Fair enough.
Saw this a few months back on the hunt quietly IG account....
- Thread starter tod osier
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@Eric Patterson,
it happens A LOT! Any fowl hunting around Amarillo Tx is long gone. Its impossible to free lance that area anymore. Used to, I could roll out to Tx, run around and find a feed. Knock a door and get access. It was never really an issue. Sometimes I got told no, but for the most part it wasnt hard at all. Even if it wasnt the mega feed, there were other feeds going on around that would provide limits. Everyone was hunting and there was lots of birds to be had everywhere, and lots of success. Now its all locked up under contract. Some birds still use fields but they dont get hunted because that goose feed isnt as big as the goose feed that the guides have their clients on. Yet that field is leased by the guide service and if the landowner lets other hunters on it, its a breech of contract. Lots of the landowners ive talked to or knocked on their door says "I really wish I could let you out there, but guide company x has it leased and I face penalty if I let anyone out there to hunt without them". Landowner put themselves in the predicament by signing the lease during the off season. Guides get all the land in the area to hunt, and the avg joe hunter is SOL. Ive heard landowners beyond frustrated because they have geese in their fields all season. 15 people have asked permission to hunt it that season, but they cant let them because of the contract. That guide company may never hunt that field because that feed just isnt big enough to run 10-15 guns on. Kind of a drag.
See post 62. I explain it there. Im sure its happening around the country more and more.
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That woukd tick me off, too. But sounds like something that should take care of itself pretty quickly - either farmers will stop entering contracts or will negotiate guaranteed number of hunt days/week if birds are present (if not met they can offer out). Or perhaps there isnt enough guide competition out there that the bottom feeders can get away with it.
There is so much dove guide competition in S Texas the farmers really have the upper hand, from what I can tell. A guide that can't both bring consistent clients and manage the resource to maximize a long season loses their fields to another who can.
There really is only one guide service. They came from Arkansas and ran that motto out there. They saw opportunity when they realized no one had it locked up and they took full advantage and had the funding behind their guide service in Arkansas to do so. I give them props, they saw an opportunity and made it work in a major way. Just sucked the life out of free lancing that had been going on for years though. They entered and took over...... RAPIDLY! Its been going on for the last 10 years. Its finally getting to the point where farmers are slowly not signing contracts, but its not resolving quick enough. But they have owned the area for quite some time.
For some odd reason, snows are only 5/day now and no conservation season. No one can figure out why. Its beyond dumb as that area holds one of the biggest wintering grounds for snows. Some have said its because of the guide presence that is there. Some say it was one bad year of migration and biologists freaked out and thought numbers were dropping. I can promise you, the numbers are back in full swing in a major way. We sat on a playa and watched thousands in and out of the decoys for a couple hours. Nothing we could do, we had our 20 on the ground already. Used to be 25/day during regular season and unlimited during conservation season. Oh the days we shot hundreds and hundreds of snows.
If you cannot see the difference between paying someone for success and working for success yourself the problem is yours not mine.
You can try to tell the tale that paying a guide to tell you what to bring, to carry your gear, to feed you, to house you and take you to the animals is hunting, but to me it isn't even a crude facsimile of what it means to be actually hunting. Sorry to burst your bubble but there are many of us that see right through the 50K you spent on your trophies for what they are.
That's harsh, and way over-generalizing.
Yes, there are guides that simply take people to the game. Yes there are people (I agree, not hunters) that do no work, no study, no learning and just want to be put in front of something to shoot so they can take photos. But it is totally unfair to say that just because someone chooses to use a guide in certain situations/locations they are less a hunter.
That's like saying a person is less of a traveler because they choose to find local folks in whatever country/destination they visit than the person who does it without any assistance. Personally, I'd rather get to know local customs, eateries, activities through local eyes when I take the time to travel.
I feel similarly about hunting and fishing in distant, unknown areas. Until retiring recently, I've never been able to afford the time to go spend more than a few days a year on such endeavors, so couldn't spend days scouting on my own. Where I had friends or acquaintances, I hit them up for tips and assistance. Where I didn't, I researched to find locally-based guides to provide intel, boats, and/or property access - but more importantly to me to provide local flavor and insights. But I'm in it for a much broader experience than just the killing - I want to get to know local people and places as much as I want to hunt.
Now that I've retired, I'm beginning to do more by road and more freestyling. Building the boat will give me more opportunities to explore in a lot more depth even locally. But I'm not doing any more or less hunting in these scenarios than when I've hunted with property owners, friends, or guides.
I'll fully qualify the above by saying I'm not a deer or big-game hunter and never have been, so that guide game may be totally different.
Alaska does in fact require a guide for brown bear/grizzly, Dall sheep and mountain goat. These were the animals that I harvested on my trips to Alaska although I was also fortunate to get a black bear, which does not require a guide, on my mountain goat hunt. A guided mountain hunt in Alaska is not any less difficult and I was grateful for the help they provided. Both client and guide suffer and work together as a team. Every guide I have known from those hunts have had one if not two hip replacement surgeries. Training for these trips involved backpacking the Superior Hiking Trail beginning to end. Nevertheless, even in my prime it would have been impossible for me to carry a wet brown bear hide out of the bush.
RM
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Something can be harsh and true at the same time.
I can make as nuanced an argument as you wish. For example, I have hunted Alaska for big game my myself. Would a comparison of what it took to put myself in the position to be successful compared to a guided hunter be instructive? I'm happy to do it, but it will be harsh.
I would put all who who pay a guide in the same category, the nuance you are hoping is not there in my eye. If someone is taking you hunting or fishing you are not doing the actual work that matters to me. Showing up to a dove field that was planted and managed for months and given a stool and a gun rest and a place to sit is not the same as hunting yourself. Paying someone to the the hard part absolutely makes you less of a hunter if that what you do. That makes you a shooter at worst or a half ass hunter at best.
Paying someone to take you on a trip is different than planning the trip yourself. Why would you even try that comparison? One is a "tour" and one is a "trip". They have different names because they are different.
Most guides in large parts of the country are kids and not even local to the area. Yes having a great day with a guide with local knowledge is great I'm sure. I've been lucky enough to know and meet as many of that sort of person as I want and have a beer with them for free. When I say "lucky" I chose to sacrifice to make that luck happen.
I know a little about hunting in distant and unknown conditions. I hunted and/or fished in: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
In the course of 4 decades as an adult I paid a guide 3 times and had one freebie guide trip to test out a potential new guide for a guide friend and I've hunted with a bunch of friends. The experience with a guide in every case was stupid easy, required hardly any effort and was a shadow of the experience that you get doing it on your own. I won't be convinced that showing up and spending time with someone who is an expert at extracting resources is anything like actual hunting or fishing on your own. It may look similar, that is where it ends.
Right here is the big excuse - didn't have time. No, you didn't TAKE the time. Just because you pissed your life away at your job doesn't mean you get some special dispensation to pay someone to hunt for you and do the work and to show you the game and call it hunting.
Yep me too on the friends and acquaintances, that can make it barely harder than a guided hunt, but at least it has some purity.
Finish the boat, put it on the trailer, take it out of state, launch it in the dark and then tell me that it isn't any more work or a more pure hunting experience than booking with a guide. Your above statement is absolutely false bordering on the absurd.
I'm a student of big game hunting, also upland hunting, waterfowl hunting and fishing. I've done it myself. I speak from a position of experience having spent my adult life busting my ass to experience the purity of real hunting and fishing. I'm nothing special when it comes to the folks here, that is why I like the group here. Amazing people who have done amazing things, be it decoy carvers, artists, craftsmen, boat builders, dog trainers... writing a check to have it done for you is not the way it is done here. There is a difference.
Yes, you follow a guide around that has local knowledge having pre scouted the area or has hunted the area in previous years, or had their master guide hunt the area for years before and tell them where to hunt. That guide got you to the area, booked you bush flight if needed. The guide usually carries the spotter and tripod. The guide also calls the shot especially for sheep if you are counting rings. The guide skins your game or capes it and carries the meat and trophy out of the field. None of these things are like actual hunting for me. When guided the hunt starts before the client shows up and finishes after they leave.
Tough to follow up those treatises. I have two comments: 1. Glad you're never gonna grade any paper I write. 
2. Thank you for using the word hunting, not freelancing. It makes me nuts being labeled a pirate or similar, and legitimizes the idea that paying to hunt should be the norm. 
2. Thank you for using the word hunting, not freelancing. It makes me nuts being labeled a pirate or similar, and legitimizes the idea that paying to hunt should be the norm.
I think the issue with guiding is the pressure on the guide to have success. What we have really lost sight of, as hunters, is when you pay a guide you pay for the opportunity. Anymore we live in such a world that reviews are everything and if one bad shoot with a guide leads to a negative review, people look elsewhere. People pay a guide and they expect success. Just because you hire a guide for a hunt does not guarantee a harvest. People have lost track with the mindset that sometimes mother nature doesnt allow a harvest. People get bent out of shape when they do not harvest or get enough shooting and for some reason its the guide's fault. Every so often I will help friends go to a buddies lease to harvest a doe. I remind them constantly, we cannot control wind and elements, just because you pay for the license and can shoot up to 4 doe does not guarantee we will harvest anything. We are fortunate we get to go, but this is an opportunity, not a shoot. People dont understand the difference between hunting and shooting anymore.
Ben
I think if I apply your logic then if someone who owned private land allowed no hunting at all and managed their property for wildlife building huge numbers of waterfowl you would have to make the same argument. That is to say they are controlling a public resource and not allowing you access to enjoy them. I don't think we can have it both ways.
I totally get your frustration and there are positively people working the system to the detriment of many. That's why I lean towards the side of tax and regulate to balance the scales.
William
I think in this centralized specific situation the public hunters should probably organize and enter into agreements with landowners more favorable than the agreements the guides make with them. I don't know. Not an easy answer and it sucks for freelancers like myself.
I agree and I think what you are describing fits under the broader heading of being entitled. They want something so they think they deserve it and writing a check is easier than doing the work. Saw you mention earlier in the year the hundreds of miles you put on to find a specific pod of birds to hunt. Sure would have been a different experience if you had paid someone to find them and just show up to shoot them.
Cost has something to do with it as well and creates the expectation. Sheep hunts are routinely at or nearing the $100,000 mark (Canadian thinhorns and Mexico bighorns). You have a limited resource to start and then the sheep "conservation group" is promoting the frenzy of scarcity that drives up prices while patting themselves on the back for putting and keeping Wild Sheep on the Mountain (their motto paraphrased).
Somehow the term freelance in your vernacular has a different meaning than mine. Simply put freelancing is hunting public lands on your own accord, no guide.Tough to follow up those treatises. I have two comments: 1. Glad you're never gonna grade any paper I write.
Here is what AI has to say about the meaning of the term.
Freelance hunting is an, often public-land, DIY approach where hunters travel to new, unfamiliar areas to locate, scout, and hunt game without using guides, pre-set stands, or leases. It involves high mobility, scouting in real-time, and quickly setting up on fresh signs or changing locations if the current spot is unproductive.
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Tod, I appreciate you and your opinion, and am not arguing whether one way is harder or easier. I'd guess we define hunting differently. For me, hunting is about spending time in God's glorious outdoors, preferably with friends and family and dogs, and chasing an opportunity to harvest some game for the table. Yes, I'd rather go to lower Alabama or Currituck or anywhere and meet a friend or family member who knows the area to spend time with them in pursuit of fish and game than I would go alone just to say I did it 100% myself. Similarly, in an unknown area or pursuing unfamiliar game, in the absence of a friend, family, or acquaintance, I'd much rather seek out (and pay for) an experienced hand than start from scratch on my own - both for a hoped for relationship and to maximize my time in pursuit rather than figuring it out from scratch. I get that we're probably quite different in that way. I don't see one as better or worse, just different.
I grew up primarily quail hunting in SE NC, with some dove and duck mixed in. Dad and I spent hours driving around, knocking on farmers' doors asking permission to walk their land, training and working dogs and finding birds. I loved doing that from the ground up, too, and want to get back into more of that in my backyard now that I have more time. But the goal for me was (and is) enjoying the hunt and the surroundings with others - not the prep itself. I'd bet from your various comments that you don't separate the two, or maybe even take more pleasure in the prep work. That's great!
It puts in mind for me a common discussion among hand tool woodworkers. There are those who spend huge amounts of time and money and effort sharpening their planes and chisels, and take great pride in showing how thin a ribbon they can shave off with their planes. There are others who are more interested in making something, and minimize the investment in sharpening - they don't sharpen to the extreme, but only enough to get the quality needed for their work - and they'll happily pursue anything that allows them to lessen time sharpening. In my opinion, though maybe not yours, the latter are no less woodworkers just because they don't put as many hours into prep. Nor do I think the former group are inferior - they just get as much or more pleasure in the prep.
Bottom line, if I were making a trip up north or out west to one of your areas, the first thing I'd do would be to contact you to see if you'd take me hunting or fishing and to learn more about your "world". That is how I define hunting. No issue with you defining it differently.
As to the job comments, those were definitely choices, too. I chose a career that required way too many hours and way too much stress - but I loved serving the communities and people around me and would never consider that as "pissing life away". It did force me to prioritize my time, and my priorities beyond career were my family and church. Hunting and fishing were distant 4th places (still are), but important to my well-being so I still made what time I could for them... but needed to maximize the parts I took the most joy from. Again, no regrets. Now that I have more time, I'm enjoying the prep (boat building, dog training, etc.) more and more.
I grew up primarily quail hunting in SE NC, with some dove and duck mixed in. Dad and I spent hours driving around, knocking on farmers' doors asking permission to walk their land, training and working dogs and finding birds. I loved doing that from the ground up, too, and want to get back into more of that in my backyard now that I have more time. But the goal for me was (and is) enjoying the hunt and the surroundings with others - not the prep itself. I'd bet from your various comments that you don't separate the two, or maybe even take more pleasure in the prep work. That's great!
It puts in mind for me a common discussion among hand tool woodworkers. There are those who spend huge amounts of time and money and effort sharpening their planes and chisels, and take great pride in showing how thin a ribbon they can shave off with their planes. There are others who are more interested in making something, and minimize the investment in sharpening - they don't sharpen to the extreme, but only enough to get the quality needed for their work - and they'll happily pursue anything that allows them to lessen time sharpening. In my opinion, though maybe not yours, the latter are no less woodworkers just because they don't put as many hours into prep. Nor do I think the former group are inferior - they just get as much or more pleasure in the prep.
Bottom line, if I were making a trip up north or out west to one of your areas, the first thing I'd do would be to contact you to see if you'd take me hunting or fishing and to learn more about your "world". That is how I define hunting. No issue with you defining it differently.
As to the job comments, those were definitely choices, too. I chose a career that required way too many hours and way too much stress - but I loved serving the communities and people around me and would never consider that as "pissing life away". It did force me to prioritize my time, and my priorities beyond career were my family and church. Hunting and fishing were distant 4th places (still are), but important to my well-being so I still made what time I could for them... but needed to maximize the parts I took the most joy from. Again, no regrets. Now that I have more time, I'm enjoying the prep (boat building, dog training, etc.) more and more.
Agree 100%!
And also agree that anyone who hires a guide expecting a kill/catch fall outside my definition of hunter. But I think there are a lot of us who hire guides with totally different expectations.
Perhaps it aggravates me most because I never heard the term until it popped up on the internet. But my statement about legitimizing the concept that paying to hunt is the standard is in the definition "where hunters travel to new, unfamiliar areas to locate, scout, and hunt game without using guides, pre-set stands, or leases." If it only said "where hunters travel to new, unfamiliar areas to locate, scout, and hunt game." I wouldn't have a problem with it. Eh, I guess I'm the only guy it bothers so life goes on.
I get it you like the social aspects and don't like to be alone and don't care to muck around doing it from scratch. You are missing most of the experience doing it that way.
To do the prep and clean up is part of hunting. In my experience the prep is the most important part and you are not hunting if you are not doing it. Showing up for the easy/fun part isn't much.
Don't like much of the prep, but that doesn't mean it isn't an essential part of the experience often defining the experience.
Although I'm good at sharpening a tool, 9 times out of 10 I would pick a powered tool with carbide cutting edges so as not to have to sharpen. I would not consider myself a master craftsman on peer with those hand tool users although I usually produce a pretty good product. This analogy is far off the mark comparing the level of sharpening... what I am saying is the guided hunter is at the level of buying from ikea compared to that master craftsman.
Fat cat guide users are the last person I'm interested in sharing my world with. They are used to thinking buying the guide's time is friendship. I've got great stories and I know a lot of shit, but they can't be bought in a sporting situation. I craft and stories and transfer knowledge for a living, so I know a little about that transaction. A student is a student until they decide to become a scholar, which is moving from paying for experience to doing it yourself. A goal of mine is to aid the student on that journey. A shooter is akin to a student that may be on their way to becoming something more. Paying for knowledge or an experience will only get you so far.
I have a pretty fancy career, myself, and I made my choices to put family first, sporting second and job third. I have reasons for my choices and I'm glad I had a tiny gem of wisdom to set my life on the course that I did. Your career contributions are not in debate here and you have contributed to society 100 times more than I. What I'm calling you out on is the excuse that you didn't have the time when it was your choice on how you lived.
Well imo, I think most people that pay to hunt with guides for fowl are not willing to put in the miles to scout and hunt like most of us do. Lots of them are business guys and just do it once or twice a year, only with guides. Those are the folk that expect good shoots or they look elsewhere. I have had buddies who have guided over years and it absolutely drives them nuts.
I would of hated if i paid someone to show up and shoot. Part of hunting to me is the exploration and knowing I did it myself. Again, I think there is shooting and there is hunting. Anymore, guides around waterfowl, people expect shooting. Its not hunting imo to show up and shoot knowing someone else did all the leg work. But let me be careful with this statement because I have a small network where I bounce info off friends and we work together. There are times where I get a call and am told to show up because they got a good feed going on or they have a pile of new mallard. Sam goes both ways but never an exchange of money and that is more networking with friends you trust. Friendships not guided trips I think is the difference there. I kind of pride myself on not paying for land to hunt on and not paying for someone to find birds for me. I enjoy it as well. There is nothing better than getting permission to hunt private land all based on a handshake. Money has turned that sour as well. Once money is exchanged and land is leased, people do not respect the land the same way someone who can be thrown off at anytime does. To date, I have never paid a landowner to hunt their property. They ask for money, I explain why I dont pay to hunt, and usually I get a call back and I am hunting their land. I have done very well over the years hunting lots of private that way.
Ya big game is getting out of control. My buddy with kuiu went to the sheep convention this year and gov tag for NM went for 1 million this year. Down from the 1.2 million it went for last year.
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