“Paid” Is Not a Four-Letter Word

Okay, technically it is a four-letter word, but you know what I mean. Both at conventions and in smaller settings, I’ve seen a vocal minority of hunters who treat a paid hunt with utter contempt. It comes as no surprise that this mindset is common among those who claim to have never paid for a hunt (and therefore have no frame of reference). But I call bullshit. Much like the crude joke about the world’s oldest profession and how we all pay for it in some form or fashion, there is no such thing as a free hunt.

All hunts have a cost, whether it’s cold hard cash, the opportunity cost of not working, or simple time and calories. Take the die-hard whitetail hunter for example. Most guys who harvest a 130”+ buck every year know that best strategy is maximizing time in stand. So let’s say it takes an average of 40 hours in stand to harvest a mature buck on the average farm. If you make $30 an hour, that buck cost you $1,200 in stand time alone. Now ask yourself, did I order take-out instead of cooking? Did I buy new gear? How many hours did I stare at OnX? My point is $1,200 would hardly be the true cost of that animal.

I’ve got the whitetail bug bad enough that I only give a trophy buck tag to youth, veteran, or disabled hunters on my family’s farm. With all the time and effort I put into management, I’m not gonna be the little red hen. A mature Eastern buck is so cagey that most other animals look like they ride the short bus by comparison. Instead of turning my nose up at any “less challenging” species, I relish the opportunity to hunt animals in what I consider the difficulty sweet spot - where you feel a deep sense of accomplishment upon success without risking an aneurysm from strategizing.

I’ve been blessed to find dozens of hunts across the world that fit this bill, as well as many that don’t, giving me a good frame of reference to compare apples to apples. You can imagine my consternation when guys with relatively little experience have a noticeable aversion to the hunts I recommend just because they’re “paid” or guided. It’s as if they conflate them with canned hunting, which is a classic strawman mistake. None of the camps we run or hunts we endorse are guaranteed or have sliding scale trophy fees. You’re paying for the opportunity to harvest an animal of any size just the same as you do back home.

Sam’s PB whitetail, completely “unpaid” on our family farm.

Being as generous to these guys as possible, there are pros to DIY hunting and cons to guided hunting. I myself prefer to be in charge of strategy, so DIY wins there. I’m a sucker for a good deal, and DIY can offer big savings compared to guided. Sometimes I choose DIY because I want to hunt solo. But even though I’m a self-professed recluse, I love meeting like-minded hunters from different cultures and sharing the hunt experience with them. With guided hunts, you’re paired with a die-hard local. Through that local, you’ll either see hunting from a different angle or you’ll appreciate similarities that span continents. Often, it’s like holding up a cross-culture mirror. This is a truly special element of guided hunts - one that you’ll never experience through DIY.

Another pro to guiding, and the one I suspect is the root cause of the division, is success. You’re going to be more successful on a guided hunt than a DIY hunt. My own experience does not reflect this, but that’s just dumb luck and divine providence. The data is clear that guided hunts have a higher success rate, and there’s the rub. Jaded, egotistical hunters who turn hunting into a literal measuring contest can’t resist the urge to belittle other hunters who are more successful. I guess their mental gymnastics make sense. If you’re the big, bad, Great White Hunter and other people shoot bigger animals, then surely there must be an explanation for it. Luck can’t be the explanation, because that undercuts your own skill. So the easy explanation is, “They paid for it.”

Maybe you know some of these hunters. Maybe you’ve heard them refuse to EVER go on a guided hunt or brag how it took 30 days to harvest such-and-such buck on public land. Let’s do that math, shall we? 30 days at only 5 hours per day is 150 hours. At $30 per hour, they just admitted to “paying” no less than $4,500 in their time. Personally, I get pretty anxious when I haven’t punched my tag after a workweek of stand hours. I certainly don’t have 30 days to spend in stand, not with a constant backlog of habitat work to be done. You know, actual concrete conservation work beyond mere conservation dollars - the type of work that’s done predominately by private landowners.

If somebody comes up to me and says in self-deprecation, “Dude this season killed me. I blew all my vacation time before I finally got my buck,” then I’m going to respect his dedication, not grumble “must be nice” because I can’t afford to take as much time off from work. As soon as they decide to wear it like a badge of honor and attack others, I’m just disgusted by the hypocrisy.

Fifteen years ago, I didn’t have any axe to grind with the public land purists. That was before Western hunting exploded in popularity and when a nonresident elk tag could be purchased over the counter for $400. Back then, I wholeheartedly agreed that DIY public land hunts offered unmatched value in the difficulty sweet spot. But today, it’s a completely different story. Any tag that does not take multiple years to draw is essentially a low-odds lottery ticket that will run you $1,500 BARE MINIMUM when you consider license fees, tag cost, airfare, baggage, lodging, and rental car. Take it from the guy who considers the rental truck his hotel and freeze-dries his own meals - you CANNOT do it any cheaper as a nonresident unless you live within driving distance of the hunt.

What about quality? Going back to that aneurysm I talked about - I can’t think of a more likely culprit than the hordes of discourteous hunters that have diminished the West and have personally ruined up to 50% of my public land hunt sessions. I genuinely enjoy persevering through hardships, setbacks, and whatever else nature can throw my way. If you don’t believe me, look at my smile when I talk about frostbite, dysentery, and avalanches in Tajikistan. I do NOT share this appreciation when other hunters observe me putting on a stalk and deliberately blow through thinking they’ll beat me to the animal. Trying to meditate in Times Square would be less damaging to my mental health. That’s why my new mantra is: if I’m spending this much time and money, it’s going to be to get away from those people.

Sam’s free-range Irish fallow, taken on a small family cattle farm. Did the single knee-high strand of electric wire make this a “fenced” hunt?

Most lifelong hunters agree that OTC and leftover tag units have become a showcase for the Tragedy of the Commons (look it up). It’s gotten so bad that some big-name jerks openly argue that states should force private landowners to offer public leases! I’m sorry, but I thought this was America and not communist China.

I’ve been blessed to never eat tag soup, which is to say I have no delusions as to the incredible luck I’ve had. If I ever blame failure on the bourgeois landowners, please take me out back and put a bullet in me like the 150+ million casualties of socialism and communism. Better dead than red, right?

In all seriousness, we have to push back against this “unpaid” elitism. It’s based in ignorance and egotism, neither of which is beneficial to our hunting culture. The young hunters being misled by this mentality are missing out on a whole world of hunting. Hunts that were once any young hunter’s dream hunt are now hunts that some wouldn’t dream of doing.

This paradigm shift couldn’t come at a worse time. Corrupt governments in Africa are taking African landowners for all they’re worth. Every year, more game ranches (read: properties managed for wildlife and hunting) turn into cropland or cattle farms. For the unaware, native game becomes the red-headed stepchild in areas with livestock - never thriving and only rarely tolerated. The decline in game ranches has as much to do with the “unfenced” as the “unpaid” sentiment, but the point stands. Misguided hunting snobbery carries the unintended consequences of fewer animals, poorer habitat, and less solidarity amongst hunters.

Solidarity is key to our community, but we cannot bridge the paid/unpaid divide with a kumbaya attitude urging hunters to all get along. Siblings fight the worst in households where parents refuse to adjudicate disputes. Nor can we stoop to the “you’re just jealous” defense, which is an elitism of its own. We have to speak the truth, give logical arguments in support, and risk offending people. The truth is there is no such thing as an unpaid hunt. How can we judge others for their preferred form of payment?