When I was about 9 or 10 years old and I saw an Eland mounted at our taxidermist's office. I am now 18 and my family and I are going to Namibia on our first safari this coming June!!!

All of the above. John Hunter, Jack O'Connor, Elgin Gates' Phc , and all the African stories I devoured as a kid. Growing up in a small town in Nebraska, the stories of others only fueled my fire to go to Africa. In 2005 I finally made it , we are going back in June 2007 and I am already planning the what will probably be the last trip as age and finances are beginning to rear their ugly head. Jerry Hoover

I remember reading Hemingway and Capstick when I was in college and sitting around with roomates who were all hunters talking about how we would die to hunt Africa just once in our lifetime.

After graduation I sold my car, bought a ticket and spent a month in South Africa with a couple of like minded individuals. Managed a 2 1/2 day hunt on a small budget and thought I had died and gone to heaven. Took me a few years to get back, but I am booked for my 3rd hunt in 5 years this summer.

I can honestly say Africa is dangerously addictive and I have only scratched the surface. SA this summer hoping for my kudu and then hoping for buff next season somewhere and dying to visit Namibia.

When did I first become interested in hunting Africa? Well a long time ago is the easy answer, but to be exact in the year of our Lord 1943 AD, at the tender age of seven years. Having my first rifle given to me the Christmas before, a Mod 67, .22 lr single shot, I was already hunting for meat on my grandfather’s ranch. The war (WWII) had taken all the younger men, including my father to fight, leaving five families living on my grandfather’s ranch in the North end of the Texas hill country. Meat was needed badly to feed all those people, and I was the oldest boy, so my job was to gather meat. A job I took gladly, I might add!
I used to go to town with my grand father on Saturdays, for supplies, and to sell produce. We always paid a visit to the Kelly Hardware store. The owner Mr. Kelly had hunted Africa back in the early 1930s, and had a collection of mounted animals from Africa, and other countries, high on the walls of his store. The store also had guns hanging among the mounts, mostly old muzzleloaders. My grandfather had to drag me out of that store. I loved to go into that store, because the owner recognized the hunter in me very quickly, and would tell me of his exploits in Africa.
It seems Mr. Kelly had only one son, and he was a little on the feminine side, and who shared none of his father’s passion for hunting, or firearms. So I got the stories that would have been wasted on his son. I was hooked on the idea of hunting Africa, myself someday. I was 45 years old in 1982, before I got to Africa, but it has been my destination ever since, till I retired in 1996! I’m 70 years old today, and on a fixed income, and with some health issues, but I still want to go back at least one more time before I cash in! Maybe next year!

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Originally posted by Eland Slayer:
When I was about 9 or 10 years old and I saw an Eland mounted at our taxidermist's office. I am now 18 and my family and I are going to Namibia on our first safari this coming June!!!

Good show, Eland Slayer, Tap a couple for me while you're there!

Few years ago, when the rating exchage begun to be good in Euro-Dollar rate, and I had enough money to spend to hunt in Africa.
Before was a dream.


Eland Slayer I'll be there on the end of June, in which period will you be there?