Wounding Policy?

[jhg]

Originally posted by tarponnut:
...
I know it's their livelihood,but Guides can be selective about who they guide....
 

I can't speak to how different outfitters implement such a rule, but in my experience guiding both for elk and on wilderness river trips, outfitters just do not have the luxury of turning away clients and/or somehow screening them beyond some very basic criteria ie can you walk, can you hit what you aim at. All the people I guided for elk swore they were good shots.

Outfitting is a lot of work and nobody is getting rich. Its a tough way to make a living, as some of you know from experience. Turning away clients(business) is something that is usually  avoided, if possible.

J-

[L. E. Carroll]

In my case it does not matter if that is the guides policy or not...

My "personal policy" is just that !... I take the shot, and make a bad hit [ body shot] on an unrecoverable animal, I consider my hunt as "over" for that species [ unless I bought a second tag before the hunt began]....

This occasion came up last year, when I made a questionable hit on a large black bear on a "spot and stalk" hunt.... Luckily for me, there were some great guys along on the hunt including Thomas Burns and Doug Krings from Montana.  Their tracking skill and persistance resulted in my recovering a fine trophy the following morning...

Immediately after making the shot and failing to find the bear after 5 hours looking on my own, I passed up two more opportunities on large boars, while returning to the beach to be picked up and returned to the boat for the night.  This occured  after vocally saying to myself "I have taken a bear,[ recovered or not ] and the state does not owe me another"..

I take the lives of the animals I hunt very seriously and those are self imposed rules that I choose to hunt by.

Everyone is free to feel and hunt as they choose. However, a  policy like the one by guides and outfitters as stated above would be OK with me.

Gene Carroll    

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Originally posted by Robhood23:
Cyclic river, the dealership wouldn't but your insurance would in your ananolgy. Maybe outfitters that have the draw blood and done could do an insurance plan that they could offer if this happens. I guess the way i look at it is if the outfitter has a proficincy test or watches one test shoot they can usually tell what they are dealing with and can make recomendations based on that. This would force some of the yahoo's to come better prepared. As anyone reading this knows in all the excitement things can go wrong and I don't have control how hard they look for the hit critter. I appreciated all the input so far.
 Rob what I mean by a wounding policy is that if you draw blood you punch your tag. I mean any blood even just a superficial cut.

I was thinking about the insurance policy idea myself. There is a million ways you could figure one out on any hunt.  

[Robhood23]

My personal opinion is if I were to hit and wound an animal I wouldn't consider my hunt over, unless it was the law. I lost a doe 2 years ago and fell horrible but picked myself up and made a great shot the next day on a different doe. If I paid thousands of dollars for a hunt and just clipped a leg and that animal is not going to die. I would feel terrible but picking yourself up after a poor shot shows alot of character. Why not just end the hunt after a miss? Not trying to start anything bad here just trying to figure it out. Great discussion guys ande i do appreciate all the input from everyone!

[Arwin]

The thing that bothers me about a wounding policy is the outfitters amount of effort to find an animal.
 There could be a situation where an outfitter is lazy, considers an iffy shot too much work to track and deems the hunt is over.
 
 I've had to track deer on my hands and knees for 100's of yards finding pin drops of blood. If you know the arrow went into major organs, the animal will die. Patience and persistence is what it takes but some outfitters might not have that.
 
  Most ethical hunters hate wounding critters.  I would be entirely unhappy if I went thousands of miles and dollars just to have to go home. God makes more and if game animals were endangered, we wouldn't be able to hunt them.

 There is a fine line though when it comes to hunters who aren't prepared. If I were an outfitter, and a guy wounded two animals and clearly isn't prepared, I would call off the hunt. Catering to lazy hunters wouldn't be my style!

[Cory Mattson]

LECarrol - cool on that

ncrecurve - dude funny made my day

We DO have a wounding policy but not getting into it here. I would avoid working with someone unduely focused on this issue.

Outfitters: They ALL should from what I have seen. Yes Eldon is the best and works right around the issue - but the two biggest areas I see abuse are Whitetails and Africa. Not sure what the percentage is - half the guys - more or less - but a huge number just aren't good enough and expect trackers and outfitters to close the deal many cannot start effectively. Like my "brothers" say - "we want 100% success" --- "NOT 150%!!!"
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[PaddyMac]

I am pretty strict with myself about this. Fortunately I've never lost one, but I almost did. I was up all night looking for it and finally found it. It really upset me. I know there will happen sooner or later.

So I guess I would just consider it in the selection process when I was hiring the outfitter. It's not like your hunt is risk free. If you're hunting fair chase, you always run the risk of never getting a shot. You pay for that, too.

[TxAg]

I can see both sides of the coin.  

I've only paid for a guided hunt once. That was in Africa. It was understood that you paid for the animal if you drew blood. I was ok with it. I recovered everything I shot. The guides and trackers will work very hard for you...my hunting partner made a bad shot and tracked a Kudu for a looong ways. Finished it with a gun. Wouldn't have happened without the trackers and guides.

In Texas, there isn't much public land to hunt so I lease 2000 acres low fence with a group of guys. It's bow hunting only. We have a surplus of does, management bucks, hogs, and turkeys. If you draw blood and don't find an animal it stinks but you don't burn a tag. With mature bucks (what we're calling trophy bucks) it's a different story. We only have a few of these each year...if you wound one, that's your buck for the year. You're not allowed another "trophy" until you see you see your buck alive or someone else kills him. This is a rule we impose upon ourselves.

[Rick McGowan]

There are two sides and understandably, most folks on hear are ONLY looking at it from the hunters side. Looking at it from the guide/outfitter side is totally different. For one thing, there are lots of BAD hunters and the good outfitters, want to weed them out, having a wounding policy most of those guys that just want shoot until they get lucky, will go somewhere else, usually the bad outfitters! One outfitter friend of mine had ONE guy gut shoot THREE BIG whitetail bucks and I mean record book bucks, what do you do, just keep letting him shoot? When I am guiding, I will look for a wounded animal for DAYS, but some hunters, don't want THEIR hunting time wasted, looking for wounded animals, they just want to go shoot more. In my experience the outfitters with a formal wounding policy are only doing it because its best for BOWHUNTING or hunting in general, not because they want to.

[IndianaBowman]

My 17 year old daughter just shot a very large bear in Manitoba. I video'd the hunt and have the shot and hit well documented. The shot was very close to where most of us would consider a perfect hit. She was shooting a 50# old Bear Grizzly and it just didn't have enough uummpphh to punch all the way through the big bear and get an exit hole. There is no doubt in my mind that the bear is dead. We could not find it. She was devastated and the tears just flowed. This was the 2nd day of a 5 day hunt. The outfitter would have very likely allowed her to keep hunting. That would have been disrespectful to the animals and to some of my fellow traditional hunters coming to hunt this week. She did everything exactly right and things still didn't work out for her. She said she would feel horrible if she kept hunting. She said she could possibly be shooting a bear that one of the other guys might have a chance at in a following hunt. She didn't want to do that to them. Also, just think how horrible she would feel if she hit and lost another animal.  We know lost animals happen, but if you kill an animal you should be done hunting them if that fills your limit. We need to be responsible for our actions and respectful to animals and other hunters.  It shouldn't matter if it was a fully outfitted very expensive hunt or out your back door. Trust me as a dad, I would've loved to have her keep hunting and be successful, but it just wouldn't have been right. It was a very long 2,000 mile drive home.

[Plumber]

I can see where they are coming from. you broke it you brought it! It should not be that way for hogs thought.but a bear or a deer I understand.

[Robhood23]

I just read your story, my heart goes out to your daughter. Did your outfitter use trail camera's. Would he have let her hunt the same bear. What if that bear showed up on a trail camera on a different or same bait? I have seen some animals that anyone would have bet would be dead show up again. I was with my brother once who hit a nice buck that we both though would be dead at the end of a short bloodtrail only to see that same buck chance doe's the next day. Reason I ask is it is not totally unheard of that the bear could have returned to the bait in the next day or two. Tell your daughter to keep her head held high!

[IndianaBowman]

Robhood23, I'm sure he would've let her keep hunting the same stand. We never even considered that the bear wasn't dead. I don't think her heart was much into it after not finding the bear.

[Robhood23]

i hear you bro! Again I feel so bad just reading your post!
 Where did you shoot that moose in your avatar! Love the pic!

[Flingblade]

I shot a buck two years ago and minutes after the shot it started to rain very hard.  I decided not to wait and got down from my stand and started to track.  I had good blood for the first 15 yards into a cornfield but then the blood ran out, or was washed away.  I spent the next four hours looking and came back the next morning and looked until noon.  It was very thick where I was hunting and I found my buck at noon.  I had made a perfect quartering away heart shot.  My point is even with a perfect shot things can go wrong; like unexpected rain.  I would not hunt with an outfitter that has this policy but I do understand their side.  There are lots of guys hunting that don't put in the practice time necessary to make the lethal shot.

[Bill Carlsen]

I wonder if the guy that shot this deer stopped hunting, or thought he killed it, or whatever. I know in Africa that you have to pay when you draw blood. But, this is not Africa and I know of countless situations where deer have been shot and found to have broadheads imbedded in some bone....usually the shoulder.

 

[Kudu Kid]

IMHO, I think it comes down to the "ownership" of the animal.
If I were to hunt in Africa or a highfence hunt, the landowner most often "owns" the wildlife on it.

In the US, we the people "own" the wildlife, and we allow the state to govern the taking of the wildlife.  If I go on a public land hunt using a guide, I'll be damned if I am going to pay for a wounded animal that the outfitter has no "ownership" of.  I even object to a private-land free-range animal policy of pay if you wound it.  It is my belief, that landowner does not "own" that wildlife.

Of course, I would never book a hunt with a outfitter that has that type of policy in the first place.  

This is hunting and wounding does occur.  If you have been at this for any length of time and have not lost an animal, you are either very lucky or have not shot many animals, because you will at some point wound something.  

I will get off my soapbox now

[tracker1]

Indianabowman sorry to hear about you daughter losing the bear but I think a few more adults should have the same attitude about their actions.

[David Mitchell]

I had a moose outfitter tell me about a guy who hunted for a week (on a videoed hunt) and wounded four or five moose before finally killing one (not counting some missed shots).  That ought not to be allowed.  I can see maybe letting a guy go for one more if after all reasonable effort has been made an animal is not found, but not that many.  I have no problem with a reasonable wounding policy that recognizes that stuff happens under the best of circumstances.  I know on public land the animals do not belong to the outfitter, but he has the right to say "your hunt with me is over" at some point.

[Rick McGowan]

IMO, it does NOT come down to who "owns" the animals, an outfitter may spend weeks or even months preparing for the season, scouting, building blinds, putting out stands, setting up camps, training guides etc.. There are no limitless numbers of trophy animals anywhere and the outfitter quite probably has thousands of dollars invested in the hunting area. So when someone shows up and obviously dosn't care how many animals they shoot or wound, it isn't going to sit well. The guides and outfitters want happy customers and good hunters make their job easy, bad hunters make a miserable camp for everyone. I've worked for outfitters on private land and they had to pay a trophy on every animal hit, they had no choice, but to pass that along. Every hunter has the option to go where they want, BUT to me a wounding policy, in writing is evidence that they are serious and ethical. Any outfitter that tells me they care how many animals I wound, I won't be going there, obviously they don't care about hunting or ethics. I've had hunters that I specifically and repeatedly told to do or not do something and they did it anyways and resulted in a wounded and lost animal. I've WATCHED a hunter gut shoot a big boar hog and then deny he even shot and refuse to waste "his" hunting time looking for it. Remember it takes that guide/outfitter just as much effort and sometimes more to have you shoot and wound an animal as it does to drop it perfectly. Having said all that, things do happen even to the best of hunters and in my experience, guides/outfitters sometimes make exceptions, even when its not deserved.