Bowsite.com

This may not matter as I have heard that in 2009 Hadley is going under, or at least Stacey Ward (owner) was bankrupt. I feel bad for my hunting buddies because I was the one that booked this trip. Bad Mistake!!! Lets start with the basics. We were told there would be 10 guys in our camp, which is one of 4. To our SURPRISE when we got to camp there were 20+ hunters in our camp alone. Thats right, 75-100 hunters in camp at one time. Now had we been told this instead of lied to over the phone we would not have booked. Who would? Lodging.......... It was fair to say that the lodging was OK. The place was not a dump by far and other than the fact that there were 6 of us sharing one toilet I have no real complaints with the lodging. Food. They had it catered in lunch/dinner, and I can honestly say Hadley Creek (HC) was getting screwed by their caterer, the food was bad. Hot dogs/ tacos/ some of the crappiest bar-b-q ever, we would have been better off with cold cuts and a loaf of bread, honestly. Guides and staff were a joke. It was obvious that there was a corrupt element, as we were told by 'veteran' HC hunters that if you want to kill a big one you have to butter up your guide to the tune of $1000 or more. Funny , the hunters that told us that killed a 160", and were seeing 15 bucks per sit. The other 'regular' hunters in camp, including us, did not see that many deer between the 15 of us???????? We were mad , and almost left on the 4th day as it just appeared that HC was clearly a cattle operation. We noticed that the brochure was full of 'guides' with their bucks. The guides hunted and most of them had tagged out on nice deer. 27 guides means 27 less trophy bucks. Owner appeared to be a homeless guy at dinner, then we found out it was the owner??? I guess he knew back in 2008 that he was done. Be careful with IL outfitters as my hunting connections have had similar experiences with the BIG outfitters. ASK your outfitter if the guides hunt too. RED FLAG ASK your outfitter how many people will be on the entire property that week. ASK your outfitter what their kill rate is on trophy bucks........BEWARE of numbers that are 50% and higher.......We all know its hard to kill a 140" buck with a bow. Do your homework, sometimes you just have to learn the hard way like we did.

Was the outfitter notified of problems? - YES