What if your outfitter is just bad?

This article was first published in my email newsletter in September of 2026. I've added it to my website, because I think the information is useful in general, not just for the month it was published. If you'd like to keep up with the latest hunting information, including my open dates and available hunts, you can subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of this page.

I've guided hunters more than 250 days a year for most of my career. I know what it looks like when an outfitter is doing its job right — and I know what it looks like when it isn't. This summer, chasing all three species of tur in the Caucasus Mountains of Russia, I got to see both, back to back, on the same trip.

I'll tell you up front: I got all three animals, and two of them are genuinely world-class. I'm proud of that hunt. But for two of the three legs, the outfitting pretty much got in the way of my success — and I think there's a real lesson in that for anybody thinking about booking a hunt outside the U.S.

THE GROUNDWORK

I booked the trip through ProfiHunt, one of the better-known booking agencies working in Russia, to complete a tur slam — the Mid-Caucasian, the Dagestan, and the Kuban, the three recognized varieties of tur found across those mountains. It was a three-week trip: fly Houston to Istanbul to Moscow, clear passport control, then bounce between regional airports and long mountain drives to reach each hunting area.

What a lot of hunters don't realize is that a booking agency like ProfiHunt isn't the outfit that actually guides you. They handle the logistics — the visa work, the meet-and-greet at the airport, the paperwork, the connections between camps. Then they hand you off to a local hunting guide who controls the actual ground you're hunting. That handoff is where things can go right or wrong, and on this trip, it went both ways. 

HUNGRY, TIRED, AND IGNORED

The first camp, for the Mid-Caucasian tur, is where it started. After 41 hours of travel with no real sleep, I finally got to bed. The next morning, before a full day of rugged climbing in the mountains, this is what I got for breakfast: A handful of little, round, ginger cookies.

On this first hunt, that breakfast became the pattern. One morning they hiked me from 9,500 feet up to 11,000 feet with nothing more than cookies and a slice of melon in my stomach. It was more than six hours before we made it back to camp, and about eight hours before I saw any food again.

That’s not a small thing. I’m in pretty good shape, and I’m used to rough terrain, but operating without fuel at more than 9,500 feet is no way to hunt, and it’s made worse when the mountainside is incredibly steep — gradients in the Caucaus mountains are regularly in the 60-75 degrees range, and at times I’d swear they came close to ninety degrees.

When I finally got back to a road, it was Dennis, my ProfiHunt contact, who gave me a Snickers bar and a sleeve of Pringles that he found in his truck. That's what kept me going until an actual meal.

RACING ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN

An even bigger problem was how they hunted. Quite frankly, they weren’t very good at it. They didn’t pace me. They spoiled opportunities by approaching the animal from the wrong direction. And then they expected me to rush shots because their stalking was sloppy.

Pace was a big problem. They had no interest in accommodating my need to get acclimated to the terrain and the altitude (and to an absence of burnable calories). They'd side-hill across a mountain at a dead run to get in position for a shot, and then they'd set me up on a rock with my heart rate pegged and a tur running away at 350 yards and tell me to shoot. That’s no way to hunt.

Worse still, at least once, they rushed across the mountainside to get in position above a tur, which pushed our scent straight down onto the animal and blew the stalk. That’s hunting 101.

Anyhow, none of this is how I run a hunt, and it's not how I'd let a guide run one for me. When I finally told them — through my interpreter — that they needed to slow down so I’d have a chance to take a clean shot, one of them told me not to worry — if I wounded an animal, they had dogs in town that could track it down later. That's not an acceptable answer for a client who's paid thousands of dollars and flown halfway around the world.

A NOTE ABOUT BOOKING AGENTS

A booking agent can vet an area, negotiate a price, and get you through customs. What they usually can't guarantee is the local guide's day-to-day standard — how he feeds you, how he paces a stalk, whether he's sober the night before a 3:30 a.m. wake-up call (yes, vodka-guzzling guides was part of the experience, too). That part of the experience is all set by the local outfitter, and it varies guide to guide, even within the same booking agency.

If you're paying a booking agent, it's fair to ask them directly: what standard do you hold your local guides to, and what happens if they don't meet it?

THE ONE THAT WENT RIGHT

It wasn’t all bad. My last hunt, for the Kuban tur, was everything the first two should have been. Good horses, a clean camp, a guide who spoke enough English to communicate directly, and a crew that fed me a real breakfast every single morning without being asked. We rode at a patient pace, passed on animals that weren't mature enough, and when we finally found the right one, everything about the stalk was calm and controlled. I killed him at 330 yards, and he's a world-class animal.

The difference between this hunt and the other two wasn't a matter of luck. It was due to a local outfitter that understood what it was being paid to do.

MY ADVICE FOR YOUR INTERNATIONAL HUNT

If you're booking an international hunt, a few things I'd suggest, based on this trip:

Get a reputable booking agent. A reputable booking agent is worth the money — they can get you out of a jam a local outfit can't. But understand exactly where their responsibility ends and the local guide's begins, and ask them how they hold guides accountable.

Pack redundantly for anything battery-powered. I lost my rangefinder to a dead battery that got drained in my luggage on the flight over, and I didn't have a spare.

Go in expecting a roll of the dice. Even with the same booking agency, I had one great hunt and two rough ones on the same trip, guided by three different local crews.

Speak up. If something isn't right — the pace, the food, the ethics of a shot — say so, through whatever translation you've got. I had that conversation more than once on this trip, and it's the reason each of the hunts ultimately succeeded, in spite of everything

THE BOTTOM LINE

An international hunt puts you in the hands of people you've never met, working inside a system you don't control. Booking with a good agency doesn't guarantee smooth days — it means somebody's supposed to be accountable when a local guide falls short.

I got three tur out of this trip, two of them exceptional. But the job of an outfitter -- and your booking agent -- isn't just putting you on an animal. It's making sure you're fed, safe, and treated like the client you are — for the whole hunt, not just the parts when they’re standing next to you.