Bowsite.com

Stay away from Seven J outfitters, they mislead hunters and do not stand behind their hunts. The rifle Elk hunts in area 116 are advertised as high success rate (90% shooting opportunity and 75% harvest per their website), on premium private leases of around 180K acres. When booking the hunt, we were told to expect to see elk every day and that they always have many stalking opportunities. Seven J stated that in 2013 the only people that did not harvest an elk were hunters holding out for a 350+ bull and that they decided to go home empty handed but could have easily filled. We were also told that we could easily take a cow towards the end of the hunt if we so choose as elk were abundant on their leases, so this sounded like a pricey but great hunt so 3 of us booked with them for this fall (Oct 2014).

The first day of our hunt, our guide said that we were going to a ranch where the landowner had called the day before and said that he was seeing elk. Our guide said he saw one (neither myself or my buddy could see it), and we did not see anything else the rest of the day. We ran into the landowner at the end of the day, and he told us that he had not seen an elk on his ranch for over 3 weeks. Fishy right? Of the 5 hunters in camp.....0 shots on day 1, and no one spotted an elk.

The rest of the week went the same with none of the hunters seeing anything. We found out that the leases are not very large (multiple 2-3k acre leases make up their 180k of "premium" private ground, of which maybe 15-20k acres are in area 116 that we could actually hunt), and the elk do not reside on their leases, but on a very large ranch a few miles away close to their hunting leases. You basically spend allot of time driving around in a pickup looking for elk..hoping that they get pushed off of the other property which does not get any pressure so they stay right there. During the week we were at Seven J, none of the 5 hunters even got a shot at an elk. Pretty far off of their 90% shooting opportunity and 75% harvest rate they advertise. All of the hunters were upset with the hunt by the end of the week, it did not live up and Seven J was indifferent to how things were going.

During dinner in the evenings the guides and owners sat at a table by themselves back in the corner of the lodge and did not mingle with the hunters or say much to us. I thought that this was really odd, as other hunts I have been on the guides and hunters mingled and had a great time. This made things feel really uncomfortable and had a weird vibe. The dinners were ok but not great, allot of boxed stuff.

Jeff Smith (owner) blamed the weather and lady luck for our terrible hunting. We pointed out that we could glass elk on the neighbors mid day and that they were moving around, but he stuck to his guns and said elk were where we hunted but bedded down. This is complete bs....there was very little sign of elk even being on these leases. Another hunter came in mid week that had a cow tag for a different hunting area and he filled day 1, so that should also tell you that weather was not an issue, there were not any elk where we were hunting.

At the end of the day this hunt was a rip off. We did not have access to as much contiguous land as we were led to believe. The elk were not staying on their properties like they stated. We got mixed stories from them which seemed liked someone was not being honest. When we brought this up to them we were told they lived up to their end of the bargain and thats hunting. These people cater to the big name hunters and do not care about the average joe, even thought you spend over 7k with them.

They did not even thank us for our business, talk to us about not even seeing an elk (let alone shooting one), or say goodbye. They might be ok for other hunts, but these guys seems like they didn't care about us and didn't really care that we had a bad hunt, not to mention that the hunting was terrible and we felt lied to. We were told we are not the first folks not to fill a tag with them and won't be the last, that should tell you something.

Stay away....dishonest outfitter.

Was the outfitter notified of problems? - YES