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Hunts | Hunting clubs come a great variety of configurations and while they all are different there are some common analysis criteria that may be applied to all. That criteria is offered in this article as providing a basis to first determine what type of hunting club would be best for any one hunter and subsequently as evaluation criteria for decision between what hunting club to apply for and which to discount.
All hunting clubs have basics that can be cross compared in spite of any particular clubs’ organization. First is that it offers hunting as not all hunting clubs are for hunting such as rod & gun clubs or dog clubs that are more hunting support organizations. The type of hunting the club offers is then the screening criteria. The first screening criteria is released/fenced or wild fair chase hunts. For many hunting clubs this first criterion helps eliminate or identify what the hunter is actually after. Moreover, either type may be better than the other.
For big game a fence hunt has application similar to the recent popularity of the community farms. A community farm raises plants and animals for the greater good of others that prepay to cover the farming costs. The farmer does the work and the, members of that farm community share in the harvest. The benefit offered and gained is typically along organic farming lines with a higher degree of certainty of quality foodstuffs. This includes cattle, sheep, chickens and more. A fence non-domesticated animal farm (elk, whitetail, etc.) offers the same with the exception the hunter slaughters the animal rather than the farmer taking the domesticated animal to a slaughterhouse. Otherwise, the buyer and producer are seeking/offering the same service whether it is a domestic or non-domestic product. If selecting a controlled (fence/release) hunt the continuing decision criteria is simply a matter of selecting the type and quality of animal desired and comparing those options to travel distance/time and overall cost. If selecting a fair chase hunting club the decision criteria requires expansion to other considerations such as:
Quality of the wildlife of interest. Hunting club wildlife of choice and quality of that wildlife criteria is easily identifiable. An example is if looking for trophy whitetail those states that have trophy whitetail are limited. This narrows the search and thereby eliminates contenders. In this example Kansas, Illinois, Iowa and parts of Texas offer trophy potential localities and the hunting clubs in those areas are to be considered. Waterfowl hunting clubs is another easy example of selecting a club based on where that club is located and in the case of ducks it is within the better flyway. Most will agree the Mississippi Flyway is the most duck and goose productive of the four flyways. These two, whitetail and duck, locality examples then work into the next decision criteria of proximity and weather. Proximity is two fold. The first is reasonable travel distance from home to hunting spot. Second is the population density of the wildlife of interest within a locality. Typically, for most, a week long hunt is a high energy requirement and few of us can actually hunt more than a week at a time. To do so is more often spending time outdoors than quality or intense hunting. Vacation times also are typically a calendar week at a time. These two facets make it reasonable to spend as a cost of recreation a day’s travel time at both ends of the hunt leaving seven days for actual hunting on a Saturday through the week until the latter Sunday schedule. Any more travel time or delay to the actual hunt and the quality of the hunt desired begins to be adversely impacted and this screening criteria transitions into evaluation criteria.
As screening criteria a hunt that requires more than a day’s travel time such as an air and horseback to get to a remote camp taking two days, or four total within a nine day vacation week, leaving five hunting days, may rule out that hunt as an option. In this case, the one week hunt idea fails and perhaps the evaluation criteria needs to be adjusted. The second proximity aspect is the population density of the wildlife of choice. This is easily identified by the duck club example. For waterfowl, once we agree one flyway over another is better, we then seek to identify what part of that locality is better within that flyway meaning the likelihood of having the opportunity to hunt more ducks. No easy task and like with trophy whitetail what is reality and that which receives the most press print is not always the same.
In this waterfowl/flyway example weather demonstrates a great impact on decision criteria of where to hunt and when. The easy answer is early season is more north in the flyway and later in the season the more south in the flyway to hunt. A timeline affected hunt brings us back to vacation day availability and that brings us to flexibility of the hunt provider or club to provide the hunt with the hunter’s timeline requirements rather than the clubs’ organization limitations. A tough bill to fill. The ideal is the hunter hunts when he wants and the club’s viewpoint is frequently other such as getting the most hunters process through each season as income generation. At this point we must accept that hunting clubs exist to profit someone. It is the profit making club that sustains itself and generally provides the better quality hunts. The social hunting club such as the earlier dog training club illustration, typically is a volunteer operated organization that simply does not provide any hunts other than the canned type. Hunter pressure and acreage available are proofs that the club has sufficient land resource for its clients/members. How to identify those proofs remains the problem. Pictures, testimonials and references are the only means to test the quality of a hunting club prior to boots on the ground experience. Pictures do show a lot. Typically, they are smiling faces of hunters with harvest standing near a club’s sign. Those are the least valuable. More valuable are the member courtesy submissions to the club as an indicator of gratitude for what the club has provided.
Testimonials from all successful hunters telling why they were successful and from those that were not successful at harvest of choice and are satisfied carry great weight. Further the full testimonial rather than snippets frequently provides many nuance that may add up to a greater understanding of what may be expected. The same can be said from testimonials that offer overall quality accounts which can never be 100% positive as hunting has far too many variables. References are always a problem as the hunting club provides them. That along with our previous conclusion that successful hunting clubs are for profit directs that any references provided bring favorable reviews of the organization. How to get around that issue and gain quality feedback for the reference remains the challenge.
One model for evaluating references is to have a plan before talking to them. A plan may be quickly developed from reading the club’s material. Next, read as many testimonials as required to develop questions about the club’s characteristics and continue reading testimonials not quitting until no further questions are evident. Take the entire list of questions and narrow them down to not more than three of the most important to the type of hunt being sought. Any more than three questions and those being asked will grow weary of being questioned and the quality of response will decline. Take those select questions and ask the club’s management and staff for their answers. Take the same set of questions and ask of several references. The indication being sought is the degree of consistency in answers as a reliability gauge of what the prospective club member may be buying into. If there is not any consistency then perhaps the questions are wrong, the sampling of references too narrow or it is a red flag that what is advertised in the rules and testimonials is not in agreement. Whatever of the two possible outcomes the one seeking a hunting club then has decision criteria either supporting or detracting from selecting that particular club. Club management and staff qualities and how to measure them leaves open a wide range of possibly points of consideration. We selected those that most affect decision making. They are: personal work experience of the club’s operators, participation is hunts, how the hunting land is selected/maintained and how the staff treats the club members. What experience brings is stability of operation and all club members want quality hunts and equal treatment only possible by way of stability. Those clubs in the growth or development phase are the least desirable and those that have operated a set method for longer periods the most likely to continue with what they advertise themselves to be. It is that the club members want quality hunts and not be learning tools for novice management. The club operators must have strong connection to the hunts they offer and the resources that provide those hunts. This does not mean the club operators have the time to hunt themselves or have the most success of the entire organization within any type of hunting discipline. It means that those operators know what it takes for success and makes those resources available to the club members. At this point we offer the caution that the club operators must have experience. The prospective club member will be able to tell if that operator has time in stand, trained his own dogs, knows the calling and decoying art from the very first conversation. That quality of detection we assumed the reader has the current wherewithal to ascertain and will not discuss those points further. The deeper discussion about a club’s operator background beyond actual hunting experience includes other facets such as connection to the resources that make the hunt quality what it is. One readily accepted example is habitat as it is habitat that makes for the wildlife or hunt being sought. Then it is the right habitat within the right region that allows for population densities within close proximity that make for the better hunt experience. Part of the question development process of researching the club under analysis is to include how the operator resources the assets that make for that good hunt. Is this too deep, we do not think so as it is resources that are the root of all success. If the prospective club member can ascertain how the club operators secure the resources that more likely increase the opportunity for successful hunts then the prospective club member is asking the right questions. The word “right” in this case means asking a question that more likely gives better indication for what is being asked than what may appear to be a more obvious question. An illustration as a contrasting question would be the ratio of hunters to harvests and the quality of that harvest. This is a common and widely accepted information point promoted by many hunting magazines articles about how to select a hunting guide and inappropriate for a hunting club. The reason for this is that those that seek a guide do so counting on that guide being a better hunter, knowing the habitat better or other resource than the hunter paying for the service could provide himself. Otherwise, why pay for a guide. For a hunting club such a question of hunter to harvest ratio is inappropriate as within a hunting club the hunter makes his own hunt typically as a self guided hunt.
A more appropriate question about a hunting club to ask of references would be about the hunt quality itself in terms of quality of habitat, hunter pressure, wildlife seen and how the club treated the hunter rather than that one reference's personal harvests. That concept alone will do much to frame the more efficient question gaining the more accurate information as analysis of what is to be gained. Contact us by email or telephone 913 773 8110, 9 to 9 on most days.
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