Avoiding the Outfitter Blues

Five years later, Art Davis is still mad. The outfitter was incompetent, his guides completely unqualified and the entire week-long, $7,000 Newfoundland moose and caribou bowhunt was a total bust. But no one takes the blame for the failed hunt more than Davis himself.

"I didn't do my homework. I found this guy on the Internet, spoke with him on the phone a few times and decided he was worthy so dove in head first," he recalls. "I didn't call any references, either."

The food was pretty good, but other than that, everything that could go wrong did. The guides had no experience with bowhunters, and Davis, who lives in Minnesota, is pretty sure they had little or no hunting experience at all. He was supposed to be the only hunter in camp that week, but four others showed up and essentially elbowed Davis out of the prime hunting territory. He never drew his bow.

Davis is hardly the only hunter who has had a bad experience on a paid hunt. Matt Blosser, a paramedic from Maryland, booked a snow goose hunt with an Eastern Shore outfitter but found himself in a duck blind staring at another group of hunters in a blind across a small pond.

"When we showed up, he told us there weren't any snow geese in the area, so we were going duck hunting instead. We saw one duck all day and we had to leave the first blind when the guide informed us the pond had been baited with corn," he recalls. "The whole thing was just dishonest."

Their stories are far from unusual. Incompetent guides and outfitters are liberally scattered throughout prime hunting country, and just about everyone who's been on more than a handful of paid trips has some sort of similar story. Guides show up drunk, the amount or quality of game is poor, or the outfitter is an arrogant, vulgar jerk at best, or worse, a slimy, lying thief.

Truth is, it doesn't take much more than a business card or maybe a slick brochure to qualify as a guide in most states. Build a cheap website, take out a thumbnail advertisement in the back of a magazine and you're in business. Other states, however, do have at least some requirements before an outfitter can open shop. Some even have a regulatory office that oversees the state's outfitters. Still, most only require proof of insurance and bonding, a cursory first aid course and a few dollars for the licensing fee. But no state agency can regulate poor people skills, bad food and a lack of game. That's something you have to learn on your own.

Finding a quality guide or outfitter really isn't that difficult. Plenty of those who use websites or small ads in the back pages of a hunting magazine do a bang-up job of putting you in front of more game than you've ever seen before. In fact, for every incompetent guide, there are a dozen good ones who love their jobs and work hard for their money.