Is it time to petition the WDFW to standardize and license guide services?

[pianoman9701]

The ongoing thread about our favorite guide service, another thread about a fishing guide who supported and encouraged poaching, and other threads from time-to-time has me ask this: Is it time to have standards and licensing for WA guide services? I couldn't find the option to post a poll or I would have asked Yes, No, or Unsure.

I personally see this as being an important "yes" and my reasoning is as follows. First, hunting and fishing guides may be someone's introduction to our state. A good and ethical guide will bring people back year after year. An unethical one will have people leave and never come back. This not only affects the guides services but all the peripheral economy that the visitors take part in. Ethical guiding services have the right equipment, leases, experience, employees/labor, and must compete with cheaper, less ethical guides who have a fraction of the overhead and don't care about return business - they take the money and run.

Let's hear it from guides, hunters who've used guides, anyone interested or concerned. If there's overwhelming support, we should considering starting a petition of concerned WA hunters to send to the director. Fire away!

[Boss .300 winmag]

I agree something needs done to keep the shady ones from doing business in Wa.

[Dan-o]

I am a NO.   

Government is already intrusive enough?
E.G.   Why does a hairdresser need to be licensed! ) (:2 /+('t?


Let the market work and the buyer beware. 

I'll take Caveat Emptor over the nanny state. 

[JimmyHoffa]

I don't want more government intrusion, especially from the wonderfully managed WDFW.    WDFW will just make it unbearable for legit guides.  If you're coughing up some serious money to hunt with someone, you should probably look around and ask around.  I'm not sure it would take all that long to dig up the first few negatives of the bad guides, then once you have a few you can find more.

[pianoman9701]

I am a NO.   

Government is already intrusive enough?
E.G.   Why does a hairdresser need to be licensed! ) (:2 /+('t?


Let the market work and the buyer beware. 

I'll take Caveat Emptor over the nanny state.

Lots of businesses need to be licensed to protect consumers. Hairdressers need to be licensed to pay for the health inspections to make sure you  don't get lice when you get a haircut. Food servers need to be licensed so you don't die of food poisoning. This isn't requesting a regulation on hunters. It's a protection for them and for the guide industry. 

[Curly]

Aren't fishing guides required to be licensed by the state?

[pianoman9701]

Not sure but I didn't think any guides in WA had to be licensed. I'd love to hear from some guide services. @whitepassoutfitters @bearpaw

[Curly]

I think in this link from wdfw it says fishing guides are required to be licensed.  I'm surprised the state has not required hunting guides to be licensed yet.

I'm torn on the issue though.  Maybe bigtex can give his theory on why the state hasn't required hunting guides to be licensed? 

[huntnphool]

The ongoing thread about our favorite guide service, another thread about a fishing guide who supported and encouraged poaching, and other threads from time-to-time has me ask this: Is it time to have standards and licensing for WA guide services?

 To what end?.............you can't legistlate morality!

[Antlershed]

Aren't fishing guides required to be licensed by the state?

Yes, fishing guides must be licensed. Charter licenses (saltwater) are even limited to the point that the state has not issued any new ones in years. Guys can, however, sell/lease out their Charter license to others.

[pianoman9701]

The ongoing thread about our favorite guide service, another thread about a fishing guide who supported and encouraged poaching, and other threads from time-to-time has me ask this: Is it time to have standards and licensing for WA guide services?

 To what end?.............you can't legistlate morality!

I'm not talking about anything close to legislating morality. Would you go to a restaurant without a health license? Why do you think they need them?

If you read my post, the end would better representation of hunting in our state, consumer protection, and some standardization and monitoring. We're one of the few states without licensed hunting guides. Montana, ID, WY, CO, UT, AK all license and they all have a robust guiding and peripheral economy. We've got great guides who lose business to frauds and slouches and steer people away from our state because of their shady practices. This hurts not only our hunting but others who benefit from the income they bring in. As well, poor guides can put unsuspecting hunters in danger in their choices of hunting areas, their lack of woodsmanship and other skills, and their lack of proper preparedness and equipment.

[Special T]

I'm always surprised that folks don't do even the smallest amount of investigation when spending decent chunks of cash.

Does not one ever check out Better Business Beuros scores on people?

I can think of sever people/companies that have been talked about at length and thier questionable activities. I wish all people were forthright and how they do business, but mostly if you ask around and do a little net searching now you can get vast amounts of feedback.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[cavemann]

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of bad guides in the states you mentioned..  I've hunted in a couple and had some terrible guides and really enjoyed others.  Your logic for us who disagree is the same logic as any tax:  We are just taxing the bridge for repair and maintenance, what is wrong with that???  LOL, and we still have a paid off bridge with tolls higher than ever promised. 

As for the business benefit, I'm pretty sure those states benefit from the abundance of animals not how good the guides are.  I personally could care less if we get more out of state hunters, I'd like to see less.  I'm with Dan-O, buyer beware.  If you are hunting with a guide do your research and more often than not most do so off of referrals and word of mouth.

[pianoman9701]

I don't think this would affect anyone who's posted so far, unless they're currently using WA guiding services.  . I'm interested to see how the professionals feel about it.

[Stein]

The main benefit I could see is that there would be an avenue to investigate complaints and revoke their license.  Right now, you are pretty much limited to internet rants of one form or another.  If you think about it, just about any professional service requires a license and there is a board that investigates complaints.

I get the "do your research" but at the end of the day, one of the values of hiring a guide is that they are doing the work for you.  If you have to go down to checking who owns what property, how many acres it is, whether animals are using it and who it is leased to, it kind of takes away the point.

If you are from out of state, you basically can do a bit of googling, call the guy and then a bunch of trust that what he says is true.