npaden

I waffle back and forth on this issue. I've never hired an outfitter but I will probably have to if I ever want to shoot a Moose as there aren't a lot of Moose in Texas last I checked. I did look into moose hunting a little and it looks like you can line up a hunt in Eastern Canada for around $5k and have a decent chance at a 50" moose or you can spend $20k and go to the Yukon with Jim Shockey and have almost a guarantee on a 60" moose. Which would mean that I was a better hunter?

I connected on an elk this year, but I had a friend who showed me his special spots and did the bugling when the elk came in so does that make me less of a hunter? Probably to some extent, although I hung around and hunted hard with them for the rest of the week trying to close the deal on another elk for them. Living in Texas I sure didn't have the opportunity to find a few good elk hunting spots in the wilderness in Wyoming. Once I was there I felt that I was as good at keeping quiet and scent free and spoting sign and listening and looking for elk as they were though.

It is a very difficult line to draw for me. I respect the guy who shot the spider bull ALOT more than the guys that go up to a high fenced place in Saskatewan and close the deal on one that they pick out based on how much they can afford. This WAS a public land bull and several other folks did have a chance to kill him if they could have found him first. He was by no means guaranteed to kill that bull, it sounded like it took them a while to close the deal to me, help or no help. He could have spent that same $200k and ended up with nothing.