Rob - I definitely agree with everything you' ve just said. Although I do tend to overelaborate things a bit and get myself confused in the mix so my original message may have come out a bit skewed.

Like it was mentioned earlier - some people have no other options than to go for guided hunts. Whether it be because there are no trophy animals in their hunting area or like in yours and mine cases where bear hunting through guides is the only way to do it. Heck, I' ve been on guided bear hunts with my father when I was younger and I was in no way any less excited when that bear came because we hadn' t picked out the bait spot ourselves.

I guess my original point was that given 2 choices, one being doing it myself with the chance to harvest a mature animal or the other being a guided hunt with a better probability of taking a mature animal, I would choose to do it myself. But that' s just me. I' m a little strange at times.

Oh yeah - I understand about people doing it for the entire trip and not just to harvest an animal. I go fishing in NW Ontario every summer and I spend a couple hundred bucks extra to go to a camp with nice accomodations that pampers me for a week. Nothing wrong with that every once in awhile.