G-Daddy

I've been on a couple of types of "guided hunts". The first type is one where you stay at a lodge and the hunters are taken out and "assigned" to particular stands. You are driven near the stand by a "guide" and he tells you where the stand is. They also tell you when they will pick you up. In this situation you are usually involved in a morning hunt and an afternoon hunt. The hunter is confined to a very small area and you hunt what you can see from a fixed position for several hours. In this type of situation I have never tipped the guide. He really isn't doing a lot of work that deserves a tip, in my opinion.

The second type of hunt is a spot and stalk hunt that is typical of western hunts. In this type of hunt the guide is invaluable. I won't know the lay of the land or the types of movement that the local game will make. The guides I have hunted with have known the land like the backs of their hands and there is now way I would have been able to hunt with the levels of success I have experienced if I had been on my own. In this type of hunting, the guides should be tipped based on the work they do for their clients. The best tip I ever gave a guide was after a hunt where my son went home with an unpunched tag following a mule deer trip. He and our guide saw a monster muley on the third day of a four day hunt. They hunted hard trying to catch up with the buck for two days, glimpsing him a few times. But they never got into shooting position. This guide worked harder than any guide I have ever hunted with and the tip I left with him reflected my gratitude for how hard he worked.