Why do Canadian guided hunts costs so damn much compared to international hunts?

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Northern Shooter

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As someone who has started to look into domestic guided hunts I'm getting a bit of sticker shock seeing these prices (www.bookyourhunt.com).

I went into this thinking $10,000 would be a healthy budget to hunt any single big game species our country has to offer....apparently not.

As comparison $10,000 CDN will buy you a 10 day plains game hunt where you can take multiple species/trophies. $10,000 will also buy you a dangerous game hunt like Cape Buffalo with room to spare for another plains game or two. You can hunt brown bear in Europe for less than $5,000.

Looking at some of our domestic hunt prices I'm seeing:

1. Bison (AB) - $21,000
2. Caribou Hunts (Yukon) - $28,000-48,000.
3. Muskox Hunts (NWT) - $30,500.
4. Mountain Goat (BC) - $30,000-50,000
5. Big Horn Sheep (BC) - $55,000-110,000

Elk and Moose seem to be the most affordable of the big game hunts coming in $6,000-13,000.

I've even seen some black bear and white tail hunts in the $20,000 range.

So what gives? is it the cost of labour here compared to places like South Africa and parts of Europe? Is it the degree of remoteness in terms of getting access to these animals (fly in, fuel, horseback etc).

I can confidently say I don't foresee a bighorn sheep hunt in my immediate future.
 
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Has anyone here gone on one of these big ticket items? What did you hunt? Did you feel like the experience was worth the Money.

I have my sights set on an elk hunt but am open to other species, if they are not prohibitively cost restrictive.
 
My question would be: how busy are these guides?

If they are booked right up, then the answer to your question would be "because that's what the market supports."

And if the market does support such high prices, my guess would be it's largely due to american hunters who see the dollar exchange as a discount.

If these guides are not very busy, then my guess would be that the prices are high precisely because they are not busy.

That's the small business market paradox.

In school people learn about the law of supply and demand, and learn that when demand falls, prices should fall.

But that rule actually is usually only true about big businesses. If i'm a big factory and i've pumped out a million widgets, and then the demand for widgets falls and i have a surplus, then for sure, i will cut prices in order to clear inventory. As a big business, i can handle the loss from my cash reserves or other revenue streams.

But small businesses don't work that way.

If i carve widgets in my garage, when i calculate my expenses i am thinking about things for my household, like mortgage or gas for my truck. If my household expenses total $5k a month, and i sell 50 widgets a month, i will price my widgets at $100 each.

Now, let's say the widget market drops, and suddenly i'm only selling 10 widgets a month. What do i do? If i keep the price at $100, i will only make $1000 a month, and that won't pay my bills. So i increase my price to $500 each. That way i can still make ends meet even with the lower sales. If any customers complain, i just blame "the market."

Now, what if $500 widgets don't sell? What if that's too much?

There's no scenario where i can sell for less than my household expenses - i'm not a big factory, so i simply can't absorb the loss.
So if they don't sell, i simply give up. I close the doors to the shop, and go get a job as a greeter at walmart.

So i guess the bottom line is, if the prices are that high, the guides are either really busy, or really broke.
 
This is exactly why I want to move to the Yukon for a few years. Also why I don’t want to leave BC we have access to some amazing things!

Also I believe most places have a PTA (permit to accompany) if you have any really good friends who hunt in other places that’s always an option. No where near as good as a guide will be though. (From what I’ve heard)

B
 
It's supply and demand, and as supply has become more and more limited, demand has increased. I used to use outfitters until about 20 years ago, and back then, I purchased a last minute mountain goat cancelation for $3000 Canadian, and two resident bighorn hunts for $4000, and $5000. At the time the regular price was around $5000US for mountain goat, and $12-15000US, for bighorn. My last minute grizzly hunt cancelation cost me $5500US, when the regular price was $10,500US. I was actually shocked to see how much prices had climbed, since then.
 
Callee said:
My question would be: how busy are these guides?

If they are booked right up, then the answer to your question would be "because that's what the market supports."

And if the market does support such high prices, my guess would be it's largely due to american hunters who see the dollar exchange as a discount.

If these guides are not very busy, then my guess would be that the prices are high precisely because they are not busy.

That's the small business market paradox.

In school people learn about the law of supply and demand, and learn that when demand falls, prices should fall.

But that rule actually is usually only true about big businesses. If i'm a big factory and i've pumped out a million widgets, and then the demand for widgets falls and i have a surplus, then for sure, i will cut prices in order to clear inventory. As a big business, i can handle the loss from my cash reserves or other revenue streams.

But small businesses don't work that way.

If i carve widgets in my garage, when i calculate my expenses i am thinking about things for my household, like mortgage or gas for my truck. If my household expenses total $5k a month, and i sell 50 widgets a month, i will price my widgets at $100 each.

Now, let's say the widget market drops, and suddenly i'm only selling 10 widgets a month. What do i do? If i keep the price at $100, i will only make $1000 a month, and that won't pay my bills. So i increase my price to $500 each. That way i can still make ends meet even with the lower sales. If any customers complain, i just blame "the market."

Now, what if $500 widgets don't sell? What if that's too much?

There's no scenario where i can sell for less than my household expenses - i'm not a big factory, so i simply can't absorb the loss.
So if they don't sell, i simply give up. I close the doors to the shop, and go get a job as a greeter at walmart.

So i guess the bottom line is, if the prices are that high, the guides are either really busy, or really broke.
Click to expand...

I appreciate the Economics 101 but how does that take into considering at the comparatively lesser prices for guided hunts abroad (including the USA) even when you account for the Canadian dollar? The website I provide has the option to list all pricing in CDN. Are those guns not just as busy/slow as the Canadian outfits?

Similar sheep/goat/bear hunts in Alaska/Europe cost less than the Canadian examples. I can understand the value proposition for hunts in Africa/Asia/E. Europe as the labour costs would be less.
 
stubblejumper said:
It's supply and demand, and as supply has become more and more limited, demand has increased. I used to use outfitters until about 20 years ago, and back then, I purchased a last minute mountain goat cancelation for $3000 Canadian, and two resident bighorn hunts for $4000, and $5000. At the time the regular price was around $5000US for mountain goat, and $12-15000US, for bighorn. My last minute grizzly hunt cancelation cost me $5500US, when the regular price was $10,500US. I was actually shocked to see how much prices had climbed, since then.
Click to expand...

Those prices sound much more manageable, sounds like they've jump almost 10x since then.
 
bdb.hunting said:
This is exactly why I want to move to the Yukon for a few years. Also why I don’t want to leave BC we have access to some amazing things!

Also I believe most places have a PTA (permit to accompany) if you have any really good friends who hunt in other places that’s always an option. No where near as good as a guide will be though. (From what I’ve heard)

B
Click to expand...

BC/Yukon do seem like as good as it gets for hunting in this country, I was born on the wrong side of the country.
 
The world continues to increase population, and decrease wilderness areas. More hunters with fewer places to hunt. Supply and demand.
 
Sheep are Glamour Game and supply is extremely limited.

I'm not a Guide but for labour why would I babysit someone for less than $500/day? Add expenses etc to that. If horses are involved look at the cost of hay and land these days.

Price of fuel has tripled in 20 years. A trip to the grocery store is $300-$500 these days.
 
Northern Shooter said:
I appreciate the Economics 101 but how does that take into considering at the comparatively lesser prices for guided hunts abroad (including the USA) even when you account for the Canadian dollar? The website I provide has the option to list all pricing in CDN. Are those guns not just as busy/slow as the Canadian outfits?

Similar sheep/goat/bear hunts in Alaska/Europe cost less than the Canadian examples. I can understand the value proposition for hunts in Africa/Asia/E. Europe as the labour costs would be less.
Click to expand...

Well, if my theory is right that these guide prices are being set according to living costs, then the different cost of living between those places could be to blame.
It's tricky comparing american vs canadian cost of living, because, as professor google tells me, technically the american cost is higher than the canadian one.
However, those numbers are misleading, because they include american medical costs, and do not include the higher american average income. Once you account for those, the average american income will cover 2 months of living expenses, while the average canadian runs out of cash after only 1.5 months.
And those are averages, of course.
Hunting usually takes place in remote or northern areas, and we all know the cost of living in those areas is much higher than average. Even there, however, the americans would have an economic advantage simply due to their population. Even "sparsely populated" parts of america would still have ten times as many people as the sparsely populated areas of canada, and so they would still benefit from economies of scale. Not many remote parts of america would, for example, see the same kinds of insane grocery prices that canadians see in nunavut, where a box of chapmans icecream sells for $26.79! A pound of bacon runs you $39!

I don't know for sure that this is the explanation, but it certainly makes sense to me that the canadian guide prices could be explained by financially strained canadian guides jacking up the prices in a desperate attempt to keep up with rising cost of living.
 
Callee said:
Well, if my theory is right that these guide prices are being set according to living costs, then the different cost of living between those places could be to blame.
It's tricky comparing american vs canadian cost of living, because, as professor google tells me, technically the american cost is higher than the canadian one.
However, those numbers are misleading, because they include american medical costs, and do not include the higher american average income. Once you account for those, the average american income will cover 2 months of living expenses, while the average canadian runs out of cash after only 1.5 months.
And those are averages, of course.
Hunting usually takes place in remote or northern areas, and we all know the cost of living in those areas is much higher than average. Even there, however, the americans would have an economic advantage simply due to their population. Even "sparsely populated" parts of america would still have ten times as many people as the sparsely populated areas of canada, and so they would still benefit from economies of scale. Not many remote parts of america would, for example, see the same kinds of insane grocery prices that canadians see in nunavut, where a box of chapmans icecream sells for $26.79! A pound of bacon runs you $39!

I don't know for sure that this is the explanation, but it certainly makes sense to me that the canadian guide prices could be explained by financially strained canadian guides jacking up the prices in a desperate attempt to keep up with rising cost of living.
Click to expand...

If outfitters keep up with that mindset,eventually,they'll simply price themselves out of the market. Some income is far better than no income,but,once the costs outstrip the income,there's no way back from there. They're out of business.
 
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MiG25 said:
Sheep are Glamour Game and supply is extremely limited.

I'm not a Guide but for labour why would I babysit someone for less than $500/day? Add expenses etc to that. If horses are involved look at the cost of hay and land these days.

Price of fuel has tripled in 20 years. A trip to the grocery store is $300-$500 these days.
Click to expand...

The problem is that they're not babysitting for $500 a day. They want double that. And you know what, I kinda get it. If you're going to have the expertise and equipment to take people hunting, that's worth a lot.

But what burns me up is that in Canada, I cannot as a Canadian easily freelance hunt other provinces. Down in the US, over-the-counter tags make it easy to jump between states. It is way way way harder to do so in Canada. Not impossible, but harder. It makes no sense that I can jump in an airplane and freelance hunt Utah for elk, on the other side of the continent with a limited population, for well under half the cost of a caribou hunt in Newfoundland.

The reality is that our populations are so mis-managed that they might not be able to handle it anyway.

But you know what?

Sooner or later, the natives will start offering more widespread guided hunts (I know they do it in some places already for moose, here in NB. Or they *were* doing it). There will be some fuss in the courts, but they will win in the end, and white outfitters will be pushed out of the game entirely here. I say this with no acrimony towards anyone of any race. It's just where it's headed.
 
Before I started to explore this topic my perceptions were the complete opposite.

I was under the impression that an African plains game hunt/Dangerous Game hunt would be 6 figures minimum and reserved for the most wealthy in society.

Same with some of the driven hunts in Europe, would have thought they would command a significant premium over our domestic hunts.

Would never have guessed that Canadian Goat/Sheep hunting could approach 100k or caribou would be 10s of thousands.
 
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Europe's Alpine Ibex population is >50,000 same for Spanish Ibex, BC Bighorn populatiin is ~3,000. So Western Europe has ~100,000 Ibex.

Yes, BC's Big Game is grossly mismanaged.
 
A couple examples to illustrate the disparity.

14 Day Big Horn Sheep Hunt (Utah) - $8,974 Canadian. Understandably this is a bare bones hunt (bring your own meals)

https://www.bookyourhunt.com/en/Tour/22318?species=Bighorn%20sheep

Vs

14 Day Big Horn Sheep hunt (BC) - $110,448 (Full accommodations)
https://www.bookyourhunt.com/en/Tour/16452?species=Bighorn%20sheep

Although I'm sure that extra 100k could pay for a lot of creature comforts.

6 Day Mountain Goat Hunt (Utah) - $5,522
https://www.bookyourhunt.com/en/Tour/26818?species=Mountain%20goat

Vs

8 Day Mountain Goat Hunt (BC) - $27,612
https://www.bookyourhunt.com/en/Tour/22140?species=Mountain%20goat
 
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