I always keep a journal on safari. If I could only write like Judge G or CB (or Ruark) I might even write a book. When everyone else is taking a siesta after lunch I like to write down what I hear and see and what has transpired so far.
The reason I bring this up is that I am finally getting around to transcribing my notes from our 2007 safari and am amazed at how much of the whole experience I had forgotten. You of course remember the trophy shots and seeing the mounts hanging on the wall brings back those memories but how about the blown stalks on wildebeest or the time you cut up a downed ebony tree for firewood, the hyena circling your tent in the night.
Keeping a journal of your hunts seems like a bother sometimes until you get to relive the experience years later. If you don't, you may never know what you are missing.

My hand writing sucks!! I took a dictaphone and dictated what I would have written in a journal. I later wrote short stories about the experience.

My hunt in South Africa in 2010 was the first time I have used a journal. I am really glad I did this as every time I look at it the memories just come alive. I will definitely be doing it again on my Safari this August.

I keep a journal of all my safari hunts, sitting around on a rainy day when there is nothing to do I will pick up a journal and re-read it. I also forget many of the small things,, like what we had for lunch in the bush and how great it was,, the large number of francolin we walked up and how they scared the poop out of us,, etc. I had never kept a journal of any of my hunts before my first safari and a friend who hunts in Africa yearly convinced me to do so,, i am so glad I did. It is like a quick trip back to the bush and a break from everday life

I began keeping a journal of all of my outdoor outings (hunting and fishing) about 20 years ago. The notes I make about local outings are generally fairly brief: what the weather was like, what I saw, shot, caught and on what. I also like to record unusual things, like the time a couple weeks ago I saw a snowy owl on my way home from work.
I also have done a lot of travelling, and living abroad, mostly when I was much younger. I usually sat down every couple days at that time and recorded my experiences. That made keeping an occasional journal a lot easier than if I had never done it before.
My African hunting journals have been a lot more detailed. I, too, have found siesta time after lunch, when available, to be a great time to write. I have also spent a lot of time on the plane ride home wrting about more general topics, such as how people live and dress, what the hunting areas and cities are like, etc.
Journalling can seem like a hassle at the time but it really is worthwhile. Just imagine your great grandkids coming across those journals some day when they are cleaning out the attic. What a way for them to get to know someone they never had a chance to meet!

I made outline type notes, but about 3 yrs ago I started taking a lap top and each evening using the video feature I record my days. It is rough footage and not always the best quality but is easier than writting notes.

Sadie keeps a journal of our travels. She often can pass on the midday safari siesta but I can't. She writes during this time. As Blacktailer said details get lost and it is nice to be able to look back at her journal to find a trackers name or whatever detail might be a litte foggy.

Mark

Just thinking about this thread a bit... and perhaps I ought to go on a safari as an observer and write about it. Heck, but for my shelling out an observer rate and an airfare, I'd get to enjoy everything but pulling the trigger.

Might be fun and hopefully I'd write something (and take some pictures) worth the client's putting up with me.

I took a steno pad with me and kept a fairly detailed diary of events. Its only been a few months but just reading it the other day brought back some small details that I had already forgotten. As an aside, it will be a great thing for my granddkids to read someday as they sit and admire grandpas well worn but mechanically perfect Sabatti elephant rifle!

I invested in a nice leather bound journal and never regretted it. I carry it in a heavy duty ziplock. In addition to noting observations and experiences it is the repository of names, phone numbers, etc.

Like JCS I take a steno pad with me in my backpack, every stop for rest, lunch, before and after dinner I write in it. On my Namibian 10 day trip I had 98 pages of notes.

I have been keeping notes on my hunts right from the first one in 1982.

Another easy way of remembering what went on is carrying a small pocket camera, and take pictures of everything you notice.

It isd amazing what one remembers when one sees a photo of a particular occasion.

I wished now that I had written more, much more.
More photos too.

I journal at night but I like to do short videos too. I sit down a few times per day and turn the video camera on, do a short clip on what I've observed, how things have gone, what went right and what went wrong.

You'd be amazed how these short clips with video of the area you're hunting will bring back the memories. It's different than trying to get "the kill" on camera it's more about the actual hunt and it's the little things that really make for good memories.

I made short notes daily and took a lot of photos (I love digital cameras, I took two of them). I then started blogging about my trip as soon as I returned. I love to go back and review my stuff, brings back the magic of the first exposure to Africa and my life's dream of hunting there.

I have kept pretty good journals of my hunts and as others have said, it amazes me what I have forgotten when I get out the journal and read the stories of hunts I did just a few years ago.

It is getting so much easier to get something published now than it used to be.I know you can have picture books done on Snapfish for a little bit more than nothing.Can someone give me an idea who I might get to publish my journal, with photos, at a reasonable price.I would like to make a copy for myself,my grandsons, and maybe a few for any friends that might want to read of my adventures.

For years I did a detailed story of each of my safaris, with pictures, and in nice binders, until about 2007, and then I ran out of steam. I still take pictures and that now suffices for me.

On my first trip across I decided to log my adventure to preserve the memory, not knowing if I would get the chance to return. I wrote down copious notes and send emails to the wife daily of the experience before me. When I returned home I took my notes and wrote five articles detailing each two days on safari. My 10 day SA safari in 2004 is now recorded in print anytime I decide to relive the experience. I highly recommend it. My wife and I returned in 2006 to Tanzania but did not cronicle the events in detail as we should have. I will detail those adventures someday but will have lost much to time and memory. We are returning this June for a 30 hunt to SA and Zim. I plan to keep daily voice notes on the I phone this trip to be sure of not loosing the detail. A hunt report here will be in the works when we return in July.

I have kept a journal on a couple of trips. The entries before the hunt and on the plane are pretty detailed and long winded. As the safari gets going the pages turn into "walked a lot, shot a warthog, went to bed..etc"

Hard to keep up with it when you are trying to enjoy every moment. It is a very good way to keep track of details that you may forget if you can make the time though.

One thing that has been helpful is to record all expenses in the back pages of the journal, then you can really get a feel for all the costs involved...trophy fees, transfers, permits, ammo taxes, insurance, tips, extra lodging, food, dip and pack, shipping, etc.. It will not only help you budget for the next one but it will shock anyone reading it after you are dead.

A few short video clips are great, even if only around camp. You will capture little bird calls, tracker "Eeehhs and Ahhhhhs" and other things you will enjoy hearing later.

The dictaphone that Frostbit used sounds like a very good idea to me. I can't count the number of times I've fallen asleep in bed on safari while trying to write the day's events in my journal. The days on safari seem to be filled with too much activity to get out my journal and write, and when I retire to my room at the end of each day I'm almost too tired to write! Yup, I'm going to look into getting a dictaphone or some type of voice recorder.

Only down side is you have to listen to your own voice when you play it back to type up the "stories/journal".

I think everyone should keep some kind of journal while on safari. I use a digital voice recorder because it is easier for me and you can record the sounds of Africa. They are inexpensive and don't take up much space.

I take a few notes every night. When I get home, I expand it into a narrative, including some of my pictures. My 21 day hunt in Zim turned into an 80-page book.

Not sure if this works for everyone but if I use a tape recorder to chronicle stuff for my own use to write down later, I almost never transcribe word for word. I will only do word for word when I need to ensure the accuracy of a quote, say for an article or book or whatever.

What I do is to go for a long walk and listen to the recordings and get my brain full of the information and start writing in my head and edit what I want to save and what I want to delete, then when I get home its just a matter of putting it on paper. I have found that trying to transcribe AND write is fruitless for me since I would constantly fight the words on tape and it is a much clunkier process.

Not sure if that'll help anyone but that's what helps me.

My favorite description of SAFARI!

A little story by Gene Hill on remembering Africa (I have posted this before, but I enjoy reading it over and over)-

Unpacking Some Memories of Africa
By Gene Hill

Just about this time of year, a few years back, I was happily packing for Africa. After I got home I never really unpacked. I played at staying ready to return at a moment’s notice. I kept a few things in my little tin trunk and a lot of things in my heart. But now that my part of Africa is closed t hunting, I guess I might as well shake out most of the things I put away.

I wish I could tell you about the dawns and sunsets, but I can’t. I could attempt to describe the colors of the sky, the ways the light shifted from dark olive to orange to yellow to blue-white, and the way the air went from bone cold to suffocatingly hot, but I can’t really do them justice. I can close my and see the colors change, but I lose the intensity when I open them.

What I would like you to hear most are the sound of mourning—a pair of shrikes, a male and a female, calling so melodiously to each other that you cry from the beauty of it. The baboons setting up an early leopard watch with their angry, vicious backing. And until the morning heat sends everything into a modest quiet, the rising susurrus of sounds: an animal newspaper with everybody reading items aloud to everyone else.

And the n evening comes on and the sun hangs there just the way Cezanne would want it to, framing a perfect acacia tree so long you’d think it was stuck. Then suddenly it’s dark and the night orchestra tunes up: one animal small-talking to others of its kind; another just bragging and shouting; others still going about their nightly business of getting supper and rounding up the kids.

But, as I said, I can’t do it justice and I won’t try. I can’t even get across to you one of the things that I still dream about. It’s a simple thing to say but something else to feel all around you. It’s space, or distance, or horizons, and it’s really no one of these things—it’s all of them; it’s Africa.

Perhaps more than anything I liked riding up in the back of the hunting truck with the trackers, trying each other’s tobacco and snuff. You’d look out in front as the truck topped a hill, and there was Africa everywhere—and you’d smile because that was just what it ought to be. You’d runt around and there it was, even more of it, all spread out behind you. And no one was there, except for a few Masai or Wakambas who you didn’t see unless you went looking, or got on one of the real roads—the kind that didn’t have trees and brush growing up in the middle.

Off in the distance you’d almost always see something: a band of ostriches, giraffes, oryx, zebras, gazelles, or—where we were—rhinos. It was an experience just being there, being part of Africa, part of something so right, so big, so exactly what could never get enough of that I didn’t want the truck to ever stop. In my mind we just keep driving on and around forever… Katheka and Josie and me, poking each other in the ribs whenever we see something, or chucking a little snuff under our lip to make spit. Together we form a kind of Africa Flying Dutchman.

I can’t really explain how this vastness drew something out of me, rid me of some emotional paralysis and made me feel as free and as natural a part of that landscape as the Masai or the oryx or the impala. But I have never been happier.

Another of the memories I didn’t want to unpack was of lunch time: cold meat from yesterday’s supper, maybe a kidney or a Tommy liver, along with a chop or two, some sardines, a fresh-baked bread, and a semi-warm bottle of Tusker beer. I’d lie on my back and watch the clouds play through the leaves of fever trees, or the giant figs. I’d watch the weaver birds in their sort of upside down nests, or the blue rollers doing their aerial chandelles. Then I’d sleep in the heat until Josie work me up for a cup of tea, and we’d be off again, sailing over the sea of Africa.

In the evening, or more often well after dark, we’d spot our campfires and begin wondering what we’d have for supper, what the others had seen or shot, and whether to have a scotch or a gin. At camp a huge fire would be warming our canvas chairs. We’d have a quick drink and chat about the shooting, and then a hot bucket shower, clean clothes, a down jacket, and on or two more drinks before dinner.

It was always early to bed, snuggled under three or four blankets, wish-dreaming like a child for tomorrow’s lesser kudu or a better than 40-inch oryx. The now-familiar night sounds were a touch of home. It was always a great temptation, now and then indulged, to sit up and listen until the small hours and marvel that even the fire smelled like nothing else but Africa.

I would be up early with the ripping sound of my tent zipper being opened by one of the kitchen men bringing me my pot of tea. He’d light the gas lantern as he left so I could see to dress and shave. Then I’d have 15 minutes or so to lie in bed and drink my tea before getting up. No king ever enjoyed such luxury more!

Then breakfast: oatmeal, more tea, toast, and bacon. Afterwards I’d check the rifles and ammo and be off into the chill of a 6 o’clock African morning, my fluting shrikes going slightly off-key in the cold and dark. I would have given anything to be able to whistle just well enough to join them for a minute, but was never tempted enough to risk spoiling it.

A day’s note from the most inadequate diary typically reads: “Morning hunt was a five-hour walk. Perfect day to see top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Cannot believe I am camped virtually on a side of it. Never want to go home. Watched four kongoni who seem to be practicing sharp turns. Shepherd’s pie for supper. Up tomorrow at five as usual. A lovely day.”

My lovely days went into a notebook with a few words designed more to job the memory than to attempt to capture the uncapturable. There are little notes like, “Saw fourteen fine heads of different species today: rhino, elephant, eland, lesser kudu, etc., etc.” Already I’d gotten too blasé to finish the note. But now I remember some of the others: cheetah, a pride of five that we literally stepped on and flushed, like so many brown-spotted, golden, land-bound birds; a red-maned lion that was far too elegant to shoot—and too smart to come to our bait for a closer look: a leopard at mid-morning that sat a half-mile distant and coldly stared into my eyes until I flinched and looked away.

There are those who will go back without a rifle, but I am not one of them… no yet. I like to hunt. I like to stalk, the tracking mystery, the shot, and the skinning. I suppose I could go without shooting, but that’s a decision I can only make with the legal rifle in my hand. I want both the right to shoot and the privilege of not doing so. I could see Kenya again without my heavy rifles—but I couldn’t experience it.

What I ought to do is keep my tin trunk packed, after cleaning out the despair and the regret, with a fresh notebook and a new pen. Add a box or so of .375’s, my old walking shoes, some fresh chewing tobacco and snuff, and a few pictures to show Josie and Katheka when I get back.

An artist once said that his eyes were stuck to a point and would bleed if he turned away, Just so, my heart has been pierced by the turning of Africa, and bleeds for it.

For ten years now I've kept two journals, one for africa and one for NA, and I detail not only the hunts, but the booking details, shipping costs, taxidermy stuff, etc. Maybe one day someone will be interested in my silly antics... You guys are right, it preserves a ton of the otherwise forgotten stuff!