WIDRIG OUTFITTERS REVIEW. I just returned from a dall sheep/caribou hunt with Chris Widrig. Runs a very organized outfit in camp both there are a few negatives. I would not go back and hunt sheep with them.
1. The problem is with Chris. He is 60 years old now and trying to run the whole outfit and he still tries to guide too. He philosophy on hunting is like banking hours....8-5...even though it doesn't get dark until 11pm.
2. It was a 10 day hunt he said with 12 days allotted. 2 days are dedicated to flying from Whitehorse to his base camp at either Goz Lake or Bonnet Plume lake. Even though we arrived in that camp around 9am.....we spent the entire day and night there before heading out for a 7 hour horseback ride to spike camp. So now 12 days becomes 8 days of actual hunting!
3. The horses and equipment/camp are all excellent. Very good, tame horses that were a pleasure to ride. The food was pretty good as we cooked regular food (not freeze dried) over a camp fire BUT.....3 days eating caribou meat that his previous hunter had shot got old!
4. VERY FEW SHEEP in his entire area. The density is very low. 7 hours of horseback riding each direction and didn't see any sheep (or any other living creature other than a few ptarmigan and 1 small caribou).
5. Chris was 1 for 3 sheep hunters himself this spring and the 1 he did get was a last minute one on the last day. He does not want to do any extra effort to go after sheep. We had 3 opportunities to go after sheep we saw in mid-day or early afternoon and he refused to make a stalk saying "they will be lower or closer to camp tomorrow!". On 1 occasion, we stalked a ram up high on the mountain and the biggest ram I had ever seen (I have 17 sheep/goat hunts to date) was in my crosshairs....standing on the ridge broadside....and he wouldn't let me shoot. It was 3:30 pm (dark at 11 and only about 1 mile by horseback to camp) and he said it was too late to recover the ram that day because he was In a "bad position". I said..... SO WHAT....we will get him and he refused and we went back to camp as usual by 5 and he was in his tent reading by 7pm.
6. The morning of the last day which we were going to do the 7 hour horseback ride to, we were packing he horses around 7:00 am and I looked up and saw the big ram right down low on the green grassy knol just above camp. He refused to go get him (maybe 1-1/2 hour stalk) saying he had lots of stuff to do and new hunters coming in the next day and he wanted to get back to camp!!!!! I was paying for that day of hunting......we had 16 hours of daylight left and he refused to hunt.
I went home totally empty handed...no sheep and no caribou and only 8 days of hunting time.
The other hunters in camp got some sheep (I think they went like 8 for 12 sheep this year. So low density of sheep and just don't use Chris as a guide. He is too old to be trying to run a complete guiding outfitting business and guiding himself and is certainly not willing to work hard for the trophy. Most guides would push a hunter but in this case.....I was pushing him to make a stalk/kill and he always refused because it was 'geting too late" and he wanted to be back in camp by 5 and in bed by 6 or 7.
