Episode # 264 with Jay Scott of Jay Scott Outdoors – Outstanding Outfitter

September 16, 2016

WR 264 | Jay Scott Outdoors

How does one determine if an outfitter is outstanding? Jay Scott of Scottsdale, Arizona knows how. Jay began his professional hunting guide career back in the late 1990’s. Initially intent on getting his guide’s license for extending his seasons and going on more quality hunts, Jay soon gained valuable experience that had helped him become a more successful hunter. Throughout twenty years of guiding, Jay has always made it a point to maintain good communication with his clients, to scout out the areas extensively, and to learn all the tricks and trades of his quarry. Jay’s clients have been able to take some unbelievable trophies, including multiple record book elk, bighorn sheep, Coues deer, and Gould’s turkey.

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Jay Scott joins us now from Jay Scott Outdoors. He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s been a professional hunting and fishing guide in the State of Arizona for over fifteen years and has guided for many impressive trophies. Jay is an avid hunter and has harvested many trophies across the west, which includes several animals that make the Pope & Young and Boone and Crockett record books. Jay spends more than 120 days in the field guiding and hunting across the United States. Jay is currently a Field Editor for Western Hunter Magazine and Hunting Editor for Elk Hunting Magazine.

Listen to the podcast here:

Outstanding Outfitter With Jay Scott Outdoors

We’re excited, pleased and beyond measure to have Jay Scott Outdoors on the show with us now. Jay is in the outfitting business, he’s a passionate fisherman and he’s pretty good hunter, especially when it comes to critters out in the Rocky Mountains. Jay, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Bruce. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Jay, let’s just start right off. Jay Scott Outdoors is with Colburn and Scott Outfitters. Why don’t we just start out and share with our listeners who basically comes from the West are whitetail hunters and they dream about coming out to the Rockies from Arizona all the way through British Columbia and hunting big game. Why don’t you tell us about your outfitting business?

I own and operate Colburn and Scott Outfitters. We have a website, ColburnAndScottOutfitters.com. We are based here in Arizona. We hunt mainly big game from elk to bighorn sheep to Coues deer to mule deer to Gould’s Turkey. Most big game animals that we have here in Arizona, I’ve hunted and we do Gould’s Turkey hunts in Mexico and Coues deer hunts in Mexico. This will be my 17th year of going to Mexico and taking hunters down there in Sonora for the Coues deer, the distant cousin of your beloved whitetails. I like to hunt myself, I like to guide and I really enjoy what I do.

Jay, do you hunt Coues deer with a bow and arrow, with rifles, muzzle loaders? What kind of weapons do you use when you’re hunting Coues deer?

I’m one of these guys. I think that turkey’s made to be shot with a shotgun. I think it’s a perfect animal to shoot with a shotgun as well as I think a Coues deer is a perfect animal for a spot and stalk-style hunt with a rifle. We have had hunters that had been very successful shooting very nice bucks with a bow, but it’s usually big open country, glassing across big canyons using big optics, tripods, spotting these animals at great distances and then moving in, trying to get in position and get a shot with a rifle. I don’t spend a lot of time myself hunting them what a bow. I spend way more time and have way more experience rifle hunting them in big open country, thick country. Open-thick, it’s a combination of both.

Let’s talk about the whitetail hunting, wood lots hunting in the 80 or 120 acres in the farmland of Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and even the Sand Hills of Kansas. How would that transfer to a Coues deer hunt?

Bruce, most of the country on our leases that we have down in Sonora, Mexico, we don’t even look at the property unless it has 10,000 acres. I’m a big fan of Bill Winke over at Midwest Whitetail. He’s a great friend of mine and we’ve spent a lot of time together. I watched some of his shows and the content there. It’s a totally different ballgame in the fact that we are looking at big pieces of country, whereas different parts of the country and certainly the Midwest sometimes it’s smaller clumps of property. Keep in mind deer densities and such are totally different. The topography a lot of times is a lot flatter in the Midwest where out here, maybe a lot of mountains and stuff. It’s just totally different in the fact that the countries in my mind are much, much bigger, it’s much more vast but we have a lot smaller per acre deer numbers than you guys would have back in the Midwest. A lot of the same tactics and principles apply when you hunt Coues deer and hunt some of the different animals out West, glassing, spot and stalk, and trying to find your pinch points and your ambush places. There are a lot of parallels.

WR 264 | Jay Scott Outdoors

Jay Scott Outdoors: A Coues deer is a perfect animal for a spot and stalk-style hunt with a rifle.

Out in your country, I’ve have actually busted some Coues deer. What I’ve found, they like pockets very similar to our whitetails where they got 80 acres, but you’re going to find them bed in one area, feeding in a different area, and then watering at a different area. Is that similar to the Coues deer?

Coues deer actually are very habitual and that they usually, other than the rut period of time, they don’t live much further than half a mile from where they were born. They very rarely go outside that circle in any one direction. They’re very home-bodied animal and live in a tight range. For us, I consider a half a mile radius a pretty tight range where you might have a 40-acre plot and the deer never leaves that. Compared to mule deer and compared to elk, certainly the Coues deer have a much tighter range and that’s one of the tactics we use in trying to find a buck. Once you find him in a period that’s not during the rut, you have a pretty good chance that you can go back on that point, that glassing knob, and pick out that buck with enough time. They could be laying right there for five days in a row and you never see them because they don’t get up during the day. They don’t move very much or they’re behind brush. Certainly, one of the hardest things to do is find them. Once you do find them, then you know that that’s probably in their core area. You’ve got a pretty good chance that if you sit there long enough, you’re going to be able to see him again.

Everyone, when that day comes, you head west to the southwest. That’s really important because from what I understand about hunting Coues deer, it’s glassing and glassing and trying to find a100-pound animal in dense cover.

They are definitely small in size and stature. What’s interesting, I hunted in Kansas for a Midwest whitetail years ago with a friend of mine, Jeremy Gugelmeyer with Sagebrush Hunts in the West part of Kansas in the Sand Hills. It’s a very similar type of hunting. It’s just the mountains were smaller in Kansas, more rolly, but we would get up on a ridge or a high point, glass across, and it was much more open where the Coues deer are in oaks and teal and mesquite and even up into the pines in some country. They are small in size. They are hard to spot at sometimes, and a good optics and definitely a tripod is very necessary for finding those deer.

Let’s go back to that Kansas spot and stalk hunt and try to relate lessons learned from the Coues deer hunting and how you are successful hunting the whitetails out in Kansas.

I always say that if you hunt Coues deer routinely, you can pretty much go and hunt any animal in the world. I have hunted in a lot of different places and I found that to be true. I think the ability to look around and glass an open country is a tool that I took to Kansas where I’m used to looking long, long distances and we did a lot of glassing on that Kansas hunt. We were able to see a lot of deer. I think most of the people that come from the Midwest or back East, they can’t believe how big and vast and open our country is. I always say on any hunt that you’re going to go on, if you have the ability to look with your eyes, I would look with your eyes first before you proceed. A lot of times people get impatient and just walkthrough a country without really glassing it out first. I would say being a Coues deer hunter, hunting in Southwestern Kansas, we definitely glassed before we moved. You cover enough country into the next valley, cross up over the next rise and glass, the next depression and valley and then just keep moving throughout the day.

Did you harvest a buck when you were in Kansas?

I was fortunate to harvest a really nice buck. He’s actually hanging here on my wall above where I’m sitting where I do my podcast. He’s a nice buck. He was right at 159 and a half inches and is a beautiful representation of a deer. He’s up here on the wall next to a bunch of Coues deer and mule deer and I’m very proud of them.

If you hunt Coues deer routinely, you can pretty much go and hunt any animal in the world. Share on X

That’s great. Thanks for sharing with that. Everyone, there are transferable skill sets when you’re thinking about hunting in the West. I’m going to ask Jay now about elk hunting, calling elk, and how that is similar to calling and rattling in whitetail deer.

I love to call, whether it’s turkeys or elk. I don’t do a lot of calling for deer, but I do know people that do for Coues deer. I would say some of the similarities that I see, the parallels are for one, I think you have to sound authentic. I think if you make the wrong sounds at the wrong time, the Midwest deer and the Whitetails are very wary. You cannot make noises that are human-influenced. They have to sound good. If you sound authentic, elk hunting, if you make good cow sounds, good bugling, authentic sounds, you’re going to do a lot better than if you don’t practice. It will come out less throat calling your mouth and I think you know what it sounds like. It just doesn’t get it done much like if you were to rattle or if you were to grunt with a grunt tube that’s much too loud or much too deep or doesn’t even sound like a whitetail deer.Those animals are going to be able to pick that out and realize that it’s not normal.

When I first came out west in the late ‘702, we hunted with an outfitter and he said, “You guys from Wisconsin hunt hard and understand that animals can be in a small amount of cover, yet you figure out the terrain and you can zero in on that without ever being here before.” Do you find that true with the people that you guide?

As far as for the elk?

Yes.

I think overall the people that I guide, I think they’re overwhelmed of the country in general, but I would agree. I’ve hunted with a lot of guys from Wisconsin and a lot of guys from the Midwest and they tend to be very good hunters and I think the reason they are is they’re very aware of their surroundings, because they’re used to hunting those wary whitetails. They’re used to a planning every little approach. I find the Midwest hunters and the guys that focus on hunting whitetails very good because in order to be successful on those deer that are very wary, they have to really plan out their steps and their strategies when they go after say an elk.

Jay, we talked about a company named goHUNT. Let’s share with the listeners why that might be a go-to place to get some information about hunting the West.

goHUNT Insider, I’m fortunate to have them be a sponsor of my podcast, the Jay Scott Outdoors Podcast. Lorenzo and Chris Porter and Brady and Trail Kreitzer, first and foremost, those guys are friends of mine. Those guys live in the West. Those guys are western hunters and very, very avid hunters. They’re very keen on the draw of the different states and the different species that are available. They know the tag structures, they know the different game and the fish departments, and they’ve got a really cool website, goHUNT.com/Insider. A portion of that as a member only website that you can go and get harvest statistics and draw statistics. You can look at each unit. It’s on the computer, so you can go on mobile and you can pull up the different units. You can pull up the maps, you can hit a button and it will show you the nearest area, services like hotels and gas stations and food and restaurants and what have you.

The newest filtering 2.0 part of goHUNT Insider is pretty amazing with all the harvest statistics. You just type in mule deer, you type in, “I want 170 plus bucks,” and it will give you the different states and the different units in which those deer will exist. You say you want 200-inch bucks or 400-inch bulls or 350-inch bulls or you say, “I want an over the counter hunt where I have a chance to shoot a 170-inch mule deer with my bow,” it can filter through the states and tell you which units that you could be looking for and gives you the odds and the harvest statistics and such. It’s a great resource for sure.

Everyone, that’s goHUNT.com. Check it out and like Jay said, there’s paid section within the Insider, but it’s tremendous information. If you’re thinking about hunting in the West at all, try out goHUNT.com and you’re not going to be disappointed at all.

Every day, they post twice a day. It’s a news site so anything to do with Western hunting and hunting in general. They cover all the different news, if there’s anything breaking and that’s on the free part portion of the site and there are a lot of great articles and what have you, great photos, and it’s just a great resource. Then they have the Insider section which gets more in depth in drawing each state and where to put in, what animals to apply for, and such. It’s a really good resource.

WR 264 | Jay Scott Outdoors
Jay Scott Outdoors: A lot of times people get impatient and just walkthrough a country without really glassing it out first.

Jay, let’s talk about your podcast for a little bit and share with everyone why it might be a good resource in and of itself for a trip out West.

What I like to do is try and cover topics that are going to be helpful for people that are going to becoming and hunting in the West. It’s the Jay Scott Outdoors Western Big Game Hunting and Fishing Podcast. It’s a long title, but I want it to be clear that it’s Western big game hunting and fishing as well. I try and have the most renowned experts in their own field for each animal each state. We usually talk for an hour, sometimes a little longer, and we just cover all strategies, tips and tactics to hunting elk, hunting mule deer, hunting big horn sheep, digiscoping, units to apply for, and all the things that a Western hunter needs to face and we’ll run into when they want to come out West.

A couple of guys talked to me last year, I was hunting at Buffalo County in Wisconsin. They said, “Bruce, what do we need to do to be in shape for coming out West so we can handle a five-day, ten-day elk hunt or Coues deer hunt?”

I think a lot of the places you’re going to hunt out west are going to have elevation. It’s very rare to hunt under 5,000-foot of elevation and on up to as high up 12,000 to 13,000-foot elevation. I think the main thing is depending on the type of hunter you’re going to do, specifically for Arizona, you have to be able to walk long distances. Arizona’s terrain is not certainly as vertical or steep let’s say Utah or Colorado or Wyoming, Montana, but we do have to cover a lot of country. I think in order to get in shape, a stair master, if you have any types of hills or mountains around your house, I would recommend putting on your backpack, putting some jugs of water in your backpack, putting fifteen, twenty, 30 pounds in your backpack. Certainly over time, you might have to just start with the backpack or just start walking up those hills, then graduate as the season gets closer and your training gets more in depth of applying more weight in your backpack, because most western hunts you’re going to be out all day, if not overnight. Carrying a backpack is mandatory in order to have water and food and you’re spotting scope and your tripod and all your necessary gear to spot your game. Wear good boots, get your feet in shape, and two, three, four months ahead of your hunt, cover as much ground as you can and try and get your heart rate up as high as you can within your comfort zone.

When people call you and say, “Jay, I want to gather 300-class bull with my bow. I’ve been hunting whitetails for ten years, what do I really need to do to get myself ready to pull back that bow and let that arrow go?”

I think as far as field judging, there are a lot of great resources out there. I actually did some articles for goHUNT.com. I have some great field judging articles and video. I have a YouTube channel, Jay Scott Outdoors is my YouTube channel, and there’s a lot of great field judging. I think there are 36 different posts on my blog, JayScottOutdoors.com. You basically have to get your eyes set on what you want and for a bull to be 350 inches, the bull has a lot of things going forward. It’s got to have long points, long beam, fairly heavy, and decent width. The most important thing in field judging elk is point length. You have to have long points in order to have the high scoring bull. A 300-inch bull is very achievable in a lot of Western States. A 300-inch bull is not necessarily going to have very long points. You probably want to look for at least 15 inch points on and you want to have a main beam that’s 50 inches long, a spread on a bull elk, 35 inches, 36 inches minimum. Point length in a bull elk score is key. Main beam is second, mass is number three, and spread is the very last component of score. Point length is everything when trying to score a bull elk.

If you can have original content that’s yours, that’s good quality, good photos of good taste, that seems to work. Share on X

Whitetail hunters do similar things. They look at mass, they look at the age of the animal, they certainly look at browse times, G1s, G2s, their points, and the inside spread. Looking at an elk which is on the hoof, is a mature bull elk at 400, 500, 600 pounds?

It’s probably going to be on the light end for young bulls. 600 pounds up to 900 pounds on the big, probably very, very mature bulls, some of the big heavy bulls in Montana. Let’s say700 to 750 is a pretty good average for elk. Like I say with most animals, a big one looks big if you have to second guess. They’re just like your white tails, if you have to squint and what have you, it’s probably not very big. Our Coues deer, I go after point length. Just like elk, you’ve got to have long points and you’ve got to have a lot of them for a buck to be big. Main beam is number two and you’ve got to have good beams but point length and number of points in my mind is everything.

Everyone, think about and look at pictures. I think if I was heading out West and hiring a guide or DIY-ing it, I would get her to hold of as many pictures. Like Jay said, he has a YouTube channel where I think you’d find hours of content where you could see some trophy-class animals or Pope and Young to Boone and Crockett animals to compare and take a look at so your mind is familiar with the size of the elk and what it really takes for the frame on the bull to make it trophy quality.

There are a lot of great resources out there. With the Internet these days, you can basically just Google bull elk. You can Google field judging elk, field judging a mule deer, whitetails, what have you and it’s amazing, the images that come up. You definitely want to familiarize yourself with the animal as much as you possibly can.

Jay, how do you use social network to get resources for your hunts and to invite people on and to find the hunters that you’d like to have on? Talk to us a little bit for a minute or so about using social network for hunting.

I was very, very fortunate. I started a blog, JayScottOutdoor.com back in 2008 and it quickly grew into a very popular site before social media. Then with Facebook and Instagram really got going on, you saw a trend from people bumping away from websites and blogs into social media because it was a much more quick and rapid response. You could post content and immediately get a feedback on that. You can follow me on Instagram @JayScottOutdoors. What I try and do on my own page is just post my own content. I try and post every day. If you’re asking me for tips on how to generate traffic, post daily, and post good content that’s your own content, in my mind, that’s the best way to build the biggest following that is organic.

There are certainly pages out there, Instagram pages and Facebook pages that are giant, giant pages, but they might not have as loyal a following. I feel like if you can have original content that’s yours, that’s good quality, good photos of good taste, that seems to work. I’m a big believer in marketing my hunts. I don’t really market the animal that we kill as much as I’m marketing the experience and everything that goes along with the hunt. I think even in our world now of trophy hunting and such, as much as I want to get my clients the biggest animals that I can, I think there’s much more to hunting than just the ultimate trophy at the end. There’s so much that we enjoy as hunters and outdoorsmen that needs to be portrayed. If I was giving anybody advice on marketing hunts it’s, market the experience and the adventure more than the end product of just an animal with a hero shot at the end post with a buck of a bull or what have you.

WR 264 | Jay Scott Outdoors
Jay Scott Outdoors: Market the experience and the adventure more than the end product of just an animal.

What you just were talking about, the adventure of the hunt, I’d like to come back and revisit that because so many times people get wound up in the score, the Pope and Young score or the Boone and Crockett score and they miss the hunt.

I’d love to come back on. I’m happy to come back on any time, Bruce.

Give shout outs for your sponsors. I know throughout our discussion, you’ve shared how to get a hold of you but this recaps where you’re at on Instagram, YouTube and your various websites. Take it away, Jay.

JayScottOutdoors.com is the main hub, on Instagram @JayScottOutdoors, YouTube channel, Jay Scott Outdoors, our Facebook page, Jay Scott is my personal page and Jay Scott Outdoors is the company page. I’m very, very blessed and fortunate to do what I do; very blessed by the creator above. I just want to thank you for having me on. I released at least two episodes a week on my own podcast and it’s the Jay Scott Outdoors Western Big Game Hunting and Fishing Podcast. I’m just very blessed to do what I love to do.

Jay is a renowned fly fisherman. We’ll talk about that in another show because that’s something that we hold very much in common. We’ve probably fished some of the same rivers at different times. On behalf of Whitetail Rendezvous Community, Jay Scott, thank you so much. I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode more whitetail hunting tips, techniques and stories. Until then, keep the sun at your back, the wind in your face and always be patient.

 

 

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