Spikes-N-Spurs
MissouriWebsite Address posted for sponsors only
should have known how it was going to go when my messages to outfitter leading up to the hunt went unanswered. I had questions about what I needed for the hunt but no luck getting anyone to respond. Then, I thought I was booking a semi-guided hunt. Instead all the guides had full time jobs or hunted themselves. They pointed your stand out to you at 8 pm the previous night from the road and gave vague directions to stands that were not bright eyed or well marked. The most exciting part of the hunt was finding your tree stand. They had done little to no scouting. The trial cam pics they showed of potential deer were from the summer for the most part showing deer in velvet on mineral sites. The guides were all hunting near us and one even came back and talked about almost getting a shot at one of the target bucks. They showed me and the other 3 people hunting the farm I was on pics of two bucks. One had been shot weeks earlier and they hoped it was alive. So basically 4 of us were hunting 1 viable deer and the scouting of it was from the summer time. We saw very few deer and they were mostly 2 1/2 old and younger. After 2 days in camp and 17 hunters going out (I was told there would be 12 in camp before hand)and 0 deer killed they started to make adjustments. It was obvious they had no back up plan. We were moved to a farm the guide they told us they never hunted but had a pic of a good buck on it last year. That of course made me feel great. It was a small parcel next to public hunting land. He gave me and my hunting buddy that was on the trip with me directions to our stands. He said we would both walk by my stand (which we did find) and then told him how to proceed from there to his stand. He gave him round about directions for a long walk but then after daylight we realized we were less than 100 yards from each other. We left after the morning of day 4 on a 5 day hunt. It was obvious they had our money and didn't care. There were various other issues we and others had with people running the farms we were hunting trapping and doing excavating work while we were trying to hunt. Our Midwest dream rut hunt turned into a nightmare. I don't want anyone to experience what we did. I have hunted with 5 different outfitters. 3 of those I would hunt with again even though I only killed a deer with 1 of them. I realize it's hunting but this outfitter was an absolute joke with no real scouting done. He told us he rode around when he got off work and looked for deer in the fields with his headlights at night to see what was going on. Please don't waste your money like we did.
Was the outfitter notified of problems? - YES
Three days of near 60 degree temperatures will obviously SLOW down movement in mid November, but you can also check our social media pages to see deer were still killed in this above average temperatures for Missouri’s Rut!
We had 3 good days of weather out of the 4 we hunted. It was used as an excuse but we saw several locals killing good deer and I talked to another local outfitter that said they had killed 5 good bucks with much fewer hunters in camp than we had.
