What should a guided hunt be?

[Nickziegler]

Did you see any bulls?

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[ncstewart]

Did you see any bulls?

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Ya me and my bro glassed several.


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[Chirogrow]

This is a great question and topic in my opinion. I just got back from an alberta archery moose hunt and it was my first guided hunt as well. Similar to you I'm an avid hunter and regardless of the weapon I typically harvest elk and deer on OTC tags in low success units, I mention that because I feel like I'm a competent hunter so going into this hunt I was excited to learn from a professional and see how I can become a better hunter. I told the outfitter that all I wanted out of this hunt was 2 things, I wanted to have an adventure and I told them I wanted to learn more about how to hunt moose and hunting. The outfitter and I talked for 2 years prior to the hunt and I felt like we were on the same page. When we showed up the guides we had were on their first hunt as guides and said they hunt from trucks with rifles or archery hunt from tree stands. So they had never gone back country hunting or done spot and stalk style hunting. throughout the hunt the guides were great with being positive and willing to learn about back country hunting but I was very bummed that they didn't know the area, didn't know about local pressure, weren't comfortable hiking in the dark, archery hunting, etc. All in all, I was able to check the box for a great adventure which is what I'm really looking for at the end of the day but was very disappointed with the "guided" aspect. I think what everyone else has echoed is on point with regards to communication and past hunt reviews but they are running a business and I think a lot of them will say whatever they need to in order to get you there. Just my 2 cents

 

[ncstewart]

This is a great question and topic in my opinion. I just got back from an alberta archery moose hunt and it was my first guided hunt as well. Similar to you I'm an avid hunter and regardless of the weapon I typically harvest elk and deer on OTC tags in low success units, I mention that because I feel like I'm a competent hunter so going into this hunt I was excited to learn from a professional and see how I can become a better hunter. I told the outfitter that all I wanted out of this hunt was 2 things, I wanted to have an adventure and I told them I wanted to learn more about how to hunt moose and hunting. The outfitter and I talked for 2 years prior to the hunt and I felt like we were on the same page. When we showed up the guides we had were on their first hunt as guides and said they hunt from trucks with rifles or archery hunt from tree stands. So they had never gone back country hunting or done spot and stalk style hunting. throughout the hunt the guides were great with being positive and willing to learn about back country hunting but I was very bummed that they didn't know the area, didn't know about local pressure, weren't comfortable hiking in the dark, archery hunting, etc. All in all, I was able to check the box for a great adventure which is what I'm really looking for at the end of the day but was very disappointed with the "guided" aspect. I think what everyone else has echoed is on point with regards to communication and past hunt reviews but they are running a business and I think a lot of them will say whatever they need to in order to get you there. Just my 2 cents

Man I hear ya. That why I was asking about hunting outfitters vs money outfits. I feel from now on my first and most important question is do you hunt the animal I’m booking for. I personally believe if it’s not something you love to do then it’s hard to put the same effort as a guy that does.


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[NorthCountryAB]

Man I hear ya. That why I was asking about hunting outfitters vs money outfits. I feel from now on my first and most important question is do you hunt the animal I’m booking for. I personally believe if it’s not something you love to do then it’s hard to put the same effort as a guy that does.


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First off I cannot even fathom not hunting the mornings. My guides are on the lake calling before the hunters are even awake, an hour before daylight. Than coffee is on, breakfast cooked etc.

I am very sorry to hear this. Unfortunately like any industry there is good and bad.
I agree 100% the outfitter and his guides need to be die hard hunters, especially the species that they are guiding for. I wouldnt hire a moose guide that didnt absolutely live for calling moose.
But I think asking the outfitter or guides if they hunt themselves for the game animal you are targeting can be tough.
Take for example an antelope draw in Alberta. It requires upwards of 14 points to draw a tag. So you could have a guide who has guided 5-6 hunters successfully each season for 10 years, but never drawn a tag himself.
Does that mean hes not competent?

Like my moose guides, some of them have drawn their own tags and killed bulls, some have not. A couple of them are sitting on 10 points waiting to draw a very coveted tag. Some of them draw every 3-5 years and kill a bull for themselves. But some of these guys that have never killed a bull for themselves yet, have guided multiple hunters to great bulls for my outfit.
The fact of the matter is we need to recruit young guides into the industry.......BUT it is 100% on the outfitter how they transition that new guide/packer/wrangler into a full time guiding position.
If I could bring on 2 juniors a year I would do it in a heart beat, unfortunately I could only find one competent enough to be a junior last year. And the honest truth is, it will take him 2-3 years before hes ready to run his own camp with his own client. These young guys/gals gotta have a serious passion for it, and unfortunately more and more of them just want to play video games and smoke weed.

I'll quit the rant lol. All im getting at is this industry is no different than any other, but its a ton of hard work, for very little pay and sometimes no tips. The good ones do it because they love it, and those guides seem to be going the way of the dodo.

 

[ncstewart]

First off I cannot even fathom not hunting the mornings. My guides are on the lake calling before the hunters are even awake, an hour before daylight. Than coffee is on, breakfast cooked etc.

I am very sorry to hear this. Unfortunately like any industry there is good and bad.
I agree 100% the outfitter and his guides need to be die hard hunters, especially the species that they are guiding for. I wouldnt hire a moose guide that didnt absolutely live for calling moose.
But I think asking the outfitter or guides if they hunt themselves for the game animal you are targeting can be tough.
Take for example an antelope draw in Alberta. It requires upwards of 14 points to draw a tag. So you could have a guide who has guided 5-6 hunters successfully each season for 10 years, but never drawn a tag himself.
Does that mean hes not competent?

Like my moose guides, some of them have drawn their own tags and killed bulls, some have not. A couple of them are sitting on 10 points waiting to draw a very coveted tag. Some of them draw every 3-5 years and kill a bull for themselves. But some of these guys that have never killed a bull for themselves yet, have guided multiple hunters to great bulls for my outfit.
The fact of the matter is we need to recruit young guides into the industry.......BUT it is 100% on the outfitter how they transition that new guide/packer/wrangler into a full time guiding position.
If I could bring on 2 juniors a year I would do it in a heart beat, unfortunately I could only find one competent enough to be a junior last year. And the honest truth is, it will take him 2-3 years before hes ready to run his own camp with his own client. These young guys/gals gotta have a serious passion for it, and unfortunately more and more of them just want to play video games and smoke weed.

I'll quit the rant lol. All im getting at is this industry is no different than any other, but its a ton of hard work, for very little pay and sometimes no tips. The good ones do it because they love it, and those guides seem to be going the way of the dodo.

Ya man I hear what ya saying. You right about the hunting for themselves. I can see that but I do feel I messed up not talking to them more about hunting. I’ve never hunted lots of species that I could talk and listen to hours of stories from others. I do feel like a passionate hunters is what a guy should be looking for in a guide. I made the mistake of thinking that an outfit must love to hunt as much as me if they doing that line of work.
You also right about the games and weed. Sad when grown men wanna talk video games in the house instead of hunting story by a fire.


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[HornPorn]

I went with Beaverfoot. So for goat no issues at all. But for moose it was night and day difference. This was my first guided hunt and it was a learning curve for sure. It wast lack of not being prepared on our end. Like I said all I do is hunt and prepare to hunt. And there isn’t a other side. We just flat farted around for moose instead of hunted.


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I think you misrepresented the situation here. Only after a few comments in this thread do you actually admit that you booked a Goat hunt, and that you got your goat. Then you go on to say that after getting your goat the hunt shifted to a moose hunt. I see on their website that additional animals (in your case, moose) taken after the primary booked species (in your case, goat) are $1,000 + cost of tag. $1,000....That's practically free. You expected them to start a brand new hunt for you for moose, so they could get $1,000 trophy fee?


As far as moose hunting, I had never heard of this outfitter and I can see why. The bulls on their site are dinks.

If someone did want to book an actual moose hunt with them, they're charging $12,000, which for BC is a budget hunt if I have ever seen one. Definitely a dink hunt. May as well go to Newfoundland and pay half that. If you want to kill a real AK/Yukon moose guided, and go with real pros, the going rate right now is $32-35K.

 

[ncstewart]

I think you misrepresented the situation here. Only after a few comments in this thread do you actually admit that you booked a Goat hunt, and that you got your goat. Then you go on to say that after getting your goat the hunt shifted to a moose hunt. I see on their website that additional animals (in your case, moose) taken after the primary booked species (in your case, goat) are $1,000 + cost of tag. $1,000....That's practically free. You expected them to start a brand new hunt for you for moose, so they could get $1,000 trophy fee?
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As far as moose hunting, I had never heard of this outfitter and I can see why. The bulls on their site are dinks.

If someone did want to book an actual moose hunt with them, they're charging $12,000, which for BC is a budget hunt if I have ever seen one. Definitely a dink hunt. May as well go to Newfoundland and pay half that. If you want to kill a real AK/Yukon moose guided, and go with real pros, the going rate right now is $32-35K.

No sir no misrepresentation. I booked a goat. My brother booked a moose for the full cost. I killed a goat and then hunted with my brother as I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do a hunt like that again. And it was a damn joke

Also we are no trophy hunters and was willing to shoot any legal moose. We just wanted to moose hunt.


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[HornPorn]

No sir no misrepresentation. I booked a goat. My brother booked a moose for the full cost. I killed a goat and then hunted with my brother as I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do a hunt like that again. And it was a damn joke

Also we are no trophy hunters and was willing to shoot any legal moose. We just wanted to moose hunt.


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OK, well then I apologize. Thank you for explaining. That stinks for your brother. He might look into some of the newfoundland moose hunt threads. Some pretty high success operations that focus on moose.

 

[Wolf-killer]

One word of advice I always tell people looking to go on a guided hunt is to ask the outfitter for references that were unsuccessful on previous hunts. If unsuccessful hunters have good things to say about the outfitter that tells you a lot

 

[ncstewart]

OK, well then I apologize. Thank you for explaining. That stinks for your brother. He might look into some of the newfoundland moose hunt threads. Some pretty high success operations that focus on moose.

It’s all good man I ain’t trying to blast nobody. Just honestly never done anything guided so just trying to get a grip on it all. Figure out where we went wrong with moose specifically.

Right now he just wanting to focus on Alaska maybe in a few years. Neither one of us are jumping up and down to go hunting with other people at the moment! Thinking doing it ourselves. I will definitely look at newfound threads tho as I will cover my basics a lot better before we head out next on a bigger hunt like that.


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[ncstewart]

One word of advice I always tell people looking to go on a guided hunt is to ask the outfitter for references that were unsuccessful on previous hunts. If unsuccessful hunters have good things to say about the outfitter that tells you a lot

So my biggest mistake I think was I called and talked to lots of people about the goats and made the assumption that hunting is hunting so it’s all good.
That’s on me for sure looking back cause obviously goats and moose are totally different. Skill set is totally different and they need massive help in the moose category.


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[Nickziegler]

Did any of the issues get brought up during the hunt with the outfitter or guide?

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[ncstewart]

Did any of the issues get brought up during the hunt with the outfitter or guide?

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No that was one question I asked in the original post. Is when to say something and then does the guide screw ya cause ya piss him off? Never having a guide before wasn’t real sure how to handle that. Me and my bro talked about it and decided after some stuff the guide said early on that we were better off not to say anything and just hope we get lucky on the hunting part or the owner make it right on the back end. Both ways was a mistake on our end looking back.


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[keller]

I was on a semi guided caribou hunt in Canada. We weren't seeing any animals so they flew us into another camp.when we got their the camp manager said the last group got all their bulls when the caribou swim across the lake I go out their with the boat and steer them to you. I said that's not what we want. The next afternoon a plane flew in picked us up and our hunt was done.we we were out hunting they went to the lodge loaded all our gear and picked us up at another location.

 

[Robinhood21]

I’m not talking expectations as to opportunity even. I’m talking about effort expectations. Like we hunt a lot and public ground on everything. So we game plan and hunt hard.
On the moose we were just randomly doing stuff with no rhyme or reason. We also never hunted the mornings which I thought was really weird. We wasted over 30 hours of morning hunting. Is that normal for moose to not morning hunt?


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That is odd unless Canadian moose are different then Alaskan moose. All 4 bulls I've been a part of have been shot before 9:30 in the A.M...

 

[Kyle Avey]

Me and my friend moose hunted BC this year. We both tagged bulls before 10:00am. No evening action.

 

[roymunson]

One word of advice I always tell people looking to go on a guided hunt is to ask the outfitter for references that were unsuccessful on previous hunts. If unsuccessful hunters have good things to say about the outfitter that tells you a lot

This is good advice.

I was blessed enough to talk to a guy who'd hunted both successfully and unsuccessfully with my outfitter. He glowed about them.

One of our guides went on a combo hunt for 20+ days and didn't kill anything. He later became a guide with them. He thought highly enough of the outfit to become employed by them, even though he didn't kill anything.

Sounds like poor representation by the outfitter and potentially you missed a couple things too. Lesson learned and you do better next time.