Chaparral Hunting Adventures Full Service Outfitter for Whitetail Black Bear and Fishing

Greg Lavoie of Chaparral Hunting Adventures talks about his Full Service Outfitting business in Saskatchewan offering Whitetail, Black Bear and Fishing.

Do you consider Chaparral to be a Full Service Outfitter?

We consider our business, our outfitting business, to be definitely a full service outfitter. We offer, you know, transportation right from the get-go from the city to the camp. We look after 100% of the meals, all the accommodations, license, tags, taxes, skinning, guiding, all the above. We’re we’re all inclusive. 100% all-inclusive. And I believe you know, we’re a five-star operation.

How much do you charge for airport pickup and drop off?

One thing that we include in our deer and bear hunts is transportation via Saskatoon. So, we either pick you up at your hotel, which is preferred because we recommend you travel a day prior to us picking you up, just logistically works better for everybody, if something doesn’t show up through the airline. Anyway, so that’s included in the hunt price.

How long have you had the big van?

We purchased the van in 2024. We started using it, fall bear August ’24. It’s a very nice added addition to our business. We pick everybody up. Everybody, you know, meets everybody at the same time and new clients, old clients, and the travel to camp is just just more conversation. I think it just makes makes a better fit for everything. Logistically, it’s better as well.

Do you personally do the pickups and drop offs?

I personally do 95 to 98% of the pickups as far as picking people up in the city. I just like to shake everybody’s hand, you know, give that first impression to everyone. I’m 100% involved in 100% of the operation. So, I think that’s very important. The drop offs, I don’t do all the drop offs. Gives me a little breather, for that day. I do have a full-time person that does the drop offs for us.

What are some of the common reactions when a hunter sees the camp for the first time?

We get some really good reactions when we get our first timers here and not just our first timers, but people that have been coming with us for for the past 7 years. You know, when we bought the place, it definitely needed some upgrades and some love, and we’ve done that. You know, it couldn’t all happen at once, just financially it couldn’t happen. But you know we’ve put a lot back into this business, in the forest and at camp or at home, I guess, it’s home, we live here. But anyway, I think it’s, we get lots of good reactions, especially, you know, from the guys that have been here already mostly. You know, they see what we’ve done with the bunk house and the yard and just improvements all around. So, it’s it’s very refreshing to see that people notice that you’re putting money back into the business and it goes a long way, I think.

Is there much of a difference between spring and fall bear hunting?

Not really. The difference between spring and fall is very minimal. Obviously we use the same bait spring and fall. Um really same stuff. The only difference is in the spring obviously we have more access to the beavers that we use in our beaver tanks. So in the fall it’s a little tougher to come by. I mean you can come by them. We get some people that you know are taking care of nuisance beavers and stuff like that. But that would probably be the biggest difference that we have in the spring. But in the fall, there’s less mother nature’s food once the berry crop is gone and stuff. You know, so we don’t have to compete with mother nature as much. So that’s probably the biggest difference.

What advice do you give hunters for judging bear size?

The best advice I can give for judging a bear is obviously the barrel. You know, we have a 55 gallon barrel there. And I always tell guys, if you can fit the bear inside the barrel, he’s 250 or less. If the bear can eat the barrel, probably a shooter. So that that’s a really good judge of the bear. And I mean, the biggest, the biggest thing is you need to have the patience to actually use that tool. You know, it’s, bears are the hardest animal to judge as far as, in my opinion anyway. So I think the biggest thing is patience looking at that bear, looking at that barrel or, you know, just look at the features on that bear. Are his ears Mickey Mouse like or are they really close to his head and short and on the sides of his head rather than on the top? There’s there’s lots of things you can look at, but you need to take the time to look at it. You can’t just, you know, you can’t just pull the trigger in the first three minutes that he comes in there ’cause, or 30 seconds, whatever you want to say there. Because after the fact, you can’t judge him after that. You know, he’s gone. So anyway, that’s my that’s my biggest tell telltale of a big bear versus a small bear.

What’s the biggest change you have made regarding bear hunting?

I think, well I guess the biggest change we did as far as bear hunting goes is Chaparral, prior to us purchasing in 2019, did not use the bear allocation. It had approximately 60,000 acres of bear allocation when we purchased it in ’19. They hadn’t hunted it for 10 to 12 years. So that you know that little chunk was very good, very good for a couple years. You really have to be careful, a lot of people probably disagree with me on this. But you have to be careful. You you can take the cream off the top in a quick hurry with bears. So that’s why Shelly and I decided that we needed to increase our area if we wanted to keep bear hunting. If we’d have kept bear hunting in our in our little pocket, it would have been something that I didn’t want to do simply because I don’t want to bring people here just to sit in the stand and and look at the squirrels. I want to bring them here so that we can put them on mature boars and have really successful hunt. So, that’s one of the biggest changes. Obviously, we purchased in the in the spring of 2024, we purchased an additional 100,000 acres, closer to 120. So, we’re really close to to 180,000 forest allocation for bears, which is huge. The bonus for that new area that we bought is the gentleman that owned it prior, he hunted it but you know he didn’t go to the edges and he didn’t exercise, I think, all the area. I think, you know, and we’re doing that. Obviously we can’t do it all in one spring or or one fall. It’s, you know, we’re taking our time and making sure the setups are right. So yeah, that probably the largest change is we’ve added to the allocation. And you know, getting some relationships with with some of the the farmland land owners, I guess I’ll call it. And when I when I speak farmland, I don’t want to send out the wrong message. It’s not open plain. It’s, you know, if you look, if you look around here, it’s we’re in the forest right now, obviously, but a lot of our farmland country is mass chunks of bush, stuff that can’t be farmed, on the edges of of cultivated fields. So, those places are golden. I mean, lots of bears, lots of big bears. So, two changes we made, I guess, is adding that, you know, 120,000 acres in the forest and creating some good relationships with land owners and gaining some more access. So, that that’s the two biggest changes, I think, for the better.

What’s the ratio of guides to hunters?

For the bear hunting, typically we do two, 2:1 ratio hunters to guides. We have very good equipment, good logistics. You know, we get everybody out to their stands and and pick them up in a timely manner.

How important are your guides to the operation?

The guides are very, very important. And not only the guides, but the cook. Bernice, Dave, Steve, Nick, Logan, myself are all local people. We’re all born and raised in this area. I think that is very important simply because, you know, we know the area. We were born and raised here.

What qualities do you look for in a guide?

Number one, the guide has to be a people person. They have to like being around people. Number two, very close to number one is of course you have to be an outdoors person. You’ve got to love hunting. You’ve got to have a passion for it. That definitely is one of the qualities. You know, you got to like being in the outdoors and you got to like people. I think that’s the two most important aspects of a quality guide.

Does being one of the guides yourself keep you in tune with the hunt?

I am 100% involved in 100% of the operations. I do all the booking. I do as much as I can in the fixing and you know a lot of the setups. I’m involved in in 99% of the setups. I think being involved and keeping your finger on the pulse is very important to have a successful outfitting business. So yes, I definitely keep myself in tune and keep myself involved in 100% of the operations.

How did you first get into hunting?

So what got me into hunting in the first place was definitely my family. I came from a family of of four boys. Oh, you have to ask me a question where I was going to get, you know, that gets me. I’m really passionate about it. But yeah, I had three older brothers. My dad got me into hunting and every time I even think about it, you know, I started hunting when I was probably wasn’t even supposed to be hunting. Anyway, they’d take me when I was six, seven years old and we’d go deer hunting and I shot my first bear when I was 13. My brother Ron took me and yeah, so family for sure. Family’s number one in that category.

Do you name the bears that you are hunting?

We really like to name the animals that we’re hunting and we do it for deer and we do it for bear as well. We don’t name them all simply because you can’t. I always say we like to name them if they’re worthy. You know, so we have a mature boar on camera that’s, we’re thinking, is a 350 plus or 300 plus, whatever. We like to name them. Actually, today when we dropped off one of our clients, we have a big bear on camera there and we hadn’t named him yet. So, I said to Travis on the way in, I said, “Hey, we we got a bear in here that’s definitely worthy of a name.” And, he kind of paused and I said, “Well, no, I’m looking for a name from you.” Cause I mean, I think it means a lot coming from the client naming it, and you know, and if he kills that bear, if he harvests that bear tonight, that’s that’s going to make for a great story. Even if he doesn’t, we’ll go back to camp and we’ll talk about it. That type of stuff, I think, gets everybody involved and gets everybody talking you know, about the hunt. So, anyway, we’re cruising in there and he’s thinking, it didn’t take him long. Thought for a few minutes and he said, “How about how about Big George? Big George Foreman.” I said, “That sounds like a great name to me.” So, that bear was named and we drove in there and and there was a smaller bear at the bait and anyway, I did my thing and Travis got in and on the way out I received a text message from him saying that Little George was at the bait already. So, it’s just, it’s just fun. Get people involved in and stuff like that.

How would you describe the quality of fishing at Turtle Lake?

Our fishing at Turtle Lake, I think, is second to none, you know. There’s not very many drive-in lakes that you can go out and fish and catch 40 inch Pike or 30 inch Walleye, you know. I’m not saying that’s going to happen every day, but it’s definitely a chance when you go out there to catch a trophy fish like that. So, I think the quality of fishing is great. We have a very good resource. We look after it.

Do any of the fish make it to the kitchen?

Of course, those 40 and 30, 40 inch Pike and and 30 inch Walleye that we’re catching, we are not keeping those fish. We’re releasing those fish to catch another day and to you know, just to keep the lake thriving. Those are the big females. We want to keep them alive. Of course, we’ll keep some of the smaller fish for fish fry. You know, when we’re doing our bear hunts, try to do that once a week only. We don’t keep any fish other than that just because we don’t want to put the added pressure to the lake. We want to keep that resource for years to come.