For traveling sportsmen, arranging the adventure of a lifetime can oftentimes be quite taxing. Luckily, Global Hunting Resources (GHR) can do the heavy lifting for you nowadays. From matching clients to the right outfitters, to helping with travel and gun transportation needs, to finally making sure your trophies arrive home safely and swiftly – GHR and their associates will always dedicate their time to turn your next hunting trip into an adventure you’ll never forget! For years, Global Hunting Resources (GHR) founder Aaron Neilson specialized in outfitting and guiding trophy Whitetail and Mule deer hunts on the Plains of eastern Colorado, along with some elk hunts in Colorado and New Mexico. He has lost count long ago of the many great bucks taken over the years, but there’s no doubt that the Plains have been good to Aaron. It’s a passion he still holds close today as he continues to guide regularly throughout eastern Colorado and beyond.
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Global Hunting Resources With Aaron Neilson
We’re going to head out to Colorado and meet with a gentleman, Aaron Nielson. Aaron has hunted across the globe, literally, and he’s got some great stories about North America, about Africa. The biggest thing I want to share with you, hunting is not what I do, but who I am. He and I are going to talk about common ground. When you hunt throughout the world as Aaron has, you meet up with a lot of different folks, a lot of different cultures. When you sit around the campfire, you all have reached common ground because we are hunters. Not everybody hunts but in a sense we’re all hunters. I want you to think about that as we share some great stories with Aaron Nielson of Global Hunt. We’re staying right here in Colorado. I should know. I live in Colorado and hunt. I’ve been blessed to hunt all over North America but we’re going to talk to a guy, Aaron Nielson, who hunted as his company says, a Global Hunting Resources. Aaron, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I’m looking forward to it.
A lot of guys and gals from the Midwest, they dream about coming out West, coming out to the Rocky Mountains and hunting elk or mule deer or antelope, just chasing critters out in a completely different environment. Let’s take five things that you would give advice to somebody thinking about coming out for their first Western hunt.
First of all, I think that people need to realize is most of them, I already do that you are obviously are getting into a whole different ballgame when you start going out West. The country’s big. There are a lot of open expanse. There are a lot of different states and a lot of different things to choose from. Of course, licensing and different things can be different in each state you go to. I think first and foremost would be to tell a person to focus in on what it is that you want to hunt. Whether it be a mule deer or an elk and try to narrow it down to are you think he might want to do that. Secondly, one thing that I see that people want to come out West don’t realize is just simply how big the country is. Unlike a lot of people who are hunting back East or in the Midwest, which has thick wooded terrain, they don’t seem to understand how important things like optics are in the West versus they are back in the heavily treed areas of the East. Try to make sure that you have a good optics and enable to glass and see long distances like what you have to do and some other prices.
Thirdly, on a gun hunt for example, if you’re going to be a gun hunter and you’re going to come out elk hunting to sit your weapon and your caliber choice, what you expect might happen out here. Unlike what happens a lot down south and back East where you might have a long shot of 100 yards, quite the opposite can be true here. You might have a long shot, it’s 300 or 400 yards. I think choosing the weapon and the caliber to fit or style of hunting to what you’re going to be doing that would be very important.
Another issue you might want to consider is make sure you’re prepared for what you’re getting yourself into. Oftentimes out here, if you’re going to be hunting elk because you’re going to shoot an elk maybe in a canyon to three miles from a road, unlike back East oftentimes you can get a buggy or a vehicle fairly close. Be prepared to come here with the right gear, no frame packs and strong legs and deep long so you can make sure you can do all the work that it takes to get those things done. I think if people will just take the time to study a little bit more about what they’re getting themselves into in a completely different scenario. We’re going back there. We’re going to have to completely adapt our tactics. The same has to happen when you come out here.
As we talked to my first foray out West, we’re all whitetail hunters. We did a little scouting. This would be for Google Earth and all this. We talked to some people and got into it. I remember talking to White Shoe at Rocky Mountain Foundation. He said, “If you’re going to come out West, buy my book.” I said, “Fine. I’ll buy your book.” What I found out how many north-facing slopes are cold in the day, listen for the vocalization of the elk. Whitetails do vocalize but certainly not as a herd. That elk is in tremendous amount of vocalization. I’m not even talking about dueling. We’d learned all that. Then we applied it and I’ve been told by outfitters out West that whitetail hunters make good elk hunters. Why do you think that is?
If you’re talking about whitetails in the West or Midwest, I do think that the tactics are quite similar. The whitetails that you and I might see here in Colorado, Wyoming, that have adapted to a much more nomadic way of life, like an elk and mule deer has. They’re not real patternable, their territories in that range are much wider and much greater than what you’ll see in hardwoods back East. You’re able to utilize a lot of the very same tactics, open country glassing, open country stalking. At least that’s been my experience here where I’ve spent the vast majority of my entire time on whitetails, which is Eastern Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. I have found that my elk hunting and mountain mule deer hunting tactics play absolutely the same key essential parts to being successful as a whitetail hunter for me when I go out into the sea of some of these open countries where the whitetails are around.
A number of my shows this year, people talked about long distance scouting for whitetails. What does that mean?
It’s very simple. Here’s what I’ll tell you. When you start dealing with whitetails that live in open country as we do here, they are a much different animal, even the mule deer. A whitetails’ typical response is flight. They want to get away. They want to run, they want to get as far away from anything and anybody as they can. What I have found to be most essential when you’re trying to be successful on open country whitetails is you’ve got to be very careful about your movements and careful about letting them know you’re anywhere in the country within a mile. There are lots of long distance glassing and long-distance observation on these whitetails. If you’re able to do that and do it without them knowing that you’re there you can very easily figure out what those deer are doing. Unlike the mule deer that don’t live on the exact same terrain and you’ll see the exact same time, if you get a vehicle or a person within a half a mile of those guys, they are absolutely gone, unlike where mule deer will walk and continue to tolerate your presence. Everything you do with these open country ones, you want to do it from a great distance up until you’re ready to go in and get them.
We’re talking about Boone and Crockett class whitetails and in Colorado, just because they get so big, everybody takes the shots and the Boone and Crockett then get published. Help me out understand what kind of class animal is typical. Is a monster buck 200 inches?
I would say this, I don’t think a true Boone and Crockett whitetail is common anywhere. I do think that places like Eastern Colorado has been great for their potential quality. It’s one of the few places I’ve seen where on a regular basis you could go and harvest 160 plus whitetail. Personally, I bet I’ve guided at least 40, if not more, whitetails over 160 in Eastern Colorado. We’ve killed a couple of bucks over 200, certainly killed several Boone and Crockett deer over the years. There’s no doubt that the quality exists there, but part of the reason that the quality that we have in Eastern Colorado exists is because the game and fish here does do a good job of limiting the availability of the tags rather than just having a free for all, all the permits and everything. The eastern third of the state of Colorado is all private land. Most of it is farming and ranch country so they’ve got great food. It’s an extension of Kansas and everybody’s very familiar with the quality of whitetails that come out of Kansas and Eastern Colorado for that matter is no different.
Explain to the folks what it looks like out there Eastern Kansas and Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado.
It’s basically high plains country. Elevations will range between 3,000, maybe 4,000 feet generally speaking. When I say it’s all ranch and farm country, it’s just that. It’s what we call rough pasture or cattle pasture. Certainly, a lot of farming including mostly dry land, corn, some irrigated corn, wheat fields, milo fields for the most part in the course. CRP is still a factor in Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas. When you combine those three elements, they’ve got food, they’ve got water and they’ve got cover, they’ve got plains. Due to the fact that they’re not a high-elevation area, deer here are not suffering from extreme weathers. They don’t have to look hard for food because there are crops everywhere. Whether it would be the weed or the mile or the corn. They fared very well, so you have to factor that with the fact that everything is generally private and they have a recipe to reach the number one criteria to get big, which is they’ve got to get old.
The State of Kansas has done a very good job with their walk-in program. Share on XFor the listeners out there that are saying, “I’d love to get out to Kansas, Western Kansas, Eastern Colorado,” what’s it going to hit the budget to hire an outfitter because it is a lot of private land? There may be some little sections here and there but for the most part it’s private land, so money comes into the play.
There’s no doubt. I will tell you that the State of Kansas has done a very good job with their walk-in program and there’s a lot of walk-in access basically what amounts to public land access throughout Canada and Western Kansas in particular. I’ll tell you having been out there more and more recently, I was actually quite surprised at how much good hunting land is registered under the walk-in access. I think something that people should certainly be aware of if they’re unable or unwilling or just simply don’t want to do a guided hunt, certainly look into that in Kansas, but yes, other than that, Colorado and Kansas are both highly restrictive private land. Those hunters out there will range anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000 a piece just depending on whether it’s a two by one, one by one, or it’s a rifle, archery, whatever the case may be. Some areas may charge differently just based on the consistent quality but definitely Eastern Colorado, Western Kansas is generally speaking a place where you don’t go and do it yourself hunt, but that’s not the same in every case. That’s certainly not the case in Western Kansas. People should look in that if they’re interested.
I haven’t hunted yet but I’ve heard outside of Riverton and other places in Wyoming there are some decent and eye-popping whitetails. Have you got information you can share about hunting Wyoming whitetails?
I’ve spent a little bit of time hunting Southeastern Wyoming for whitetails mainly in the wheat land area. Here’s been my experience, but this is not to say that it holds true. It’s just simply one man’s experience that, certainly the whitetails are there. Finding them and locating the deer has not been an issue, but I haven’t seen to the regularity the quality of deer that I see in Colorado and Kansas and even Nebraska for that matter. Not to say that they’re not out there. We obviously have seen guys who have taken some great whitetails out of Wyoming, but generally speaking it seems to be my personal experience has been a lot more 120 to 140 class of bucks versus a lot more the 150 plus class bucks I’ve seen elsewhere here in the West.
I just throw this on Devil’s Tower area. I forget if it’s Area A or One in South Dakota and Wyoming and Montana will come in. I can’t just right now remember the river, but right in that corner there are a lot of whitetails. I was fortunate to hunt one ranch up there and we were hunting turkeys and I couldn’t believe the whitetails that were there, the numbers of whitetails. Don’t overlook place as far as I’m concerned. From what I’ve heard, don’t only look in Wyoming. I know the ranches along Crazy Woman Creek. There’s some decent 150-class whitetails that I’ve seen, I haven’t hunted them yet, but I’ve seen them over there. We’ve got Kansas, we’ve got Colorado. We’ve got parts of Wyoming where you get to the Dakotas. We’ve got a lot of whitetails out West. Think about heading this way for an exciting trip. Let’s change up and a lot of audience say, “Sometimes I’d like to go to Africa, I’d like to do the Sun downers and just hear a lion roar, but I can’t hunt a line or don’t have any interest, but I sure like to get plains games.” What does that look like? Share some of the experiences that you’ve had in the Dark Continent.
I’ve spent a lot of time there. I have been in Africa for 36 times, different countries and hunted pretty much all that they have to offer. It’s a fabulous place and I love it dearly. Here’s what I would suggest, certainly you have your guys that are experienced at it already, but if you guys that are first timers or new to it to try and get some experience about what Africa is about and how to go about it, I would definitely suggest and contact a reputable hunting consultant or booking agent. Oftentimes these guys have been there, done that themselves. They represent multiple enormous outfitters and whether it’d be South Africa or other countries down there and they can start to give them a real feel for what it is that they’re potentially getting into. Any good agent that’s offering their staff, either themselves or work closely with a travel agent that specializes in African travel, taking firearms, shipping and crating of the trophies, the whole nine yards. Anything that that person is going to want to know about including the prices and the options. Get a good agent and you’re going to get a variety of different options, what he might have available and can guide you based on his own personal experience. That’s where I’ll start if it was me.
Would you start with the plains game just to get a feel Africa or we did say, if you have the time and the wherewithal, go after the one on the big five are dangerous seven?
A lot of people have that philosophy that maybe starting with the plains game is a good idea. When I first went there over twenty years ago, my first ten-day hunt I took a lion and a buffalo, leopard and bullock. I think it’s personal preference. A guy can have a lot of fun, hunting plains game and get to go to a place where you get to see and experience a lot of games that I think people also need to realize that if you have a truly wild remote area for potentially dangerous games, that hunting actually can be arduous. It can be difficult, it can be hard to find some of your core. You want to keep that in mind as you pick which one’s best for you. Do you want to see and experience and do all the things and have fun and not make it too rough and tough? If you’re willing to stick it out and be rough and tough and sometimes dangerous game stuff will be a lot of fun.
What does PH mean?
Professional hunter.
Why is that important to somebody who’s thinking of going to Africa?
It’s no different thing going with a guy here. First of all, when you’re traveling halfway around the world, I think it’s very important that you have somebody that’s knowledgeable and experienced dealing with that you’re hunting and the game that you’re hunting. If you’ve never seen a kudu or an eland or something of the sorts that you’re after, you won’t know the difference between a smaller one and a big one. Certainly, a lot of the females have horns just like the males so you want someone that can differentiate that from them. You want somebody also generally speaking the local language and communicates with the trackers and the other people of the community. Somebody that knows how to keep you safe, especially if you get into situations where there could be dangerous game around. It’s just a wise idea. Lastly, in a lot of places it’s required by law. I think when you factor in all those things it’s pretty important when a person is doing a hunt in Africa or overseas for most places that you would try to work with a reputable quality and experienced professional hunter.
If I said to you I want to kill a Kudu and whatever else comes along, I’ve got ten days to fly over. I’m probably going to get a five-day hunt on plains game. What’s that going to run me?
Depending on a number of animals, but now a lot of days you can find some very reasonable packages that are like five to seven days, seven days are very popular days of hunting. You can find some very good packages for $4,000 to $6,000 where you shoot three to five different animals. When you look at that, even your airfare included, let’s say you’ve got all this stuff for $10,000 into it, there are a lot of elephants out West now that have $10,000 plus. You can go to Africa and shoot three to five animals and have a fabulous time for roughly the same price.
Remember that wasn’t always the case but it is today because there are some ranches here in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona. If you go down to White Mountain, Apache, San Carlos, it’s eye-popping. It’s over $20,000 if I’m correct, Aaron.
Over $20,000, that’s right. A lot of your good quality elk horns now all throughout the West. Utah I would include in that too. You’re looking at anywhere from average quality hunts for $7,500 to as much as know $25,000 plus some of the good reservations or well over that. It can be very costly. Not that I’m discriminating against the value of what they have to offer. I’m just simply saying that for the same exact money, if you’ve done it a time or two on some of these, you could have some very good experiences, whether it be in Africa, Asia, even Alaska, Canada. Some of these other places for what amounts to be a rough with the same money.
A part of what we all enjoy about hunting is the camaraderie of who we're with and who you're going to share the experience with. Share on XThink about that, one thing I learned, a guy told me a long time ago, he says, “Bruce, it’s expensive hunting this ranch, but think about it. You can hunt this ranch every ten years. You got to set aside some money every single month that you get every ten years for the next twenty, 30 years and have some of the best hunting in North America if you budget for it.” It’s no different in Africa. People just go, “I can’t do that,” when you actually can and maybe you don’t have as many peers, maybe you quit smoking cigarettes, maybe you don’t buy that new truck, but truly if you want to do it, you can come up with $10,000 and that can take you ten years. You can do it. The other thing is the first time I try to go with a friend for the travel portion of it. Your thoughts on that, Aaron?
I agree. A part of what we all enjoy about hunting is the camaraderie of who we’re with and who you’re going to share the experience with. Certainly, if you’ve got the opportunity, whether it be friends or family that also have the same desire and same way with all that you have, by all means, it’s great to go. Oftentimes you can get even just a little bit better package deals over there if you’re doing a two by one. I’ll tell you in most of these places, the game density is so great that it is not in any way, shape, or form going to affect your success. It does allow you to spend the time with your buddy or your friend, maybe even your daughter or son and all be successful and at the bottom line, maybe same, just a little bit of money going in too.
Let’s switch gears and come back to North America, just about every single game in North America. What was your favorite hunt in North America?
I’ll tell you this, growing up here in Colorado from a small child, the North American deer, the rocky mountain elk, it’s always been my go-to. That’s my love. The fact is the greatest adventure that I’ve ever had here in North America has been hunting the polar bear. It’s a fabulous experience. A place that I never thought that I would get to see and some of the things I got to experience, getting out on the pack ice and actually seeing a live wild polar bear, was a pretty amazing experience. One I probably won’t ever get to repeat again. If I had to choose one great adventure, it would be the polar bear. If I had to choose only one animal left in North America that I could continue to hunt for, it would definitely be the elk.
Thanks for that. I’ve never hunted a polar bear. I had a couple of friends that did and they said it’s arduous because it’s cold and you’re behind snow sleds and he actually stayed in the Igloo. What was your experience?
My guys have put up a wall tent, lying in the floor with caribou skin rugs and that sort of thing. It is very arduous. It’s quite cold, although if you’re prepared with the right gear, it’s actually seem like it’s as cold sitting in a blind waiting for a whitetail to walk by to be honest with you. It was cold, but it was just the fact that to be able to see and experience not only Inuits but living with a lot of these guys. They were able to function and thrive and that environment versus a guy like me that was just there completely at their mercy. If it wasn’t for their expertise and their ability to get around, the Lord knows what would have happened. Overall it was a tremendous experience. I was very happy doing what I love to do it again. It’s not for the faint of heart, let’s put it that way.
Even if you go to Schefferville and you hang up there for caribou, which is little ways up there above Montreal and you spend the time with the Intuits, that’s what you do. I remember one of the elders, we’re talking in camp and I said, “How do people do it?” You’ve got to understand the Inuits came over the land bridge thousands of years ago. The oldest said, it’s simple. He says, caribou come, we live. If they don’t come, we die. I’ve never forgotten that. That’s our culture. They use caribou for everything. Did you have to make a caribou suit for you during your hunting?
No, I actually use some of this stuff that you will get here. I’ve been there a couple of times, not only have I done the polar bear, but I’ve also done the muskox which takes place in the Arctic as well. One thing that I found very interesting about their culture versus any other place that I’ve been, let’s face it. I know nowadays the tag line, a lot of us hunters like use is we’re hunting for food. I think you and I both know and I think most people would admit that none of us are out there anymore hunting because it’s our sole source of survival. When you see what happens with the Inuit and how much they do thrive and relying on the fish and the caribou and the bear and the things that they’re able to subsist on, they’re probably one of the last remaining cultures in the world that hunting is truly a large part of their subsistence. It was neat to see that.
That’s part of the traveling and Aaron does have a lot more travel as I said. I haven’t been Africa yet, but in North America I can remember just sitting with the Inuit or being with some of the first nation people up in the upper reaches of Canada or even into Alaska. Then you drop down into Mexico and a completely different culture. What I like to share, and I’ll just throw this out, we all have common ground because we’re hunters. Your thoughts on that, Aaron?
I think it’s one thing that is interesting, whether it’s been the Inuits or the people at the north. I have 200 on tribal lands here in the West, South America. I’m hunted with the aborigines in Australia. I was hunted with the native blacks in Africa and I hunted with the Pakistani people in Pakistan. What’s most interesting is when you look at those entire dynamics of all these different cultures as a political world and the things we see now, we have racial tensions and we have wars with Muslims. I can go on down the down the list, but it’s been very interesting is when I go to these places and you’re hunters, they’re hunters, we all just enjoy the camaraderie of being together. I’ve made some of my greatest friends in these places. Elsewhere you would have thought that we would have been at odds at each other’s throats, but just that common ground of hunting brought us together to both laugh, share and enjoy doing the exact same thing that we love to do.
Thank you, Aaron Nielson, from all our listeners across North America for sharing not only hunting elk and whitetails, but the common ground that we have and talking about the hunting tradition and talking about the uniqueness that hunting brings to the campfire. No matter where you are in the world, if you’re a group of hunters, you are brothers. Thank you so much, Aaron Nielson, from Global Hunt Resources.