We sent Pollack's report to outfitter Peter Wuenschel, who sent us a 10-page rebuttal letter that is impossible to fully summarize here. Basically, Wuenschel says he has been operating for five years and never had a complaint. He explains that it is illegal to have a permanent camp on crown lands in Alberta, so he provides take-down, plywood camps, with wood-frame beds and twin mattresses, generator power and propane heaters. Wuenschel says his four-wheelers are tuned up every spring before the hunting season, but that the country is very rough on equipment and the remote location of his camp requires that all repairs be done onsite. "Not once during Mr. Pollack's hunt did he get stranded or lose a minute's hunting to equipment breaking down," he says.
Despite that, Wuenschel admits that on either the first or second day of the hunt, he told clients that he was not comfortable with how one of the quads was running and that he was going to fly a plane in and fly everyone out at the end of the hunt, rather than riding out on the four-wheelers, as originally planned. This required what Wuenschel says was an unexpected expense for each client (sharing a charter fee) not an "undisclosed fee" as Pollack characterized it.
Pollack counters in a re-rebuttal, saying, "By the end of the hunt, we were down to one quad. While being transported one evening there were three people and a 100-pound butane bottle all on one quad when we overturned." Regarding the flight out he says, "My contract included transportation out. How he chose to do that........(continued)
