Peax Thrive Vodcast

Buying a preference point can cost you the tag. In this Peax Thrive episode, Mark breaks down the traps hiding inside the Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming nonresident draws before you spend a dime this tag season. In Idaho, general nonresident tags are now a lottery, and the zone you put first decides everything. Mark walks through the A tag and B tag odds, the $185 nonrefundable license, and why every...

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 sid...

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 fu...

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...

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...

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 ela...

Three hunters. Nine days. Three archery bulls. We recored this after the hunt a year ago, sitting in the dirt next to all three racks, the day we came off the mountain. Last September, Jeff Helm, Josh Smunk and I packed eight llamas 4,500 feet up into very remote piece of public land. What came out of it was a film called The Hat Trick — and this conversation, which has been sitting in the vault e...

Elk season is just weeks away, and here are five tactics almost nobody actually uses. Every one of them is still doable this week. (Part 1 of 2 — Part 2 drops next Tuesday.   Most elk hunters read the same articles, watch the same videos, pick the same trailheads, and walk up the same trails — often at the same time. Predictable hunters get predictable results. In Part 1 of this two part series, I...

On this Thrive Live From The Hunt, with Bow Disciples but this time we've traded the elk woods for the islands of Hawaii — chasing one of the most beautiful and most destructive animals in North America: the axis deer. Introduced over a century ago, they've exploded across the islands, stripping native forests, wrecking ranchland, and pushing fragile ecosystems to the brink. Out here, hunting isn'...

Six percent. That's how many public-land elk hunters actually punch a tag. The other ninety-four out of a hundred go home empty-handed.  Those six percent aren't luckier than you. They're not tougher than you. They just did the work, months before the season, behind the e-scouting screen. It's July. While everyone else is posting countdowns to September on Instagram, the smart hunters are already...

In this live from the hunt Thrive episode, Chiam and I are joined by Lucas, the Peax Equipment spring bear hunt giveaway winner. We sit down together on the hunt to talk about the lessons learned and the highs and lows of spring bear hunting. This season had it all: snow, heat, and a lot of miles! Visit our website: https://peaxequipment.com Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peax_e...

On the morning of May 3rd, a 33-year-old man named Anthony Pollio left his father a voicemail from a trail in Glacier National Park. He told his dad he was hiking up a mountain. He told him about his day. He said he loved him. He hung up the phone and kept walking up that trail. He never came back down. A search team found his body three days later, fifty feet off the Mount Brown Trail. His injuri...

In this Thrive Vodcast episode, I'm in the kitchen dialing in two custom freeze-dried meals that are going with me on the mountain on my upcoming spring bear hunts.  A Deluxe Mexican Style Scramble and Carnivore Ice Cream. Yes. I did say Ice cream. My goal with this episode is to parts.  One – Maybe it will get you thinking about how you can take control of your food and fuel your performance on t...

Spring bear season is here, and if your gear isn't dialed right now, you're already behind the curve. Today, I'm not going to waste your time. I've got 10 pieces of gear sitting here that have earned a spot in my pack this year for spring bears. We're gonna rip through these and do a quick breakdown on all of them. Rounding out the gear selection is a brand-new gear item just hitting the spring be...

So many elk hunters fail for one simple reason…They can't find elk! But when you really dig into it—that's not the only real problem. They never built a strategic hunt plan with multiple fully vetted Hunt Areas More importantly, they did not build a plan that could adapt to a changing hunt situation. There is one thing you can count on in elk hunting It's that everything is going to change! The ol...

So much of today's hunting tech is overhyped… or flat-out useless. But every once in a while, something shows up that actually moves the needle. This new Bridger Watch might be one of those tools. We're talking best-in-class topography maps, extreme battery life, fast ballistics, and incredible durability. Watch it go into a blender!   This watch could legitimately change how you operate in the ba...

We talk about public land like it's permanent. Like it will always be there. Like nothing can really change it.   But what if the real shift isn't happening through legislation? What if it's happening quietly… through purchase? What happens when the winter range, the migration corridor, the valley floor, and the only access road all sit behind one locked gate?   The West isn't disappearing. But it...

On today's Thrive Vodcast show, Mark is joined by Jeff Helm, they are fresh off the Peax Elk and Bear Tour events, and they break down the latest Western hunting news. In this episode, they dive into Montana's new license changes, including mule deer B tag restrictions, elk, deer, and antelope regulation updates, and a 233% increase to the nonresident base hunting license. We also cover the brand...

In this special edition of The Thrive Vodcast , No Middle Ground Mark and Chiam cut through the noise of modern Western hunting with zero fluff and zero filter. Has Western hunting peaked, or has the rising costs and demand finally broken the system? Do you run a 0° or 15° sleeping bag, and what are the real-world tradeoffs, and does it actually matter in the backcountry? UV pens vs water filters,...

Today's Thrive episode is a little different. No hunt tactics. No gear talk. No strategy.   We will get back to that, but today I want to explore a topic that's been on my mind.  It's about us! More specifically, the disconnect of the modern man. You don't need a PhD to see it, men are drifting and some are completely off course. Society is conditioning our boys to be soft, disconnected, and addic...

Spring bear season doesn't start when the tag hits your pocket, it should start right now!  This year, the snow isn't normal; the prime bear elevation zones they may not line up like they have historically.  Spring bear hunting is snowline game. An elevation game and a timing game. The bear hunters who are guessing are about to get exposed. 2026? It's going to punish the unprepared.    In this Thr...

Remember when elk hunting out West meant hitting the mountains, not crunching numbers, gaming odds, or dodging fine print and deception? Is the elk tag game rigged, and are the rules changing while you're still in line? What's happening in the Western elk tag system isn't just frustrating, it's broken. The states know it. The math proves it. Application season is here, our annual collision of hope...

Most Western hunters don't fall short because of bad luck—or bad gear. And no one sets out with the goal to be average. But somewhere along the way, comfort and familiar creep in and take over. This is how the cycle begins, and you need to be intentional to break it.  ·      Same familiar spots ·      Same excuses ·      Same half-ass preparations ·      Expecting different results ·      Doing th...

In the last Thrive episode, I laid out some hard truths. Montana's deer herds are in trouble. The response to that episode was immediate, emotional, and a bit overwhelming.  Hundreds of comments, strong opinions, and a lot of understandable frustration from people who care deeply about Montana's deer herd. But here's the thing, pointing out the problems was only step one. Today's episode isn't abo...

Have you ever seen something coming from a mile away? Yet, nobody does anything about it? Montana's deer herds didn't just disappear overnight. It wasn't random. This was a slow-motion train wreck, and the people in charge of the tracks, well, they stood there and watched it happen. That's Montana's mule deer story. From over 386,000 animals to under 250,000 in just seven years.  While other state...