June 10, 2025 • 16 mins
On this episode, Tony explains why guided whitetail hunts can be a great choice for certain hunters, but also why they aren't for everyone.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about guided deer
hunts and what you should think about if you're considering one.
Only ten percent of hunters will ever go on a
guided hunt. I've heard this number tossed around a lot,
(00:40):
but I don't know if it's actually true. I don't
doubt that it's in the ballpark. Though. Most hunters don't
have any desire to do an outfitted hunt, and I
don't blame them, but I'd also say that there are
quite a few reasons to consider one, and that some
folks would really enjoy them. I'm not really one of
those folks, but I've done quite a few for my job,
and I guess that makes me qualify to talk about them.
So either way, I guess I'm going to so buckle up.
(01:10):
A few weeks back, I walked to a familiar gate
at the Minneapolis airport to sit with the other travelers
and wait for the cattle call to board my Montana
bound flight. Most of you probably know that met Eater's
office is located in Bozeman, and about three or four
times a year I have to head out there to
teach Steve how to write or cal how to train
a bird dog. During this last trip, the goal was
(01:31):
to promote our Dog Days of May celebration, which meant
I got to be a part of several met Eater podcasts,
record a few houndations, episodes of my own in film,
some hunting dog edu content. So, in other words, for
like the twelfth time in a row, I flew to
Montana and didn't do anything cool but work. Until last month,
(01:52):
I'd never hunted or fished in the Big Sky state
at all, and it kind of bothered me. But on
this last trip, Corey Hawkins reached out to me and said,
we're going fly fishing, come hell or high water now.
While I give Mark a lot of shit for being
a fly fisherman, I also loved to flyfish. In fact,
I kind of look at fly fishing like I look
at traditional archery. The acts themselves are great. It's just
(02:15):
some of the people who wear either activity as their
full identity that made me want to smash the eject
button on life. After about two minutes of conversation with them,
any Huski, I was pretty stoked to go float the
Madison with Corey after a week of working, but the
forecast didn't look great. Now. While everyone dreams of living
in a state like Montana for the natural beauty, and
(02:36):
I don't know like the thirty seven species of game
you can hunt for, I've been out there in mid
May and last year in late June and dealt with snow.
Our weather for the week I was there was forties
in rain, NonStop cold ass drizzle. I figured the trip
was a no go. But Corey isn't that kind of guy.
He's as capable of an outdoorsman as anyone I've ever met,
(02:58):
and I've met a lot. And he said, even if
we get soaked, the trout will still be eating and
the boat will probably still float. So he and I,
along with a Kansas trapper who was in town for
a couple of podcasts of her own and who was
also hell on Beaver's, bobcats and most fur bearers drove
to a launch site on the Madison. When I climbed
into the boat after parking Corey's truck, he handed me
(03:20):
a rod and said, cast toward the bank, try to
mend the line so there's a little drag and pay attention.
I did my best, which was probably about one percent
of what Corey could do with his eyes closed, and
I started fishing. So did old trapper Kade at the
front of the boat, and before long she hooked up
on a rainbow, which made me jealous because I fully
intended to kick her ass at fishing. We both got
(03:41):
into the groove as Corey pointed out slicks behind rocks
and runs and just about anything he could say in
a nice way to help two not very good fly
fisher people catch some fish. At one point, I got
so hopelessly wrapped up with my line and my tippet
that Corey took pity on me, and as former guides do,
worked it out in a matter of seconds. When I
(04:01):
was about in tears at all of the water I
was drifting through that I couldn't fish because I'd created
a total mess. Another time, I set the hook like
a real man on a rock and left Corey's flies
on the bottom of the river, and instead of handing
me flies to retie, he simply took control of the
situation and had me up and running in no time.
I almost always fished with kids, so I understood that
(04:23):
impulse deeply. It also felt really nice to be catered
to and did not have to solve every single problem
in the boat. Eventually, old Trapper Caate caught a whitefish,
which put her up two to nothing, a score she
pointed out multiple times without acknowledging that I had graciously
given her the front of the boat. Then, as if
God himself wanted me to not look like a total loser,
(04:45):
I made a terrible cast that I tried to remedy
as soon as my fly hit the water, which made
it look like I had intentionally set the hook on
the unluckiest brown in Montana. After that, I actually did
everything right and caught a rainbow which evened up our
score or before we hit our takeout spot, which was
a real bummer because I could have fished that way
for at least another couple of weeks. It was really
(05:07):
nice to have someone else do the heavy lifting gear
wise and experience wise, and to just be a passenger
along for the ride. The guided deer hunts I've done
have induced the same kind of feeling, but with a
hell of a lot more pressure. Some folks want to
offshore the work, some don't. Most of us will never
(05:27):
pony up the dough to do a guide to deer
hunt anyway, so we'll never know. I know that I
never would have if someone else wasn't paying for it,
which is exactly how I ended up on my first
guide to deer hunt, where I found myself down in
Illinois on some property that wasn't exactly known for producing
only four keys, with three other magazine writers and eleven
dudes from New York, some of whom were really decent guys,
(05:51):
and some of whom were very quick to point out
how many elephants they'd killed. I wish I was joking anyway.
I had a great guide on that hunt who put
me in and stands you couldn't pay me to get into.
Now that I'm older and wiser and not quite ready
to eat every meal through a straw. When I killed
a barely pope and young level ten pointer, he gave
me a hug and was truly happy. That's where the
(06:14):
fun ended, though, and while the outfitter didn't say anything,
I could tell they really would have preferred that buck
to get another year or three under his belt. That
was a good lesson on guided hunts, because I hate
following someone else's rules on what I can shoot. When
a great buck comes in and works a scrape at
twenty yards, I don't want to think about whether I'll
get fined if I shoot him. I did a hunt
(06:36):
in Texas one time for the same TV show I
filmed the Illinois Hunt for where the outfitter scared us
all so much with the orientation meeting that the decks day,
no one shot, despite several of us having good bucks
in range. The meeting consisted of a quick lesson on
how to tell if a buck was five and a
half years old or older, but every one of us
was from someplace very far away from where the mesquite
(06:57):
grows thick. A text is dear to me is a novelty,
and I am absolutely terrible at judging them because they
are literally like half the size of the deer I'm
used to And I wasn't alone in that issue either.
So while I did get to see crazy running activity
in more big bucks in one sit than I'll see
at home in a season. It wasn't all that much fun.
Constantly worrying about making a mistake that could cost you
(07:20):
a lot of money and be embarrassing as hell makes
hunting something different, especially because the main thought process for
most of us is not to screw up to begin with.
I guess since I'm focusing on the negative side of
outfitted hunts, I'll keep going before I switch gears. A
common horror story among folks who go on their first
guided hunt is really shitty guides or over hunted stands,
(07:43):
and a general lack of deer activity, which goes with
the other two. Now, hunting skill varies a lot, but
there's also the reality that some outfitters engage in a
volume route to make money. Instead of say, like ten
spots a season that all cost six thousand grand apiece,
they'll open up forty spots that cost two grand. This
(08:05):
is kind of like buying a new bird dog. There
aren't any really good deals out there for outfitted deer hunts,
just like there aren't too many good deals when you
want to buy good blood in a dog if you're
not paying very much for either, the odds of getting
burned increase quite a bit. The free market has these
things figured out pretty well. This brings me to the
(08:36):
due diligence stage of guided hunts. If you want to
do one or just intrigued by the prospect, the work
you put into research operations is going to be worth it.
References matter, call them. If an outfitter won't provide them,
move on. That's a giant red flag. Also, don't get
lost in the thought of a region or area being
(08:58):
so good for deer huntrunning that you assume any outfitter
there will be able to put you on big bucks.
Deer hunting quality tends to boil down to individual property management.
Ask potential outfitters lots of questions. Ask about how many
people they run through in a season, whether they cater
specifically to bow hunters if that's of interest, what their
(09:19):
stands and blinds are like, and the hunting methods that
are allowed. Ask about meals, lodging, travel, and everything that
will be a big part of the hunt that doesn't
involve you just shooting a good deer and then getting
picked up by a guide on a side by side,
and speaking of guides, ask plenty of questions about their
experience levels. There is something wild that happens with a
(09:40):
lot of outfitters where the guide turnover rate is really high.
This makes sense if you ever get to do any
guiding at all, because the job mostly sucks. Just as
there are shitty outfitters, there are also shitty clients. It's
not just on the guides and the outfitters here. Now,
there are clients who don't want to work. They don't
know how to hunt, but their egos won't allow them
(10:02):
to realize that, and some people just can't be made happy.
But there is truth about guides too. Hunting is an
experience game, and the more of it you have, the
more likely you are to be good at it. I
know that's not exactly revolutionary, but the people who are
most likely to take a guiding job and work their
asses off on no sleep for the promise of decent
tips and a job that at least revolves around hunting
(10:24):
aren't exactly forty five or fifty year old dudes with
thirty some deer seasons under their belts. Guiding is often
a young man's game, and while a twenty five year
old can be one hell of a guide if the
stars aligned and they understand the properties well. It's a
bit of a red flag when an outfitter talks about
young new to the scene. Guides ask a lot of
questions about this before booking, because it is important and
(10:46):
remember to look past just the trophy photos and to
ask who actually is in the photos, like are they
paying clients or are most of them outfitters, friends and family?
Do they look recent or does every picture kind of
seem old? Ask about the hunting methods and what will
be expected of you if you book a rut hunt.
Are you going to be expected to sit all day
(11:08):
from dark to dark? And if so, are you the
kind of person who can do that? Maybe you want
nothing more than to hunt from dark to dark because
you're wired a little goofy and the protocol for a
specific outfitter is to hunt until ten in the morning
and not get back into stand until two. If that's
the case, you might find yourself feeling cheated out of
some really valuable standtime. That's a conversation you have to
(11:30):
have long before you send in your deposit and block
your PTO off on your work calendar. And when you're
chatting with the outfitter, or you're showing up to the
lodge for the start of your hunt. I'll say this,
be careful about what you think you know. It's pretty
easy for me to believe that I know more than
most of the guides I've met, and on a general
deer scale, that's probably true, I guess, but it's not
(11:53):
true on specific properties and in places I've never been.
That's a hard one for the ego to process. But
one of the best reasons to do a guide of
whitetail hunt isn't just to kill a big one while
someone holds your hand. Is to learn about deer in
a new setting and to experience hunting someone else's way.
I've been in enough deer camps to see the way
that this plays out, and I can tell you that
(12:15):
you're genuinely way better off following the guide's advice. This
is true for two reasons. One is, even if they
are young and not overly experienced, they probably still have
a pretty good idea what to do to get you
on deer right where you're hunting. The second is that
you won't get very far if you're butting heads with
them all the time, at least you won't get anywhere good.
(12:36):
Getting along with your guide will buy you freedom. It'll
open up opportunities that you might not get if you
constantly remind them how much better at this stuff you
are than them. I learned this lesson when I got
the crazy chance to go to South Africa a long
time ago. It was a hunt I never thought would
happen for me, and when it did, I shot horribly.
I just fell apart, and on one of those shots
(12:56):
I hit a big I paul A square in the
joint where the shoulder meets the leg. African critters are
notoriously tough. While I did a lot of damage to
that in Paula, he didn't give up the ghost easily.
I did get along very well with the outfitter and
his son, unlike the absolute dipshit I went over there with.
So when the time came to trail that in Paula,
(13:17):
they told me I could go along and try to
get in a follow up shot, which was way outside
of their stated policy. It was one of the coolest
experiences of my life to crawl along that blood trail,
scanning the bush for that better at Impaula. In fact,
I almost passed out from adrenaline when I finally shot
him again, which is no joke. I wouldn't have gotten
to do that if the outfitter didn't like me. I
(13:39):
promise you that now. While it's common courtesy to just
not be a prick, it's also a good way to
get to do more stuff on a guided hunt and
enjoy yourself a hell of a lot more. Be nice,
and relinquish some of the control to the folks you're
paying to help you on your quest. It's that simple,
but it's sometimes not simple. It is worth it for
(13:59):
the right person, or the person who draws a coveted
tag like I talked about last week, and has decided
that you know, it's time to reduce I was deer
population by one. I also think that guided hunts are
going to become more of a popular thing, as non
resident hunting generally just gets run through the paper shredder
over and over again, and we have more limited opportunities.
(14:20):
While it may not be your jam at all, if
you've ever considered it or thinking, you'll take some time
in the future to treat yourself to a hunt in
a state where the boomers are thick. Guided hunts are
a real option, but you got to treat them like
you would any kind of big business or investing decision.
Got to do your research. Don't just trust what you're
told by someone who's looking to make money off of you.
(14:41):
Dig into the operation, talk to the people who've gone
through it with them, and then figure out what you're
really looking to get out of the hunt. If it's
just to shoot a deer bigger than your personal best,
the process for booking a hunt will be vastly different
from looking to, you know, have the time of your
life rattling in two dozen bucks just north of Mexico somewhere.
There are a lot of options out there, and a
(15:02):
few of them like that last example, might allow you
to hunt some pigs or some other non deer animals
that could flavor the whole trip in a much better
way than just a single minded pursuit of a big buck.
This is a good time of year to think about
this kind of thing, because there's still plenty of time
before November rolls around, and one thing you don't want
to do is to impulsively book a guided hunt and
(15:23):
then cross your fingers in fact, booking a hunt for
this year is already a situation that can lead to
trouble because the lead time isn't great and like finding
that perfect German Shorthair pup or labrador puppy with just
the perfect blood to suit your hunting needs, time is
your friend when it comes to outfitted hunts, So give
yourself enough of it to make the best decisions possible.
(15:44):
Do that, and then come back next week because I'm
going to talk about how deer hunting success doesn't just happen.
You can't just wish for it. You have to understand
what it takes to be successful and then put your
mind to those things. That's it for this episode. I'm
Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. As always,
thank you so much for listening and for all your support.
(16:05):
If you need some more hunting content, and you probably do,
you know, whether that's an article, maybe you want to
listen to a podcast, whatever, The Mediator dot com has
you covered. We drop new content every day. We're dropping
bird dog stuff. There's been some really cool trapping articles
put up lately on the website. Tons of good stuff.
(16:26):
Go check it out at the Mediator dot com
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about guided deer
hunts and what you should think about if you're considering one.
Only ten percent of hunters will ever go on a
guided hunt. I've heard this number tossed around a lot,
(00:40):
but I don't know if it's actually true. I don't
doubt that it's in the ballpark. Though. Most hunters don't
have any desire to do an outfitted hunt, and I
don't blame them, but I'd also say that there are
quite a few reasons to consider one, and that some
folks would really enjoy them. I'm not really one of
those folks, but I've done quite a few for my job,
and I guess that makes me qualify to talk about them.
So either way, I guess I'm going to so buckle up.
(01:10):
A few weeks back, I walked to a familiar gate
at the Minneapolis airport to sit with the other travelers
and wait for the cattle call to board my Montana
bound flight. Most of you probably know that met Eater's
office is located in Bozeman, and about three or four
times a year I have to head out there to
teach Steve how to write or cal how to train
a bird dog. During this last trip, the goal was
(01:31):
to promote our Dog Days of May celebration, which meant
I got to be a part of several met Eater podcasts,
record a few houndations, episodes of my own in film,
some hunting dog edu content. So, in other words, for
like the twelfth time in a row, I flew to
Montana and didn't do anything cool but work. Until last month,
(01:52):
I'd never hunted or fished in the Big Sky state
at all, and it kind of bothered me. But on
this last trip, Corey Hawkins reached out to me and said,
we're going fly fishing, come hell or high water now.
While I give Mark a lot of shit for being
a fly fisherman, I also loved to flyfish. In fact,
I kind of look at fly fishing like I look
at traditional archery. The acts themselves are great. It's just
(02:15):
some of the people who wear either activity as their
full identity that made me want to smash the eject
button on life. After about two minutes of conversation with them,
any Huski, I was pretty stoked to go float the
Madison with Corey after a week of working, but the
forecast didn't look great. Now. While everyone dreams of living
in a state like Montana for the natural beauty, and
(02:36):
I don't know like the thirty seven species of game
you can hunt for, I've been out there in mid
May and last year in late June and dealt with snow.
Our weather for the week I was there was forties
in rain, NonStop cold ass drizzle. I figured the trip
was a no go. But Corey isn't that kind of guy.
He's as capable of an outdoorsman as anyone I've ever met,
(02:58):
and I've met a lot. And he said, even if
we get soaked, the trout will still be eating and
the boat will probably still float. So he and I,
along with a Kansas trapper who was in town for
a couple of podcasts of her own and who was
also hell on Beaver's, bobcats and most fur bearers drove
to a launch site on the Madison. When I climbed
into the boat after parking Corey's truck, he handed me
(03:20):
a rod and said, cast toward the bank, try to
mend the line so there's a little drag and pay attention.
I did my best, which was probably about one percent
of what Corey could do with his eyes closed, and
I started fishing. So did old trapper Kade at the
front of the boat, and before long she hooked up
on a rainbow, which made me jealous because I fully
intended to kick her ass at fishing. We both got
(03:41):
into the groove as Corey pointed out slicks behind rocks
and runs and just about anything he could say in
a nice way to help two not very good fly
fisher people catch some fish. At one point, I got
so hopelessly wrapped up with my line and my tippet
that Corey took pity on me, and as former guides do,
worked it out in a matter of seconds. When I
(04:01):
was about in tears at all of the water I
was drifting through that I couldn't fish because I'd created
a total mess. Another time, I set the hook like
a real man on a rock and left Corey's flies
on the bottom of the river, and instead of handing
me flies to retie, he simply took control of the
situation and had me up and running in no time.
I almost always fished with kids, so I understood that
(04:23):
impulse deeply. It also felt really nice to be catered
to and did not have to solve every single problem
in the boat. Eventually, old Trapper Caate caught a whitefish,
which put her up two to nothing, a score she
pointed out multiple times without acknowledging that I had graciously
given her the front of the boat. Then, as if
God himself wanted me to not look like a total loser,
(04:45):
I made a terrible cast that I tried to remedy
as soon as my fly hit the water, which made
it look like I had intentionally set the hook on
the unluckiest brown in Montana. After that, I actually did
everything right and caught a rainbow which evened up our
score or before we hit our takeout spot, which was
a real bummer because I could have fished that way
for at least another couple of weeks. It was really
(05:07):
nice to have someone else do the heavy lifting gear
wise and experience wise, and to just be a passenger
along for the ride. The guided deer hunts I've done
have induced the same kind of feeling, but with a
hell of a lot more pressure. Some folks want to
offshore the work, some don't. Most of us will never
(05:27):
pony up the dough to do a guide to deer
hunt anyway, so we'll never know. I know that I
never would have if someone else wasn't paying for it,
which is exactly how I ended up on my first
guide to deer hunt, where I found myself down in
Illinois on some property that wasn't exactly known for producing
only four keys, with three other magazine writers and eleven
dudes from New York, some of whom were really decent guys,
(05:51):
and some of whom were very quick to point out
how many elephants they'd killed. I wish I was joking anyway.
I had a great guide on that hunt who put
me in and stands you couldn't pay me to get into.
Now that I'm older and wiser and not quite ready
to eat every meal through a straw. When I killed
a barely pope and young level ten pointer, he gave
me a hug and was truly happy. That's where the
(06:14):
fun ended, though, and while the outfitter didn't say anything,
I could tell they really would have preferred that buck
to get another year or three under his belt. That
was a good lesson on guided hunts, because I hate
following someone else's rules on what I can shoot. When
a great buck comes in and works a scrape at
twenty yards, I don't want to think about whether I'll
get fined if I shoot him. I did a hunt
(06:36):
in Texas one time for the same TV show I
filmed the Illinois Hunt for where the outfitter scared us
all so much with the orientation meeting that the decks day,
no one shot, despite several of us having good bucks
in range. The meeting consisted of a quick lesson on
how to tell if a buck was five and a
half years old or older, but every one of us
was from someplace very far away from where the mesquite
(06:57):
grows thick. A text is dear to me is a novelty,
and I am absolutely terrible at judging them because they
are literally like half the size of the deer I'm
used to And I wasn't alone in that issue either.
So while I did get to see crazy running activity
in more big bucks in one sit than I'll see
at home in a season. It wasn't all that much fun.
Constantly worrying about making a mistake that could cost you
(07:20):
a lot of money and be embarrassing as hell makes
hunting something different, especially because the main thought process for
most of us is not to screw up to begin with.
I guess since I'm focusing on the negative side of
outfitted hunts, I'll keep going before I switch gears. A
common horror story among folks who go on their first
guided hunt is really shitty guides or over hunted stands,
(07:43):
and a general lack of deer activity, which goes with
the other two. Now, hunting skill varies a lot, but
there's also the reality that some outfitters engage in a
volume route to make money. Instead of say, like ten
spots a season that all cost six thousand grand apiece,
they'll open up forty spots that cost two grand. This
(08:05):
is kind of like buying a new bird dog. There
aren't any really good deals out there for outfitted deer hunts,
just like there aren't too many good deals when you
want to buy good blood in a dog if you're
not paying very much for either, the odds of getting
burned increase quite a bit. The free market has these
things figured out pretty well. This brings me to the
(08:36):
due diligence stage of guided hunts. If you want to
do one or just intrigued by the prospect, the work
you put into research operations is going to be worth it.
References matter, call them. If an outfitter won't provide them,
move on. That's a giant red flag. Also, don't get
lost in the thought of a region or area being
(08:58):
so good for deer huntrunning that you assume any outfitter
there will be able to put you on big bucks.
Deer hunting quality tends to boil down to individual property management.
Ask potential outfitters lots of questions. Ask about how many
people they run through in a season, whether they cater
specifically to bow hunters if that's of interest, what their
(09:19):
stands and blinds are like, and the hunting methods that
are allowed. Ask about meals, lodging, travel, and everything that
will be a big part of the hunt that doesn't
involve you just shooting a good deer and then getting
picked up by a guide on a side by side,
and speaking of guides, ask plenty of questions about their
experience levels. There is something wild that happens with a
(09:40):
lot of outfitters where the guide turnover rate is really high.
This makes sense if you ever get to do any
guiding at all, because the job mostly sucks. Just as
there are shitty outfitters, there are also shitty clients. It's
not just on the guides and the outfitters here. Now,
there are clients who don't want to work. They don't
know how to hunt, but their egos won't allow them
(10:02):
to realize that, and some people just can't be made happy.
But there is truth about guides too. Hunting is an
experience game, and the more of it you have, the
more likely you are to be good at it. I
know that's not exactly revolutionary, but the people who are
most likely to take a guiding job and work their
asses off on no sleep for the promise of decent
tips and a job that at least revolves around hunting
(10:24):
aren't exactly forty five or fifty year old dudes with
thirty some deer seasons under their belts. Guiding is often
a young man's game, and while a twenty five year
old can be one hell of a guide if the
stars aligned and they understand the properties well. It's a
bit of a red flag when an outfitter talks about
young new to the scene. Guides ask a lot of
questions about this before booking, because it is important and
(10:46):
remember to look past just the trophy photos and to
ask who actually is in the photos, like are they
paying clients or are most of them outfitters, friends and family?
Do they look recent or does every picture kind of
seem old? Ask about the hunting methods and what will
be expected of you if you book a rut hunt.
Are you going to be expected to sit all day
(11:08):
from dark to dark? And if so, are you the
kind of person who can do that? Maybe you want
nothing more than to hunt from dark to dark because
you're wired a little goofy and the protocol for a
specific outfitter is to hunt until ten in the morning
and not get back into stand until two. If that's
the case, you might find yourself feeling cheated out of
some really valuable standtime. That's a conversation you have to
(11:30):
have long before you send in your deposit and block
your PTO off on your work calendar. And when you're
chatting with the outfitter, or you're showing up to the
lodge for the start of your hunt. I'll say this,
be careful about what you think you know. It's pretty
easy for me to believe that I know more than
most of the guides I've met, and on a general
deer scale, that's probably true, I guess, but it's not
(11:53):
true on specific properties and in places I've never been.
That's a hard one for the ego to process. But
one of the best reasons to do a guide of
whitetail hunt isn't just to kill a big one while
someone holds your hand. Is to learn about deer in
a new setting and to experience hunting someone else's way.
I've been in enough deer camps to see the way
that this plays out, and I can tell you that
(12:15):
you're genuinely way better off following the guide's advice. This
is true for two reasons. One is, even if they
are young and not overly experienced, they probably still have
a pretty good idea what to do to get you
on deer right where you're hunting. The second is that
you won't get very far if you're butting heads with
them all the time, at least you won't get anywhere good.
(12:36):
Getting along with your guide will buy you freedom. It'll
open up opportunities that you might not get if you
constantly remind them how much better at this stuff you
are than them. I learned this lesson when I got
the crazy chance to go to South Africa a long
time ago. It was a hunt I never thought would
happen for me, and when it did, I shot horribly.
I just fell apart, and on one of those shots
(12:56):
I hit a big I paul A square in the
joint where the shoulder meets the leg. African critters are
notoriously tough. While I did a lot of damage to
that in Paula, he didn't give up the ghost easily.
I did get along very well with the outfitter and
his son, unlike the absolute dipshit I went over there with.
So when the time came to trail that in Paula,
(13:17):
they told me I could go along and try to
get in a follow up shot, which was way outside
of their stated policy. It was one of the coolest
experiences of my life to crawl along that blood trail,
scanning the bush for that better at Impaula. In fact,
I almost passed out from adrenaline when I finally shot
him again, which is no joke. I wouldn't have gotten
to do that if the outfitter didn't like me. I
(13:39):
promise you that now. While it's common courtesy to just
not be a prick, it's also a good way to
get to do more stuff on a guided hunt and
enjoy yourself a hell of a lot more. Be nice,
and relinquish some of the control to the folks you're
paying to help you on your quest. It's that simple,
but it's sometimes not simple. It is worth it for
(13:59):
the right person, or the person who draws a coveted
tag like I talked about last week, and has decided
that you know, it's time to reduce I was deer
population by one. I also think that guided hunts are
going to become more of a popular thing, as non
resident hunting generally just gets run through the paper shredder
over and over again, and we have more limited opportunities.
(14:20):
While it may not be your jam at all, if
you've ever considered it or thinking, you'll take some time
in the future to treat yourself to a hunt in
a state where the boomers are thick. Guided hunts are
a real option, but you got to treat them like
you would any kind of big business or investing decision.
Got to do your research. Don't just trust what you're
told by someone who's looking to make money off of you.
(14:41):
Dig into the operation, talk to the people who've gone
through it with them, and then figure out what you're
really looking to get out of the hunt. If it's
just to shoot a deer bigger than your personal best,
the process for booking a hunt will be vastly different
from looking to, you know, have the time of your
life rattling in two dozen bucks just north of Mexico somewhere.
There are a lot of options out there, and a
(15:02):
few of them like that last example, might allow you
to hunt some pigs or some other non deer animals
that could flavor the whole trip in a much better
way than just a single minded pursuit of a big buck.
This is a good time of year to think about
this kind of thing, because there's still plenty of time
before November rolls around, and one thing you don't want
to do is to impulsively book a guided hunt and
(15:23):
then cross your fingers in fact, booking a hunt for
this year is already a situation that can lead to
trouble because the lead time isn't great and like finding
that perfect German Shorthair pup or labrador puppy with just
the perfect blood to suit your hunting needs, time is
your friend when it comes to outfitted hunts, So give
yourself enough of it to make the best decisions possible.
(15:44):
Do that, and then come back next week because I'm
going to talk about how deer hunting success doesn't just happen.
You can't just wish for it. You have to understand
what it takes to be successful and then put your
mind to those things. That's it for this episode. I'm
Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. As always,
thank you so much for listening and for all your support.
(16:05):
If you need some more hunting content, and you probably do,
you know, whether that's an article, maybe you want to
listen to a podcast, whatever, The Mediator dot com has
you covered. We drop new content every day. We're dropping
bird dog stuff. There's been some really cool trapping articles
put up lately on the website. Tons of good stuff.
(16:26):
Go check it out at the Mediator dot com
Host
Mark Kenyon
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