Figured you all would get a kick out of this. It wasn't funny to me while I was going through it, but now I can look back and laugh
Last week I spent some time in South Florida crossing some more ducks off of the bucket list. I have a friend down there and I hunted with him most of the week. The plan was to hunt with him 4 days and then take a guide trip for 3 days. I don't ever do guided hunts because I'm perfectly able of killing ducks on my own, but in this case I was going after a duck that can be near impossible to track down so I needed the knowledge of a guide that kills them daily. The duck is a fulvous whistling duck.
So I hunt 4 days with my friend and we do great. I shoot my first mottled ducks and black belly whistling ducks, two species I had never shot. Also shot a pile of teal. Just really had a great time.
Then comes time for the guide trip. This guide came highly recommended for fulvous and is the only guide around killing them consistently. Many many positive reviews from across the country. I text him Thursday and ask for the address to the lodge (lodging included in cost of the trip). He responds and says just stay in the guest bedroom at his house because we were going to be driving a little bit and I could ride with him to save fuel. Perfect, no problem. I arrive Thursday night and carry my things in, nice place, everything is good. We wake up to hunt Friday morning and drive to a small public lake. The lake has a dike that separates it from a WMA that is draw permit only and hunted 1 day a week. He pulls the boat onto the edge of the dike and we sit there. He claims this is the flight path they take and it could happen at any time. We sit there from day light until dark with no fulvous flying over.
The next day the game plan is the same, except today the WMA next to us is being hunted, so theoretically they should be flying. We sit there until lunch time with no shots fired and no fulvous in range. He says lets pull the boat out and go to another spot. Sounds great to me. Next spot is very similar, but on the other side of this dike there is a no hunting safety area. We get there and see fulvous on the other side of the dike. We sit there for 30 minutes or so and he says okay, lets go shoot one. Yes, he meant off of the no hunting area....I declined and we waited until dark and none flew over. On the ride home I'm told that he and his girlfriend broke up the night before, and she has put all of our things on the back porch. My stuff and his stuff. We get to the house and my bag is out there, but several things were still inside. My phone charger, boots, shower stuff etc. The kicker is all of my ducks from earlier in the week were in the freezer in the house....
The girl is gone and she has locked the place up and thrown out the hide-a-keys. She has blocked him on her phone, so he gives me her number and I text her asking to let me in to get my stuff. She blocks me too.
At this point I ask what the plan is for tomorrow. With a straight face, being completely serious he says we are going to take a suppressed 22 and shoot a fulvous off of the safety no hunting area. But if the game warden comes, he tells me to throw the suppressor in the lake because it is not legal. He says after I shoot I have to run as fast as possible to get the duck, but it is deep so I will have to swim, and then run back to get the boat so we can get out of dodge. After determining he wasn't joking, I told him to cancel the rest of my trip and get my stuff out of the house, I'm going home. I have no interest in shooting a duck off of a no hunting area with a 22. That's like shooting a buck at night with a spotlight. If I can't do it the right way I won't do it at all.
So I leave to go find a hotel room while he is trying to get in touch with her through friends. I go to 4 hotels before I find one with anything open and the only open room is a suite at the Holiday Inn. $254 later I had somewhere to stay the night. This is about 9pm by the time I get in the hotel room.
I call him a couple times an hour until almost 2am when he calls me and says he got my stuff. I got my ducks, slept a few hours, and then drove back home to NC.
The moral of the story is that if you are hiring a guide ask the tough questions before booking. Don't just ask about what they have been killing or what their success rate is. Ask about how they are killing the birds they are killing. If their results are too good to be true, they probably are
