as we all know, hind sight is 20/20. knowing that, i should have told my boss he was cheating people out of money and quit. i was 18 at the time, fairly mild mannered, and not out to burn any bridges in this outdoors game.

i did learn a lot working there, set some hunters up on some nice deer, and had a lot of fun.

we had close to 200 stands up between 6 and 8 guides depending on how busy we were. it was impossible for everyone to know them all. we had maps and just drew dots on them where the stands were and handed them out between each other. it wasnt uncommon for me to set foot on a farm for the first time ever, lead 3 guys into stands having NO clue what each stand's situation was. they'd ask stuff like "which way are they coming from?" and i'd have to come up with "well there's a creek crossing about 150 yards behind you and they're following a trail from there out to the field, they'll be about 30 yards on your right". it was either that or say "uhh..i dunno". nobody who just put up all that money wants to hear "uhh...i dunno".

overhunting stands was also ridiculous. if a guy saw a big buck go in the woods 100 yards away my boss had us in there that afternoon moving it closer. there'd be a hunter in it every day the next week, with each being lead to believe they were the first in there or that this was a brand new farm we just got or something.

sometimes it was just stupid little things like being told to throw old shed antlers near stands that we'd never even seen deer around, he just needed another stand on a farm to fit another guy on it, and that way the guy would think he's in the area of some big deer.

my boss was a waterfowl guy and, admittedly, only got into deer for the money. he was notorious for pushing deer too soon after bad shots. one hunter who came with us many times and i personally got to know got excited one evening and made a bad shot on a very nice buck. rather than back off and wait till morning my boss rallied the troops and we jumped it about 80 yards from where it was shot. we then pulled out and tracked it the next day into an impenetrable swamp.

we had to put hunters in a stand and then having to (quietly) go to another place on the same farm and put up more stands if they'd been seeing deer there.


all that being said, those things didnt happen in every case with every hunter. there were some farms that i knew inside and out and one in particular that i still hold a special place in my heart for because i know what lives there and that nobody will ever kill any of them.

what we, as guides, ran into often were hunters with the mentality of "these aren't my deer so i don't care what happens to them". it wasnt uncommon for hunters to lie about shooting at animals (we always had to slyly count their arrows when they went in and came out), we had one guy who lost all his arrows shooting at a 120 class buck 80 yards away, one guy who took face shots, one guy who stood tiptoe on his stand with his release and bow way above his head to try to get a shot over some branches, a guy shot a deer with 7 slugs, one (that i have a pic of somewhere) was allegedly a 140 class monster with a drop tine and turned out to be a broken racked small buck. that guy denied up and down that he shot that deer until we took him back to his stand and showed him the blood trail and he finally admitted it. guys would complain about not seeing any deer and after they left we would go check out their stands to find piles of cigarette butts and candy wrappers littering the ground. we got sort of jaded to the whole thing and started to feel that we had to be defensive to every hunter who came in and always assume that they were hiding something.

all in all i'm pretty neutral on the whole experience. i shouldn't have tolerated what i did and let it go on but i can't go back and undo any of it. hate me if you want....it is what it is.