RE: Do it yourself vs. guided hunts
 

Back in the day (5 years ago) when Illinois didn' t make out of state hunters drop their pants and bend over for a license, my hunting buddies and I used to go on self-guided 9 day hunts for under $200 (total cost). We packed out own food, camped out, and killed huge deer. Even now, anyone can go to Illinois, Ohio, or Iowa and for $600 or less have a fantastic opportunity at really nice bucks. We still do it every year.

Personally, I think the difference between going on a guided hunt is being a shooter vs. being a hunter. If someone puts you in a stand, and you shoot what walks by, there is still skill involved (LOTS of ways to screw it up), but nothing like what is needed to find a piece of land, scout it, place a tree stand, and then shoot the deer. For me, the scouting and scheming is at least half the fun of hunting. The nice buck haning over me as I type this I was 100% responsible for killing. I found his rubs, found his bedding area, lured him in with scents, and shot him. Had I but shot him, I would still be proud of the trophy, but I couldn' t claim it in the same way I now can as something that I did on my own.

I' m not putting down guided hunts, they have their own allure. But I feel guided vs. non-guided are two very different things. I would rather kill a 130" 8 on my own, than be guided to a 160" 10.

And please don' t ask me about the 130" 8 vs. a guided 200" 10- I don' t think I want to admit it...

RE: Do it yourself vs. guided hunts
 

guided schmided! personally, im not a trophy hunter. im a meat hunter, i love being in the woods, and i really like guns!:D thats why i hunt. i would get the shakes if i saw a doe or some freak of nature buck. it doesnt matter. with that said, i wanna be romanced, i wanna be wined and dined, i wanna dance, i want to be toyed with. think of it as foreplay i guess. you walk into the woods with expecting the unknown, am i going to even see a deer today? am i in the right spot today, has a deer even been here in the past 4 months? you sit for a while, thinking you should find a better spot, but your experience tell you to stay. you look around, you finally see something moving. you cant tell what it is or if its even coming your way. 10 minutes later you think its gone. a few minutes pass by and you have givin up hope, all the sudden you see 4 more, might even be 5 if i counted legs right. they mill around a little jsut out of range. staying behind trees as if they are playing mind games with you. your legs hurt because your trying to stand SO still, your face has 3 misquitoes on it but you refuse to swat them. you tell yourself you take a few lumps on your forehead for that big ol doe. they move a littel closer, then a littel closer, then a littel farther, one looks right at you for what seems like a week, your sure your busted, but then it looks away. they move back a littel closer, a littel closer and then BAM! stuck em' !

now isnt that a littel more exciting than, " ok, climb right up there. at about 8:23am there will probably be 6 deer come in beteen these two trees. you should shoot when they reach this point or this point. we' ll see ya at 8:30. good luck."

however, i would take a guided hunt if i was trying to learn another type of hunting like elk or ram just to find out how to do it.

RE: Do it yourself vs. guided hunts
 

JZarr,

Here' s my opinion as much as it counts.;) I am an outfitter/guide here in PA. To some extent, you have a valid point...I certainly for myself get more out of doing my own scouting, taking an animal I may have outwited on his terms....however I myself went on a guided hunt on two occassions, one to Wyo and I took a bull elk with my bow...seen at www.asatcamo.com under ASAT Believers...now, I would love to go back and do it again, myself.....the only thing the guide really did was, know the area and call....I can do that but that didn' t take away from the excitement of taking my first bull with a bow.....I learned alot and that is what I payed for.....the hunt, the learned knowledge, the meals and I was fortunate enough to score on a dandy bull.....

The second hunt I took was what your after....a bear hunt in Quebec with Maine' s Turnpike Ridge Outfitters....I was again, fortunate enought to take a 200 lb black bear with my bow....bear hunting in PA is pot luck regardless the scouting etc....there are bears here, they travel and are pushed like hell come bear season and to do it with a bow...well it doesn' t happen often lets put it that way.....I got what I paid for...the service.....the sites were located and the bears were coming in....but believe me, when Mr. bear showed himself, the heart pumped just as fast and excited as if I' d done it all myself....it just didn' t matter, it was him and me and my bow and the excitement was there...

Do yourself a favor...don' t hash it out too much, you' ll enjoy yourself and it' s still up to you to arrow the animal...you' ll know it when the time comes....

Now as an outfitter....it' s a service...it' s not for everyone...I do it because we have the land, the resources, the animals and I can continue to hunt vicariously through someone else once my tags are filled and believe me, our clients are as touched with their animals as I would have been taking them myself.....like I said, it' s not for everyone but it still can be and is extremely exciting.....UNDER FAIR CHASE CONDITIONS. :)[:-]

RE: Do it yourself vs. guided hunts
 

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. :D

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. :D

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. ;)