Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is from James Mellon's African Hunter published in 1975.

"Tanzania offers the sportsman many fabulous hunting opportunities, but also something more subtle. Perhaps the most endearing thing about this sprawling, uncouth country is simply that so much of it lacks both the cramped conditions of overpopulated Uganda and the tame, well-kept, almost landscaped look of Kenya's best-known, most scenic, most tourist-tramped safari areas. With few exceptions, Tanzania is not beautiful. But it has something better to offer. It is bigger, freer and wilder, less visited and less bunged up than Kenya or Uganda. It has not been completely carved up into those controlled hunting areas that the sportsman has to vacate, after so many days, for the next safari, as in a game of musical chairs. During my own hunts and travels there, I camped for long periods in areas where no one had seen a safari for several years and where the local guides often asked no more for their work than the meat from my kills. This was country where a hunter could still feel he was in Africa."

"Big ivory is a major attraction of the Selous Reserve. During the last eight years, some twenty-five 100-pounders and two bulls over 120 pounds have been shot by foreign sportsman. In an ordinary hunting season, some twenty bulls carrying between 80 and 100 pounds of ivory per tusk are taken."

"Big ivory is a real but distant possibility in the parts of western Tanzania. The Rungwa and Ugalla rivers, Lake Rukwa, the Malagarasi Swamp, and their vast miombo-forested environs have produced some enormous tuskers and unboubtadly still hold a few giant bulls in the 180- to 200-pound class. These are areas that have seldom been visited by foreign sportsmen expressly for elephant hunting. Yet a 180-pounder was shot along the Malagarasi River east of Kasulu by Edmund Sunde, a 153-pounder was taken on the Ugalla River, and rumors of other large tuskers constantly circulate."

Regards,

Terry

A little scary and awfully sad. Not a lot of hope of those kinds of bulls ever being around again.

I am reading Safari the Last Adventure by Capstick(1983). There is a table showing the average hunt costs for different countries in Africa. Tanzania's prices were the lowest on the chart!

Oh yes, how times have changed!

Jason

I wish I had kept the letter and brochure but back in the early '70's Jack Atcheson (Jack had set up a very nice deer/antelope hunt the Fall before)sent me an offer on a hunt cancellation in East Africa...28 days and the amount of animals, including black rhino, you could take were absolutely amazing. As I recall the daily rate was less than $100 a day and the original two hunter were each leaving a $1000 deposit on the table. I couldn't convince my Dad to go and I didn't know anyone else so I had to pass. I was a young Captain in the USAF at the time and it would have stretched out budget but.....