Trail Blaze Hunting Consultants

Submitted by: David Linn

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Review Submitted: Dec 16, 2012

Hunt Date: Sep 17, 2012

Species Hunted: Elk

Days Hunted: 6

Hunt Type: Guided

Primary Terrain: Mountain

Method: Bow

Price Range: 2000-2999

lousy property

I’ve been bowhunting elk since 1982 almost solely in OTC units. I spent five years hunting Roosevelt’s near the Washington State Coast, which is very brushy so I’m not opposed to hunting brushy areas. As a side note, I even wrote an article for Bowhunting World in 1993. All this is just to say that this wasn’t my first rodeo. In terms of the quality of this property for a hunt during the rut and the quantity of elk this was the worst hunt I’ve been on. Archery elk hunting is difficult under any circumstances, but this property was nothing like it had been described to me. When I spoke to Ben, the descriptions of the trespass hunts he sells were embellished with hyperbole. He said, “Everyone gets shooting," “big bulls," “great place to hunt” and “two hundred elk on the property,” , etc. I took notes and wrote these things down. Having little experience with private land hunts, I believed him. He told me of one hunt in particular that he said was great and told me that if I booked it early I could have the ranch to myself. However, when I called the outfitter, he was angry and swearing on the phone and told me I would need at least four people to hunt there and he didn’t even know if he wanted to lease it anyway. The next hunt Ben referred me to the outfitter told me he only did full service guided hunts, not the trespass hunt as Ben had told me. I picked two more hunts from his list and each time, for one reason or another, the hunt wasn’t booked, but it just wasn’t what I had been told or wasn’t available. I feel stupid now for not seeing the, “writing on the wall” but he was so convincing. He sent me information on some more and told me that a hunt in Colorado would be the hands-down best one. He said that the rifle hunters during the first season have had an 85% success rate and the bowhunters have had less success, but of course that’s normal. He said there was lots of great area to hunt plus BLM land on three sides. I was told I could hunt everything that I could see and that it had some oak brush and aspens, but with good access and game trails all through it. He emphasized that there were always elk on the property. When I arrived, the outfitter showed me the property. There is a half-mile or so of road through the ranch to the property line. He drove to the end of it but curiously he didn’t know the road well enough to realize there was no turn around and that he would have to back down the narrow road on a steep hillside. The other outfitter stopped by later and told me he’d never been to the property before. (It’s only a two-man operation, so this was strange that one of the two guys had actually never seen the property that they were showing me to hunt on.) He showed me a few cattle trails off of the half-mile access road that led to some small openings in the nearly impenetrable vines and canyon bottom brush. He told me to hunt there and on the road. When I asked about the majority of the property and the BLM land, he said that the brush is just too thick to get through. He said he went in there once and it “made him hate life” it was so thick. I had been told on the phone that the entire property and BLM land; thousands of acres could be accessed with an ATV to pack an elk out. An ATV would only be able to access a few hundred yards on the cattle trails. I hunted everywhere I could, crawling through the brush, most of it so thick it would be difficult to shoot more than two yards. I hunted for four days up to ten hours a day and never saw an elk, never heard a bugle, no fresh tracks, no fresh droppings, no rubs and very little old sign! There was no plan B. Most of the good habitat in the area is private. There is a place in the hunting shack that was pointed out to me when I arrived where successful hunters are supposed to write their name and what they harvested and the date, “a different form of writing on the wall”. The kills were all from rifle hunts and mostly raghorns and bears. The statistics went back maybe twelve years or so. There hadn’t been ANY elk added for the last three seasons and only a few for the three previous years. Mathematically, since you can’t kill a fraction of an elk, the minimum number of elk necessary to get an 85% success rate is 17 elk for 20 hunters. On the morning of the fifth day I discovered that the road is also an easement road to another property and just before light as I was heading out to “hunt the road” like I’d been told a loud vehicle that sounded like it didn’t have a muffler drove up the road. It would have spooked any elk if there had been any. I decided to pack up and check out some public land at a higher elevation. I called Ben about the poor hunt and he said that the outfitter showed up after I left and spooked some elk on the road driving in. He seemed pleased with this and insinuated that somehow the bad hunt was my fault and reminded me of his supposed 85% but someone can only pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining for so long before I figure it out. If it happened; spooking some elk on the road was more action than I saw but it’s not really what I would call a great private land hunt during the rut.

Outfitter Response: David linn had contacted us in November of 2011 to discuss finding a self guided arhcery elk hunt for the 2012 fall season. David and myself spoke on the phone and we figured out what type of hunt he was after. I started sending David emails of many different self guided archery elk hunts and guided archery elk hunts that he might be interested in. After I had sent some hunt information over to him via email, he decided he wanted to speak with some of our hunt providers, so I gave him the contact information and told him to speak directly to our hunt providers as we recommand all of our clients to do this. He spoke with our first hunter provider and liked what the outfitter had to say, but did not want to go guided, as he wanted to hunt on his own, which is fine. The second outfitter David spoke with was Alan Bair. David said to me via email that the hunt sounded really good, but he did not want to do the hunt as he would have to provide his own food because he has a severe food allergy and he needed to be careful about which food he eats. I then went on and sent him another 10 or more different hunt options that were mostly all self guided archery hunts. One of the unique siutations we had with David was the fact we had to find one of our landowners, outfitters or hunt providers that would allow David to be a single hunter during the archery season for 6 day self guided hunt which was not neccesarily going to be easy. After going over several different self guided hunts, David finally decided to hunt in Colorado with one of our outfitters on a small ranch where he could hunt at the end of September and have the property to himself. The hunt would be self guided and include a small Cabin for lodging. The outfitter and myself specifically told David that the elk hunting should be good, but the outfitter only had hunters on the property during the 1st Rifle elk season in the past and every hunter during that season had shot opportunities at legal bulls and their harvest success was around 85%. I sent the hunt information directly to David via email telling him the specifics of the property, such as elevations, habitat, etc.... On August 21, 2012 David called me and said he could not get a hold of the outfitter as he had some questions for him. I called the outfitter and within an hour the outfitter was on the phone with David and answered his questions. On September 23 I received an email from David Linn stating he had left the hunt early because he had not seen any elk. He had also sent the same email to the outfitter. I replied to his email on September 24 and told him I would call him after speaking to my outfitter as I wanted to hear from the outfitter as well. I tried to call David and could not get a hold of him and left him a message, after trying on several different occasions to catch up with David I finally was able to speak with him over the phone about the hunt. I wanted to speak with David first hand about the hunt and also to see if what the outfitter had told me and what David was telling me was accurate. The outfitter had told David when showing him the property if he had any problems to call him and he would do his best to return David's calls in the evening and check up on David periodically which he did, as the outfitter was guiding other archery elk hunters on the national forest during this time period. The oufitter went over to the property on the last day of David's scheduled six day hunt as they had not heard from David. The outfitter had with him his archery elk clients who had been hunting the public ground and who were on the last day of their guided elk hunt. They drove up the easement road to the edge of the property about 45 minutes before daylight and parked the vehicle. They got out of the vehicle and heard many differnt bulls bugling like crazy. They of course were there to check up on David and were not going to hunt the ranch as they still beileved David was there hunting. Daylight came and they had seen several different bulls and heard many other bulls on the private ranch and on the surrounding BLM ground where David had been told to hunt by the outfitter. Around mid day the outfitter and his clients drove down the road to the cabin to find out that David had already left. The other archery elk hunters were so happy with the ranch and the elk they had seen from the vehicle in the morning they booked the ranch for the 2013 archery elk season for the last week. David seems like a really nice guy and there is a legitimate chance that he did not see any elk during the 3 and half or 4 days of hunting, however when my outfitter showed up the last day to check on him there were bulls bugling everywhere on the BLM ground next to the ranch he could hunt and there were elk on the property. I will have my outfitter post his response to David Linn's claims as well as I feel that he can shed even more light on the situation. There are always two sides to every story. The outfitter told me he tried to contact David several times during his 6 day hunt to see how he was doing and never received a phone call back. Finally the outfitter got worried and called his home phone number and spoke with David's wife and found out that David had come home early. Our outfitter provided everything he said he would. He showed David the ranch, how to hunt the property, where to hunt on the blm ground and tried to help David in every way possible to have a successeful hunt. The outfitter even had his personal mechanic help David with vehicle issues that David's vehicle was having during the hunt that took up some of his hunting time. If David would have stayed and hunted the entire 6 days, he would have seen elk and been into elk during his hunt.

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