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A good friend and I were fortunate to draw a First Rife Season Elk rifle tag in NM in a joint application. This is a 5 day hunt. A long time supplier of mine did some work for this outfitter when I asked him about NM Outfitters he might know about. He gave me Ty's name but the qualifier was "he is a young guy trying to build a hunting business - but look, I have never hunted with him" . I assumed the best which was a huge mistake in hindsight. There were no online references but my view was optimistic because NM is hard to draw and wonderful place to hunt....and how bad could it be. Applying with this outfitter went smoothly and I would add that the woman who cooked for us at the Airbnb house in town prepared superb meals. But like most hunters, you head out on a hunt for the hunting experience and not the food. Nevertheless, the cook was the most intelligent person in this outfitter's operation and probably should be running a hunting business herself or at minimum, directing the outfitter, Ty Goar, on how to hunt, guide and listen to clients. Here is my rundown of the experience. Ty Goar hired a guide to support our hunt but with only 1 bear hunter coming in later in the week, advised us that he would be hunting with us several days. After driving across country for 2 1/2 days from Pennsylvania, my friend and I sat in the back of a pickup truck for 2 more days as the guide and Ty drove around spending most of their time checking their Facebook accounts and watching TikTok videos. There was no planning. Ty headed out with his "crocs footwear" every day and I knew he was not serious and very casual about this whole event. He did put on boots 2x during the week so we were treated to standing by the truck for 20 minutes while he laced up and got his pack together. Since Ty was taking the guide to areas that the guide had never hunted or was unfamiliar with most of the time, it was these 2 guys socializing, exchanging info, and talking about places they hunted in the past. At one point, the guide wanted to show Ty where he hunted during muzzleloader season for a week earlier but saw no elk. (Think about that for a minute.) We ere about to waste another afternoon and evening - Ty exited the truck to look around, walked down the mountain for 50 yards with his rubber crocs shoes and slipped nearly falling at which point my suspicion that these guys were wasting our time was confirmed. We told them that we were not going to shoot an elk doing this but they marched forward. Other highlights during the week was Ty taking us up a mountain to glass some valleys and hunt over water. Again, the guide had never been to this area and headed another direction with my friend. The underbrush was so thick, there was no glassing possibility because visibility was limited to 50 yards. Ty says to me, "I have been in most parts of this unit but never here". It got better. We cross a National Forest fence which I point out to Ty...walk a hundred yards more. I point out a gate that sure looks like private property at which point Ty breaks out his cell phone and spends the next 20 minutes on Onx Hunt trying to figure where we are at. He realizes we are on private property and the water we were targeting is also on private property. It was another wasted evening. If I was taking a guest squirrel hunting back home in PA, I would have at least looked at the map back in camp and become totally familiar with boundaries. Here --- we are spending thousands of dollars and the basics aren't covered. We attempted to map out decent plans for the next day's hunt at dinner with these guys and give feedback but for the most part, by morning, Ty had come up with a different plan. Towards the end of the week, it became fairly confrontational because we just couldn't handle wasting time any longer. We knew where an elk herd was hanging and agreed upon getting above them in the dark the next morning at dinner the night before. We get to the mountain after insisting we hunt the area we agreed upon and the guide then advises us that Ty wants us to sit in the truck till daylight. My friend and I say absolutely not and indicate we are going up the mountain with him or without him which is what we agreed upon the night before. You can guess what comes next. "Do you think you guys from Pennsylvania know more about elk hunting that we do?" Well -- at that point - Yep we did. We left the truck with a fair amount of friction, hiked to a position above the herd and killed a bull. My best day in the field was midweek when I was able to drop off alone from my friend and the guide who were unknowingly going to spend the day stalking a bull that "the outfitter glassed and thought" was bedded down. At this stage, I was jumping at every chance to get away from what I viewed as a clown show. The guide had never hiked in this area and the guide and my friend (with considerable mountain climbing experience) got into some real crap country. I was by myself in a nice chute with timber and watched several dozen elk over the course of the afternoon and evening. I texted my coordinates to the outfitter and indicated I would return to the truck at dark. There were 3 good bulls all within 350 yards but I opted to not shoot because my friend and guide were so deep in some tough country and whipped from the "stalking experience" and never finding the bull - if I killed an elk, the logistics would have been difficult. I could go on with more amazing events during the week --- we drove up roads to hunting areas several times only to turn around because the public road turned into private property. This is 5 miles from town where we were staying. It was totally disheartening. The basics are that Ty Goar has very limited self awareness, poor judgement and my view is the experience he delivered was totally unprofessional. We were not expecting a trophy bull. Just a good basic hunt. From what I could see, he has a lot to learn and is not receptive to guidance. I am no spring chicken. At 68 years old, the real tragedy is I will likely never draw New Mexico again. I have hunted with outfitters around the world Africa, US, Canada -- can you imagine a guy like Jim Shockey walking out of camp in "Crocs"? I will tell you based on firsthand experience that Jim doesn't. The usual response from an outfitter responding to these types of negative reviews is to put this type of experience back on the hunting party - you will hear "these hunters had unreasonable expectations" or "they were not prepared to hunt in this type of environment". Nothing could be further from the truth. Based on my Garmin GPS watch, one day I walked 13.1 miles at 10,000 feet on this hunt. That was the day Ty ventured onto the private property. I felt cheated by the experience and tried to understand if Ty comprehended his shortcomings or our feedback and how he wasted our time. Nope - he is not there. (He could sit down with the cook and get a lesson on listening to others.) My friend felt as if he "stole our money." I thought it was inappropriate for Ty to walk away from this hunt without penalty and asked for a $2500 donation to RMEF. Nope. Ty continually put his guide in a difficult situation and we would have had a better hunt without the outfitter's daily involvement - the communication would have been direct and the guide would have hunted areas in the unit that he was familiar with. We tipped our guide placing no responsibility on his shoulders. This was a case where the outfitter should have spent his days watching TV back at the house and it would have been to everyone's benefit. He was certainly dressed for it.

Was the outfitter notified of problems? - YES