Edit - If you are new to this thread, the answer is "yes." I am going to try out a DIY elk hunt in 2026. Probably in Montana, but I am not set on that yet. The conversation in this thread helped me refine my thinking on the topic and I appreciate everyone who participated.
Original post is below.
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All my life, I have thought about hunting "out West" or "up in Canada." I'm 46 and not getting any younger. I'm in excellent shape for a flatlander. I have a good job, but I am loathe to spend big money on vacations or experiences. I love hunting, but I hate crowds. I have hunted almost exclusively on private land in Virginia. I did a few hunts on public land and I did one guided hunt in Oklahoma that my friends convinced me to try. It was on a ranch owned by some fellow Marines.
The guided hunt in Oklahoma was a horrible experience. It wasn't hunting. I told them I wanted to still hunt and they said, "we don't do that here." They drove me out to a tree stand, dumped a bucket of corn on the ground 100 yards away (in a spot where I could tell they had been dumping corn for months). An hour later a decent-looking cornfed buck walked up for me to execute him. He might as well have been a lamb. I texted the guide and he came out to pick him up. The guide insisted that I could not field dress him right away and assured me that he would take care of it back at the barn. I realized they didn't want to "ruin the spot." Once we were back at the barn, I offered to help, but he said it was part of the service. I went back out hunting. That evening - nearly 12 hours later - I saw that he still had not field dressed the deer. Needless to say, that venison did not taste very good. It really soured me on the whole guided hunting experience. I know that there are guides and hunters on here who will be outraged at that kind of experience. So, there is no way I would pay money for a repeat of that experience.
1. The first problem is that I cannot make up my mind whether it is even "worth it" to go hunting "out West" or "up in Canada" as an experience. Or in Africa or anywhere else. And I mean that for any animal.
The whitetails on my farm are not particularly big or rare, but they are very wary and elusive (except during the rut, then they are dumb. But since by that point I have been going out twice a day, every day, hunting them, I feel like I earned the right to shoot them). I still hunt for them, which generally means roaming the mountainside for several hours during the morning and early afternoon, then doing it again in late afternoon. And, having been hunting on the farm for over forty years, I know it really well. I enjoy the familiar. And I have an entire national forest just over the top of the mountain if I want to get away from that.
I've been hiking out in the Grand Tetons and seen elk, moose, bison, etc. So, I have been "out West" and I have seen the living, breathing animals. But I haven't hunted them. I know that would be a different kind of physical challenge. But I keep coming back to the thought that "hunting is still just hunting." Am I wrong? Is there something else special about elk, or any other animal, that makes it "worth it"?
2. If I can answer the first question in the affirmative, then I want to find the right kind of hunt for me. I keep coming up with nothing. I have an ON-X subscription so I have access to Huntin' Fool. When I talked with the advisor, I tried to explain that I want to go hunting, not killing. I don't care about a trophy on my wall (I don't even have a wall that could fit an elk trophy in my current house). I don't need to go out looking for the biggest bull in the whole wide world. I just want to hunt - but with a reasonable chance of success. But he didn't seem to get it. He kept gushing about trophy animals this and trophy animals that. He kept talking about how going with this outfitter or that outfitter would put me into a target-rich environment where I would have an excellent chance of success at a trophy bull. But I don't want that. I just want to hunt and have a reasonable chance of success at any bull. I won't shoot cows. I'm not willing to pay $10,000 to eat tag soup, but I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for the hunting experience. And I have to bear in mind that each hour I currently spend hunting is an hour I am not working. So my deer season last year probably cost me at least $10,000 and probably a lot more than that. But it's a lot less painful to not work and not make money than it is to work and then spend the money.
So, based on all that, do you think this is an experience I should continue to explore? Is there something about it that you think makes it likely that in 20 years, I am going to say, "I wish I had done that before it was too late."?
