# Anyone used Gus Pietila from Maple ridge motel in Merriweather, MI in the past as a



## chevymike1 (Mar 31, 2013)

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## chevymike1 (Mar 31, 2013)

I have him booked as bear guide this upcoming season and he seems to be straight up. just a little feed back would make me a little at ease. First time bear hunt.


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## BuckJohnson (Sep 7, 2006)

My father and I are booked with him in October.


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## chevymike1 (Mar 31, 2013)

Just hunted with him. A1 he works hard and is a bear guide 100 percent. Bring a fish pole cause you should be tagged out the first night like us. The fishing on the lake is just as good.

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## BuckJohnson (Sep 7, 2006)

Sunday my father and I returned from our 4 day hunt with Gus Pietela of Maple Ridge Motel, disappointed. First bad sign was Gus asking for all money up front. I should have held back 50% to keep him motivated and working. It seemed once he got all the money, he set us up in our first spots and he was basically done. He continued to go on baiting runs in the morning, but after he returned and we discussed where we should sit for the night, we ended up taking our own bait in to an empty bait site.

I did not see Gus possess a single trail cam. He didn&#8217;t know what size bears were hitting a site unless a previous hunter of that site relayed that information. He seemed to have no clue as to which sites had bears visiting during daylight hours. He claimed to use trail trip sensors to determine when bears visited, but the only ones I ever saw never left the dashboard of his truck. 

It appears Gus runs a larger scale &#8216;baiting&#8217; operation. He claimed to be 7 for 12 with hunters when we started. So he would have been 8 for 15 when we left. We were very careful of scent control, don&#8217;t smoke, nervously fidget or do anything to draw attention to ourselves in the woods.

I believe most of Gus&#8217; baits get hit on a regular basis, but during our time there, we saw no bears while hunting. After day 2 he said he "gave up" and that he "doesn&#8217;t know what to do". He also said he would be satisfied if one of us got a bear. We didn&#8217;t, but another hunter in camp did. Gus claimed to have &#8216;virgin&#8217; baits that had not yet been hunted that year but he was saving them for someone coming later. He did set me up on what he claimed was a &#8216;virgin&#8217; site but no luck. He tried to set me up on another, previously hunted, site but I would have been 30+ yards directly upwind of the bait pile. I told him I didn&#8217;t like that set up. He also had me in a ladder stand every night. That would have been fine but all the stands I hunted where 15-25 yards from the bait and most where not concealed. Not an ideal situation in my mind when I was hunting with a scoped rifle, in a woods where the leaves are disappearing off the trees.

Overall, I think Gus Pietela does well in the early seasons if you want someone to bait for you. He has many, many baits (some within ½ mile of each other) and has used the same sites for years so he is going to have success early in the season when hunting is easy. When things get tough, I didn&#8217;t see him with a backup plan. If you want a bear guide, hire someone else. Gus claimed to have been driving 100 miles a day and walking 9-10 miles per day since Aug 10th. I believe that could be true. I believe he was burned out by the time we arrived Oct 2nd. I would be tired too, but if I was, I wouldn&#8217;t still be taking paying customers. When I hire a guide, I expect them to work for my money and I don&#8217;t believe Gus cared enough to do that. I would rate him 3 out of 10 and hunt with someone else next time.


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## justdantanks (Apr 25, 2015)

No to Gus


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