The part where I said "I have never paid for a hunt" answers your question.. but either guided or semi-guided you think they would do more than, here is a stand.. hope there are some deer for ya!
Then you should not make a statement like "guide-guide for the most part hunts with you and talk you threw the deer you are looking at and talks you threw a shot. Sounds to me like he is paying for a non-guide". You are making a statement without any knowledge on the issue at hand.
Sounds to me like I can say what I would pay over 2k for.. and moving stands, finding the deer myself ect isnt it. If I want to call that a non-guide hunt, thats what I feel like it is and thats what I will call it.. thanks for your input tho.
Im going to go on a non-guide hunt come oct 1st.. Ill find the deer myself and take my own stand to the woods
Ya guys it's pretty unreal I wasn't trying to start a fit in here but this is an experience like nothing I have ever seen, when we found the one area that the deer seam to be in he has a stand in there but he told no one about it. It's not marked on his Map he gave us at the beginning of the trip. I am about to talk with him and see what he thinks is fair, if it ends bad I promise you I will be spreading the word like wild fire
Going by OP's past threads sounds likeit is a place called Green Treez Outdoors. I think it woud be hard to hunt a semi-guided early season hunt anywhere. Early season you need to be on the food sources and have them patterened, uness you were abe to scout a lot a few weeks before the scheduled dates I wouldn't have the hopes of a rut hunt. In one of your threads you did say you didn't want a place that was too easy Hopefully he might be able to put you on some higher traffic areas for the remaining sits.
Its pretty simple... there are MANY reputable outfitters to be had. One hour spent at the keyboard and you CAN verify an outfitter. There are many resources and many sites dedicated to the subject. These forums and others are great tools as well. You went with one that honestly wasn't verified outside of his own website. Poor choice, IMO if I can't Google an outfitter and find reviews on multiple sites then he doesn't have the experience I would want. But I prefer DIY anyway so..... It sucks AND some of it does sound a lil shady, but YOU could have prevented it with a lil more research.
A few random points. Early season whitetail hunts( guided or semi guided) for any measurable amount of success are very labor intensive. The outfitter has to have some early season patterns established centered around food sources, typically we are talking about afternoon hunts. This is not the time of year you can stick a hunter in a stand in a travel lane an hope a buck comes through. Semi guided in the mid west means....here is the farm...here are the stands, good luck. Fully guided in the mid west the guide will direct you to a stand for each sit.....note I said direct, not take you, not sit with you or hold your hand. At this point, since your on the hunt I would be more concerned with talking to the outfitter and resolving any issues rather then asking guys on a forum. Many of the answers you will get are from guys that have zero experience in the situation.
LOL not even any decent trail cam pics on his website.... Quick search shows his site, a FB page and a thread on bh.com Chalk it up to experience, next time you'll do your homework...
Yes we read a little to much into his own story and that was our fault. The guy seams like a decent guy just wasn't what we expected but for a discounted rate I feel we just had our standards set to high, but our standards were set high based on what he said and the bogus past customer (his partner) said over the phone. Knowing what I know about the land now if I was there one more week I think a lot of our group would have had a great chance at a good deer. My assumption on a semi guide is there are stands hung in decent areas if we wanted to move around that was on us but that there had been scouting done in recent months and the stands that were hung there was for a reason and that was far from the truth. Either way we worked our tail off killed two decent deer and spend 5 days with family and friends made it home safe so all is good. Although if you was to ask the 3 guys who never even seen a deer they may beg to differ.
I am not sure how to post pics but I can text or email them if you want to post them. My wife killed an 8pt her first deer I killed a 10pt. They were nice deer not Giants but after a long week I was happy to kill mine in the last 30 min of the last morning
Thanks for posting there is good deer on his property and if anyone else decides to go they just need to be prepared to spend day 1 scouting
As for the rest of your story, I would post up an honest review on his site. Give him credit for the positives, and hit on the negatives. Don't make it 100% focused on the negatives, be balanced and fair. Then watch the site for a while. See if he deletes it or edits it in any way. That will tell a lot about the place/owners as well. Can they accept a bit of criticism along with praise? Midwest hunting has been rough the past few years with drought, flooding and disease.
There is no where to put a post on his website I see the ones there but I have no idea how to do that. There is no place to leave a comment.
Guess that won't work then, looks like hand picked testimonials. Only thing you can do is post about your experience on whatever hunting forums/blogs you use and get the name in searches when people google it. Keep it fair and honest and shouldn't be a problem.
