Horseback hunting

Bill Burnett is a seasoned Hunter and outfitter and takes hunting parties up to very high elevations in the mountains of the West. It probably doesn't take a genius to figure out that getting up to high altitudes with camping gear and enough supplies to cover a six or seven day hunt requires a little packing help. So I had a question.

Tell me, how do you outfit? Let's say you have three hunters. Where do the horses come from? How do you get that part put together?

So normally we have a wrangler that handles all the stock for us. And the Wrangler, usually his job is just to handle the stock and the guides would basically handle the guests and the hunting. And so we'll either do a ride in and the Wrangler will stay with the horses in camp for a five to seven day hunt. And then we can use the horses to pack meat throughout the week and back down to the trailer if we need to. Or a lot of times we use them basically as a shuttle. We’ll have a string of horses come and we'll drop the base camp with all the heavy equipment. You know, your kitchen set up and your bigger tents and all that stuff. And then they just leave. And, you know, we've got ways to communicate. We've got sat phones and satellite texts if something goes wrong. But otherwise they just drop us off on a Sunday and usually come back and pick us up on a Saturday, usually.

What a fabulous adventure.