quote:

Originally posted by Kathi:
Rural Phillipstown man books safaris starting at $50,000
By BRADEN WILLIS Of The Times Staff
Published: Monday, December 10, 2007 4:31 PM CST


A rural Phillipstown man is booking safaris in Ethiopia but one better start saving now and be ready to wait for a while - he's booked through 2012, and the starting price for the big-game hunts begin at $50,000.

Rich Elliott grew up in Carmi and graduated from Carmi Township High School in 1963. He went to the University of Evansville (then Evansville College), where he earned his bachelor's degree in economics before returning to Grayville to help run the family business, O.H. & F., an oilfield trucking firm with offices in Illinois and Ohio.

Rich was a life-long hunter and had hunted all the game southern Illinois had to offer when he began venturing west to hunt larger game. He enjoyed the experience so much he decided to hunt even bigger game and started going on safaris in Africa, where he's bagged southern greater gemsbok, springbok, warthogs, red cape, hartebeests, Hartman's Mountain zebras and elephants.


Elliott is a published author, having had articles published in trade publications and magazines. He also recently edited the section on Ethiopian hunting in a "bible" of African hunting called "African Hunter II." The authors of the book are Peter Flack, a world-renowned big-game hunter from South Africa Elliott calls "a friend," and Craig Boddington, a retired Marine general and famous writer on the topics of firearms and hunting.

"A man named Melon wrote the first African Hunter in the 1970s," Elliott said. "It is the bible for any African hunter. But it had become a little outdated, so these guys decided to update it."

One of the articles he had published appeared in African Sporting Gazette and outlined what was almost Elliott's last hunting trip in the 1980s, when he was charged by an elephant. The incident led him to change the cartridge he used to hunt elephant, from a .458 Winchester magnum to the .458 Lott.



Elliott wrote in the Gazette, "In the winter of 1988, Nassos Roussos [his boss since 1985 in the business Ethiopian Rift Valley Safaris] invited me and my wife (Candi [Cantrell]) to spend a couple of months in Ethiopia.

"The first month was spent hunting elephant out of our Tepi area.... The Tepi hunting area was named after the town of Tepi and the Tepi coffee plantation. It was two days' drive southwest of the capitol city, Addis Ababa.

"Our camp was about 200 yards from the main road. Almost all of the hunting consisted of walking out of camp at daybreak, maybe to return that night but often staying on a promising track until nightfall and sleeping in one of several shelters constructed at various locations for that purpose. This was my second trip to hunt in the Tepi area. My first had ended badly with a poison palm spine embedded in my elbow. I'd spent eight days on my back with an IV full of antibiotic until well enough to travel back to the States....



"The elephant must have been 25 yards away and bearing down hard when we first heard him. It was 12 yards away when we could see to shoot. As we learned later, I put a .458 caliber 500-grain Hornady solid just inside of his right eye. Franco Morreschalchi [a fellow professional hunter] put a 300-grain solid from his .375 H&H in his chest and our game scout, Hussein Borezo, who had my .375 H&H, did likewise.

"As far as I could tell the elephant didn't even flinch but came right for me. I was younger and a bit more flexible then than now. There was a 12-inch tree three steps in front of me and a bit to the right. I rolled through some brush to the base of the tree while chambering another round. The elephant tusked the tree. Hussein later told me his trunk swept around the tree and just missed my head but I didn't see it.

"(The elephant) came around the side of the tree looking for me. I remember pulling my feet up under me in an almost fetal position while I saw those monstrous feet come down where my feet had been an instant ago.



"Now between his legs, I threw the .458 up and fired point blank into his chest. At that instant, Franco, bless his heart, came up from the right side and put one through (the elephant's) shoulder. Flinching from the impact of Franco's bullet, the bull teetered over to my left and crashed to the ground, my feet touching his.

"It took about 20 minutes before the shakes set in. I, too, became aware of a pain in my chest and at first worried about a heart flare-up. Then I realized that it was the bruise from the recoil pad of the .458 that had hammered me in the breastbone when I threw the rifle up and shot between the elephant's legs.

"Would a better hit with that 500 solid have stopped him? Maybe, but I will say that as soon as I was back in the States, I had the rifle chambered out to .458 Lott and soon had a client bring a reamer over to do the same to the company rifles.



"Turns out that this was one of the last elephant safaris taken in the Tepi area as Nassos had acquired Gura Farda, an area out of Mizan Tefari, just past the Bebeka Coffee Plantation, where we hunted until the revolution and consequent cessation of elephant hunting in 1992.

"A few years ago I visited Franco as his plastics plant in Addis Ababa. I had heard that he didn't have a picture of him with the elephant that day so I had an 8 X 10 made for him. He showed it to his son and in English, for my benefit, said, 'This is the elephant that tried to eat us.' I couldn't have said it better in any language."

Elliott said he got into business with Roussos, a Greek who was born and raised in Ethiopia, after his wife made a comment in jest. He said he and his wife were on a safari as clients of Roussos when he made a comment over supper that clients were showing up without the proper paperwork and other problems. His wife made the half-joking comment that he should hire her husband "because he's used to working with logistics." Elliott said everyone laughed at the time, but after he was back home for a couple of weeks Roussos called and offered him a job.



Elliott has worked for him since, running a sort of safari booking agency out of the rural Phillipstown house he shares with wife, Candi. Son Graden, 40, is a technician in Montgomery Village, Md., and son Austin, 38, is a U.S. Army major stationed in Anchorage, Alaska.

He has a second-story office overlooking a lake on family property. It's not as secluded as Africa, but it's pretty far off the road for southern Illinois. The office is adorned in numerous hunting trophies and other safari-related displays.

But if one is interested in taking a safari to the Ethiopian Rift Valley, they better make their reservation now. Elliott reports business is burgeoning and he is booked through 2012.



Prices start at $50,000. Elliott can be contacted at 966-3563 or by e-mail at ervs@shawneelink.net.

Elliott is retired from the trucking business, having sold out many years ago. He is now in his early 60s and obviously doesn't need to work anymore, though he says he has no immediate plans to retire.

"Nassos will be 70 in 2013," Elliott said of his boss and the next available year for safaris to be booked through the company. "I'll be 67 then. [He smiled.] We'll probably decide then."