GUIDES WANTED

Local Guides - within 50 miles of South Bend, IN

eMail:  biglake@biglakeoutdoors.com

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ON THIS PAGE

If you are a successful hunter or fisherman and would like to supplement your current income while doing what you love, this is your chance.

If you live within 50 miles of South Bend, Indiana and would like to be one of our Local Guides, let us know.  This would be a part-time position with no guarantees of how many hunts you would guide per season.  We will be signing on no more than two more guides in Indiana and four more guides in Michigan.

The counties we're looking in are:

We're looking for experienced hunters and fishermen with the lands, equipment, and know-how needed to give our customers a first-rate, enjoyable experience that will keep them coming back year after year.

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HOW IT WORKS

In a nutshell, we take care of all the administrative work and you take people hunting or fishing.

You will have the option of becoming a MEMBER or ASSOCIATE guide.  Member Guides will be called first when a customer wants to hunt in their area.  If there is no Member Guide in that area or none is available, we will call the Associate Guides for that area to see who wants the job.

You will also tell us what dates you can and cannot guide.  We'll mark down dates you will be unavailable and will only call you for dates not marked as such.  There is no specific number of dates you need to be available to guide.

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BECOME A BIG LAKE GUIDE

Step 1: Contact us to let us know you'd like to guide hunters and/or fishermen.  Include a rundown of your experience, the fish and/or game for which you wish to guide, physical descriptions of your properties, and a few pictures of some of your successful outings and lands available to you.  This information will be used on our web site.

Step 2: Decide if you want to be an Associate Guide or a Member Guide.

Step 3:  Send in your Member Guide dues (if applicable).  Dues may be paid by personal check or money order, but we will not contact you as a 'Member Guide' until the check clears.

Step 4:  Begin taking customers on outings.

Become a 'Member Guide'

To become a Member Guide and so be contacted first with any jobs in your area, an annual dues of $100 is required.  If we fail to contact you during that year to take out hunters, your fee will be refunded.  Until your dues is received, you will be considered an Associate Guide.

There is no annual dues required to become an Associate Guide.

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How You Get Customers

Customers will contact us looking for that perfect hunting or fishing trip.  We will make available to them all the information we have from our Member and Associate Guides.  

We'll contact our Member Guides first and then, if necessary, our Associate Guides until we find one to take the job.

If the customer has a specific Guide he wishes to use, we'll set that up.  However, if you book repeat customers yourself without going through us, we will no longer book trips with you.

Customers will send us their deposit.  When they arrive for their outing, they will pay you the balance due in the form of cash (they will be very aware of this requirement when they book), which more often than not will be your cut (you don't have to send us money and we don't have to send you money).  

If the customer doesn't have the complete balance in cash, it's up to you whether or not you'll accept a check or even take them out that day.  It is our recommendation that you don't do either, but instead try to book them for another day when they can meet their end of the deal.  

Any tips you earn is strictly between you, the customer, and the IRS.  :)

When the day is done, you will send us a short report.  Give details on weather conditions, game seen, game taken, and a little about how the day went in general.  We can use this information when talking to future potential customers for what you offer.

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Guide Pay

If you are hunting land you own, lease, or otherwise have received permission to use, or if you are fishing from your own boat, you will be paid 60% of fees charged.

If you are using any of the lands we have obtained for the purpose, you will be paid 40% of fees charged.

You keep 100% of tips received from the customers.

You have the right to request more money, but understand that we want to keep our prices to the customer as low as we can and still make you money, and pay for our web site, work on the phones and email, etc.  We'll deny any request that will take our rates significantly above the 'going rate'.  This may cost us a few guides, but it will gain us new customers for those guides who choose to stay with us.

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GUIDE PERKS

Besides getting paid to hunt and/or fish, you will also have the opportunity to take a buddy or two on a complimentary hunting or fishing trip with any of our other guides.

Every Member and Associate Guide may dip into the complimentary till one time each year for an outing with any other guide.  This is strictly first-come, first-served and must be booked through Big Lake Outdoors.

You'll be responsible for travel and lodging (unless the host guide offers lodging to you), but the guiding is complimentary.  

Member Guides receive a maximum of two days complimentary guiding for their party, preferably not on a weekend.  Additional days will have to be paid.

Associate Guides will receive one day complimentary guiding.  Additional days will have to be paid.

The Host Guide will set all trip parameters such as Party Size, etc. 

If a guide would like to make use of any of our other guides multiple times during a fiscal year, Big Lake Outdoors will waive our cut one time.  In other words, you will be able to hunt one more time paying only that guide's cut.

To make this work, you must agree to give Big Lake Outdoors one, and only one, complimentary hunting or fishing package each year to be used by other Big Lake guides.  This package will be one or two days in duration depending on whether it's used by a 'Member' or 'Associate' guide.  There is no guarantee that these packages will be used, but you must agree to make them available.

NOTE:  No guide will be required to make available to our other guides more than one free outing annually.

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GUIDE RESPONSIBILITIES

Once you become one of our Member or Associate Guides, you will be responsible for the following items.  By becoming one of our guides, Member or Associate, you are acknowledging and accepting all items listed below.  We recommend you print out this list for your records.

#1.  Employee Status

You will not be an employee of Big Lake Outdoors.  You will be considered an Independent Contractor and thus responsible for all your tax and insurance needs.  

#2.  Liability

You agree that Big Lake Outdoors and its owners are not liable for any injury or damage to you, your customers, your assistants, your equipment, or the property on which you are conducting your hunt booked by Big Lake Outdoors.  You further agree that you are solely responsible for your actions, those of your customers, and any assistants you may choose to use, as they may pertain to the safety, well-being, or damage caused as a result of those actions, to other persons or property near you and the party you are guiding.  Big Lake Outdoors and its owners will be free of all liability in these cases.

#3.  Property

You are responsible for all your own leases.  You work out the deal with the landowner and take care of all physical preparations for hunting.  In other words, you build the blinds and/or tree stands, etc.  For this, you will be paid 20% more than guides having to use our properties.  You are also responsible for any damage caused to properties you lease or otherwise use to guide hunters and fishermen.

#4.  Equipment

You need to own your own equipment.  For example, a waterfowl guide should have decoys, appropriate watercraft (if hunting ducks), and dog.  A river or big lake fishing  guide should have a boat large enough to comfortably accommodate x-number of customers.  Any guides using a boat for ANY guiding MUST have all required safety equipment.  Big Lake Outdoors will not provide equipment nor will we replace any equipment damaged or lost during the course of the season.

#5.  Licenses

If your state requires you to have a guide permit or captain's license, you are responsible for taking care of those.

#6.  Your Assistants

If you want to have any other people help you with your guiding serves, you will pay them from your share.

#7.  Your Conduct

You will not show up for an outing smelling of alcohol or other impairing substance.  You are 100% responsible for your own actions, as well as those of your assistants AND your customers.  If you allow anyone associated with your operation to damage property belonging to someone else, you will be held liable for the damage.

#8.  Safety

This is our #1 Priority, even above taking game.  If you run an unsafe operation, not only will we stop sending customers to you, but you may also be the target of a lawsuit by Big Lake Outdoors, the customer or landowner.  This is your one warning on this subject.  So just be safe and avoid any potential problems.

#9.  Illegal Activities

Not tolerated.  Period.  You will not permit anyone who is drunk or high to have a loaded weapon.  You will not permit the taking of any game that is not in season.  You will not permit the taking of any game over the bag limit.  If any illegal activities take place and you or anyone else in your party are cited or arrested, you're on your own.

#10.  Customer Complaints

If we get a bad report from a customer about one of our guides, we hope we'll have heard about it from that guide first.  Basically, if you think somebody has reason to be angry, you should mention it in the report you send after each outing. 

Each complaint will be handled on an individual basis AFTER we've heard from both parties.  That said, repeated complaints about a specific guide from multiple customers will result in that guide being dropped from our ranks and immediate loss of any right to 'Guide Perks' (this would include immediate cancellation of any 'Guide Perk' outing you have scheduled, whether giving or receiving).

'Member Guides' being dropped due to repeated customer complaints will forfeit their annual dues.  No refund will be given.

#11.  Bad Outing Refunds

We flat out don't give refunds and we won't expect you to give any either.  What we will do is try to work with the unhappy customer to reach a mutually beneficial solution.  This may require us to ask (not 'require') one of our guides to take out a customer on a free hunt.  If this is done, the guide working the free hunt will receive the next hunt request for their area, regardless of Member or Associate status.

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CONTACT US

If you'd like to sign-up to  be one of our 'Remote Guides', click here.

If you're interested but have questions, ask them here or call 269-845-2354.

Either way, we'll get back to you within a couple of days with your answers or to get the ball rolling.