Ladies and Gentlemen,

I know we are all going through rather hard financial times, so I thought of at least easing the pain off those of you who are willing to write us a few lines.

As usual, all we are asking is you right us a hunting related story.

There is no looser, as each story teller is going to get paid ONE HUNDRED TRILLION ZIMBABWE DOLLARS.

The story does not have to be of your own hunt, as long as it is based on a true hunt, you may have as much freedom to make it "interesting".

The best one will also get a copy of our Champions DVD, there is more than 2 hours of aspiring dangerous game hunters trying our 577 T.Rex, with helarious results.

This contest will run for one week.

Holy Smoke Saeed

That is some serious coinage you are offering. It might bring forward some guests retirement age if they win it.

Just to put things in some perspective.

If the truth be know should you from Dubai and me from NZ travel to Zimbabwe with say $US Dollars in our sweaty capitalist hands we could buy some items that are available there using the $US for less than we would pay for the equalivant in Dubai and NZ.

That is someting that some guests cant comprehend, it is still relatively (DIRT CHEAP) to make end meet in Zimbabwe PROVIDED we have $US to spend.

Go figure, are we being taken to the cleaners in our own wonderful countries with the price we pay for some goods or what !!!

Anyhow what a wonderful benevolence to offer that money, it sure will bring out the best in the hunting stories (-:

Cheers, Peter

True story.

I live in Anaheim Hills, CA. It's a rather nice neighborhood of decent folk. There's a few Mercedes on my street, a half dozen BMW's, a couple of Hummers, and one guy has a couple of Lotus Elise's in the garage that he races.
Yep, pretty much upper middle class white-bread suburbia.

My neighborhood has 63 homes in the Association and 26 dogs. We bump up against several hundred acres of undeveloped land, a lovely horsepath that I run my dog on, four coveys of Quail (great for training my dog!), and...

Gophers.

Lots and lots and lots of Gophers. Destructive little bastards. They tunnel under the concrete walkways and into my "backyard" - all 10x5 feet of it. They tunnel, destroy my plumbing, hole my lawn, and eat my grass.

I hate the little bastards. I dropped a hose down the holes. I dumped M80's and tried to blow them up. I smoked 'em, poisoned 'em, and even tried to let my housecat at 'em.

My neighbors are laughing at me. I'm being defeated by a freaking gopher. I'm all but out of answers...the gopher's getting bolder...and it's getting personal.

I drive out and come home with a Crossman 760 pellet rifle. Gopher likes to come out after 6pm. I'm going to be waiting for him.

So, imagine if you will, a scene that truly does hommage to Bill Murray and Caddyshack.

I'm on my patio, in full camo, face painted, sitting in a corner of my yard with a Pellet-gun in one hand and a beer in the other.

Waiting.

And Waiting.

...And Waiting.

And the little bastard never popped his head up. Not even for a second.

I camped that little bastard for 7 days. A FULL WEEK.

My neighbors have never once talked about that week. My Wife, on the other hand, has such fond memories of bringing beer out to my "blind"!

so, a co-worker of mine has a couple acres and a couple of kids. seems 3 coyotes have been having the run of the place, coming through the back yard and such. a couple of weeks ago, he asks how to get rid of them.... well gee! i can help that! so i headed out to his place. about halfway there, the fog gets THICK. hmmm... maybe it'll burn off. when i pull into the driveway, i can barely see 50 yards. he and i headed out to get the lay of the land a bit. i found a nice little rise with some old farm equipment parked there... perfect to set up in. we headed back to the house and watched some cartoons with his son and talked about life. fog lifted an hour later and we headed back to our spot. i set up my coyote caller, an old (but brand new) CD based system with 2 speakers. had my ghillie suit on, a .300 win mag with 130 grainers (no scope on the 22/250), .22 for finishers if needed, and Chris had my 1928 model 12 16 gauge with #4's if they snuck up on us. i hit play on the caller and did a fawn distress track for about a minute, minute and a half. waited 5 minutes or so and hit the coyote serenade, then a little rabbit distress for a minute. waited another five minutes and nothing was moving. i've never used a coyote call before, they've always been a target of opportunity. "well Hell, maybe it wont work today" I start to think. caught some movement out of the corner of my eye... yup, 3 coyotes on their way in! i moved into a better position and watched as two milled around looking for the goodies about 200 yards off. the third dog was still coming. i got on it with the scope and it stopped broadside at 143 (lasered after the fact) yards. i smacked it in the spine and turned to the other two. they were headed off at a run, and i took a second shot just in case. missed of course. they headed off for parts unknown.

chris and i checked on the coyote i shot. female, young, healthy. we took her tail and a couple of pics. 130 grain .30 caliber bullet is nasty on a small dog. there was a six inch notch missing from her mid spine. the gun is dead-nuts at 300, and i held low to compensate. coyote was smaller than i expected, and with a little jerk on the trigger on my part, i about missed!

so we packed up and headed back to the house. trampled through the stiff snow, tough going since we kept breaking through. put all the stuff back in the car and chris says "Listen!" one of the other coyotes was howling, and sounded close! i spotted it 400 yards off against a fence and ran around the house to get a better look. it was just standing there, howling. we headed through the field to close the distance. i lost sight of the dog and we had to get even closer. ended up at the same piece of equipment i took the first shot from. the dog was still standing still, and i tried to get calmed down. as i squeezed the trigger, felt myself tense up and knew it the shot was bad. the gun (rem 700 with ported barrel) is SO LOUD after 2 shots i developed a flinch! should have remembered ear plugs! saw the coyote running across a field, but it wouldnt stop, even with a mouth rabbit distress call. interesting part is, these coyotes were kinds hemmed in, as my friends place backs up onto fairchild AFB, and there is a 90 degree corner that kinda traps them. we were both amazed at how well the calling worked. they came running with no worries!

i went back weekend before last to try and clean up the other two song dogs. Since the first go i did some research and found some mp3's of animal distress calls. i burned a new CD with 7 tracks, up to 20 minutes each. when i got to chris' house, we could hear one or more coyotes hanging out at the AFB fence right at the base kennel. dogs were going crazy and the coyotes were sounding off as well. based on the layout of the houses in the area, the only real option we had was to return to our previous stand, the old farm equipment. doing so, we thought we had the lay of the land and where the dogs would be coming from. once set, i hit the first track, a 20 minute rabbit distres/coyote serenade. i had forgotten my binoculars at home, so was a bit blind. focusing on the direction of the AFB dogs, we watched through the first track. on came the second, a 17 minute doe bleet/coyote attack. at the end of that, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion, we'd done something wrong, or the coyotes weren't in ear shot. so, the good news it i get to do it AGAIN! and another co-worker got to talking about the coyote problem at HER house! happy days! i am really enjoying the calling aspect as opposed to target of opportunity.

I hope you all enjoyed the story!

heath


and thank you, saeed, if you choose to reward this little tale!

My best friend, Brett, and I were hunting black bear in the mountains of Colorado. Brett moved to an area to look for sign and I stayed on a trail where I'd found scat.

Getting bored, I watched some buzzards flying overhead and had one of my less-than-great ideas. I would play dead and see if I could get them to land nearby. Sure enough, they started circling lower and lower. Eventually, they were flying approximately 10 feet over me.

About this time, Brett moved back into the area and wondered where I was. Seeing the buzzards, he suddenly thought I might be hurt. He walked down into the arroyo and saw the buzzards land near some brush where he also saw blaze orange.
He was thinking the worst had happened. All of a sudden the buzzards screached and took off as if they'd seen the devil.

Brett ran down and saw me laughing. He, though, was not amused. After he'd calmed down, he did see the humor of the event.

Now this isn't a story of success in bagging an animal, but is a success in fooling a wild creature. Since I'm currently working in Iraq for a year, I hope I can leave hear a Zimbabwean Trillionaire!
Max

The bad ,the ugly and the Good

I had decided to join a a pair of hunters looking for a third person to fill numbers for a first time hunt on a farm in the Kwa Zulu Natal area.

It was to be plains game and I had heard the farm had some good animals. Being a meat hunter I was looking for big bodied animals.

Let’s call him Basil after faulty towers character was looking for Trophy animals only.

Miguel well he had the arsenal for every occasion and had the story to back it up. One tool for one job he said. One calibre fits one animal.

I was starting to wonder if I had made a right choice when 2 hours into the drive Basil closed all the electric windows and started giggling. No sooner had the snigger stopped than the stench began.

Basil definitely had something wrong with his digestive system and no doctor would be able to help. This was his particular party trick I was told by Miguel.

We arrived late that winter night. I am one that cannot sleep without a bath. I did not think much of basil and Miguel not bathing as it was very cold.

The next morning was a beautiful crisp winter morning all was white with frost and the sun gave us a beautiful display of beauty. That orange, purple sunrise piercing through the grey of night to a bright clear morning offering warmth but not penetrating the cold to warrant taking off the jacket.

Miguel was ready he had chosen his rifle for his duiker hunt , his trusty 243. Apparently he had taken a duiker at 300 meters running away with a clean head shot with this self same rifle.Before performing the same feat on the second male in the herd of duiker. Who was I to argue.

Basil he had his trusty 303 inherited from his great grand daddy for his trophy blesbuck.

I decided to wait in camp and hunt the afternoon as I was starting to get nervous about my decision to hunt with these guys.

After about 2 hours I heard a shot ring. No thump followed it was a miss I presumed. Few minutes later a second shot. Then a third.

Then came the call on the cell “please wounded animal need assistance”. Taking my rifle i was just leaving when Miguel came back to camp to get his 308. That was the rifle for blesbuck the 243 would not do being such a light calibre. The 308 had taken blesbuck at 100, 200 and 300 meters all head shots as the heard ran after the first shot.

We found basil shaking his head.

What happened.

Well at 250 meters aiming for the heart lung area Basil had managed to shoot the front left leg of the blesbuck which had taken off. The second and third shot he was not sure as to what it hit at 400 meters.

Following the spoor we saw the herd go left. But the blood went right at the split. Basils tracker was calling us to the left as he could see the herd. The day had started to warm up a bit.

My tracker said the animal had gone right. I decide to go with him and Basil decided to go left with Miguel in tow.

About half an hour later we heard a shot ring in the vicinity Basil had disappeared in. At that moment we saw the wounded blesbuck stand up from his hiding place at about 50 meters from us foreleg dangling uselessly . Taking the shot the animal did not go far with the heart shot.
We radioed for the bakkie to come pick up the animal.

Then we heard over the radio basil had shot his wounded animal as well.

When we got back to the skinning shed there were two blesbuck. One with a broken fore leg and one with a broken back leg.

Basil was now insistent that he had shot the animals back leg off and that the animal I had was not his and that he did not wound it. The tracker said the back leg was shot when he tried the follow up shot at 400 meters.The other was the animal he had shot at first.
Basil was paying for two wonderful trophy animals nice thin nowhere near Roland ward female blesbuck. He felt that the scope may be to blame.

But being the gracious man he was he asked if I would like to buy the one animal off him as I had shot it and thus allow him to shoot a better animal. Still not sure why he was upset when I declined his offer.

Miguel had however decided to go for his blue wildebeest and had gone to get his 375 H&H tool.

That afternoon we heard a boom but no thud. I thought we were going to be at it again.

It appears that the wildebeest had been a bit wild. While on the way back miguel saw a duiker next to the road so stalking up in the car he took the shot at about 5 meters. He could not understand why when aiming for the head the bullet penetration was through the neck and the hindquarters. It seems that the barrel of a rifle is a bit lower than the scope so the bullet tends to exit a bit lower than what the scope is. Miguel was not happy that he had damaged his leg roasts of duiker.

That night there was great feasting and celebration for the great white hunters. A Bootle of rum each with some ice and coke a cola.

The next morning was a quite one when I left. Basil and Miguel had found the chairs in the lapa more comfortable than the beds in our accommodation and were still sound asleep. I was refreshed as I had a good night’s sleep with no snoring or stench to wake me up.

I managed to tag a nice impala before lunch. Basil and Miguel were up and about. The sun seemed a bit too bright for them and they seemed to be suffering from some kind of fever with severe headaches. Which seemed to be cured by a double medicine measure from the next bottle of rum.

Miguel was particularly afflicted by the fever and asked if I would be so kind as to tag him a good wildebeest as his fever needed attending to and he could not see himself leopard crawling with such an affliction.

I being the gentleman I am I kindly accepted his offer. That afternoon I managed to get a good wildebeest to which Miguel and Basil felt they needed to celebrate the afternoon and evening away.

That night I went to shower. Basil and Miguel however were quite perturbed that I was not blending into the whole way of nature. The animals would smell me if I bathed. Not sure how if you are downwind of them. However I fear that even downwind of my hunting party pair, who after two days of no bathing and well into the second of bottle of rum, might have been smelt anyway.

Basil decided to get a good night sleep that night. It appears he went to get something in the room and while sitting on the bed he was hit by another bout of drowsiness caused by the fever. Miguel later went to check on Basil not to return either.

I thought that the floor rugs had somehow got wet during the day and had started to decay when I arrived at the room. There is nothing like two ripe hunters and a party trick to fill the air with odour de toilet.

I did not find the chairs in the lapa as comfortable as Miguel and Basil. But thank goodness we were departing the next day. The trip home was one I think for preservation of sanity has been blocked from my memory banks. Rum, no baths and a digestive tract that is definitely not human has left its mark on my sense of smell.

I have not spoken to Basil since and hope he has found a good physician for his affliction. Miguel I heard took his 357 H&H in to the gunsmith to get checked as to why it is shooting low.
Me I will not be going on a hunt with guys I have never met before even if the bad turned to ugly before I got the good.

I've been trying to get my hands on on or two of those notes for a while but just can't find any down here!

Anyway, here you go:

June 1983, newly qualified and I was conducting my first ever solo hunt. My client was a first timer from New York and we were hunting plains game on the South African side of what Mr Kipling so charmingly called ‘The great grey, green, greasy Limpopo, all set about with fever trees’. Directly across the (dry at this time of year) river was the famous Tuli Block of Botswana.

On the third day of hunt, just as we were setting out from camp in my wheezy old Land Rover, while the morning was still chilly and the grass covered in a heavy dew, my radio crackled to life and I heard the hunting Director of the game department calling me with a hint of desperation in his voice. This was very unusual for such an early hour but as the game department are the people who issue my licence, which effectively makes them the next best thing to God, I replied to his call immediately and asked how I could help him.

His first question was to ask my exact location and when I told him I’d just left camp, he told me to turn round, take my client back to camp, collect my first aid kit, firearms and everything I needed for a 3 day trip and then head for the nearest border crossing and to call him on the radio en-route to the border. He further told me to apologise to my client for the delay and that my employers were sending a replacement Professional Hunter in for him within a few hours....... but in the meantime, I had an important job to attend to.

I’ve got to tell you the client was less than impressed but as it was the top man of the game department giving me the orders, I had no choice but to obey.

It took me about an hour to organise supplies, fuel, documents and my top tracker Eddie Mbawala and I was on the road by about 0930 hours. As soon as I was clear camp, I called the game department and was told a very sad story. Apparently, the day before, a young PH had been hunting the Botswana side of the river with a Czechoslovakian client of a ‘certain age’ when they’d walked right into a pride of Lions that had immediately attacked. The tracker had managed to get up a tree to safety, the client had been killed and eaten and the young PH had been very badly beaten up, but had been pulled to safety by his tracker. Some hours later, they had been found by a group of natives in an old truck and taken to camp.

The Director told me the Botswana game dept had contacted him to ask if there were any PHs in the area that they could send to administer first aid to the injured PH and deal with the Lion situation. As I was the closest, I got the job. I told the Director, that I had hunted Lions in the past, but not very often and I didn’t feel very confident of my ability to do the job, but would do my best. As is the wont of the Director, he told me I had a licence that said I was qualified to hunt all game, including all dangerous game and if I couldn’t deal with this, I shouldn’t expect to have my licence renewed....... ever! So on towards the border I went.

Two hours later and after the fastest border crossing in the history of mankind, I arrived in the Botswana hunting camp to find the injured PH in a pretty bad way. I broke out the first aid kit, cleaned and irrigated the wounds, got some pain relief into him and then asked him to tell me what had happened. He didn’t really have much to add, except that the Czech client had gone down very quickly when the male grabbed him, that he hadn’t suffered for long and that the Botswana game department would expect me to hunt down the lion involved, kill it and one way or another, try to recover at least some parts of the body to send back to his grieving widow. He also had the wit to tell me that although he felt well enough to come with me in the truck to help find the pride, he wasn’t up to being involved in any way with the control operation. In other words, I was on my own on that part of the operation and the best of bloody luck.

So we loaded him into the back of my Landy and off we went to look for the scene of the crime. It didn’t take long to find as it wasn’t far from camp and we could see a few vultures around to guide us. When we got there, the Lions had vacated and all I could find was a large patch of dried blood, no body parts and a shed load of spoor to follow. After a quick lunch, we got back into the truck and with Eddie sitting on the bonnet, we drove on the spoor. Two hours later or so, in mid afternoon we spotted a pride of Lions about half a mile ahead of us asleep under an acacia thicket.

Luckily I had my spotting scope on the truck and after we had given them a good look over, the injured PH was able to confirm that this was indeed the pride that had caused all the trouble, and the lone male that was covered in blood all over his face and chest had to be the culprit that had attacked, killed and eaten his Czech client.

Frankly, I wasn’t very happy about my ability to deal with all this but deciding to make the most of the situation before I lost my bottle, I loaded my 12 gauge shotgun, gave it to Eddie and told him to keep the safety on and pointed away from my arse, then loaded my old 416 with Lion loads, and stuck a few spare rounds into both my and Eddie’s pockets and we set off on a loooong leopard crawl towards the sleeping cats.
The sun was hot and the grass was high and I don’t know how long it took to get into the pride, but it felt like a lifetime. Eventually, we got to within about 25 yards of the male and had sleeping Lionesses on both sides of us and I knew there was no time to lose. All it would take to land us both in an ocean of the brown stuff was a change in the wind, and that surely was just a matter of time.

Summoning all my courage, I got up on one knee and as I did so, the Lion rolled over onto his chest to see what had caused the unexpected movement. He was obviously not as sleepy as I thought, and without wasting a milli-second, I got him in the shallow vee of my sights, and whacked him in the chest with everything the rifle held. The Lion just grunted and rolled back onto his side, apparently dead. Just then, the whole place just exploded with roars and females running everywhere. There wasn’t time to reload my rifle, so I chucked it at Eddie and grabbed the 12 gauge as our last line of defence. Luckily Eddie was switched on enough to reload it for me. While he was doing this, we got a charge from the eldest female, and I gave her until she was about 7 yards away and then fired a shot at her feet, which threw up dust and gravel into he face. She stopped immediately and although still bouncing around, wasn’t decided whether to press the charge home or not. We looked at each other over the barrels of the shotgun for what seemed like a hundred years, but was probably just a second or two. Just as the rifle was ready to rock and roll, the Lioness decided that discretion was the better part of valour and without even blinking he eyes, she turned and following the rest of the females, bailed out of the area.

I took the opportunity to swap firearms with Eddie, and as soon as the 416 was back in my hands, I took a quick scan round to check we were safe. As soon as I realised we were, I ran over to the dead Lion and gave him another shot in the back of the head to pay his insurance for him. I can tell you now, that never in my life had my heart been beating as fast as it was just then.

Sending Eddie and my shotgun back to the truck to bring it to me, I began checking round the area for some part of this poor unfortunate Czech client. I didn’t find anything, not even a shoe and as I knew I not only had to recover some body parts, no matter what their condition, I also had to prove to the game departments concerned, I’d shot the right Lion, (As old Bobby Ruark once said, ‘Lions is awfully expensive’ and I wouldn’t be very popular if I’d just shot any damn Lion) I knew the next part of my job wasn’t going to be pleasant.

As soon as the truck arrived, I took made my rifle safe and laid in on the bonnet where I could quickly get it back into action if needed. Then with the injured PH taking witness photographs, I took my knife and carefully slit the skin of the stomach open to it’s full length. The stomach itself, was chokka block full of meat, and taking a deep breath because I knew the stink was going to be something special, I opened the stomach and out rolled about umpteen kilogrammes of slimy, stinking half digested meat. I started raking through it to try to find anything identifiable as being part of the Czechoslovakian client.

I was out of luck, the entire contents were zebra meat and apparently I’d committed the cardinal sin of shooting the wrong male.

Which just goes to show you that if a Professional Hunter ever tells you there’s a check, a cheque or a Czech in the male or even in the mail, you should never, ever believe him!!

WORST PH EVER "CHICKEN WIRE PETE"
My first trip to Tan. back about 5 years ago I went with a friend who knew the hunting company owner well. I will not say any other names other than the ph was named Pete.
We got to camp and it turned out the ph had leased the area. I was supposed to hunt with Pete but the first 3 days he was not around and I hunted two on one with my friend and his friend the hunting company owner. Pete's wife was the cook and after about 3 days of eating the tails of this and that animal, I finally asked her when we were going to have the rest of the animal. For the first 3 days they never ate with us. On about the third day the hunting company owner lets call him Joe. came up to me and asked for 3 hundred dollars. I gave it to him. I found out later the police had come to take chicken wire Pete to jail and Joe needed to bribe them. Also on the 4 day a new PH arrived in camp. I later find out that he was flow in for me to hunt. Anyway with the $300 Pete's problems were solved and we started hunting next morning. First Buff bull we saw he wanted me to shoot. I refused, did shoot the second one on his recommendation 36 inch. Oh I forgot to say his wife started going out with us hunting. Nothing against women but this was my first Tan hunt and I wish she had not come along. We starting hanging bait for leopard. We had a hit we built a good blind. Now Pete had killed everything and all were the biggest ever. He knew everything about everything. When I look back I think either Pete did not like sitting in a blind or he was afraid of the dark. We would sit 2 hours, 4 hours, never stayed the night even thought we planned too. Every time we would leave the bait the leopard would come and eat. Finally Pete decided to put chicken wire around the bait. He told me the leopard would stay longer trying to get the wire off and I was NEVER to say anything about the chicken wire. We never got the leopard and after about 10 days my buddy wanted to change camps and I was offered to go and hunt 2 on one or stay with Pete.

I left, true story

Yes, but I''ll settle for being an American Multimillionare. As you know, even the Zimbabweans are not using their own currency as its
worthless. I have a 250 million Zimbabwean Bill...and when theings were better years ago, it was = to US 62 cents. Now also
worthless, but my bill is prettier...It has an Elephant on it!

Best Regards,

Tom from Cody...

This is not an African hunting but one that happened while deer hunting with my buddies in Central Oregon.


It was late in the day and Randy and I were about 10 miles from the ‘main cinder’ as we call it. A cinder road is one that covered in volcanic gravel, in this area a pinkish dark red. We had been hunting and scouting new areas, driving in my FJ40 until we were about 20 miles from camp and were working our way back.

We were moseying along going along an old logging road through the Jack Pine and rolling hills. I looked in my rear view mirror and about a mile back on the straight stretch I could see another rig behind us in the failing light. The white truck seemed to be moving along at a pretty good clip as it lifted and sank over the swells in the road.

As it got closer I mentioned to Randy that I think that a cop is behind us and looks like he’s trying to catch up to us. I asked Randy if he was sure he had his tag and license. He did as did I. When the Ram pickup got behind us it was clear that it was a state trooper. They do the bulk of game law enforcement in this area.

We pulled over in a spot where he could get around us if he wanted, but he pulled in behind us.

Randy and I get out and smile at the officer as he got out of his rig. He smiled and said hello. He was a young kid, maybe in his mid-twenties.

We exchanged a bit of small talk about success rates this year, if either party had seen anything big, etc. It was clear that the officer wanted to bring something up, but was hesitant.

I asked him if he wanted to see our tags and licenses thinking that this might help him broach the subject that was obviously in his mind. He said, ‘yeah sure’, looked at them and handed them back saying everything looked good.

Then he looked sheepishly at Randy and I, shuffled his feet a bit and worked up his courage to ask, “So, how do you get to the main cinder road from here..?”

This didn't happen in Africa but it did in Texas. Every year all our hunting buddies would get together for opening day of dove season. It was an annual event and the numbers of hunters seemed to grow each year. We would have a bar-b que pit going constantly and have a dove and fish fry after the hunt. One of our hunting buddies had this older black lab that was really good at retrieving dove. In fact, he would sneak by where you were sitting and steal your birds that you had put under your hunting stool. When we would come in from the hunt he would be at camp asking how many dove each of us shot. Of course we never had the total number of dove we said we shot because his dog snitched them and he was always,,, if you can't show them too me,, then you can't count them. Of course he would have a ton of birds,,, way over the limit and he thought this was really funny. He always told us how poor of shots we were because he would only take out 25 shells and bring back 60 birds. We put up with him but he really rode everyone hard about their shooting. The next year, same thing happening, that dog stole my first 3 birds, everything was the same for the rest of us but one thing changed history forever. The federal game wardens showed up and went down the fence row checking birds and licenses, you guessed it, he was last in line and had way over the limit. He tried to tell them that he didn't shoot all of them but that his dog retrieved them from the field. They were unsympathetic, they said, the birds are in your possession, they are yours. They confiscated his gun and license and wrote him a hefty fine. He was really, really pissed at us because none of us came to his rescue. We just told him,, if we can't show the birds, we can't count the birds... He could use the trillion dollars to try and buy his gun back out of hock,,,,,,He hasn't hunted with us since but he will speak to us now,,, they did let him keep the dog and we really like the dog now,,, he ranks number one in all our minds for a hunting dog!

Shakari,
Ruark's got nothing on you.

Ok, I have this "friend" who I took hunting a number of years ago. He is older than myself and although I hadn't hunted with him prior to this event, he had no problem about tell us all about his hunting adventures thoughout the years.

"You know, I hunted bear up in Alaska..."

"When I hunted elk in Colorado back in...."

"I once had a perfect shot on a fine 10-point buck back at my family's farm in..."

You get the picture of the type of guy this is: everything you did, he had a story of doing something bigger and better.

Well, he (I will call him "Bob") and I were deer hunting in north central PA with another friend of mine, Steve. It was early in the morning when we got to our pre-determined spots along a ridge line over looking a ravine area. I was the first to get to my spot. Directly to my right, about 150 yards, was Bob's spot, and a further 150 yards to Bob's right was Steve's spot.

Day light came and about an hour after first light, I saw three does making their way from my left to my right. They grazed a bit and moved off in front of Bob.

I didn't think anything more of it, hoping that a buck would be behind them.

Well about an hour after spotting the does, I heard hysterial laughing coming from my friend Steve. Steve yelled to me to come over where Bob was sitting. Figuring the area was done due to my friend's laughing and yelling, I went over to them.

As I got there, Bob was sitting on the ground and Steve was standing next to him laughing.

Steve goes to me, "Paul, did you see anything this morning?" I said, "yeah, I saw three does go past me and head toward you guys." Steve kept laughing.

I asked what was so funny.

Steve said, "well, I saw them too, but after about an hour I figured we should move so I came over to Bob. I asked him if he saw anything - and he told me he didn't see anything. So I asked him if he didn't see those three does about an hour after first light. Guess what the big game hunter said to me? He said, 'deer, I didn't see any deer. I just saw a couple of German Shepards walking down there.'"

It was a classic moment. Our big game hunter friend made a hunting camp story that I will never forget.

This isn't an African hunting story either; I haven't done enough yet to have any good stories to tell. I did want to tell the story of my oldest son's first hunt, though.
Actually, it wasn't his very first time hunting. That was when he was three. My dad, my brother and I were up at a relative's place for an archery whitetail hunt and my son came with. While the hunters went out in the morning he stayed in the cabin. Early in the day I shot a doe, which ran about a hundred yards before dropping. I walked back to the cabin and got my son, put him on my shoulders and we walked back to the deer and started gutting, my son holding a leg while I cut. When I pulled everything out he pointed at the intestines and said "That looks just like sausage!" He was right, of course. Since then he has gone out in the woods and fields with me many times.
His first time carrying his own gun was the spring before last for a turkey hunt. In Wisconsin a kid must be twelve to buy a license for any kind of hunting, but he can enter a draw for turkey hunting while still eleven. However, you can't actually buy the tag until you turn twelve. Well, we put in for a tag for him and he got drawn for the period in which his twelfth birthday fell. So far, so good. Unfortunately the lumberyard where we buy our licenses-- the nearest place to our house-- didn't open until 7:00 on his birthday. Those of you who are spring turkey hunters will know the anxiety I was feeling as we sat in the parking lot waiting for the store to open, knowing that the birds had already flown down off their roosts and the most magical part of a spring hunt was passing us by.
Finally the door was unlocked, we bought the tag, piled back into the car and drove over to the farm where we hunt. As we neared the driveway a gobbler was standing there in full strut in the middle of the damned road! I stopped and he ran off into the trees, on our side of the road, thankfully. We turned around, parked the car and I quickly duck-walked him to a spot about a quarter mile from where we had seen the tom in hopes of setting up an ambush.
We settled in place and I glassed over to where we had seen our strutting gobbler-- and there he was in a plowed field a a quarter mile off. I called and he seemed to step a little in our direction, but it wasn't as tough he was in any great hurry. Then through the glasses I saw a hen between him and us. Not good. I called a few more times and heard a distant gobble from way off behind us. But nothing from the guy we were focused on.
So we sat there. I yelped a little every ten or fifteen minutes and we watched our tom slowly work his way toward us, but still a couple hundred yards off. Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw a turkey head shining in the sun on the other side of the brushy fenceline next to which we were sitting. I told my son to get ready, that one was going to cross the field right in front of us. Sure enough, the tom hopped the fence twenty yards off, his neck stretched out, looking for the lonely hen he'd heard making all that noise. "As soon as you're ready," I whispered. BANG!
There was a 22 pound tom, flopping his last. I think that moment was the happiest I'd been since the day my boy was born.
It was only 9:00. And his bird was WAY bigger than the one I shot that year.

The first Caribou hunt.

I moved to bush Alaska in 1992. In February I got offered a chance to go Caribou hunting with two local Yu’Pik I had gotten to know from work. I had ZERO sno-go (snowmobile, sled, or snow machine depending on where you live) experience. I bought a piece of crap one lunger Tundra with less suspension travel than a stage coach. My Yu’Pik buddies each had brand new Polaris XLT’s, the local snow rocket of the times. One towed an aluminum sled for the return trip from the “meat market”.

It was 12 below when we left at first light (maybe 09:30 that time of year). We headed to a spot that caribou generally mill around. In order to get there we had to cross the Wood River, which requires you to head pretty far up stream to a non-tidal area where it is frozen enough to cross. Of course it had a pressure ridge in the center that requires a jump of sorts to cross. I didn’t do too badly for a newbie.

The problems began when we got on some fairly worn trails that were flat. I could have duct taped that throttle to the bar and maybe have gotten 60 MPH out of that Tundra. Of course with the lack of suspension travel I was getting beaten to death. All this was happening as I tried my best to keep watch of the disappearing taillights of the XLT’s.

I had no thumb or grip warmers and earned my screen name by frost nipping a couple of fingers, but I persevered. My buddies would ride just to out of sight then wait for me, then rocket off again. We came to another small slough we needed to cross. This was during high tide and the ice had over flow water on top. Looked like an open river to me. My friends were already on the other side. I sat looking down the cut bank at that water thinking this was a bad idea. One of the Yu’Pik, with the sled in tow no less, came ripping back across the water throwing up a nice rooster tail wake as he popped up the cut bank. He asked, “What’s the matter, let’s go”. I simply said, “That’s water”. He laughed. He said, “That long track tundra can ride on top of the water till you run out of gas as long as you keep the throttle to it.”

I didn’t want to look the wimp so I said, “OK!” I took a deep breath looked across the open water at a 6 foot cut bank waiting on the other side. I decided breaking something was better than drowning or freezing to death so I nailed it and to my amazement skipped across that water that felt smoother than the previous trail that had beaten me to death. The problem occurred when I hit the cut bank that acted as a ramp for Evil Kenievel. I got launched about 20 feet. The Tundra survived but made a groaning noise for the rest of the trip.

We ended up killing 6 caribou. I further froze my hand quartering the one I did in the time they did the rest. They were not even wearing gloves and never got cold hands.

We made it back home just after dark by taking a short cut across some open water on the lower end of the Wood River. I was happy to have just made it home. I sold the Tundra and got better a sno-go that season. Ah the pleasure of grip warmers!!

I have always dreamed of being a TRILLIONAIRE!


So Here goes.

When I was much younger my Grandad had a weekend place on the Brazos River just out of Rosharon, Texas. It was a small kinda subdivision in the middle of a large ranch. A ten year olds dream! The owner of the ranch was an older man that really seemed to like kids and he and his wife didn't have any, so he adopted all us weekend kids for his. He built us a baseball diamond with backstop on the ranch yard and a football field complete with goal posts, he even had a swimming pool that we could swim in. He let us hunt all over the large ranch and fish in the stock ponds too.

Now it wasn't all just for fun 'cause he would also work us half to death too.

We would haul hay, build fence and work the cows, but man it was all a big adventure. The ten year old cowboys working cows or driving the big old one ton truck in the hay field was way cool, running a pair of post hole diggers building fence and stacking hay in the barns.......not so much.

Well the rancher hated Armadillos with a passion. He was always saying his cows would break their legs in the holes dug by them. Now I never saw a cow with a broke leg on the place but he was the boss man.

Every spring he would sponsor the annual Armadillo round up on his ranch. We kids would break up in three man teams and hunt Armadillos, the team that got the most Armadillos got T-shirts blazoned with "Annual Armadillo Round Up Champions", that was a big deal, braggin' rights for the year.

Well me an my two partners were out hunting Armadillos one evening and we ran out of .22's so we were headed back to the house for the evening and wouldn't you know it we stumbled across another Armadillo. No bullets! Well I went to just catch it! The ol' famous Jtex tail grab. He eluded my first attempt and took off with me right on his tail. I grabbed his tail as he was heading down a hole. Lots of people think you can't pull an Armadillo out of a hole, well bein' the Armadillo expert I was, I knew if you just kept good a steady pressure on 'em by the tail you could wear 'em out and they would "eventually" get tired and you could pull 'em out.

Well I had this Armadillo by the tail about the time the other two kids showed up. So I sat down on my butt to get both hands on his tail so I could start the contest of will.

About the time I got settled in good and firm ol' mister Armadillo went into high speed reverse and came stormin' out of that hole and ran right over the top of me to get away. It startled me so bad I let go of his tail. As I sat up to look and see why he came out of that hole a swarm of Bumble bees, you know the big black and yellow suckers, boiled out of the hole and were all over me and my buddies. We took off running and screaming through the woods like the devil was after us getting stung left and right the whole way. And yep, you guessed it we ran until we came to a ditch full of water and jumped in and submerged to get the bees to quit chasing us.

It was just like the cartoons but it hurt a lot worse. Man with all the stings we swole up like toad frogs.

We didn't win the round up that year and I leave Armadillos pretty much alone these days.

The binds you get into when you are a kid????

This is my Story I'm sorry to say, but funny afterwards.
3 of us were bow hunting in PA. my first time.
We had the old Baker tree stands that I was never very comfortable in.
The first day my partner was in his stand when a bear came by with a arrow in his rump.
The next day I was in my stand when a cramp hit me ( greasy food we were camping ) I was afraid to climb down as we didn't have climbers, so I pulled down my pants 20' up in a tree. Have you ever tried to hug a tree and climb down with DIARRHEA?To clean myself up afterward I decided to cut off my drawers with my broadhead and managed to cut my leg. Knowing my hunting was done I hiked back to camp.
At dark my partner got frantic He thought the Bear had gotten me, all he found was crap, and bloody underwear.
I guess you should have been around the campfire that night.

Bill that's funny!

while not exactly a hunting story, it goes back several years when i made about my 2 or 3 trip to africa. My first trip i was in RSA and i was impressed by the intelligence of baboons. It seems that no matter where we were, they saw us and were setting up their alarm system. Try as i could, we could not get within range of them. I think that is when the game started. Since that time one of my greatest enjoyments during the day is to find new ways to terrorize babos. We chased a large group in the truck one day and had to stop to laugh when the big old dog picked up a little one and threw it aside so he could get in front. To prove a point one of my PH's show us how you could actually outrun a babo. Something he learned in his childhood when a big old guy would wait outside the school and then attack the kids as they came out. An old man told him that a man can outrun a baboon given a bit of time. And so they can, to the point where the babo is totally out of breath, and holding himself up on a tree. Then came the hiding. There was a waterhole in RSA where the cattle would water, but a troop took it over and would keep the cattle away. The rancher planted a big rubber snake by the waterhole one day and watched. When the troop came down, the lead big dog took one look and the snake and fainted dead away. When he came to he took another look and the shake shrieked and ever came back. Then there was the slingshot, we'd shoot marula nuts at them. Every so often when one would get hit, he'd promptly start beating up the babo next to him, while a 3rd would eat the nut. But my favorite (when you could do it) was to bring a handful of fireworks rockets with (people weren't so paranoid then) we'd wait by the waterhole until the whole troop would amass and then let go of a rocket or 2 in their midst. Rocket would go off and there would be shrieking running babos going in everywhich direction. Sure do miss those rockets

I was hunting elephant in the Caprivi Strip with Vaughan Fulton a few years ago. We were accompanied by a new tracker that Vaughan was trying out. His name was Patrick.

Patrick was a local lad. He spoke a little English, and since he knew we were Americans, he would often try it out on us. Patrick's English could be pretty inventive, and hence this story.

Early one morning, as we were examining elephant tracks for size and freshness, Vaughan gave Patrick what we used to call in high school a "pop quiz."

Vaughan pointed down to a good sized track, with a worn, smooth heel, and asked Patrick, "What can you tell me about this track?"

Patrick examined it carefully, pondered a moment, and then declared in a confident voice, "This track was made tomorrow!"

Vaughan and I discussed the matter, and decided to go back to camp and wait for 24 hours, since the elephant that made this track hadn't even been here yet, and it would clearly be a waste of time to follow him.

Gentlemen,

Would those of you who have posted a story please send me a PM with your mailing address? So their payments can be processed?

Thank you for your participation in the Richest Writers Contest the world has ever known

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Gentlemen,

Would those of you who have posted a story please send me a PM with your mailing address? So their payments can be processed?

Thank you for your participation in the Richest Writers Contest the world has ever known

Saeed,

Last time we did this and you sent me my Zim Bucks I have to admit I kinda liked the UAE Falcon stamps on the envelope almost as much.

Jim

Can I still be a trillionaire?

If not, enjoy anyway. First I want to ask why doing your business from a deerstand seems like a good idea? My father had a friend with famously overactive bowels, who somehow managed to get his coveralls down enough on top of a 15 foot tall ladder stand to make that happen.

The real story is about scopebite. I went to Africa (RSA) for the first time last June, and I had a blast. My rifle was held by SAPS due to the rule where two rifles of the same caliber can't be imported by the same person (my dad). So I used a pair of loaner .270 win Mausers without a hitch. My father used his Ruger .338 win mag, and his friend used his new Blaser in .338 win mag. He reads this site, so I won't mention names. Apparently someone else had set up the scope on the gun, and it was a tad far back. Add that to some blood thinners due to a previous heart attack, and you've got a mess waiting to happen. The scope hit him in the nose 3 or 4 times in the first 3 days, and it bled and bled after shots on springbok, blesbok, gemsbok and others. I wondered if transfusions were a good idea when a good chunk of the population has HIV... fortunately it never came to that, but I was starting to wonder after the first few shots on animals put a permanent divot on the bridge of his nose.

All true, all embarassing, all me...

A TIME FOR BRAGGING

I was attending college at Colorado State University in the late 80's and, having moved there from Florida, had only hunted a few birds, squirrels, and assorted small game. My first Fall in Colorado I cruised roads east of town on the plains knocking on farmers' and ranchers' doors to ask permission to hunt their property. I eventually found a nice fellow, Doug, ten years my senior, an avid bird hunter and hunting dog breeder/trainer, and hunted doves and ducks with him now and then.

As deer season approached, my friend said "I guess you're alright. How'd you like to take the horses and hunt Mule Deer with me in November?" Would I? "That would be great. Thanks." My only rifle was a .35 Remington and he suggested we might take longer shots and recommended I borrow his .257 Roberts instead. I sighted it in two inches high at 100 yards with a neat one inch three-shot group – sweet. A few weeks later I met him at the ranch, we loaded up two horses, and headed for the hills. I was excited like a 17-year-old boy on prom night; oh the possibilities.

We saddled up the horses in the darkness at, maybe, 0200 and I learned a few things I never knew about the mischievous beasts; they are disobedient, vindictive, paranoid creatures. We came to our first stream, swift water perhaps six inches deep, and my horse, Sugar, stopped. I mean dead stopped. At Doug's urging, I smacked the horse hard on the ass and dug in my heels and she finally crossed the stream. Maybe two miles into the ride in the darkness Sugar, evil nag that she was, jumped sideways what seemed like ten feet. What the hell? Apparently, as Doug belatedly explained, horses think every boulder is a bear and every bush is a mountain lion. I spent the next hour waiting for Sugar to wig out and leave me cling from a cliff. We finally reached the last water crossing. The water, not so swift but still moving along at a good clip, was a foot or so deep with banks a foot above the water. This time, much to my delight, Sugar walked right into the river, demonstrating her acceptance of my place as her master and her place as my loyal beast of burden¦and promptly tried to rub me off on a pine tree and unseat via walking under a low hanging branch. Vindictive nag.

We finally reached the end of the ride and dismounted our horses and tied them to a tree. Out came the binoculars and Doug had a small herd of Mule Deer spotted a half mile or so away and 1000 feet up a hillside. Poor college student that I was I had to borrow the binoculars and quickly trained my eagle-eyes to the same spot on the hill. What did I see much to my amazement? A bunch of rocks, some dirt, a little sagebrush, and a few scattered trees; pines mostly as I recall, perhaps a few Aspen. Where were the damned deer? Kind, patient Doug “Dumbass, those dirty white rocks are the deer butts, asses, tails¦come on, Matt, use your eyes." And he was right. Eight or so deer materialized out of thin air like magic.

Doug plotted a course that would take us up a gully to within an easy 100 yards of the, hopefully, still feeding deer. Hell, at that range I'd thread the bullet through the deer's left ventricle. No worries. We eventually closed the gap and Doug had me crawl onto a flat rock from which I'd be able to shoot my deer if they hadn't moved. Oh the suspense, but they were still there and, if anything, even a few yards closer. I nestled into my rifle and fired. Yay“ let's go track down my buck. Hey, what the heck's going on here; no blood, no hair, no nothing… “Must be the rifle, Doug." Damned horse probably knocked the scope around on purpose.

We followed the deer's tracks for a couple hundred yards before Doug spotted them again, a couple hundred yards and a hundred feet or so above us across a small ravine. "Matt, get a rest. I'll stop 'em for you. Be sure to shoot the buck,†whispered Doug. I kneeled and laid the rifle across a dead snag. Doug whistled loudly and, sure enough, the half dozen or so deer stopped in their track and stared at us.

I aimed slightly high on the buck's brisket in order to drop my bullet right into his vitals and squeezed on the shot. Instant gratification. I looked through the scope and saw four legs sticking up in the air and fall over. Nailed him and the buck was mine. Doug and I climbed up the hill with him asking "You're sure you shot the buck, right? It wasn't one of the does, was it?" Whoa, I was aiming at the buck wasn't I? "Yeah, I shot the buck. I held high and dropped the bullet right into the kill zone. Didn't you see him drop like he was pole-axed?"

We made it to my deer, a fine little forkhorn, but a monster buck to this first time deer hunter. I was ecstatic. Doug patiently walked me through gutting the deer and I dove in elbow deep. The he said, "Matt, did you find the bullet hole?" Come to think of it, I'd never even looked. No blood in the chest cavity. "No, but maybe I was a little high and spined him. "Nope, not that. It took some time before we finally found the hole. I'd missed my point of aim by some two feet and hit the buck in his lower jaw. The bullet deflected and lodged in his neck vertebrae “ instant death…but through not intentionally done. So what could I say? "See Doug, I told you that nag knocked the scope out of alignment."

We packed the buck out on my horse's back while I walked. It was only six miles and I was still on cloud nine. Sometime around midnight we finally made it back to Doug's ranch and hung the buck up in the barn. I crashed out in Doug’s living room and the next morning we decided to resight the rifle before we headed out again to get Doug his winter meat. We picked out a big piece of cardboard, Doug drew a small black circle, and I laid down behind the .257 and fired off three rounds…a one inch group, two inches high.

Never brag about the shot until after you know where the bullet hit. Shucks, I could have been known as the guy who kills bucks at 100 yards with head shots.

This story happened in 2001 with Ntshonalanga Safaris. I was hunting Leshoka-Thabang in South Africa, close to Potgietersrus. My job was to use a dart gun to anesthatize a white rhino. The morning of the hunt I did a practice shot with the dart gun with the medicine-filled projectile. The scope worked great. In the dim light of early morning I had no trouble seeing the red dot in the middle of the field of view.

Well, you can already guess what happened. I poked my head up over the scrub-brush at 20 yards distance from the gold medal rhino and his two pals. As I squeezed the trigger the battery-operated scope light was so dim that I couldn't see it at all. The three rhinos were startled. They couldn't believe that any creature would have the audacity to crawl right up to them and ask for trouble. This made for a tense moment. I vowed that if I made it through this fiasco I would definitely have to make a strongly worded statement to the veteranarian who gave me the dart gun.

Fortunately I didn't give up and in the next seconds I got the red light to come on and I shot the rhino in the shoulder. He and the two others exploded into a dead run, fortunately not in my direction. The three of us, the PH, the Vet and I, had to follow them as fast as we could to make sure the rhino wasn't overdosed and didn't die. We ran as fast as our legs could carry us in the direction of the rhino's dust trail.

Eventually we saw him stopped in a large bush, sleeping. We came running up to check him out but we didn't see the other two rhino waiting to ambush us from behind the bush. They had had enough of our fun. As soon as we were close they boiled out from cover and charged us. We immediately took off running in the opposite direction, me still holding the empty dart gun, the PH with his .500 Jeffery bouncing on his back and the Vet with his medical kit spilling a trail of medical supplies. We ran with a sense of purpose. Each of us was searching for a tree and hoping we could stay abead of the pointed snouts, or at least ahead of the guy running next to us. Fortunatey for us the rhinos stopped their charge, apparently satisfied that we were demonstrating an adequate understanding of the situation.

Soon enough we much more cautiously apprached the fallen rhino and scared off the other two with stones. The rhino's heart and vital signs did quite well, probably better than my own. We microchipped him, woke him up and sent him on his way. I'm leaving the rhino darting to the Vet next time.

This is a true African story that is almost unbelievable in its outcome. We were hunting hippo and came across a nice pod. The big breed bull was very agressive, keeping all of the younger bulls away while he enjoyed flagrante delico with all of the cows. The pod eventually worked their way over to and upon a small island where we watched them rest. Eventually they worked their way back into the water and we sneaked down along the bank in order to get as close as possible for a shot on the big breed bull. As the vegetation was rather thin the hippo pod saw us and moved out into deeper water. Frustrated by the hippo pod's distance from the bank, the PH told the trackers to go to the edge of the river and take off their shirts and waive the clothing at the hippo pod to see if they could somehow attract them back closer for a better shot for me. Incredible as it sounds, this piqued the curiosity of the pod and they moved in closer to us. When the big bull was about 60 yards out, I shot him between the eyes with the .375 and a trophy bonded sledgehammer solid. His head went back and he immediately went down. Well, to make a long story shorter, we never saw him in the next two days despite all of our efforts in polling/dragging the river bottom in that area, going up and downstream looking for him, etc. We then decided that maybe I had not killed him and we decided to hunt another bull in the pod. The pod was about 130 yards out in the river when my PH spotted another bull which looked, sizewise, very close the the bull that I had shot at earlier. After a couple of hours he had turned and presented me with a good head on shot and I took it with the .375. This bull's head, as the one before, rocked back and down he went. The PH (as he had told me with the first hippo) said that he would most likely float to the surface within an hour and a half. Well, two hours later, no hippo. I then began to think deja vu. Within 20 more minutes, the big bull hippo floated to the surface and we eventually got him onto the bank. When we examined him, it was the very same hippo that I had shot days earlier. There was a white spot on the front of his head where the first bullet had hit him. The first bullet had penetrated the hide, went up along the skull without penetrating and had exited the hide near the top/back of his head, apparently due to his head being back and on a slight angle. On the second shot his head must have been down and not angled back, and the second bullet penetrated the skull and brain. We dubbed him the second chance hippo.

This is the story of a drive after a hunt in RSA.

We were returning to the Port Elizabeth area after a successful plains game hunt near Cookhouse. Jim and I were in a vehicle with the PH, a tracker, and a Jack Russell hunting dog suffering from an extraordinary case of intestinal distress.

This was in October of the year that an iceberg had been spotted off the Cape, and it snowed in the mountains not too far from Port Elizabeth. It was quite cold. Trying to stay warm, we had the windows up during our drive – some of the time.

Periodically, the dog’s caustic gas would waft up from the floor where it slept, and singe the hairs from our noses. The stench was unimaginable, and the offending pooch just slept right through it while we were forced to lower the windows and gasp for breathable, albeit icy, air.

As a vegetarian, I am typically the first one people try to accuse of such indiscretions. So, I was grateful when they figured out it wasn’t me, and the dog got full credit for its trouble.

would thee be a chance of sending some of these to obama?? He seems to thin k economics along the same lines as uncle bob

In 2006 I booked an elephant, leopard, buffalo hunt with Tshbezi Safaris in Zimbabwe. I flew into the Bulawayo airport (an experience in itself) and met professional hunter Kirk Mason, with whom I spent the next 14 days hunting in the Gokwe North concession area. We drove the 6 hours to Gokwe and began immediately looking for elephant tracks and running leopard baits.

We spent the majority of the nights in a stilted river camp on the Ume river. There were several lions in the area and plenty of elephant. Unfortunately, though we tracked and looked at many bull elephant over the course of the hunt, we never located one that would have made 50 pounds (ivory weight per tusk). 50 pounds was my self-imposed, and ambitious, limit for a trophy bull.

About 4 days into the hunt early one morning we cut the tracks of, what appeared to be, two good bulls that had crossed the two track road above camp during the night. We took up the track and followed it for about 3-4 miles before we lost it in a rocky area. It's unusual for the talented trackers of Zimbabwe to lose a track, and in my experience it's the rare situation that it happens. After spending about an hour and a half trying to sort the issue out, we elected to turn back toward the cruiser in hopes that we might catch the bulls in the case they had doubled back on us.

When we were about a mile from the cuiser the trackers began hearing elephants ahead of us feeding in the thick jess. Kirk felt that we might have located the two bulls. We moved into the thick jess where visability was, at most, 15 yards in any direction. Suddenly, we could see the backs of the a herd of cow and calf elephants as they moved parallel to our position and in the direction from which we had come. Since cow elephant are significantly more dangerous than bulls, we were glad to let this group move out.

I was walking slowly and watching the cows to our right at about 20 yards. They didn't appear to pose any threat and it was thrilling to be that close to them. When I looked forward the palm of Kirk's hand was held out straight to me in a frenzied warning to stop - I did! It was then I noticed a young cow elephant facing us, motionless and about 7 yards in front of the elephant tracker who was leading the group.

It was a Mexican stand-off. There all six of us stood motionless waiting to see what this close encounter would produce. Neither Kirk or I had time or space to get our guns up. The group was in single file fashion and I was third in line with one tracker, one skinner and the game scout standing behind me.

The situation lasted about 30 very long seconds and finally the cow turned to her left and began walking to our right, apparently content in her conclusion that we were no threat that needed aggression. Unfortunately, as she did so, Moses, the council game scout who was legendary in his fear of elephant, broke ranks and spun around to run. At that point, I was the only one in the group without a tree between the cow. When she saw Moses' movement she turned on a dime to face us, dropping her head and came forward at us. By this time, both Kirk and I had raised our rifles for protection. Honestly, having never experienced such offense from an elephant, I never appreciated any emergent situation. It's a good thing Kirk did though, because the elephant had a bead on me. At 11 paces I heard the unexpected BOOM of Kirk's 500 Jeffery as Kirk stopped her charge with a shot low in the head. His shot missed the brain but turned the elephant to the side. I hurriedly put a shot in behind the shoulder, and the whole thing was over within a matter of seconds.

Obviously, the elephant was not charged to me as a trophy, and the council took possession of the hide meat and tusks. The guys went in the afternoon with the tractor and recovered the elephant. All of the meat went to the local villiagers, save a chunk of the backstrap which came down to our camp and provided a couple of very nice dinners.

DRY LAND HIPPO HUNTING IN THE DARK

My mind was focused on the unbelievable colors in the sunset ahead and more specifically upon a glass of single malt with a cigar – following a bath under the 50 gallon drum suspended over the back of my tent.

I was on a 21 day safari in the Selous with Pierre Von Tonder and desperate to kill stuff in order to reduce the temptation to do the same to some of my slow paying clients upon my return to the States.

Pierre and I were running a bit later than usual after a full day of dragging and hanging foul smelling and fly covered chunks of meat and guts in various trees throughout his concession – a madness that he seemed confident would attract an equally foul smelling Tanzania lion.

We were both lost in our thoughts. Everything that needed saying had been discussed earlier. Between us and the single malt was a mud puddle that I remembered walking across the previous year. This year it was about 2/3 mud and 1/3 scummy water.

As we neared this mosquito heaven Pierre suddenly snapped out of his thoughts and said “ Would you like to shoot a hippo Allen?” Thinking he was coming up with a diversion for tomorrow I said “sure” but noted he was striding out toward the mud hole before the answer left my lips. Then it hit me that he meant now.

I opened the 470 and loaded on the run just barely catching up to Pierre before the tranquil mud hole exploded into a huge hippo.

I was relieved to see that the old skutter wasn’t coming for us but was headed downhill through the woods. He was bugging out like he was intending to run until he met a whale in the Indian Ocean. He was looping around to his left and we cut straight across the loop.

We soon pulled alongside and about 10 yards apart. I stopped and fired for his front shoulder. I assumed that was the right spot but we had never discussed dry land hippo shooting on the run.

It was now just before dark and when the 470 went off the flames which shot out the barrel nearly blinded me. “Shoot him again Allen”. The second barrel had even more of a blinding effect than the first.

I reloaded in the dark now as Pierre was commanding me to come up and shoot him again. All I could see was blue and orange "Northern lights".

As my vision started to clear I could see that he was down. Was he dying or just lying down to catch his breath? Maybe he died of an old age heart attack brought on by our dash through the woods.

After two more quick shots I was completely blind again.

As I was hoping the hippo wasn’t getting up to come for me I heard Pierre laughing and a few seconds later thought I could see people floating off the ground. Soon my vision cleared a bit again and I realized all the trackers, driver and game scout were on top the hippo arm in arm Greek fashion and dancing their merry souls out.

Even after I am forced to take up knitting I will continue to be amazed what we hunters do for fun.

One afternoon,many years ago,my dad and Neal, a friend,and I were walking home after an afternoon of dove shooting. My dad was lamenting the fact that he had shot poorly and asked what he was doing wrong.I replied he was probably not leading far enough as no one ever shoots in front of a dove. At just that moment I noticed one of those late evening high flyers coming straight for us. Very high and very fast. I said"it's easy Dad" and covered the incoming bird with with the muzzle of my shotgun and touched the trigger.It was as if the dove had hit a stone wall. It stopped in midair,in a puff of feathers, and dropped straight to the ground where it hit with a thud and bounced about two feet and back to earth.I acted as tho I made thos type shots routinly. I was actually a little surprised. Dad didn't say a word, just looked at Neal who said"why did you shoot it?The fall would have killed it."
So much for my shooting exibition.

Sam
Formerly registered as Bravo Five One.

Here's the story of my wife and daughter's fire pig hunt together.
We had just bought our Rockspring property and the pig (thieves) were really going at the corn on the feeder. I had just rebuilt a tree stand/"fort".
They were up there for a few hours, when just about the time the trail camera had shown the last pigs leaving every evening my wife said a quick prayer out of now where came a coal black boar. My wife DRT'ed him w/ a head shot. This was her first time to shoot this rifle and the first game she had ever shot, except for doves a few years earlier.

Had some of that pig last night. YUM!

Hallo Saeed here a littel story from my last trip to Rsa .As this was my first bowhunting trip to South Africa i newer had sitted in a bow blind before.The day came and we hunted from the morning and about 10 min before we were going back for lunch i heard a strange sound outside the blind and what did i see a BIG BLACK MAMBA on its way inn into the blind luckely i had my backupp rifle with me and i shot the snake in the head fron max 1-2 meters i dont wanna think or guess what whould have happend if it came inn to the blind as we where 2 big boys in there and the door was rather small

Ok, Saeed, here goes..
Last year while hunting for moose in the deep forrests of Norway we were just getting ready to start a drive. All the guys in the "team" had managed to position themselfes were they ought to be, and the dogman was ready to release the dog.
I had just positioned myself in a good area with a combination of woods and wetlands. This was supposed to be a good place were the moose often came strolling. I had good hopes of bagging a nice animal. After one minute I felt it. I really needed to take a shit. "I can't I thought to myself. Keep it in you lousy hunter." But there was no way I could do that for the three hour hunt.
I moved back 100 yards as carefully as I could, and started "working". At the most cruical point I heard some twigs breaking and the unmistakble sound of an animal running away. At one monent I could also see a flash of fur through the dense foliage. One minute later a shot was heard from my "neighbour".
Then on the radio I heard.
"Anders, I've shot a quite nice bull here. It came running from your side. I'm a lucky guy!".

Yes, you are I thought to myself!

"I'm Not Dying With A Full Magazine!"

Earlier this year I went on a hunt in the Caprivi Strip in Namibia and at some point during our travels around the concession we ran across a village that had a resident hippo herd that was feeding on land during daylight hours. Well, having always wanted to hunt Hippo this way, I naturally thought this was the perfect opportunity and my PH and I made plans to make it happen. The fact that the villagers were desperate for meat and practically begged us to conduct this hunt made it all the more pressing.

After some interrogating of the local fisherman and some on site scouting and observation, we quickly determined that yes, these Hippo were feeding on land during the day, but to get to them would require crossing a lagoon of about a half mile. This of course had to be done via native Mukuru, what we would locally call a dugout canoe, so one of the village elders appropriated a fisherman to ferry us to the other side. Now I had never had the pleasure of a Mukuru ride before and anyone who hasn’t will find it hard to imagine just how unstable these things feel, especially when you are running about three inches of freeboard to the waterline. I got the distinct impression that if a Dragonfly had landed on my shoulder it would have capsized the thing. And the sight of resident crocodiles didn’t help either. Anyway, without getting too specific about the hunt, we crossed this lagoon and tried unsuccessfully for three days to get in a position to get a shot. No luck! We even got into good position one day, but the herd bull was lying down in the middle of a group of cows and the shot couldn’t be taken. Since I had buffalo to hunt yet, we determined that our final attempt would be made the following morning, but that we would leave shore earlier, just at light, and try to get into position before we could be seen.

First let me give you a little background on my PH. This was a part-time gig for him, his normal job was as a wildlife officer in Bushmanland and man did he ever have a history of dealing with problem Elephants, Crocs, Lions, etc, as well as many skirmishes with armed poachers. He had the scars to show a fight that he had with a Leopard when he was twelve and has had a short lifetime of very dangerous situations including stopping many Elephant charges. He has even had his fishing boat sunk by an enraged Hippo and has had an Elephant run it’s tusks into his truck and push it 100 meters down the road. The point to all this is that he wasn’t the type to be easily rattled, so you knew when he got serious about a situation, you had better as well.

Well, on that final days hunt we left just as it was getting light enough to see and we proceeded across that lagoon on our usual route. I was almost starting to relax in this boat by now, and when I say almost, I mean that I didn’t have a constant death grip on the sides the whole time. About an 1/8 of a mile out, the native poler made some excited comment and as we looked forward we saw the head of a large Hippo bull rise to the surface about twenty feet in front of us and look in our direction menacingly as we continued to drift in his direction. Now I’m no experienced African hunter for sure, but I knew enough to know that we were in some real potential trouble here. We were definitely inside this Hippo’s comfort “zone” and as he dropped below the surface again we waited for what I thought was the inevitable explosion under this glorified plank that we were sitting on. That’s when I heard my PH speak the words that will forever ring in my ears as long as I live. As he slowly raised his rifle, he calmly uttered the words “I’m not dying with a full magazine!”. Well you can bet that that got my full attention in a way that nothing else could. We waited and hardly spent a breath as we drifted past the hippo’s last know position until finally we felt that we had avoided an imminent attack and continued on our way, none the worse for wear, at least physically. We never saw that hippo resurface again and I spent the rest of that ride (and the one back) gripping the stock of my .375 H&H a little tighter than usual.

We never did end up getting that Hippo, but the memory of those immortal words will be a trophy that I’ll never forget. I guarantee it!

Now for something completely different !
Bowfishing for BIG Alligator Gar


A few years back I talked a friend of mine to go down to the Mexican boarder in search of really big Alligator Gar.
Now when I say big ,im talking about the ones that are over 150 pounds, when gar get that big they really turn into a
Different animal, very tough.

My friend Todd had never hunted these brutes so on the first day we were just looking for something over 100#
And Todd arrowed a good fish around 120 , after a good fight a few mistakes he had his fish, but then for
The next 4 days the wind was terrible so no fish, the last day we are packed up ready to head home and the wind died,

Falcon lake is located on the border between Texas and Mexico and is almost never has the water level to where the lake
Was designed, the boat ramps are a hundred yards from the water, but this year the rains really had the lake up, and we were
Hunting in the trees, really hard on the boat but that’s were I thought the fish were, and we were right . My GPS was showing
Us half a mile out of the water on dry land.

The equipment I use to go after these fish Is a different setup than just going after carp. I have 4 bows ,the first 2 bows are setup
With special bowfishing reel , it holds about 30 yards of 400# braided line and then is attached to the arrow , the end of the line
is to a float, after the arrow hits the fish and takes off the line strips out of the reel and when the line gets to the end, the float pops
off and away you go, following the float, after the fish tires a bit, you get the line and slowly pull the fish to the surface to get another
arrow with a float into it and the chase is on again, then the other 2 bows come in. This setup has zebco type reels with 200# braided
line ,after the fish is pulled up this time and an arrow is stuck the fight is on, Anything over 150# I like to get 4 arrows in.

when I first spotted this big girl I thought it was a tree, but as it started moving away things changed quickly and the hunt was on!
My first arrow was a good hit and she stripped the line in seconds, it looked like a submarine going through the water and the trees
Were being knocked around left and right, after getting back on her we got the second arrow in her, same as above, so far so good
And I got the 3rd one on and could hardly hold on to the bow, felt like fighting a marlin ,,in the trees,, then the line broke.

Im running my boat all over the place ,over trees and stumps things are flying all over the place but no luck, after a lot of looking
Without finding anything but one of the floats ( not attached to the fish ) I had to accept the fact the fish was gone, along with $50
Of my equipment.

I am so pissed, my hands are shaking, Todd is trying to calm me down, but im not having it, I don’t accept loosing very good.
After about an hour goes by and the bows are all set up again and Todd ,in a no big deal altitude says “ look at that tree over their”
I look up and this tree is kind of twitching , I go nuts, “ That’s Her !” as we are getting the boat over to her, the small tree she is hung
Up on starts pulling out of the ground just as we are getting their , its more than I can stand, I tell Todd to take the boat , and I jump in
And get a hold of the small tree, and start pulling with just enough pressure as not to break the line again, when Todd gets their with the boat
I give him the tree with the line still attached and we start to make some ground on the fish, soon as we got a chance we stick another arrow
Into her , after a short fight we get one more in and we have her.

She turned out to be the lake record at the time . 208 pounds ,7’ 4” and 44” girth

We could not get her weighed that night because when we got in to town everyone had to see the fish, must have had 30 undercover
DEA and cops taking pics , turns out most of the fishermen we had been seeing around were undercover and watching for drugs
Coming across the boarder , made a lot of new friends and got the trophy fish I had dreamed about for so long, and yes its getting
Mounted , Much to the disappointment of my girlfriend !

hear a few pics of some 130# up to 208#

I've been thinking about hunting stories lately, particularly the prospect of making more of them. Some of my best ones usually involve adventures with my son, and we have had some wonderful times together throughout his life. He started out going with me as my "dog" on dove shoots when he was just a little guy, and our adventures have flourished through the years as he got his first deer, hunting ducks, quail, turkeys, and more deer at our farm, interspersed by some other hunts in crazy places along the way. I've seen him grow up into the fine young man that every dad dreams of, and he's scheduled to graduate from UGA in 2 months with a variety of accolades.
At the moment, however, he's next to me in a hospital bed as he tries to recover from a very tough break of his femur right near his pelvis. A rare snow storm came through Georgia about a week ago and an unforeseen sheet of ice caused a hard tumble that broke the largest bone in his body in a tough spot. He had surgery last Wednesday morning and we hope the titanium rod and pins will let him heal soon.
Today he was able to ease out of bed and struggled to climb three steps put before him by a therapist. I got emotional as he made it to the top, just as I did as he has reached any number of goals in school or while enjoying God's beautiful creation.
He's going to be fine in a few months, he just has to be careful and deal with some challenges for a while. We measure a success in lots of ways; today I'm looking forward to measuring one by when my best hunting buddy is again by my side.

Spring,
Best wishes for your sons early and complete recovery. Im sure youth is on his side and he will be able to do everything with you that you are looking forward to.

These things tend to remind us of lifes priorities.

I am recovering from a hip replacement now and the only advice I keep getting and will pass on - is to do the exercises.

Thanks, Allen, and I"m confident he'll be fine in a couple of months. He's the only young person up here on the orthopedics floor with all the others going through procedures like yours. Good luck with your recovery and I hope you're tromping around with your double soon.

My oldest daughter Rachel has become a proficient shooter with her Daisy Red rider BB gun. She is also quite fond of the 22 Hornet and frequently joins me on deer hunts observing the wildlife and learning the basics of hunting.

Last year I asked Rachel if she would like to try Turkey hunting. Her response was “Daddy, I don’t have a gun”. When I told her that my intention was to purchase one for her she immediately said yes and became excited about the challenge.

I found a 20 gauge youth shotgun and fitted it with a red dot optical sight. I was concerned that the recoil would be a bit much for Rachel so our practice routine consisted of numerous dry fire sessions in the yard aiming at a turkey decoy. I instructed her to place the red dot on the birds head and squeeze the trigger. She found this process to be very simple and expected the turkey hunting to be relatively easy.

Opening morning of Youth turkey season came and Rachel and I found ourselves sitting in my favorite spot on the edge of a cut bean field. I was sitting under a cedar tree with Rachel on my lap, her holding the gun with the barrel resting on some custom made shooting sticks. I placed several decoys out in the field at about 30 paces. It was a great morning with little wind and the temps were in the 50’s.

As the light began to increase the roosted turkeys began to respond to my subtle calling. It was obvious that we were surrounded by gobblers even though we could not see them yet. Rachel began laughing at all the noise and struggled to keep her composure. As much as I wanted to be angry, I simply couldn’t help but listen to her giggle and enjoy her laughter….after all this was her hunt!

After about 10 minutes of this grand show the sun began to crest the horizon and five long beards left their roost and floated to the field slightly to our left. Rachel saw them and immediately put her head on the stock peering through the illuminated sight waiting for the largest tom to walk up to the decoy. I placed my slate call on the ground and grasped the butt stock of Rachel’s gun placing it against my shoulder. Since the stock was still a bit long for Rachel this method worked great during our practice sessions. I also knew that this method would place all the recoil on my shoulder, and not cause her any discomfort.

Seconds passed, although it seemed like hours to me, and soon the lead gobbler was directly in front of our position. I was shaking as if hypothermia had taken control of my body. My fear was that the tom would see us sitting so close by and the hunt would be over. I desperately wanted this hunt to be a success. Rachel on the other hand was motionless and quiet. I had told her how important it was to sit still and she was keeping up her end of the bargain.

I whispered to Rachel to push the guns safety into the fire position which she did without moving anything but her index finger.

With the bird positioned directly in front of us in full strut I asked Rachel if the red dot was on his head.

She whispered a firm “NO”.

I told her to put the dot on his head and pull the trigger.

She said “OK” and I waited still shaking in excitement.

A few seconds went buy with no shot so I asked Rachel a second time to place the dot on the Tom’s head and squeeze the trigger.

She again said “OK”.

More time passed with no shot and now the proud gobbler was starting to look in our direction questioning what these large camo blobs were resting under the cedar tree. He began looking directly at us, his neck stretched out and his eyes glossed over with fear. He knew what was up and would soon head for the brush. I was now experiencing complete convulsions and had lost all control of bodily functions. Dad was a mess and the 8 year old novice hunter was still totally motionless and positioned rock sold peering down the barrel of her shotgun.

“Rachel do you see the Turkey” I asked in a frustrated voice.

“Yes Dad, he is right in front of us” she whispered back.

“Then place the dot on his head and pull the trigger” I replied.

“I can’t dad” said the huntress.

“Why not” was my response fearing something was catastrophically wrong?

“Because you won’t let go of my gun”

In all my excitement I failed to realize that I was grasping the stock of the shotgun so firmly that my precious little hunting partner was not able to align the sights. I released the butt of the shotgun and almost instantaneously a large bang broke the morning silence.
At the shot the gobbler went down and began doing the bean field break dance. Rachel jumped up, handed me the shotgun and ran out to collect her trophy leaving me under the tree. I was still unable to take a breath. Upon reaching the now motionless bird Rachel turned around and displayed a smile that would melt any father’s heart.

“See Dad” she yelled, “I told you turkey hunting was easy”