Ninilchik Charters LLC

Submitted by: Schmidt Ryan

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Review Submitted: Nov 12, 2012

Hunt Date: Nov 12, 2012

Species Hunted: Sitka Blacktail deer

Days Hunted: 7

Hunt Type: Guided

Primary Terrain: Mountain

Method: Rifle

Price Range: 2000-2999

VERY Bad do not use!

I’m not sure how to begin, so I will just list the circumstances and you can go from there on how you would like to address them. First was our safety: We asked your guys if they had life vests for the skiff they said yes but the vests were not needed. We disagreed, but your employees again stated it was not needed in a skiff. Alaska State Troopers came to the skiff and wrote a ticket for missing life vests and safety gear. The Troopers were worried about us being in the skiff without vests. The raft has a hole in it and leaked air pretty bad. When two men were in the front the raft took on water. The raft folded up like a pancake, Colby finally put air in after we asked him multiple times to reinflate the raft. On day three our men were stuck on the boat because the winch for the anchor broke. The guys could not move the boat until we waited for tools from Al. Well the important tool was a 10 “ crescent wrench! Seems like a boat should always have a simple tool like that on board. As well as you knowing we were flying into Larsen Bay on Saturday, and your boat did not leave Kodiak till Friday. My concern here is what if you hit bad weather for 3-4 days and could not make it. Seems to me I would have made sure my boat left a few days prior to the hunt just in case of bad weather. Adding a fuel surcharge when fuel is now less then when we booked the trip did not seem fair. This just did not seem fair, I understand this being a part of the contract and if gas prices were higher, I would not have minded, but since prices had dropped. Seems guys put that in there just incase fuel goes way way up. This was not the case. The first night on the boat we had no heat and the exhaust that came off the heater choked everyone out, thank god this did not happen at night or the co2 might have got us. This never set off smoke detectors on the boat, so I would have your crew double check that they are even functioning. Then it comes to food and water. We were lectured every day if we drank too much water and were limited on our food intake. Four burgers for four guys after hunting hard all day just does not cut it. We asked for more food but Will said that we were budgeted to that amount and need to make it last for the next 3 groups. Your telling me you can’t have Servents bring some food out on a plane if you get low? If food was limited this should have been told to us, so we could have prepared and brought additional food for ourselves. At first Will told us to drink as much bottled water as we wanted, but after day one we were told only to drink out of the sink since we had already drank too much. As for the hearty bag lunches that we were told were provided and in your brochure, we never had a lunch on the boat besides one day when we asked at 3 pm if they had anything to eat. We were starving and we made ourselves a sandwich. So no lunches very small breakfast and limited dinners. We ate the fish we caught almost every night just so we did not go to bed hungry. We conserved water, but when you sweat all day and are dehydrated you need to drink water. That’s part of being healthy and have energy to keep hunting as you know. We did spend a few hours filling up the water for the next group during our last days as well, so it seamed we can get more water if we needed it. Felt like first grade again. Then it comes to the hunting, well hunting is hunting but your 2.5-hour climb to the goat spot was a huge miss calculation. We did get up there in 6 hours and saw nothing legal. So we asked if we could look for goats in a new spot, and the answerer was NO this is our only goat spot. We booked this hunt to chase goats, and you only have one spot that holds goats. When we talked to your captain I asked to go toward Karluk as I know there are goats there, and Will said he would check with you but he never did. Weather was great and calm as well. Will could not leave Al’s side, wherever they went we had to follow, with Al always getting first pick of all hunting spots. They always got the grass and we always got the tag alders. That’s fine but then there was other spots. We were told these spots were saved for Cabalas that were coming in the next week. We are paying customers as well, why should it matter? We were told the Outdoor Channel would be filming the hunt, and we had a chance to be on TV. Well of course you know this did not happen. Unfortunately we were very excited about this opportunity and now have to tell family and friends, this was not the case we where lied to. If you knew this was not going to happen, you should have told us. This seems shady at best. Luckily no television crews came though, cause unfortunately there was nothing to see and if this was all on film, would really look bad on your operation. The Captain seemed to have very little knowledge of the area and would guess he never hunted it before. We pretty much had one choice of where to hunt and everything else was off limits for a various of reasons, some legit, others I’m still not sure why. He was a good captain and a nice guy not saying anything bad on the crew. Deckhand worked very hard and did a great job. I have been on other trips on boats in Kodiak and have never seen anything close to this. I would never recommend these guys or use them again. Save your money and time!

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