1. Expectations and duties of a professional guide/ topics are ongoing throughout the course

• Navigation and Survival
• How to stand above the rest as a guide
• Customer relations and responsibilities to your client
• Knots, manties and pack saddles
• Gear for guides – everyday gear to carry in your pack

2. Setting up hunting camps/ topics are ongoing throughout the course

• Wall tent/standard tent, remote spike camps
• Choosing camp locations
• Camp cooking
• Camp etiquette – sanitation, food storage, bear awareness

3. Animal Behavior and Habitat/ topics are ongoing throughout the course

• Understanding thermals in different terrain and weather.
• Locating feeding and bedding areas
• Differences between migrating and residential animals
• Reading sign and knowing what it means

 4. Advanced hunting techniques/methods and when to use each/ topics are ongoing throughout the course

• Scouting techniques for maximizing your scouting efforts
• Spot and Stalk hunting
• Still hunting
• Glassing
• Tracking
• Stands and blinds
• Calling and set up strategies

5. Field judging animals-  How to field judge/score trophy animals
(multiple species including elk, deer, bighorn sheep and bears)
6. Shooting and ethical shot placement for bows and rifles

• Standard Rifle Ballistics
• How far should you shoot?
• Setting up for maximizing shot opportunity

7. Recovering wounded game

• How to determine where an animal was hit
• What do different types of blood mean?
• How long should I wait to go after it?

8. Meat and Trophy Care –
This portion will include a bear hunt for guide training purpose. Students may also hunt but must purchase a nonresident bear tag and have a hunter’s education certificate.

• Skinning and quartering your animal
• Cold and warm weather meat care
  
• Trophy preparation

9. Basic Horsemanship and packing skills

• Saddling a horse and pack mule
  
• Hobbles, high-lines and pickets
  
• Loading a pack saddle
  
• Basic riding instructions

Professional Guide Training

Guide Training Course

Becoming a professional hunting guide is much more than being a horseman or packer. In fact, horsemanship is the smallest portion of being a professional guide. A hunting guide needs to have experience in a wide range of skills before he can call himself a professional. Survival & navigation skills, first aid and CPR, customer service, camp set up, hunting techniques, judging animals, meat and trophy care, these are just a short list of the dozens of things that are expected of a professional hunting guide. With dozens of “hunting guide schools” to choose from, how do you know which one is right for you? How do you pick who you want to teach you the ropes of being a professional guide?

The first step is to look at the experience and the accomplishments of the Instructor. If you want to be a professional in the industry, then learn from a professional in the industry. You may also want to look at the species and types of areas that they are experienced in. If a guide school focuses on horsemanship or private land hunting you may not get the experience you need for being a public land, or wilderness hunting guide.

With our guide training school you are assured of a few things. First and foremost you will be taught by one of the most experienced elk hunting guides in the industry. Over 30 years’ worth of big game hunting experience and over 20 years’ worth of experience as a very successful and well known public land hunting guide. With professional big game hunting experience from Alaska to Arizona and a world class guiding reputation this may very well be the place for you to learn to become a professional guide, from a professional guide.

Whether your goals are to obtain the professional skills and experience required to start a successful and fulfilling career in the outdoor industry, or just to give you the experience to jump start your hunting success then we can absolutely help you. At the end of our extensive in the field Guide Training Program you will gain the necessary skills to enter the industry as a hunting guide and be able to say you were taught by one of the best.  We often hire from the top of our students and assist with job placement with other outfitters throughout the West.

Guide School

Our 6 week guide training course is not your average guide school training program. We are not going to rush you through a short program that doesn’t benefit you, and our course does not take place from a lodge or custom wall tent camp. We take a much more aggressive approach by spending most of our course time in the wilderness with the animals. We go from place to place to experience different species, terrain and habitat. Going back to a nice camp every night is a luxury, not always productive to finding quality animals. During our course you will spend much of your time scouting and navigating the outdoors on foot in a remote wilderness environment. You will learn animal behavior and habitat, hunting methods and techniques as well as customer service, different types of camps and set ups and much more. We will travel to the animals so that you can learn to field judge trophies and watch them in a natural setting. We will also spend time in both the rainforest and eastern slope mountains to give you diversified experience. If you are going to stand out as a professional guide in your field then you need to be able to do what many other guides don’t or won’t do. Our course will give you the skills necessary to become a professional guide in any state and qualify you to work with nearly any outfitter in the industry. This course is a hands on training course that is demanding but focuses on all aspects and expectations of the professional guiding industry. Unlike many other guide schools you will learn the essential skills to becoming a successful professional guide, not just an ordinary guide school guide. We want to give you the skills to become the best of the best.
This 6 week Big Game hunting guide program will cover a minimum of the following topics:

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