How Much Do Hunting Guides Make? 2026 Day Rates, Tips and Season Pay

Hunting guides are paid by the day, the month or the hunt, and a large share of what they take home arrives as cash tips at the end of each hunt. That makes the job hard to see in government wage data, which counts payroll wages and misses both the tips and the many guides who work as independent contractors.

This pulls pay from 2025 and 2026 outfitter job listings, outfitter rate sheets and tipping advice, Montana’s 2024 outfitting industry study and Alaska’s guided hunting study. For what outfitters screen for before they hire, see hunting guide jobs: what outfitters look for.

How much do hunting guides make a day?

Most posted day rates run $125 to $300 before tips. Guides who also pack and wrangle are often paid by the month instead, $2,500 to $4,000 in recent Idaho listings, and a few outfitters pay a flat amount per hunt.

Role	Outfitter or location (posted)	Pay	Also included
Big game guide, 0 to 2 years’ experience	Westcliffe, Colorado (Sep 2026)	$125 a day plus tips	Housing
Rifle elk guide who can pack	South of Cameron, Montana (Sep 2026)	Up to $300 a day	Not stated
Whitetail guide	Magnum Guide Service, Eldorado, Texas (Aug 2026)	$150–$225 a day guiding, plus tips	$18–$20 an hour plus food and lodging for ranch work
Elk and deer guide	Avery, Idaho (2025 season)	$800–$1,000 a week plus tips	Meals, canvas tents with wood floors and stoves
Guide, packer and wrangler	Buck Horn Outfitters, Yellow Pine, Idaho (Apr 2026)	$2,500 a month, $3,500 from Sep 1, plus tips	Room and board
Elk guide	Hells Canyon Outfitters, Riggins, Idaho (Jun 2025)	$3,000–$4,000 a month plus tips	Housing
Elk guide	Wheaton Creek Ranch, Ocate, New Mexico (Jan 2025)	$1,500 per elk hunt plus tips	Accommodations and food
Moose and grizzly guide, experienced	Wild Alaska Outfitters (Aug 2026)	$5,000 per hunt plus bonuses	All flights

Sources: RanchWork.com, Montana Outfitters and Guides Association, Outfitter Marketplace and Alaska Professional Hunters Association listings, accessed Sep 14, 2026. A day rate usually covers only the days you guide. Magnum pays hourly for ranch and wildlife work between hunts, and Cherokee TP Outfitters in Jasper, Colorado, pays extra days for game retrieval, drop camp setup and camp chores outside its hunt dates. Several 2026 Alaska ads on the APHA board give no number at all, only pay depending on experience.

How much does a hunting guide make in a season?

It depends mostly on tips, because the season is short. A Boone and Crockett Club article on gratuities says a good, experienced guide at a reputable multi-species western outfitter “has a chance to earn $40,000 to $50,000 or more” during the three months of big game seasons, with about two-thirds of it coming from tips. Treat that as the top of the range, not a first-year number.

In Montana, the average outfitter operated six months of the year in 2024, and 60 percent operated six months or less. Hunting brought Montana outfitters $66.9 million that year from 32,651 clients on trips averaging 3.23 days (University of Montana Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research, July 2026). In Alaska’s 2019 study, assistant guides worked slightly less than three months, while registered guides, the top license tier, reported 221 days of guiding-related work. Alaska guides typically hunt four to six weeks in spring and six to eight weeks in fall (McDowell Group, January 2021).

Year-round pay exists mostly on Texas hunting ranches, where guiding is combined with wildlife management. Cedar Cove Ranch in Eustace posted a full-time guide and wildlife technician job at $35,000 to $38,000 plus client gratuities in March 2026, and a south Texas ranch near Mathis offered seasonal guides $3,000 to $5,000 a month plus gratuity for September through February in a 2025 listing (RanchWork.com). Open listings are at hunting guide jobs.

How do tips work for hunting guides?

Clients tip in cash at the end of the hunt, and the usual guide tip is 10 to 15 percent of the hunt price. Swan Mountain Outfitters in Montana tells its hunters to budget $100 a day or 10 to 15 percent of the hunt cost for the guide, and $15 to $25 a day for a cook, camp jack or packer. Hidden Alaska Guides and Outfitters tells clients the industry standard is 10 to 12 percent of the published hunt price. Greg Ray, a booking agent for outfitters quoted in the Boone and Crockett article, calls 10 percent the minimum, 12 to 15 percent average and 20 percent excellent, and the article says each hunter customarily tips the cook at least $200 a week.

Because tips follow the hunt price, the species and the state matter more than the wage. The same percentage on an Alaska brown bear hunt is several times what it is on a Montana deer hunt.

Hunt	Outfitter	Length	Published price
Black bear, spring or fall	Swan Mountain, Montana	5 days	$4,400 (2026)
Whitetail or mule deer, base camp	Swan Mountain, Montana	5 days	$4,750 (2026)
Archery elk, spike camp	Swan Mountain, Montana	7 days	$6,500 (2026)
Rifle elk and deer, backcountry spike camp	Swan Mountain, Montana	7 days	$6,800 (2026)
Mountain lion	Swan Mountain, Montana	5 days	$7,500 (2026)
Baited black bear	Hidden Alaska Guides and Outfitters	9 days	$14,500
Brown or grizzly bear	Hidden Alaska Guides and Outfitters	10 days	$31,500
Dall sheep, Brooks Range	Alaskan Perimeter Expeditions	10 days	$33,750 (2027)
Moose, float or spike camp	Hidden Alaska Guides and Outfitters	10 days	$36,500

Sources: outfitter rate pages, accessed Sep 14, 2026. Statewide, Alaska’s guided nonresident hunters spent an average of $18,400 each on hunting packages in 2019 (McDowell Group). Tips are also the least predictable part of the pay. The Montana study says gratuities are a meaningful share of guide income but are frequently left out of industry surveys, and Ray tells hunters not to tip based on whether they killed an animal. Openings in Alaska are listed at Alaska hunting jobs.

Do assistant guides make less than licensed guides?

Yes. Pay follows the license ladder, and the ladder is clearest in Alaska. There, an assistant guide must be employed by a registered guide-outfitter and may not contract a hunt (AS 08.54.630). Registered guides are paid per hunt by a contracting guide or run their own business, while most assistant guides, packers and support staff are paid by the day (McDowell Group, 2019 data).

In 2019 Alaska had 420 active master and registered guides, 250 of whom contracted hunts, and 640 licensed assistant guides, 85 of them class-A. The study estimated that about 500 assistant guides actually worked that year. The Wild Alaska Outfitters ad pitched its $5,000 per hunt as “well above industry standard” for an experienced guide.

In the Lower 48 the first rung is an intern or camp-help job, not a license class. Magnum Guide Service pays interns $2,500 or more a month plus food and lodging, and a portion of the tips once they guide hunters. The Flying A Ranch in Bandera, Texas, paid a guide intern $1,700 a month plus guide tips in a 2025 listing, and a Loma, Colorado, outfitter offered $1,500 a month plus room and board for ranch help learning to guide. Buck Horn Outfitters builds the step into one job: $2,500 a month from May 1, when the work is spring bear hunts, trail and camp chores, and $3,500 from September 1 through the fall elk hunts.

What do packers and camp cooks make at outfitters?

Packers and wranglers earn about $1,500 to $3,000 a month with room and board. Camp cooks are paid by the day, the hunt, the hour or the month, and cooks often do well on tips.

Role	Outfitter or location (posted)	Pay	Included
Mule packer, June to October	Swan Mountain Outfitters, Montana (current page)	$2,000–$3,000 a month, tips possible	Room and board
Wrangler and packer	J Bar H, Hamilton, Colorado (Jun 2025)	From $2,000 a month plus tips	Meals, shared housing
Backcountry outfitting help	Bob Marshall Wilderness outfitter, Augusta, Montana (Mar 2026)	$1,500–$2,000 a month, tips	Room and board
Packer and wrangler	Cove, Oregon (May 2026)	$2,000–$2,500 a month	Housing maybe
Wrangler and ranch help, fall	Welder Ranch and Outfitting, Meeker, Colorado (Aug 2025)	$2,450–$2,800 plus bonus and tips	Fifth-wheel trailer, food about half the time
Camp cook, contract vendor	M&S New Mexico Outfitters, Gallup (Feb 2026)	$250 a day flat rate; tips go to the cook	Groceries, camp lodging
Lodge cook, archery and rifle seasons	Rifle, Colorado (Aug 2026)	$1,000 per 5-day season, $1,800 per 9-day season, plus tips	Housing
Cook, September	Meeker, Colorado (Jul 2026)	$2,800–$3,000 plus tips	Housing, per the listing text
Lodge cook, May to December	Encampment, Wyoming (Mar 2026)	$20–$25 an hour	No housing
Elk camp cook	Avery, Idaho (2025 season)	$500 or more a week	Not stated

Sources: Swan Mountain Outfitters, RanchWork.com and Outfitter Marketplace listings, accessed Sep 14, 2026. The New Mexico cook job is paid on a 1099 and requires a business name, liability insurance and a food handler or ServSafe card. Alaska outfitters hired about 200 packers in 2019; they averaged slightly less than two months of work, and many were hired from small communities near the hunting areas (McDowell Group). See packer jobs for openings and backcountry cook jobs for the cooking side.

What comes with the job: camp, meals, horses and a truck?

Room and board in camp is standard. Your truck, your personal gear and sometimes your groceries are not. Swan Mountain, Buck Horn and the Avery, Idaho, elk camp all include meals and lodging; the Avery camp puts guides in canvas tents with wood floors and stoves. A northwest Colorado private-land outfitter supplies lodging but says “food is on your own” and requires guides to have their own truck. Cherokee TP Outfitters gives meals and lodging at base camp plus a fuel allowance for guides who use their own vehicle, and expects guides to bring their own hunting clothes and gear.

The horses and mules belong to the outfit. Packer and guide job descriptions at Hells Canyon Outfitters list feeding, saddling and packing the outfit’s stock every day, and an Orofino, Idaho, outfitter hiring an elk guide in June 2026 said no stock experience was needed but asked for a reliable truck that can haul a trailer.

License fees come out of your pocket unless the outfitter covers them: $125 to apply in Montana and $50 a year to renew; $145 a year plus a $25 new-applicant fee in Wyoming; $105 plus a $20 first-time application fee in Idaho; and in Alaska a $200 application fee plus $310 for a resident or $620 for a nonresident assistant guide license, which runs two years. One Wyoming outfitter, Cross C Ranch, advertises that it pays licensing and renewal fees for its guides.

Are hunting guides employees or contractors, and what does BLS say?

Often contractors, which is one reason federal wage data barely covers them. In the Montana study, 39 percent of the workers outfitters hired in 2024 were contract laborers; guides are typically hired as independent contractors, and the average outfitter hired 4.77 of them in 2024. Montana’s license defines a guide as someone employed by or contracted independently with a licensed outfitter, and Wyoming’s law makes the outfitter responsible for a contract guide as if he were an employee.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no hunting guide occupation. The closest is tour and travel guides (39-7010). O*NET’s sample titles for the tour guide half of that group are jobs like museum docent, historical interpreter and tour guide, and the survey behind it excludes the self-employed. Use it as a rough floor for payroll guiding work, not as hunting guide pay.

Area	Median hourly, May 2025	Median annual	Workers counted
Wyoming	$22.60	$47,020	560
Alaska	$21.25	$44,210	1,660
Colorado	$20.59	$42,840	2,150
Montana	$19.28	$40,100	680
Idaho	$18.25	$37,960	460
New Mexico	$17.83	$37,080	360
Texas	$15.90	$33,080	2,250
United States	$18.33	$38,120	53,500

Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation 39-7010, via the BLS Public Data API, accessed Sep 14, 2026. Before you accept, ask if you will get a W-2 or a 1099, what you are paid on days you are not guiding, and whether room, board and license fees are included. The outdoor job pay report compares guiding with other seasonal work, and fall jobs lists the season’s openings.