RE: What Kind Of Elk Hunting Works?
It stands to reason that cost is an issue. Unfortunately on this type hunt costs run higher by mere definition; costs go up (compared to a local 1 day deer patch hunt where one sleeps inhis own bed, packs a sack lunch, burns $10.00 gas, and is back in time for supper or the game), in our case you hunt away from home, base camp away from town andin a remote location (but along the road) and thenhunt out of a horse/hike accessed spike camp --- about 5,000 pounds of gear and provisions.
Our shared camp expensesnormally runbetween$300 and 400 per head per year depending upon how many hunters participate in our group to split up the costsin a given year. I suppose the group might be persuaded to "underwrite" a disabled hunter to some degree; however, this would not be a "tv-show-won-the-free-hunt" scenario.In addition to the cost of "camp operations" each hunter has the expense of their elk licenses and their travel expense. Our group would be incurring the cost ofacquiring an extra rental horse to provide transport for someone to get "back in there" and these horses rent for$350 each for the season. The same horse could be used in the grand scheme of things to also pack out meat so may be absorbed by the group split. In any case, our "break-even-cost-elk-camp" is way, way, way below outfitter costs!
Money issues aside,themain focus of my thread is to elicit help from you all as to the profile of a good candidate. I'm thinkingthere would be physical limits in determiningwhat is smart and doable and what isn't such a good idea.
Can you folks provide any insight on this latter part?