Hi BRL
I do go all over to hunt or shoot depending on the trip. I actually stopped trying to convince family and friends to go with me many years ago. Too far, too expensive, complaints, complaints, complaints.....no thanks. I have one of those high pressure, high stress jobs where I need a break from everyones personal problems and aggravations. So.....I go by myself and I'm really fine with it. I used to go to western mass for the deer season with family and friends. The daily argument was who was going to drive, who just bought the gas, who couldn't get up ...and then...when a deer was shot, I became the surgeon, the dragger and the you sit in the bed of the pick up guy. Not to mention...I became the dish and pan washer, the go get the firewood guy and all the rest that happens when you are the youngest in the crowd. And then there were the five or six guys who we went with every year who I never met, who never came into camp and who were always on a beer run when their wives called. Not for me.
So...when I got out of College and had money I decided that if I really didn't like it, I'd just do something different. I saw a brochure in a gun shop for Wild Hill Preserve in VT...it was almost magical...all of the different animals I could hunt, though not afford at the time. So, I called and booked for boar and went and got to sit by the fire after a prepared dinner in the lodge, drink coffee, read a trashy novel or just hang with some really nice guys that I'd never met and the guides. That's for me.
Time is really tough right now and has been for the last several years. I can't easily do the 10-day wilderness hunt as easily as I did before kids and my current job. I ahve to be sure, montana for mulie and antelope, Newfi for moose and caribou, NewBrunswick several times for whitetails and black bears, etc. I focus on a primary animal that I'd like to hunt, book into an outfitter, drive or fly out to where ever and off I go. It costs more, but, I get the attention of the guide and outfitter to myself and really have a heck of a time. They tend to work harder if they only have one to worry about rather than two. It's my money and my time and this is what I choose.
Having said that......it's always negotiable....I'm taking my nephew on a boar hunt this fall, his first. I'm going with his dad on a 10 day brown bear and moose hunt in Alaska in 2008. But to get someone to go to Brady for axis....huh...my hunting counterparets around here feel I'm going to a barnyard to hunt. Meanwhile, they go to maine and see nothing, ever, or to saskatch and see 30 or 40 deer a day eating in fields and shoot them from stands and somehow that's different than what I do. Went to montana to hunt mulie and antelope with three guys. Two of them broke my gonads constantly after a recent sheep hunt in a preserve because it was too easy. On the first morning, each shot a a very small 3x3 mulie,and a doe and a 12" pronghorn and a couple of does by 11:30am. We saw 70 or so mulies (does and bucks) and 30 or so pronghorns everyday and my preserve hunt was easy?
Y'know what....they can all have a big walk in the woods interupted by an occasional doe and a great life. Meanwhile..I'll take myself on a plane and go on an adventure.
Don't be afraid to go by yourself....go on guided trips and you'll never look back IMHO.
Best of luck,
