting your criteria, then you’ll know which units to focus on from there and narrow your search. You’re using your limited time very efficiently.
If I understand you’re going to show me high resolution pictures of a 300 bull on the ground.
If that unit is holding a 300 bull and you see that picture of it and you know that bull is in that unit and that area.
Your unit research, even before you start scouting is optimized so you know where to focus. Share on XWho does that? Are you using trail cameras? You have guys spending weekends? How do you get that hard data?
The backbone of Scout to Hunt is our field team, our field team experts. They have decades and decades of experience of guiding and hunting behind them. They’re the ones who are out running every day, 24/7 practically, placing trail cameras, rotating trail cameras according to optimal game locations and game environments. If an area isn’t holding any game or nothing’s popping up, they’ll move them accordingly. They are the ones who are out there, placing the cameras and then retrieving the data and sorting them as well.
To give you an idea of how much work and how much volume that they’re dealing with based on the expansive coverage, they’re sorting through about 50,000 images per day on average. It gives you a perspective of how much coverage, how many locations there are out there. They’re sorting through that many images which narrows down to about 3,000 plus images, the quality of the images is very informative and they get uploaded to the platform that you would be able to see when you log in as a member.
If you get a hundred images, that’s a lot to scroll through, it takes a while. I can’t conceive 3000 high quality images. Right now the bulls will be in velvet. You want to see a balanced herd. Just like in whitetail, you don’t want to see all does, you want to see some bucks thrown in there. Can you give the buck-to-doe ratio or a bull-to-cow ratio off your stuff?
I don’t have those numbers on me. They’re focused on the does and the bucks. Obviously, out here it’s mule deer, and then the bulls, the elk. They do have a very balanced ratio. What I’ve seen when I go into the platform and check out some of the locations, I don’t have an exact number on that ratio.
That’s one thing that you do want to do, twenty to 100 probably throughout Colorado and some of the places that have a lot of private land, it can be higher than that. I know a couple of areas. There are as many bulls as there are cows and they’re all broken up. There are a couple of units in Colorado, they’re busted, they’re busted because they’re frustrated. There are guys that are fighting all the time. The competition is fierce for that doe in estrus, that’s for sure. Let’s take a little journey and we’re going to have Brenden walked through his website, Scout to Hunt.
Our website, that’s ScoutToHunt.com and it’s straightforward. We are planning on getting more information. The site is going to be into the platform, what we call the advanced scouting platform. What we’re trying to accomplish with this, the bulk of Scout to Hunt is providing you that unit information. Your unit research, even before you start scouting is optimized so you know where to focus. That’s where the bulk of that is, those images and the locations and the volume of locations that you’re able to explore and analyze.
We’ve also been fortunate enough to utilize leading edge technology in the site, where we have super high resolution maps. If you’re an avid hunter, you know that Google maps is a no-brainer, and this will blow you away with that high resolution you have on our satellite imagery, how close you can get the detail you can acquire from their terrain. You’re not only getting information of game movements and what units are holding, but you’re also familiarizing yourself with the terrain. We provide images of that, we provide topographic maps, 24K maps. You’re able to figure out not only where to focus, but how that terrain is that you’re prepared for that when you actually do some of that.
Do you use drones at all?
We are planning on using those for terrain familiarization. That’s interesting that you brought that up, is we are working on that. For anybody who is a member and if you aren’t a member, you can use the free trial to dig in and see what it’s like. On the website, there’s typically a header image for each location so you can get an idea of what the terrain looks like, where the game is being spotted, where that location is. What we want to do with that as well as get drone footage of the terrain. Obviously it’s not for game or anything like that, but you can get a good look at what that terrain is like a before you head out there. That drone footage is going to be helpful with that.
Most if not all states, you cannot use drones for hunting, but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about scouting either in the wintertime looking to get a jump on where the heck the sheds are going to be or the bucks are up. In the right area, with the drone equipment they have today, you can really cover a lot of land. You can read the top of map, you can do the Google Earth thing, but unless you get on the ground, you never know what you’re facing because you could be going into a box canyon and you just didn’t see it. Your thoughts on that?
With the high resolution maps that we provide, there are a lot of information you can get, but it’s always best to actually see it from a real perspective and not just aerial imagery or satellite. With that drone coverage of the terrain, you’ll be able to get that real perspective of what the area looks like and you can utilize that to plan your route plan. Where you want to go star once you get boots on the ground, what are good optimal locations to glass and to scout and prepare from there.
I will give a shout-out for GoHUNT where I wrote a lot of profiles for them. Great guys and gals over there. With the research that they have, it’s dated, unless you update every single year and that’s just the way it is. How are you going to update your deer management unit for bulls and for bucks?
That’s the real idea that we’re focusing on with Scout to Hunt is providing up to date data, current data, intel as we call it, to base your planning and scouting on. That comes from the data that our network of trail cameras catches. Those are constantly being recovered, and that’s a year round thing. There are so many applications for this, whether you’re doing your research before you put it for draws, whether you already have tags, whether it’s postseason and you’re getting prepared for next year. It’s a year round stream of current data. you are able to monitor these locations, monitor horn growth year round, shed. those cameras are constantly being recorded. The data that they capture is being recovered, sorted, uploaded to the platform and you have access to that. That’s the major portion of having updated information. It’s constantly streaming in the platform so you can better plan for your next time for your scouting.
How do you decide which game management units to do the research in? You can’t do them all. Colorado is over 200. I don’t know in Utah how many game management units? That’s a lot of boots on the ground. That’s a lot of man hours.
It is a very large undertaking for sure. right now with the current average we have, we have about 158 units that we’re gathering that users were able to gather information. Going back to our field team who are very, very experienced. They know what they’re doing. When it comes to researching units and placing cameras in particular units, it’s all based on whether or not they’re holding game, if they’re providing any value to the user. if the unit is not holding much, not showing much, then we probably wouldn’t focus on it. We focus on whatever area is going to provide value for the user.
Here’s a tool that you use 365 days a year that’s going to be fresh, as often as they refresh it. They have their own app. It’s something that no matter where you are, you can always tune into, “I wonder what’s going on here.” Is that pretty much it?
Exactly. What’s new about it and what’s cool and we’re excited about it is because of that. Depending on the locations, that’s usually about a week or two weeks out from having that information updated into the platform. Your typical trail camera time period, whether you have your own or not, you have an idea that you leave it out for a period of time and that’s how it is, but on a mass scale that you’re able to analyze beforehand before you’re scouting and get that unit research.
For people that are interested, go to ScoutToHunt.com. You get a free trial membership. What is the membership cost?
We have two subscriptions. The basic is called the spotter, and the premium that we have currently is called the tracker. Anybody who signs up were able to get the tracker subscription or the premium for the basic price, which is $9.99 a month. After twelve months or a year, you can pay monthly or you can pay it off for the year, only $99 upfront. With that you actually get two months free. There’s a benefit for going through a year. We also know there’re financial constraints, so we’re able to allow that to be paid on a monthly basis throughout the whole year.
What’s your goal for the next eighteen months for your subscribers? How many subscribers are you looking for?
It’s not necessarily a goal how many subscribers we want. We’re open to have whatever wants to use it, use it, because we know how valuable it is. It’s not based on the quantity that we want or a certain amount that we want. We know from personal experience that it can be tough to get boots on the ground when you need to. It’s unfortunate when you’re not 100% confident where to put in for draws with during the research. From personal experience, we produced this tool for you to gain that competence and efficiently use your time in that process.
For the folks in Wisconsin or any place in the Midwest and figuring out about the elk hunt in elk county, a specifically in Utah, Northern Arizona and Nevada, is that correct?
Exactly. Utah, eastern Nevada and in northern Arizona are what we’re currently at and we’re in the process of expanding as well.
Let’s talk about your hunting. Brenden’s hunting and how you get into this whole business.
This might be a shock to you, this is the reason why I’m out on the field team is I don’t have a whole lot experience hunting on my own. I’m more of a general outdoors guy. I love backpacking. I’m from Idaho. I don’t know if I stated that earlier, it’s in my blood. The hunting experience actually comes from the partners in the company. They’re the masterminds of this. We’ve been doing it for a few years now, big avid hunters in Utah and in the West in general. Hunting experience on my end is limited so I can’t answer that question for you.
Let’s talk about the people that started this, the genesis of Scout to Hunt. Where did that come from?
It spawned from that situation that we’ve identified where one of the owners, he’s based out of Utah. He wanted to gain that confidence. When he wants to hunt, he has to get enough information that he wants to, to be fully confident that he was going in the right areas. Because number one, the distance and two, the limited time to be able to go that far and acquire that information and research. When you went to that hunt, he ended up being successful. He was able to get a decent sized buck
I don’t remember the points, but what bothered him about it is he knew that he could have done a lot better after that hunt, if he had more time or more resources for it, he would’ve been a lot more satisfied with that particular hunt. That’s where the process of thinking started coming through is I wonder if there’s a tool that can be provided where we can gather the research we need for long distance constraints or time constraints and overcome those obstacles. When I actually go out and do boots on the ground, I’m fully prepared and confident in the fact that I’m in the right direction.
Here in Colorado, we have a lot of data, all the aspects of where the elk are hanging and where the mule deer are hanging. The mule deer are a little bit tougher because typically they’re herd animal and they’re typically aren’t seen with a big buck. If you think about that, if you think about the ability to have somebody sitting up on a ridge with a spotting scope, setting up trail cameras, I love the idea because that would save a lot of time. The thing is there’s so much land out here, public land.
That’s the other crux because you could have the wonderful setup and I’m sure you tapped into a lot of people. You just have a sweet setup you’ve hunted before, you know where the elk are and then somebody comes in and blows it up and you’re screwed. You literally are because your whole hunt was based on it. You got secondary places and stuff like that, but they hold your main base and the main drainage. It just gets blown up and that hurts, but that’s public land hunting, unless you get ten miles away, five miles away from the trail head, then it’s not so bad. How can Scout to Hunt help that not happen or is it there’s no way?
When it comes to public land hunting, that’s the trade off that you deal with. What’s cool about the research that you can equip yourself with before you go out is going back to the secondary plans and whatnot. You’re able to narrow those down. You do have those available in your arsenal. From the experience that our field team has and other hunters that we’ve talked to, going into those situations, it’s always 100% better when you’re fully competent of what you’re doing. You’re in the right area and you’re headed towards that buck or your goal, wherever it is, whatever type of game you’re searching for, knowing that you’re heading in the right direction because you prepared yourself with current data and you did all the planning for it, that’s what will ultimately help you overcome some of those situations. Because you’re putting yourself in a lead, if that makes sense.
There are plenty of land there. Can you get in there? Yes, but you can’t take it deep in there. You can’t take an ATV in there and you can’t take a bike in there. You have to walk in and that’s what I like because I’ve got a buffer three miles around it that people have to walk in to get in. I like that but I know that there could possibly be some other people there. Given that case, I get to spot two, to spot three, but I hate breaking camp.
Breaking camp, that’s the thing. I’m wondering how this tool could help. You get a backup plan and you say, “If this is gone, I need to go over here,” because we are restricted in some situations. You get game management unit, 501, and that’s all you can hunt, whatever’s going to happen in that unit. Sometimes that makes life interesting and things change dramatically. It’s all the flux and the change that I’m trying to think of, “How can Scout to Hunt help me weather those storms?”
In your personal application, how would you think that would benefit you personally? What’s your strategy?
The further away you get from people and noises, the better hunting can happen. Share on XNumber one, I know my number one spot, my A spot. I know what three and a half, four miles, five miles away from any trail head or, any road. That’s the type of places I’d look because I don’t want ATVs, mountain bikes, Jeeps or whatever. I’ve learned through the years, the further away you get from people and noises, the better hunting can happen. You can stay and just hunt the fringes and work them up to either shoot one or you don’t get one. I was talking to a guy the other day. We’re talking about the hunt.
I said, “I’ll be in the elk.” I can guarantee him I’ll be in the elk. I can tell you within a square mile where the elk should be. Nothing else has changed. I’m thinking Scout to Hunt. I got that. I’m in 501. I go, “I know the space. Double dog basin. I know there’s elk in there. I know people can’t ride their ATVs up there. They have to walk. A lot of people don’t want to walk out at night, especially if they’re not on a trail. They don’t want to do it. It can be very painful. You have to go slow and that’s the way it is. Because of that, that keeps a lot of people out or they’ll leave way too early.
The sun doesn’t go on at 6:30 or 6:00 and all of a sudden 5:00, “We got to get out of here.” Fine, leave and you’ll never mix up the elk. You won’t put a lot of pressure on them that way. Thinking about Scout to Hunt, answering questions, I see it as, “I got double dog basin and then I’m going to go five, maybe ten miles away, triple key creek. If they’re not in there, I might get one more thing. Place fox head.” I got three places within twenty miles, 30 miles of each other that had the aspects that I want. No road. No ATVs, no jeeps. I drive a big Ford F-150 and I take that as far as I can go and then I shuttered down, set up my camp, and that’s where it sits to operate it to get out.
I think possibly Scout to Hunt, I’m thinking just your app. if you had an app, you go, “Location one,” then you go, “Within that confines, five, ten, fifteen, even 30 miles, those are too far to go. There are places, a lot of game management unit you can go 30 miles.” Then you set up the criteria that you type in, “I want to be three to five miles from any trail head, from any road access. Then I need terrain that I can manage.”Especially Colorado, some of the stuff, I’ve sheep hunted and stuff like that, it’ll kick your butt. It can kill you too. That’s the other part. Elk hunting isn’t like sheep hunting. If you get an elk or when do you get your elk, how the heck do you get him out? You break them down into parts.
You start throwing all this real time factors into your equation, into your algorithm. You throw it in there and say, “Here’s how we can do a game plan. I call it Elk Plan 101. I charge people for it.” Not myself, I’m speaking rhetorically here, but with Scout the Hunt, I would build game plans for them because you get boots on the ground. You’ve got smart people. they know their places as well as I know my place. When you think about that, you could build an algorithm, takes all the data, throws it in, you just answer ten questions, then you get your hunt plan. That’s my two cents sitting here with a breadth of knowledge.
It’s a little different than what we have and what Scout to Hunt is used for, how hunters can apply that, but that was an interesting idea. That maybe some features that could be included down the road. The main thing with Scout to Hunt is it helps you prepare for that planning. The best thing of hunting is doing and planning and figuring that out and going through the hard work to make that happen. That’s where the satisfaction comes from, but sometimes we need a little more data to get those plans in place. That’s where Scout to Hunt comes in as a tool, provide hard data so you can start establishing a game plan from there and helping you plan for boots on the ground. You did highlight a point there where you have your preferred locations, that’s what you typically want to look for. We all know that things change, they can always change. A year later it could be a whole different situation, different environment.
You might have your preferred locations, but without having solid hard data, you might not be going into a situation that you’ll recognize because the environment has changed. As you’re monitoring some of these units throughout the year, you’re able to keep track of the weather and the trends. You keep track of horn growth and other things so you can keep an eye on those preferred locations and determine whether or not you want to go to another unit that might be holding better game from what you’re analyzing or continue to go to the unit or area that you’ve relied on, because it’s still showing some positive information. It’s still broad, it’s still ambiguous, but it’s up to date. That’s why it helps with the unit information, as you’re able to base your planning and find your scouting on current information rather than information that might not be relevant because it’s changed over the year.
The elk season’s coming up quick here in Colorado. I welcome any of you guys and gals to hunt the West, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada. It’s tough to get into as far as I know. I’ve been a hunter in that. Utah is a great state, great bulls and northern Arizona, there are some huge bulls. My last name is Hutchinson and there’s a place in northern Arizona called Hutch Mountain. That’s a great place, but it’s tough to draw tags. If you want to hunt a premium area, you got to apply. If we don’t apply, I can guarantee you 100% you will never draw.
If you apply, then you have the opportunity because I know everybody out there loves to hunt whitetails, but if you have a bull twenty yards from you screaming his head off and it’s the perfect setting in the Rockies. There’s nothing like it. I wish all my friends out here in Whitetail Rendezvous land could experience that. It’s a thrill of a lifetime. You can have bulls within twenty yards and you can’t shoot him because of the cover and the terrain and a gazillion different reasons, you can’t shoot them, but it’s still fun from my standpoint. Be up close and personal with a herd of elk and have them screaming. There’s nothing like it. Your thoughts?
This is mainly focused on whitetails. There are those barriers, the distance, time, and the finances that go into preparing for a hunt that’s two, three states away. With Scout to Hunt, you’ll be able to overcome that barrier at least to a point where you know where to focus your limited resources. You’re headed in the right direction from the beginning and you have that competence again, that hard data. You can see and you know for sure that you are headed in the right direction and that might be a big help for those who do plan to go in the west and don’t have the chance because they don’t have that confidence. Scout to Hunt have will definitely help you gain that.
Thank you, Brenden Labrum from Scout to Hunt for being our guest on the show and sharing some interesting tips and tools and techniques that you can use technology to get yourself on the ground with their application. Brenden, thanks so much.
Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate it.