Bowsite.com

My hunt was a semi-guided hunt. 3 days guided 2 on my own. I won an auction through Whitetails Unlimited to go on this hunt. The outfitter Dave Keller sent trail cam pictures of elk during the summer. Mostly small bulls 4's and 5 points mostly.

The Ride in on horses was nice for the 3000ft ascent. Camp was very nice with nice wall tents. Had high winds that blew tents in a couple of times. Food was good and there was plenty of it!

Guide, was not prepared for the hunt. He flew in from Ohio the day before I arrived. He didn't know where the elk were. He was relying on past hunts and hoping the elk would be talking, they were quiet. This was my first elk hunt, but I expected more than just getting a lot of "I don't know what to do?" responses from my guide. Day three we finally ran into a small bull. I had a shot opportunity but my shot was a touch back. I had hoped we could wait to look for him , but my guide felt good about the blood and said the high winds would make trailing harder if we waited. Guide ended up bumping him and we never found him. When discussing the events with the outfitter and the other hunters back at camp, the outfitter decided to belittle me about my movements when I was telling them about using my rangefinder/binos to verify that it was a legal bull. Very unprofessional in my opinion. My guide Shane did know the area well, but had a hard time locating elk for me. Saw only one elk while hunting with him, and one small bull while by myself. I would give my Guide 3 out of 5 stars(I did get a shot), the camp/food/equip/horses 5 out of 5 stars, Outfitter friendliness/willingness to do everything to help us hunters be successful 2 out 5 Stars. The 3 of us hunters walked off the mountain on the last day, instead of waiting to be brought out on horseback the next day... Would probably only do a drop camp if had to do it over.

Was the outfitter notified of problems? - NO