Mitch Green runs the hunting program at Lake Hāwea Station in New Zealand's Otago high country, where red stag, tahr, chamois and fallow deer share sixteen thousand acres of free range mountain terrain above Lake Hāwea. He grew up chasing sika deer in the North Island, moved south at eighteen, and worked his way from fishing guide to head guide on one of Otago's best known hunting properties.

In this conversation, Mitch walks through what separates a guided hunt from public land hunting in New Zealand: how the station manages its deer, chamois and tahr populations with no natural predators on the ground, why the red stag roar in late March and April is considered the height of New Zealand hunting, and how steep the country actually feels once you're standing in it. Mitch says he estimates that without predators, a New Zealand deer population can double every two to four years, part of why active management matters so much on a property like this. He also covers what it takes to bring a rifle into New Zealand as a visiting hunter, the accommodation options on station (converted century-old musterers' huts), and stories of a run of hunts with a repeat client that produced a trophy fallow buck, two red stags and a heavy chamois in the space of two trips.

Whether you're weighing a first guided hunt in New Zealand, researching Otago's draw of red stag, tahr and chamois, or just want to hear what it's like to guide free range mountain hunting for a living, this one covers it.

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Lake Hāwea Station Hunting:🌐 lakehaweastationhunting.com📸 @lakehaweastation_hunting

Photography credit: Courtesy of Lake Hāwea Station Hunting

Andrew Pringle grew up hunting in South Africa, then spent a decade guiding whitetail and mule deer in Alberta before building Crusader Safaris into 800,000 free range acres back home. No high fences, no farmed game, animals living where they've always lived.

In this conversation, Andrew breaks down what actually separates a free range hunt from a high-fenced one, why the majority of his clients come back within a few years, and how giving local communities a real stake in the wildlife has made poaching a non-issue in most of his areas. He also talks through the three conservancies (Umkomaas, Stormberg, and the Baviaansriver), what a first South Africa hunt should look like species-wise, and why he thinks it's one of the easiest, best-value first international hunts a North American hunter can book.

Robbie also shares that Let's Go Guided is bringing a group to hunt the Baviaansriver Conservancy with Crusader Safaris in June 2027, with five-day and seven-day packages and room for a custom trip.

Want in on it?

DM us on Instagram (@letsgoguided_) or Email [email protected].

Come for the hunting, stay for the comradery, the filming, and an experience none of us will forget!

Crusader Safaris:🌐 crusadersafaris.com📸 @crusader_safaris

Photography credit: Courtesy of Crusader Safaris

Rod runs one of Sonora, Mexico's larger desert bighorn sheep operations, and he guarantees hunters a shot opportunity on a ram. In eight seasons, that guarantee has only slipped twice, and both times the hunt was simply extended a day or two to get it done.

He and his partner Gustavo started GURO Outfitters with two mule deer tags and nothing else. Rod grew up hunting in Mexico City, starting at four years old on whitetail hunts just south of the Texas border with his father. Gustavo's family had hunted the same Sonora ranches for generations, and after his grandmother's eightieth birthday, the two decided almost on impulse to start an outfit together. The first two years were rough. They couldn't sell their own hunts and survived by taking overflow clients from another outfitter. By year three they added desert bighorn sheep to the lineup, and the growth from there was steady.

Today GURO runs two camps at a time, each with its own chef and guide team, and never mixes hunting parties. Sheep hunts run eight full days, mule deer hunts six, with clients typically picked up in Tucson and then crossed the border.

Rod walks through what actually makes a sheep hunt hard, how "high racking" works for mule deer, why target acquisition, not marksmanship, is the biggest obstacle most clients face, and how Sonora's government uses a helicopter survey every three years to set sheep tag allocations. He also gets into the mule deer scoring standard GURO holds itself to, the toll a multi-year drought took on the herd, and the questions he thinks every hunter should ask an outfitter before booking.

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GURO Outfitters:🌐 desertbighornsheephunt.com📸 @gurooutfitters

Photography credit: Courtesy of GURO Outfitters

Three generations, one concession in Cameroon, fifty five years of guiding the same wild country. Xavier Vannier of Faro Safaris joins the show to explain why the Lord Derby Eland has become the animal that defines hunting in northern Cameroon, and why it is considered one of the most difficult trophies to close on anywhere in Africa.

Faro Safaris was founded in 1971 by Xavier's grandfather, who got his start in the bush with the help of Xavier's great grandfather, already working in Cameroon since the 1940s. Xavier's father took over the operation in 2003, and Xavier joined full time in 2016, having spent his entire childhood immersed in the bush. Today the family holds one of the smaller hunting concessions in Cameroon by size, seventy five thousand hectares, but by their own account runs among the highest quota density per hectare of any area in the country.

Xavier walks through what actually makes the Eland so hard to hunt: a January to March breeding season unlike any other species in the region, a herd structure built around wary, watchful females, and terrain so unstable underfoot that a single misstep can end a stalk. He and Robbie get into what a twelve day tracking hunt actually looks like day to day, the physical and mental demands it puts on a hunter, and a couple of specific hunts that stuck with Xavier for what they taught him about patience and pressure.

The conversation also covers the making of Eden, a documentary filmed on the Faro Safaris concession during the COVID years, and the conservation side of the operation: anti poaching patrols, community relations, and a nonprofit called the Faro Conservancy Project that runs on hunting revenue, a published photo book, paid conservation trips for non hunters, and international conservation funding.

If you're weighing a first guided hunt in Cameroon, trying to understand what an Eland hunt actually demands physically and mentally, or just want a straight account of how a well run, multi generational African outfit funds its own conservation work, this episode covers all of it in detail.

Faro Safaris:🌐 farosafaris.com📸 @farosafariclubcameroon

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Photography credit: Courtesy of Faro Safaris

Guiding hunters across Alberta and British Columbia for decades, Jeff Lander built his reputation on one rule: never oversell the hunt.

Jeff Lander is the owner of Primitive Outfitting, based in British Columbia near McBride. He grew up hunting mule deer, elk, and upland birds in Washington State, then guided whitetail for years in Edmonton's Bowzone under outfitter Jim Hole Jr. From there he built his own archery-only mule deer operation in southern Alberta, ran it for decades, and sold it a few years back to focus solely on his BC operation.

Today Primitive Outfitting runs spring black bear hunts out of a family-run lodge, where Jeff's wife cooks for the camp, and eight-day moose and elk hunts by jet boat and raft along a sixty-mile stretch of river that sees almost no other hunting pressure. Jeff has shot a longbow since 1985 and chased stone sheep with it six times; grizzly with a longbow is still on his list, not something he's done yet.

In this conversation, Jeff and Robbie get into the landowner relationships that kept his Alberta operation running, the most common mistakes hunters make glassing open-country mule deer, how his team handles it when a hunt turns dangerous, and what he hopes clients say about him ten years from now. Jeff also gives his honest advice for anyone shopping for an outfitter: call the references who didn't fill their tag, not just the ones who did.

Listen and subscribe to Let's Go Guided for more conversations with the outfitters and guides shaping western hunting.

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Primitive Outfitting:Website: primitive-outfitting.comEmail: [email protected]Instagram: @primtve

Photography credit: Courtesy of Primitive Outfitting

Lee Drescher didn't grow up hunting. His passion for the backcountry started after his father fell ill, and within a few years he had gone from watching Meat Eater videos in his living room to purchasing one of British Columbia's most remote guiding territories. Findlay Creek Outfitters operates 220,000 acres entirely within the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy, protected since 1974, with no motor vehicle access whatsoever. The only way in is horseback or boot leather.

In this episode, Robbie sits down with Lee to talk elk, moose, mountain goat, and mule deer hunting in the East Kootenays, what it actually feels like to be dropped into nearly a thousand square kilometers of backcountry with no one else around for forty kilometers in any direction, and the story of his very first guided hunt: a six point bull at fifteen yards, called in on the last day, shared with a client from Idaho who later mailed Lee a laser engraved skinning knife with his name and the words Lee Drescher Outfitter.

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Findlay Creek Outfitters:

🌐 findlaycreekoutfitters.com

📧 [email protected]

📸@findlaycreekoutfitters

Photography credit: Courtesy of Findlay Creek Outfitters

Jordan Budd grew up on her family's cattle ranch in the Sand Hills of northwest Nebraska, shot her first rabbit out the back door as a kid, and never really stopped. Today she runs Running Water Hunting on that same land, guides a deliberately small number of clients each season across ten miles of river creek bottom and vast grassland that hold mule deer, whitetail, antelope, and Merriam turkey, while also producing content for Meat Eater and running her own media operation on the side.

In this episode, Robbie sits down with Jordan to talk about how she built a guiding business out of necessity and passion, why she condensed her season down to five focused weeks instead of spreading clients across the whole year, and what separates a good client from a great one in the field. She also gets into what it looked like going from filming sheep hunts in Wyoming right out of high school to becoming one of the more quietly accomplished operators in the western hunting space.

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Instagram: @letsgoguided_
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Running Water Hunting:
🌐 jordan-budd.com
IG: @Jordan.Budd
YouTube: Jordan Budd

Photography credit: Courtesy of Running Water Hunting

Doyle Moss has been guiding across the American West for decades. The record book tells part of the story: the number three Pope and Young bull ever taken, Utah's largest bull elk on record, and the legendary Spider Bull, the number one non typical bull elk in the world. But behind every record animal is a guiding philosophy built over decades of putting clients on trophy mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain lion, and bear across Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, primarily on public land.

In this episode, Robbie sits down with Doyle, founder of Mossback Guides and Outfitters, to talk about how it all started, what conservation tags actually are and why they matter, how Mossback thinks about client expectations and preparation, and the full story behind the Spider Bull, including the client who killed it, and what happened years later after a stroke when that same client came back just to prove he still could.

Let's Go Guided:

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Mossback Guides and Outfitters:

🌐 mossback.com

📸 @mossbackoutfitters

Facebook: Mossback Outfitters

Photography credit: Courtesy of Mossback Guides and Outfitters

Ben Brochu started trapping as a kid in northern Alberta's Peace Country, sold his furs to save up for a trike, and was working for an outfitter by sixteen. Between then and now he spent years in vocational ministry, sailed Pacific Mexico for five months with his wife and four young children, and built one of Alberta's most diverse big game operations almost entirely on his own terms.

In this episode, Robbie sits down with Ben, founder of Hinterland Outdoors, to talk moose, black bear, elk, whitetail, and mule deer hunting in northern Alberta, including a triple combo hunt where clients have had opportunity on all three big game species in a single six day window. Ben is candid about the kind of hunter he wants in camp and the kind he does not, what surprised him most about making the leap to full time outfitting, and why the best hunters he has ever guided are the ones who show up relaxed.

Let's Go Guided:

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Instagram: @letsgoguided_

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Hinterland Outdoors:

🌐 hinterlandoutdoors.ca

📞 1-780-978-2701

📧 ⁠[email protected]⁠

Photography credit: Courtesy of Hinterland Outdoors

This one is a little different. Episode 17 takes you out of the studio and into bear camp, where Robbie, Lindsay, and Colin recorded a casual check in from a wall tent somewhere in the BC interior on their second annual spring bear hunt.

In this episode the team reintroduces themselves, shares what has been happening behind the scenes since launch, and announces what is coming next. Lindsay was given a surprise birthday hog hunt in California with SMC Williams Guide Service. Robbie is heading to the Yukon in August for a horse guided caribou hunt with Iron North. And for 2027, the team is planning two group hunts open to listeners: an Argentina hunt and a plains game hunt in South Africa. If either of those is on your radar, reach out to Lindsay directly at [email protected] for details as they come together.

A short, raw update from the people building this thing in real time.
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Group hunt inquiries: [email protected]

Production and photography credit: Courtesy of Falk Filmz.