Early 2000s and my dad took me on a NM rifle elk hunt through what we thought was a reputable outfitter for my graduation gift. Opening day, my dad and I are chasing bugles up the mountain in the dark with our "guide" while he has his headlamp on. When we inquire about him having his headlamp on is a good idea he tells us "oh, they can't see it". We both roll our eyes and not wanting to step on toes, we just roll with it.
3/4 of the way up the mountain and my dad chooses to stay put and call a bit while we keep after this bull. About 45 minutes later, we hear my dad shoot and he's dropped a 300+ bull so we're pumped and hustling back to him as we can hear other bugles close by. We have another bull coming in screaming and he can't be more than 75-100 yards away in the thick timber. All of a sudden, I can hear water running behind me and I turn around to the guide taking a leak not 5 steps behind me. That bull busts eventually so we go and pack my dads bull out.
By day 3, we're tired of this guide and his ineptitude even though we're a couple of flatlander whitetail hunters from WI, who don't know much about western hunting. We talk to the owner of the outfit and he agrees to send me with his son the next day. This is where things get interesting.
The best way to describe his son would be if Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite did lines of coke every 15 minutes and wasn't afraid to blur the ethics lines a bit. He was an interesting fella to say the least. He first tells me he's got a great trail to hunt where I could sit on the back of the 4wheeler in the bed of his truck as he drives and shoot from there. I politely decline as even though I'm from northern WI, that's just not my style. So from here, we make a plan to go back to the public land I've been hunting, but we're going to go deeper and around some reservation land to get there. Before leaving, the owner grills him telling him we are absolutely not to cross into any tribal land, even if we're just "passing through". His son insists we're not and we hit the road.
We take the quad back in the dark and pass a few gates. The gates seem to be on the corners of some property boundaries and aren't locked, so I just figured it was some public access thing. As we're hunting, we can hear some gunshots back on the tribal ground but don't think anything of it as they have hunters there and continue on our way. That morning is pretty slow so we start heading back and I stop him as we're passing the ground we hunted on day 1. I ask if he's cool that I do my own thing and I'll meet him down on the road at dark. Without hesitation, he drops me off and he's gone (probably had to go get his fix). Well, after lunch I do some calling and end up calling this raghorn which I end up shooting and I'm ecstatic! I had someone's cell phone along so I called the guide to tell them the good news and start heading to the road. The guide and I get the animal quartered and start hauling it out to the truck and as we're making walking to the truck, the owner of the outfit comes flying up in his Yukon and yells at me to "get in the ******* back seat and lay on the floor and leave your gun with the guide!". My ear to ear grin from my success was quickly wiped away in the seriousness of everything. He peels out of there with me laying on the floor in the back and immediately starts grilling me about where we shot this bull and where we had been that morning.
Turns out, those gates we passed, were small corners of tribal ground and while we never exited the wheeler while passing through, we were in the wrong since we had weapons along. The bull I shot was easily a half mile away from any boundaries, but since I was solo and didn't know the area that well, he just assumed that I was on tribal ground. In addition, those gun shots we heard earlier that day, were some other hunters on tribal ground that weren't supposed to be there and they poached a bull. As he's driving me back to camp he continues to grill me and keeps asking if there's anything I need to tell him.
As he and my dad we're heading out to meet up with us and help pack out my bull, they passed our access road which also led back to the reservation. As they were waiting, a convoy of 10-12 pickups (some of which were Tribal Police) full of armed men in the beds were heading up in our direction to catch the poachers, to which, my dad and the outfitter thought had to be me since there were no other vehicles at the trailhead. As my dad is walking up the road, he comes up on two Tribal Officers and startles them while he's holding onto his cell phone. Thinking he's armed, both officers pull their sidearms and force my dad down on to the ground spread eagle. They eventually let him go when they realize that technically they're not on tribal ground and what they pulled was most likely illegal. My dad cuts down the mountain until he gets a call from the outfitter that I'm safe back at camp and the guide snagged him off the road. Since we had all tagged out by that point, it was recommended that we break camp that night and try to get out of town to not get dragged into any potential ****storm that was coming.
We got the truck loaded up and said our goodbyes to the couple of MN guys left at camp. We hop into the truck and as we're pulling onto the highway, I turn the radio on. I s**t you not, the first song to play was Indian Outlaw... We all breathed a sigh of relief as we crossed the border into CO on our long journey home.
Sorry to be long winded on this one and I even left out quite a few other stories from my uncle's guide and other oddities we experienced on this trip. One of the guys from MN got nicknamed "breakfast" as he was stalked by a mountain lion on day two and didn't know it until the cat was about 10 paces behind him.
It was years later and my dad looked into some of the names from that outfit and I think the son got dinged with some felonies that were non-hunting related. They were quite the crew!
. You can’t make this stuff up. I still dream about that big boar, he haunts me in my dreams.
