Originally Posted by
indyfabz
A guy here who recently retired would go moose hunting up in Canada and Elk hunting in out west. Last time was in ID. The trips were guided and sounded somewhat pampered. They supplied (ad did) all the camp stuff for you.
It's big business in some areas. When I was touring in ID in the spring of 2019 I overheard a guy tell someone he had taken in nearly $400K leading hunting trips the years before.
I believe it. I used to be heavily into traditional archery, so I got to be online friends with a lot of bowhunters. Some of them lived in places where deer are pretty much a tasty nuisance animal and they basically fill the freezer locally, but a lot of other folks live spend a chunk of cash every year to hunt, mostly in the Rocky Mountain states. Hunting there, just for the license and tags, is really expensive, and it can be a REALLY BAD IDEA to hunt without a guide in a lot of the West. A friend used to tell a story of getting caught out in a snowstorm - with an experienced local guide - where the guide lost his way, and said they'd better stop before they got lost even worse. They got through the night, once the guide realized they were hunkered down around a tiny fire next to the resin-filled rootball of a fallen pine and got that lit. Turns out there were about 100 feet from the road, and about 1/4 mile from the truck.