David Calton

I spent a lot of money for this hunt, and actually my first elk hunt, and walked away feeling like I got ripped off. In fact I left on the morning of the third day because it was so bad. First of all I went alone, which is no big deal for me. Joe, told me to put my tent up at the base of the mountain. That would have been great as well, but no one told me to bring my ATV, so I ended up hiking up the mountain early in the morning and in the late afternoon. No small feat with gear. When I did get up the mountain, I noticed there was high fence around the top of the mountain where I was. Why, because there was an Elk refuge beside it. I never saw one track, dropping or scraping, or elk the whole time I was there. Heard some bugling, but guess what, it was on the elk refuge. This was a total waste of time and money. Notice the testimonials posted are really old. I went in Sept. of 2014. I should have written this sooner so that some other sucker didn't go. Drove from Texas with a smile on my face, and left very angry.

Outfitter Response :

It is really unfortunate when this happens. Every once in a while someone becomes irate when they are unsuccessful on a hunt. David is apparently so mad that he resorted to lying in this review. We do not have any high fences on our properties. The fence he is describing is a standard height fence that elk jump over all the time. Its not an elk refuge across the fend, it was the neighbors property.....which he said had some elk on it.

David posted this review three years after his hunt. I looked back at the 2014 schedule and what I saw was interesting. David hunted the last week of archery season. The group immediately before him shot a big 6x bull that unfortunately went unrecovered. It jumped the neighbors fence and we lost blood. The group that came in immediately after David (first rifle) shot a cow on this ranch and went home early.

Of the 5 archery hunters that hunted this ranch in 2014 , 4 of them had offered to be a reference to future hunters. One has booked back every year since. Another has repeated a few more times on this ranch and the group of 2 came back to hunt it in 2015 and 2017.

Elk hunting is very tough, even on our private ranches. We are very open about this and want everyone to know this before they book with us. But, despite this, our archery elk hunts are our most popular hunts and we see way more than 50% repeat clients every year. Just look at our Facebook page...we are not making this up.

David I really wish I could have 100% satisfaction with our hunts, but we don't have high fences and I do not have control of where the elk graze. Its unfortunate that you left after only half of your hunt. It is likely you may have had a chance on the last few days. Or, maybe you would have still gone home unsuccessful. But, to call this a rip off is totally unfair to me as the outfitter. We provided a ranch that was "as described". You got a 1000 acre ranch all to yourself. The ranch is thick with aspens, dark timber, oak brush, meadows, ponds, springs and wallows. Over the years we have had great success on this ranch. We have also had hunters go home empty handed. Thats the way hunting goes...especially for elk. Statewide success on bull elk is only around 12%. We do a lot better than that on our ranches.

In summary, I don't think its fair for this hunter to make up lies and call our hunts a rip off because he didn't happen to kill an elk in the very few days he hunted. If this were a guided hunt, the guide would have showed him all the scrapes, tracks and wallows on this ranch.

I recommend that you really look into what your guide is really selling. I learned my lesson.