I just went with Eureka Peak in BC. They offer lodge based hunts out of a couple different beautiful lakefront lodges where you run the roads everyday hitting different areas or horseback hunts into remote areas. I’d book with them again. They meet your criteria. My daughter shot a 44” moose. I’m making a video of my hunt right now and will post it on YouTube. When it’s done, you’ll be able to see what they’re like. The longtime owner, Stu, has just sold it to his son, Ty. Ty was my guide. Stu is still involved.
This is my experience with Eureka Peak in 2016. The outfitter had emailed instructions to get to the lodge in a remote region of central B.C.. The last leg took us winding through about 60 miles of gravel roads. We had left Portland at 6am but it was on the dark side when we made the last turn to the lodge. That’s when we met another vehicle coming who turned out to be the outfitter. He had decided that we should stay and hunt out of the “House” and to follow him there. After another 40 miles on gravel roads we were at his personal residence, and only about 10 miles of gravel from the pavement we started on. But no problem, we were jacked, going to hunt moose in an area with “plenty of game”.
The outfitter introduced us to our guide, gave us a room (no window and 2 hangers in the closet), a shower towel, and notice that breakfast was at 6am. We were off to clean up in the bathroom, but found it had no soap or toilet paper. Our guide rounded up some TP, two bars of hotel soap and a bottle of shampoo with about a half-inch left. Good to go. In the “what to bring sheet” we were told to bring our own beer or liquor; what we were not told is that there would be no refrigerator or freezer available to put beer, or any ice. Well…we were going hunting and the “game was plentiful”.
Early next morning, the outfitters’ wife made us breakfast. It was a valiant attempt, but they are not coffee drinkers so we had lukewarm, weak coffee, scrambled eggs and toast. When she passed the scrambled eggs to my son he thought it was his plate of eggs only to learn that it was for the whole group of five. Oh well, we were going hunting where the “game was plentiful”.
We left the house with the guide that morning at 6:30am, and it was already past shooting light . I remember thinking that the game must be really plentiful as you don’t even need to be there at
daylight! Have you ever gone on a hunt where you drove around all day in the coast range looking at clearcuts? Well that is what we “hunted”. It took 1½ hours to get to the area we were “hunting” so now we were almost two hours into the daylight…but were told we were hunting an “exclusive area”.
Hmmm. Should have read the fine print. The outfitter had “exclusive guiding rights” but any local who wanted could also hunt the same area…and they did. So now we were competing with locals who were able to get breakfast in time to hit the hunting area at daylight. “Don’t worry,” said the guide, “we will get you a moose.”
We saw two cows that first day, but no bulls. We did see a rub in the same area as the cows, so that seemed promising. We saw a bear in the morning, and another one on the way out that evening. After 12 hours of road hunting, we hauled the hour and a half back to the house and it was time to bring our gear in, grab a quick beer and get to dinner. (Side note: Canada is very serious about their gun laws, no bullets in the chamber or magazine when in a vehicle, and if you lean your rifle on the outside of the truck it is considered “in the vehicle”.)
Anyway it was dinner time and we were hungry from all that sitting in the truck all day. The outfitters’ wife typically made us some type of meat in gravy, mashed potatoes or rice and a steamed vegetable. The house had some type of fly hatch problem and the glass around the bulbs of the dining chandelier had about 1½” layer of dead flies piled up around the bottom of each bulb, with another 30 to 40 flies buzzing over the lights. I got my plate served up, cut a piece of meat and when I picked it up there was a fly under it: Ewww. So I quietly slid the piece of meat (and the fly) to the side and went after the broccoli only to find a fly under that: Yuk.
Next morning we were off to hunt again, and our guide thought we should go to the spot we saw the cows and the rub. We showed up about 2 hours after daylight and — lo and behold — there was a rig parked at the entrance road and a hunter walking up the road! In our “exclusive” area! Go figure! So another day of cruising clear cuts (called “blocks” in Canada).
The nice thing about guided hunts is that they also supply lunch, and our typical lunch for a 12-hour day consisted of: one sandwich with a hint of shaved deli meat no bigger than the bread, a single slice of cheese, tomato and dressing; two store-bought cookies, a generic granola bar, a warm generic soda and
a warm bottle of water….good thing we had brought a lot of snacks.
The highlight of Day Two was seeing a sow Grizzly with her two cubs walking down the middle of the road, and we followed them for about 200 yards before they turned off. A couple does showed themselves, but we saw no moose despite another 12 hours of searching from the cab of the truck.
However, we did find more flies: on Day Two at dinner it was some other kind of meat in gravy. As we were eating, I was talking to my son when a fly dropped onto his plate into the main course. He was about to slide it off when the outfitter himself reached over, dipped his fingers into the gravy of my son’s plate and pulled the fly out. A little later the pan with the meat/gravy of the day caught a fly…that one sank into the gravy before it could be retrieved. (You get the picture, same thing every night, no seconds for me please! And that wasn’t a bad thing, because there wasn’t enough for seconds anyway!)
Day Three was more of the same: no moose, a couple of does, and a bear or two. We did get to know the guide pretty well by this time and he was a great guy with a good sense of humor, despite another 12 hours in a truck (but perhaps I’m exaggerating: maybe only 11 hours, as we went for a couple of walks) . The end of the day saw us driving down the road towards dusk and dinner, when a young bull stepped into the road in front of us. Now, shooting moose off a road is not something I am comfortable with or want to do, and it’s especially not something I would expect on a “guided” hunt…but that is apparently how our outfitter intended us to fill our tag. However, despite the adrenaline rush, we were about a mile outside our “exclusive area” and into another guides’ “exclusive area”…so there was no opportunity anyway. (side note: although the Canadians are very strict about loaded guns in trucks it is apparently ok to shoot “from a road” at an animal that is “on the road”.)
As we stopped to see where the only hunt-able moose we’d seen in three days had gone, another of the guides from our outfitter drove up in a 5-year old Toyota pickup that looked like it had gone through a junkyard crusher. The truck had a piece of twine where the door handle used to be, more dents than you could imagine, a mangled tailgate full of huge holes, non-existent four-wheel drive and a leaky radiator! When he left our guide said that he had been assigned that truck last year…but lucky for us, when the outfitter called and asked our guide to work this year, he had demanded the outfitters’ personal vehicle as part of the deal. (Apparently the outfitter was known for POS vehicles: we learned that the next day the Toyota finally died and the clients had to use their personal vehicles for the remainder of their hunts.)
In three days of hunting, driving and riding we had noticed some things: there were very few deer and the bucks we did see were small three points at best; there were a lot of bear; the clearcuts (blocks, in Canadian) were huge; the roads were like highways; and there were these signs posted everywhere with a picture of a cow moose and “Respect the Cow” written on them. We asked the guide about them. He explained that the local native tribes have treaty rights allowing them to hunt, shoot, or harvest any moose calf, cow or bull with no season limit, no limit on number of animals taken…and they are allowed to sell the carcass or meat. (Need some money for the weekend?) The guide had personally turned in 62 cases of animal wasting over the last 5 years, including whole animals shot and left to rot and or animals shot with only the nose and tongue or hams removed.
The result has been a large reduction in the moose populations in portions of Canada. A local guide started the “Respect the Cow” campaign to bring attention to the matter, and it has since gotten national attention and participation. Only four cow tags are issued annually so the signs provide an education as well as indirect pressure on the native population.
This is a troubling situation regarding any area you are hunting: clearly, fewer opportunities for harvest, and as an ethical hunter you have to ask yourself if you are contributing to the decline.
To wrap up my story, my son and I came home three days early with broken promises and lessons learned. Needless to say our “hunt of a lifetime” did not materialize, though I did have a great time with my son, saw some great country and came away with a story to tell. And how about those flies?
