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Hunting With A Professional Outfitter…
If There Is A Short Cut This May Be It
There is nowhere you will learn more about elk hunting faster than on a fully guided hunt with a reputable professional outfitter. A good outfitter is in the business of elk hunting or planning for elk hunts 365 days per year. They live elk hunting, breathe elk hunting, and sleep elk hunting. It’s not a hobby or a desire to hunt with their buddies that drives professional outfitters. It is how they make a living, and if they do not consistently produce quality hunts for their clients, they do not stay in business for long. Licensed professional outfitters are at the top of their game. For the elk hunter who is either new to the sport or does not have the time necessary to devote to learning how elk live and move in a particular area in preparation for an upcoming hunt, an outfitter may be your best resource for success.
Statistics tell us that the average elk hunter is successful one year out of every eight. Such data can reflect a wide range of variables including: adverse weather, drought, herd dispersion, predation, food supply, hunting pressure, a hunter’s stamina, and more. The one factor that may have more effect on success than any other however, is a hunter’s preparation and participation…or lack thereof.
Every year via The Outfitter Network, I am contacted by thousands of hunters looking for the best opportunity they can find for a successful elk hunt. While I haven’t actually tracked the exact statistics of these contacts, I can reasonably estimate, in the eleven years that I have been a hunting consultant, 60% of those contacts are from hunters who whole-heartedly expect to spend a week in elk camp and go home with a cooler full of elk steaks, yet they have either never been elk hunting, or they have absolutely no idea where or maybe even how to hunt elk. Folks, in my opinion this is about the same as giving your 12-year-old child the keys to the family car and sending him off across town to run an errand. The chance of him coming home with the goods, the car in one piece, and absent any form of bodily injury is remote. He doesn’t know how to drive, doesn’t have the first clue about how to navigate the terrain, and as a result runs a pretty good chance of injuring himself and others. Why would you consider doing such as thing? Well of course you would never consider doing that. So why do so many would-be elk hunters head out into elk country every year unprepared and lacking the required knowledge and ability to achieve a safe and successful hunt? In short and in most cases it comes down to two things, a perceived lack of money to fund a guided hunt and too much ego causing the average hunter to think that he knows more about elk hunting than he actually does. Let’s look at an example that I believe will help you see the value of hunting at least once with a quality professional outfitter.
To make sure that we are comparing apples to apples we need to compare the actual costs required of the hunter to achieve the same level of success with an outfitter as hunting on his own. For purpose of this argument, I will set this at a 65% probability of success. In short what does it take or cost for a hunter to achieve a 65% probability of success? For the remainder of this essay or more information on elk hunting with a professional outfitter from Elk Hunting 301, CLICK HERE.
If you would like to discuss booking an outfitted big game hunt, CLICK HERE.
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