BEWARE of Triangle T Outfitters !!!

by Steve
(Thompson, Pa)

I hope that anyone considering a hunt with Triangle T Outfitters and Ed Tibljas will take the time to read this and please contact me before spending any money. Please feel free to contact me at: sholtsmaster75@gmail.com. This is part of the complaints that are filed with the Texas Attorney General, BBB and a couple other consumer protection agencies. I have all documents to support our complaint.

Thanks

Spoke with Ed Tibjlas, owner of Triangle T Outfitters regarding an Elk hunt in New Mexico in early Jan of 2011. He told me that he had four tags left for his guaranteed trophy elk hunt and that he was sure they wouldn't be available after the Eastern Sports show in Harrisburg, Pa. The Harrisburg show was to start on the 4th of Feb.

After speaking with the my father and the other two hunters we decided to move forward with the trip. I called Ed back on the 22nd of January and told him we weren't going to be able to make it to the show, but we did want to reserve these four last guaranteed tags. Guaranteed meaning we were guaranteed an opportunity to shoot at a bull elk that scored at least 300 Boone & Crockett points.

He asked for a $1000 deposit which I gave him at that time. The total agreed price of the hunt was $7000 per man. Within a few weeks or so we gave him the other part of the deposit that he had asked for. We never received copies of the contracts until the 2nd week of September, 2011.

We took care of all final payments and returned signed contracts at that time. Our trophy hunt was all set and scheduled to start on October 15th. As advertised on the Triangle T Outfitters website at that time(since changed) we were all understanding that we were to be hunting 120 square miles of privately owned ranch land in Unit 12 in Northwest NM.

When arriving to the hunting camp/ranch, we received our tags which were not Unit 12 tags. They were Unit 10, unit wide tags. Unit 10 is primarily publicly hunted, state owned land and BMI land. At this time we began to grow suspicious.

We were shown racks and pictures of the weeks priors hunt on Unit 12 which is all privately owned ranch land that was advertised and which we thought we were hunting on. After the first day of hunting we knew that we were not getting the hunt that we had paid for. The Unit 10 area was heavily hunted by trucks, ATVs and was also full of grazing beef cattle.

We hunted for 5 full days covered over 150 combined miles in the woods and not one of the four of us even as much as saw an Elk. Not even a cow elk. We gave this outfitter $28,000 for a guaranteed hunt and not any of us saw a single elk.

At the time we booked the hunt and up until about a month ago the Triangle T website read "Guaranteed Trophy Bull Elk hunt on 120 sq miles of privately owned ranch land on Unit 12 of Northwest NM". Since we made a complaint to Mr Tibjlas the website has changed drastically. It no longer states anything about the 120 sq miles of privately owned ranch land, nor does it even say anything about Unit 12.

We have respectfully asked for a refund of our money which request has been denied. Mr. Tibljas has sent us a letter, not even acknowledging the initial $1000 deposit I had given him on Jan 22nd to reserve the Guaranteed Unit 12 tags. I have a bank statement to prove that the deposit was made to Triangle T on Jan 22.

It is quite clear that Mr Tibljas realizes that his website was very misleading because it has been totally changed since the time of our complaint.

He has tried to offer us a whitetail hunt in Texas that sells for $3250. The advertised price of the Texas Whitetail hunt includes lodging and food. He is not even offering lodging and food with his offer. Take away those major factors and it may be equal to $1000. We declined the offer. Most of all, why would we even consider booking another hunt with Triangle T when the first hunt went so badly and we were lied to and taken advantage of? We have contacted an Attorney and are prepared to do what we have to do to recoup our money and make sure that this doesn't happen again to other hunters.

2nd letter to BBB on Jan 6th 2012
Hi Steven. I am faxing a copy of the contract that was sent to me. Notice the dates on the contract and the manila envelope they were mailed in. The postmark was the 6th of September. As you can see it is totally different. I have never seen the contract that Mr Tibljas sent in to you.

Obviously he is trying to cover up his dishonesty. We never received the so called brochure that he states we received either. Also, look at the date of the original deposit. January 22nd. I gave Mr Tibljas a $1000 deposit to reserve the unit 12 hunts. The reason for the $1000 was because that is all he told me he needed at that time to reserve the 4 tags. Like I told you on the phone, my father had been on a hunt with Triangle T in Texas a few years back with another friend. Mr Tibljas had told my father about this elk hunt and had my father really pumped up about it.

My father and my friends father that were going on this elk hunt have both had bouts with cancer and are not in any physical condition to be climbing up and down the mountains in Unit 10. Mr Tibljas spoke with my father several times and told all of us that we would be hunting on easy walking areas with many miles of roads to get us where we needed to go. That is the terrain of Unit 12. You may wonder how I know this, well I was hunting with Mr Tibljas one afternoon and we spotted a helicopter flying over Unit 12.

Mr Tibljas raced to the locked gate of Unit 12 and we raced down one of the bumpy dirt roads chasing after the helicopter. Mr Tibljas was so mad that a helicopter was flying over his part of Unit 12 that he told me if we see the helicopter to hand him my gun and he was going to shoot it. Hand him my gun! I was very happy when we didn't see the helicopter again, to say the least. He believed that the helicopter was trying to drive elk off of his Unit 12 section. That seemed very crazy to me.

Mr Tibljas in no way told us that we were going to get less of a hunt for the price that we paid. We were caught in a classic "bait and switch" set up, I believe.

Fortunately, I make pretty decent money and will move on. What about the guy who saved his whole life for this dream hunt that Mr Tibljas made us believe we were going on and he gets there and he gets nothing of what he anticipated or was guaranteed. That is very sad. I will be sending the pages from the website the way it was when we booked the hunt.

Our lawyer has them at this time. The information on the website at that time states nothing about Unit 10. It states 120 sq miles of privately owned ranch land on Unit 12. When I first spoke to Mr Tibljas he directed me to his website and told me that was the hunt we were going on and that is what we were expecting.

Like I stated before, days after we confronted Mr Tibljas to tell him how disappointed we were and to try to receive a refund the whole website changed. Now I think that is a major coincidence. I think what happened here was that Mr Tibljas sold the tags that we were supposed to get for a premium and therefore we ended up with a 2nd rate hunt to say the least. He or the young guide that he had working for him had never even done any scouting or knew anything about Unit 10.

I am in business myself and take pride in my work and believe a man is only as good as his word. Its obvious that Mr Tibljas is trying to cover up his dishonesty by fabricating these contracts that I have never seen until his rebuttal. I feel that the only way for this situation to be made right is for us to have a refund of the cost of the hunt.

Why would we even consider booking another hunt with Mr Tibljas when this one went so wrong? Hopefully you will review this information and so will Mr Tibljas and, hopefully, his conscience will help him to make the right decision.

(See Triangle T response by clicking here.)