guide school?

[perky]

hey i am very interested in going to a guide school and my dad is totally up fer sending me to one once i'm 18. i'm 17 now. thing is alot of guide schools i realize require horsemanship as a curriculum and i'm allergic to horses...so if anyone can recomend a guide school that doesn't require horsemanship that would be great. or if you think i can talk around it, but if its a curriculum i doubt i can.. price isn't an issue. but i only want to go to one either in idaho, washington, or oregon if possible.
thanks!

[Terry L. Zink]

western montana guide school, Scott Boulanger is the owner, tell him Terry Zink told you to call, he is a friend.

http://www.guidetraining.com/

[buzz]

Do not use Bigfoot outfitters. The new owner Russ is a crook.

[dirtydan]

I'm not sure if guide school is a requirement to guide in your state but you would probably be better off just getting a job with an outfitter and learning in the field. Any outfitter that truly cares about the future of our sport should be happy to hire you and let you apprentice under him. I'm not against the idea of a school in fact the ex owner of the outfit I work for used to put on elk hunting school. I looked through his curriculum and lesson plans and they were actually really good. I just think an apprenticeship in the field would teach you more and faster. I've been trying to get the outfit I work for to start such a program. It looks like we might do it. Really good guides are getting hard to find. We cull guides like some of these guys cull dogs. It seems like most guides now just want a quick pay check. We need younger guys like you to keep the sport alive. I know NM probably isn't your state of choice but maybe you could be our first to join the program. If all goes well we will accept one or two apprenticeships during the 2012 hunting season. We primarily hunt elk but also guide mule deer, whitetail, bear, lion, oryx, barbary sheep and ibex. We primarily hunt New Mexico but also hunt Texas and South Dakota. If you would be interested shoot me a message and it will give my boss more incentive to get the ball rolling on the program. Good luck on your future guiding. Oh yeah the horse allergy may be a bit of a problem for you. Our outfit only uses them for packing not for hunting off them and we employ a wrangler to do it. The guides are not required to handle any kind of equine.

[LIGHTNING RIDGE]

Catdogs on this forum is who you should contact.

Royaltine is the name of his outfit

[LDB]

I am sure there are some great guide schools out there but cutting strait to the chase with an apprentice guiding position sounds like a good option to me. I know the toughest part of getting into the business for me was getting my first job. A guide school may be able to place you with an outfitter who needs a guide and is willing to take on someone who is fresh out of school, but I wouldn't pass up a chance to get some real world experience. Nothing looks better on a resume than experience actually guiding, work hard, pay attention and the outfitters you have worked for will become the best references you could ever have when you are looking for a job. If the apprentice thing falls through check out the outfitters suggested but make sure you talk to as many references on each as possible. JMO

[Andy]

I went to Scott Boulanger's school ten and a half years ago when I was seventeen and three days out of high school. It was a great experience, two weeks in Scott came and told me he had an outfitter needing someone right away and I left to work for him. It was a really good school, and I'd recommend it but I was a kid from the big city in the midwest and knew no one, and it was more of an in to outfitting and hunting than anything, I learned alot from the guy I went to work for and he did things differently than Scott did, not that one was better than another. Scott's school is heavily horse based, its pretty much just about packing and horsemanship, that's really the biggest part of being a guide in the west anyway. It's hard to teach anyone how to hunt elk in a month or so, and in the middle of the summer at that. If I was from Montana or Idaho or the west I think I would have tried to find an outfitter that I could apprentice with. If you wanna go to school though, Scott's school there in Darby would be a good one.

[MontanaHunter]

A guide school is not right for everyone. If you are looking for the skills required to be a back country guide Scott’s school, Western Montana School for Guides, has helped a lot of individuals get their start in the outfitting business. Scott is a very successful outfitter and his classes are full of useful information and give a lot of hands on experience that would take a long time to learn otherwise. I know a lot of guides who got their start with Scott so it might be worth your time to check out his school at http://guidetraining.com.

[catkiller]

Guide school is a great way to get a start in that line of work. it was something that i never went through. If you can find a outfitter that will hire you for a camp jack or something along those lines you will get all the training you need. The biggest thing is put your heart into it and learn as much as possible. Where i work we run a guide school and the biggest thing alot of kids dont realize is that when you are at a guide school it is a job interview at the same time. If you show that you want it bad enough you never know who will be offering you a job.