Guide experience

I feel for you OP. Just keep getting out there and I suggest trying to teach yourself on public land. Depending on your location it isn't super difficult to get some birds if you're willing to fail a few times.

I had a similar experience with my first and only guided hunt November up in Washington. I had to repeatedly get in contact to find out the deal with meeting up etc. Kept asking him if he would be guiding us (since he was a champion caller and featured on a TV show I had seen and seemed legit) and he said maybe, maybe not, but that he has good guys that work with him and we would have a calling champion for a guide either way. Finally on the night before he tells me how and when to meet up after I call him. He tells me to meet the guide at one place, and tells the guide another place so after 45 minutes of us waiting around in a parking lot, we go looking in nearby parking lots for our guide and find it's some 18-year old kid. Now, as the sun is coming up, he leads us off to our spot where we help him set up his decoys as the sun rises (we offered, he demanded). I shoot my first bird as the guide is walking back from his car which sails off into the pond 150' feet away, he says to leave it and we will get it later (not my style to leave a bird with a chance of not finding it). As the first flock comes in, he lets them circle a few times and when they are maybe 20-25 yards I call it to our group to shoot. The guide flips out and says "What the fuck are you doing? I call the shots!" Then, as my partners and I were all in our first or second year of hunting, we had a number of flocks come in over a 5 hour hunt, maybe 7-10 total. I largely try and make sure my wife can get some shots at birds but try my darnedest as well. The way he calls the shots, we have a hard time connecting and he made it clear we weren't free as a group to decide on our own when to fire. We all are a little too excited about our first guided hunt and are missing like crazy. The guide gets on our cases' about it in a non-joking way and I can only laugh and try and make light of his attitude. Anyways, we each get a bird or two each which we are disappointed about but still very excited to have gotten some of our first species. Sure, I wish we had connected more with our birds, but the guide experience itself was one I won't be repeating with those guys. TL;DR guide service sends us to wrong spot, costing us the best part of the day, to meet 18-year old kid guide with a bad attitude and we are out $900 between the three of us.

/r/Waterfowl Thread