Bad outfitter practices in central Montana.

[Hammsolo]

Paying customer or not, the hunter has an absolute OBLIGATION to follow up to a logical conclusion...whether you crush bedding or drive them on another parcel or not. Ethics...

I wasn’t clear enough. I was try to say in a simple way that the client is the boss. You worded it better. The client has an obligation. I was also putting it on the client, as well as the outfitter. The client is obligated to stand up for what is right.

 

[Hammsolo]

Agreed, I think I was making that exact point when I wrote "OBLIGATION" to follow

So why the ethics reference? mtmuley
[/QUOTE]

Sounds like semantics, we have an ethical obligation to these animals.

 

[Hammsolo]

If I wounded a animal Guide or no Guide I would follow it up. It just what you do. I have had people with me Duck hunting numerous time and we have shot a Duck and it flew 1/4 to 1/2 a mile and folded up or glided in and I told people with me I was going to retrieve it and to a Man I have been told I had no chance of finding it. But you want to know something I find 9 out of 10 of them and with out a dog. How experience as I have hunted waterfowl over fourty years.
I hunt deer in Iowa and with either a Shotgun or my muzzle loader most need to be tracked after the shot, some a very short distance some further and it always amazes me how far a Deer can run with a shot out heart or double lung shot. Not saying they all do but some can go a long way.

Those wounded animal guides are tough to find! not being a d bag, just funny

 

[LuketheDog]

A couple of years ago I was talking to a bow hunter from out of state who paid for an outfitted elk hunt on private land in the White Sulphur Springs area in Montana. He wasn't very happy about something that happened during his hunt. He wounded an elk, and the outfitter told him not to follow the blood trail anymore that night, but to wait until morning. The next morning the outfitter told him that the elk wasn't wounded that bad and to just let it go. The hunter thought it was a pretty good blood trail, and wanted to follow it. He was then told not to as the elk was with the herd and it was approaching public land, and if they followed then the herd would go onto the public land.
Then I talked to a friend of mine who had hunted with an outfitter on private land (different outfitter) that year, also in the White Sulphur Springs area. He said that one of the other people hunting when he was there, had also shot a bull elk, with a good blood trail, and he wasn't allowed to follow it either. He was told that the elk had headed to their bedding area, and the outfitter didn't want to follow the wounded elk for fear of bumping them out of the bedding area and onto the adjacent public land.
I wonder how much of this type of behavior goes on. These are the same landowners that complain about how many elk are on their land, and want the harvest totals to increase. Maybe they don't know what the outfitters on their land are doing. So when elk get on private land during hunting season and stay there, it's partly because they are being managed to stay there.

So did your friends call Fish & Game to report wanton waste violations or just shake their heads at the situation and let it go?

 

[Irishman]

LuketheDog, I would guess that neither one reported to Fish & Game, although they might have. The first guy, I don't even know, he just was someone from another state, who told me it happened to him. The second guy who told me about it happening, was telling me that he witnessed it happening to someone else. The two hunters who did the shooting should have insisted on following up, but I'm not sure that is easy to do when the guide is telling you that you can't go on that piece of private property (since the law in Montana states that you can't track a wounded animal on private property unless you have permission, even if you know it died). The hunters should have reported what happened, and maybe they did. Even if they do report it, does it become a he said/she said deal, and nothing happens anyway? Some of these landowners have had a lot of influence over decisions that have been made in State Government regarding wildlife management, so I'm not sure anything would happen to them. I honestly wish that people would just stop paying outfitters to hunt on private property (it really is kind of a canned hunt anyway), and if the private landowner thinks there are too many elk on his property, they need to get into the block management program.

 

[Salmonchaser]

Well the amounts of money people are willing to pay, even without the associated illegal and unethical activity such as herding elk, continues to amaze me. I guess I’d rather those guys who hunt with unethical outfitters stay where they are instead of hunting public ground.
I do know land owners/ranchers who have guided hunts, trespass fees. They would throw a guy off the property for not following up.
As described I’d love to see those guys busted.

 

[diamond hitch]

In my life I have met and known some fine outfitters and guides. However I have also found some as indicated. Growing up on the Idaho border it seemed like every unemployed recent resident found employment by opening a guide service. The technique used was to pick up a dozen or so unlikely pidgeons at the airport and dumped them out on the ridge tops and then pick them in the bottom that night. It was closer to a taxi service under the imagination of a guiding service.

Struggling to find freezer meat among the paying crowds, I happened to encounter a guide and 6 gents from Chicago. The boys were discussing a recent shot where a muley buck failed to fall at the shot and the vote of the crowd was to not waste their time going to see if they had hit anything. That tended to set me off where upon I think said any outfitter that would run an outfit like this would have his wife work in the whore houses in Wallace to get christmas money for the kids. I think I then went to see if the buck had been hit. I guess I have always had a bad attitude for commercial game activitiies that don't consider the game's welfare.

 

[LaSportsman]

It can be the right decision to wait until the next day and let the elk die but that's separate from not tracking the next day.

 

[LuketheDog]

The two hunters who did the shooting should have insisted on following up, but I'm not sure that is easy to do when the guide is telling you that you can't go on that piece of private property (since the law in Montana states that you can't track a wounded animal on private property unless you have permission, even if you know it died).

The right thing is rarely the easiest thing to do, and until people do it nothing will change...

 

[1976]

Yep thats no good about the outfitters not wanting to retrieve game or fallow up a shot with fear of pushing critters onto public, but Ive seen more than once resident hunters and nonresidents open up on a herd, wound an animal or two and fallow the blood trail to the edge of the drainage and turn around shaking their head. Hell one time I cut the trail and ended up with a 6pt 4 hrs later. The wound wasn't mortal but however was a broken front leg, I did thank them for the trail a couple days later, they just didn't want to waste the time or do the work, so its not just outfitters that are dbags.

 

[tim81212]

We have had the same outfitter get busted twice in our area. First, herding elk off of public and onto private using ranch hands on horse back. Second time was using the same ranch hands on horse back and in trucks to keep elk ON the ranch (different year) and push toward the "hunters". The last one cost them their RFW status......which would affect the cow and deer hunting more than bulls as it is an OTC gmu. I guess it is something.....but they are still making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off of hunting.

Wolf springs?

 

[SFC B]

Wolf springs?

Near Toponas