Thrive 51 - No Middle Ground | Has Western Hunting Peaked?

The reality is that draw odds tell you how hard a tag is to get. They don't tell you whether the unit is any good. In this Peax Thrive episode, Mark sits down with Chiam Loyd at the PEAX studio. They use the new Treeline Hunt IQ Suite to take Chiam's Montana general elk tag from 196 units down to a short list, live on screen. Mark walks through the State Heat Map, Tag Finder, Unit Reports, and side-by-side unit comparisons. He explains why he trusts 3-year and 5-year averages over any single year, why a unit with no hunters probably has no elk, and how soil moisture changes the elevation he hunts. There are so many Western hunting research nuggets packed into this episode. Thrive viewers get 20% off the Hunt IQ Suite annual membership with code THRIVE: https://iq.treelineacademy.net Gear up at https://peaxequipment.com and use discount code TREELINE. Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

Two bulls down, a grizzly on the blood trail, a barrage of gunfire next to our kill site, and a llama still running with an elk herd at 12,000 feet. The Wyoming hunt had it all. This is a Peax Thrive Live From the Hunt episode, recorded at a Montana trailhead the night before packing in. Mark wraps up the final days of the Wyoming elk hunt with Josh and Chiam Loyd, and previews what's next.The full stories behind the gunfire and the grizzly are coming in the Wyoming hunt film. Subscribe so you don't miss it. 🦙 HELP US FIND SMOKEY. Smokey, our 6-year-old pack llama, broke his lead rope during a bear encounter in camp and has been missing in the Wyoming backcountry since September 2nd. He's black with white face markings. If you're hunting the Cody area and see him, message us on Instagram @treeline_pursuits. Go to: https://www.treelineacademy.net/ to find out more about the new Treeline IQ Suite and other course offerings. Gear up at peaxequipment.com and use discount code TREELINE. Follow along: Instagram @treeline_pursuits Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com

Five days into our Wyoming elk hunt, a grizzly came through camp at two in the morning. One of my llamas broke a half-inch lead rope and disappeared into the dark. He's still out there. This is a Peax Thrive Live From the Hunt episode — recorded in camp at last light, no script, still in the middle of it. Josh, Chiam, and I go through what's happened so far: hundreds of elk and almost nobody else in here, a textbook stalk on a bull with 25 cows that fell apart for no reason we could see until we heard the howls come up out of the drainage, and a grizzly above camp that turned an ordinary evening into buttoning down for war. It has not been a clean hunt. We don't have an elk on the ground. We've had more close encounters than I can count, and the wind has taken every single one of them — six straight days of it, thermals running exactly backwards, prevailing southwest blowing out of the north. IN THIS EPISODE • Elk are spread from the bottom to the top this year • A perfect stalk, a herd that blew out, and the sound that explained it • What llama alerts actually mean at night • The 2 a.m. wreck that cost us a llama • A grizzly above camp, and the worst thirty seconds of my week • Bulls answering but not committing • Smokey is still missing Gear up at peaxequipment.com; use my discount code TREELINE Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/

Chiam owns more backcountry stoves than any sane person should. So, he finally did what nobody in the hunting space has done: he put twelve of them head-to-head on a 100-point scorecard and let the data decide. Boil times measured three separate ways and averaged. Fuel burn weighed to the gram, before and after every boil. Cold performance after twelve hours at negative four. Altitude performance re-tested at 12,800 feet on top of the Beartooth. Wind resistance at 20 miles an hour — where a surprising number of big-name stoves simply never boiled at all. The winner scored 91 out of 100. Last place scored 51. And the stove that took it costs under $70 — while the newest, priciest, most-hyped stoves in the test finished at the bottom of the board. I sat down with Chiam at the PEAX Equipment headquarters in Bozeman to walk through how he built the test, what shocked him, and the one number every backcountry hunter should know before their next hunt: how many grams of fuel your stove burns per boil. Get that wrong, and you're carrying a second canister you never needed — which weighs about the same as the stove itself. We keep the winner's name out of this one on purpose. Chiam's full review has the rankings, the charts, and every data point. Link below. WHAT WE COVER - Why almost every stove review you've watched is missing the comparison - How the 100-point scorecard was built, and what got weighted heaviest - 12 burner and pot combinations, 3 boils each, 16 oz every time - The cold soak, the altitude run, and the 20 mph wind test - Regulated vs. non-regulated, and why it decides everything - Where Jetboil still wins by a mile (simmer control is not close) - Why every piezo igniter on the market is on a countdown - The half-flame fuel myth, tested - The night in New Zealand when a stove was the difference between miserable and done hunting WATCH THE FULL VIDEO: https://youtu.be/gqMZAZxHNtE?si=GVLiVb6RGFZYkdGa GET 20% OFF THE HUNT IQ SUITE - Use code THRIVE at checkout: https://www.treelineacademy.net/ Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment

In this Thrive episode, we dive into the Work That Nobody Sees And Few Hunters Do! Five e-scouting and hunt-planning tactics that will help you find elk before you ever load the truck. How to set your elevation band off this year's soil moisture instead of habit, how to actually map hunting pressure instead of guessing at it, why the MVUM is the most useful access document nobody reads, why an elaborate basecamp may be costing you elk, and how to build the hunt plan that ties all ten tactics together. None of these is a silver bullet. It's the stack that matters. GET 20% OFF THE HUNT IQ SUITE - Use code THRIVE at checkout: https://www.treelineacademy.net/ Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_equip/ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peaxequipment