I wonder if any of you have the same feelings. After my first trip this last summer (Namibia p-game) I just can't seem to get excited about hunting back home. I used to bowhunt deer 20-30 times per year here in New York, but this time I went twice, killed a doe, and never went back. This happen to any of you? By the way, all I can think of is going back!

The quality and excitement of African hunting is on such a higher level for me than North American hunting that I make African hunting a much higher priority. At this point I would not consider a $12K trophy elk hunt in the U.S., but I would be delighted with a $12K non-trophy elephant hunt.

quote:

Originally posted by 500grains:
The quality and excitement of African hunting is on such a higher level for me than North American hunting that I make African hunting a much higher priority. At this point I would not consider a $12K trophy elk hunt in the U.S., but I would be delighted with a $12K non-trophy elephant hunt.

my sentiments exactly

I think I'm in the same boat. My first trip was in 2004 and I've thought about it on a daily basis ever since. I haven't been able to soak up enough information about Africa yet to wet my appetite. Although I still enjoy hunting whitetails, pheasant, quail, etc here in the U.S., I think it is just something to keep me 'occupied' until I can get back to Africa.

I still love to hunt ... anywhere. Maybe it has diminished it a bit, but I look forward to deer season in TX every year.

I can't get too geeked up about Turkey or Dove, but I guess I never did to start with.

Africa, once there, never happy until you return. I can't say I have the same feeling you do, but I will say that I have been blessed with many return trips. I have never been able to afford the truly high end stuff, but what I have done has left me with a strong desire to return.

That said, I have hunted Australia and New Zealand and my experiences there left me with much the same feeling. Strange as it may seem, one Australian hunt in the Cape York area, with some good mates who live down under, for nothing more than feral hogs was one of the best hunts I have had. It was constant action, dawn to dusk, in as remote an area as I have ever been in and the hogs were everywhere.

Those of us who live in places like Arizona have another problem. Everything is on a draw, and it is tough to get tags, so we start looking outside. Texas has been fun, but not truly hunting. My next plan is Argentina, with Juan Pozzi, "one of us."

I first hunted Africa in 1980 and just had to keep going back again and again and eventually had to make it my home..... during those early years I lost interest in UK hunting and shooting - but maybe it's just because it's in the backyard...... I still love Africa and it's hunting and even though I live here I still get seriously frustrated when I get stuck in the office for too long, which happens more and more...... BUT, I'd still love to hunt Oz for those big water buffalo etc and I'd also love to hunt me a big bear somewhere........

Probably because I need to travel to hunt just about anything, after 2 trips to Africa I still look forward to everyone of my hunting trips here. Now I am constantly planning & saving for the next trip back to Africa. Hunting there is just hard to describe to folks who have never gone. So many diff. kinds of country & animals to hunt. If it weren't for the long plane flight/cost i would probably go every year.

I really never got hooked on Africa!

Been there 2002, 2003, 2003(2nd), 2004, 2004 (2nd), 2005, and have two hunts hopefully this year, but never felt that I really had to go (thinks about Africa less than 16 hours a day)...

African hunting compared to NA hunting is like comparing baseball to football. One isn't better than the other but just quite different. In my case I'm just more apt spend my money in Africa than anywhere else if I have to choose one hunting destination over another.

As for Africa taking the enthusiasm out of NA hunting for me I didn't experience that at all. I have become more selective about what I hunt and am less interested in body count of any one species than I was before safari but I don't know if my safari experience really initiated that.

Mark

Hello

I have enjoyed my hunts in Africa very much. But when I dream of a hunt it is usually some where in high mountain country after the Sheep and Goats of the world. The animal may not be dangerous but the terrain is sometimes more dangerous and gives you a bigger adrenalin rush than some of the DG of Africa.

The sense of achievement in my opinion is also greater, if I can’t climb 3-4 thousand feet daily at altitudes of over 12000 feet, I could have all the money in the world but I will still not be able to hunt a Himalayan blue sheep.

Hunting is so individual that what excites me may mean nothing to another hunter, and that is fine, we hunt for ourselves not others.

Regards
Aziz

Ha!

Whether you are pimping NA hunts or not, there is no, absolutely no, comparison to Africa hunting.

I'd rather shoot a helmet horned buff than every elk, deer, bear, or sheep that ever walked the earth!

Yea, Africa is different!

I had been hunting for thirty years, since I was a little kid, before I made my first trip to Africa, and I have been obssessed with it ever since. (Well, that's what my wife says.)

But I can't say my love for the hunting I do here in the US, especially the whitetail and turkey hunting I do near home, is any less attractive than it was before. However, it is different. Here I don't hunt with a guide, I hunt at a different time of year, I hunt mostly with a bow, I can take my kids with me (I may never be able to afford taking them with me to Africa), and everything I shoot here goes in the freezer for us to live off the rest of the year. When I hunt here in the US I'm hunting with family, usually in places where I've spent hundreds of hours hunting, fishing, hanging stands, picking asparagus, berries or hickory nuts. Over by that tree is where I shot my first turkey, there's where I was with my nephew when he shot his first squirrel. Here's the spot where I jumped a flock of mallards and dropped three with one shot (honest!)

I guess what I'm saying is that I love them both--indeed, I maybe spend too much of my family's income and time hunting, reading about hunting and planning hunting--but I love them in different ways.

I basically stopped hunting in France after my first African safari.

I surely understand your feelings, but hunting here at home remains a passion of mine. I guess it's like having two children; you simply love them both.

Hunting here just isn't the same....not at all.....but it's still good.

Africa does indeed spoil one!!!!

Spring, you are a poet. And, I agree.

quote:

Originally posted by Wolfgar:
I wonder if any of you have the same feelings. After my first trip this last summer (Namibia p-game) I just can't seem to get excited about hunting back home. I used to bowhunt deer 20-30 times per year here in New York, but this time I went twice, killed a doe, and never went back. This happen to any of you? By the way, all I can think of is going back!

Nostalgica Africana - virus

- symptoms: day dreaming, seeing and hearing things, colour blindness (green becomes khaki), awakeing in the midle of the night speaking strange words like: tembo, nyati, simba..., patients can be mainly found with incomprehensible caliber guns in posesion

- precaution measures: stay away from Africa

- course of treatment: virus is life long lasting and it is causing strong addiction, recovery is impossible, however once ilness has prevailed its effects can be soften - it is strongly recommended to one affected to pay a regular visits to a specialist doctor they call PH (they are mainly based in Africa) and had some long walks with him in the African bush, wearing a gun and shooting some game helps

wolfgar:

I am with you! I was 63 before I went to Africa for Cape buff. That was in 1993 and ever after I felt like I had played in the World Series - so what else was left? (I used to hunt in Ontario for black bear for years before I went to Africa and for several seasons afterwards I passed up shots. A black bear simply wasn't what a buff looked liked at close quarters.

Put me in the "africa-cultist" crowd. That's all I consider doing nowadays.

Might have to do a kodiak bear hunt one of these days, but at 15k for ONE animal, I'm just not seeing it. Same goes for trophy elk and whitetail. Those people are on drugs! jorge

I had become largely uninterested in NA big game when I discovered waterfowling in 1995. Somehow Texas style "deer sniping" just wasn't as interesting or exciting to me anymore.

I still love waterfowl hunting, it's now competing with my love for African hunting though. Which one is wife, which one mistress not really sure.

Wolfgar:

I forgot to respond to your last part of your message about going back to Africa.

I had lived in Cuba and in Panama before I ever saw Africa. (Cuba is pleasant tropics. Panama {except for Chiriqui Province} can be very unpleasant tropics. Nonetheless, I learned a ditty in Panama:

" The spell of the tropics, it gets you worse than rum.

You get away and you swear you'll stay.

But she calls and back you come".

Sorry, my fellow New Yorker, you are under the spell of Africa. I wish I knew the cure but I don't. I'm still struck by Africa.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MARK H. YOUNG:
I have become more selective about what I hunt and am less interested in body count of any one species than I was before safari

Mark

I have only been on one plainsgame safari and upon returning have felt much like the above statement by Mark. I still love getting up early and hunting hard, but I have not found anything in NA as exciting as the time that I had in Africa.

Something tells me that I am in for another big change when I return from my first dangerous game safari.

Doug

A day following dogs as we look for Gentleman Bob, or a morning filled with whistling wings as ducks pour in over the treetops, or an afternoon with friends on an old peanut field as dove zoom by at 60 MPH, or watching an old buck step out in the clover during the afternoon's twilight, or the thrill of a gobbler shaking the woods as he enjoys his last minutes on the roost remain thrills that even Africa can't diminish. True, there's nothing like the magic of the dark continent, but sometimes we have it pretty good here at home, too.

This past Sept. three friends and I made the trip across the pond to "hunt" PG in Namibia. This was my first trip, and although I enjoyed myself, I felt cheated as I didn't experience the "Africa" of my dreams.

Honestly, the "hunting" was quite similar to what I could have done here in Texas. Safari was conducted on a large Ranch (40+ thousand acres) low fenced. Comfortable accomadations and great food.... but certainly not wild and raw as I imagined....

As far as the "hunting" is concerned.... I felt more like a shooter. Pretty much the PH and trackers do all the "hunting". They just point them out and say, "Shoot that one". I'd like to be a little more involved....

My next trip to Africa will be different.... remote, wild, and raw. Traditional tented camp, etc. If I ever return to Namibia it will have to be to the Caprivi.

Hunting out West and up North provides me a sense of accomplishment that wasn't felt in Africa. The reason of course is because I'm much more involved and actually doing the hunting.

FOsteology,

That is not an uncommon experience. Get yourself to the Zambezi Valley and hunt some buffalo or head to the Selous.

Last season we were in the Zambezi Valley and then headed down to Lemco for a few days for plains game. Lemco is huge, but it is still ranch hunting. I have had enough of those plains game hunts to last me a life time. I would rather spend time in the Zambezi Valley and shoot one buffalo then hunt on a game ranch and shoot ten plains game.

Regards,

Terry

Have to say it has affected me to on hunting here. 1st trip was Buff and a nice leopard plus plains game. The country the scent the sunset has affected me greatly. I like many of you think about Africa everyday. Have anothe trip coming in July. I am lucky to have my own land to hunt on lots of Turkey and deer, but I do not have the excitement to hunt them, last season I went out with a gun twice, saw several Deer, did not raise my gun.
bobga

I have been twice in less than a year and while I deer hunted at least 40 days last year, it will never be the same. I will always enjoy hunting for whitetails but it is nothing like Africa.

Just don't forget where you came from 'cause it's the reason why you kicked ass when you got there. Keep huntin' & shootin' or your skills will rot.

I guess you could equate it with Smoking Crack. After one hit your hooked for life.

I love Africa and I love to hunt there, but I am a serious "full moon" night hunter for pigs.

I can spend hours and hours without a single noise or movement waiting for pigs in the crops and I enjoy the last minute the same as the first one.

L

Yeah, Africa has ruined it for me.... and I haven't even been there yet.

I'd rather hunt Tanzania than any place else on earth.

Regards,
Dave

I think Africa kinda ruins you. It did me. I doubt that hunting in the US will ever give me the same thrill that it used to. Heaven help me if I ever buy a double rifle. I won't be fit to live with

Hi, my name is Steve and I am a AfriHuntingholic. All I can do is talk about, dream about and plan for my next African hunt.

I do not see the attraction to hunting in the states much anymore. I still enjoy hog hunting and I will hunt elk this year, but that is it. When I think of the time and effort and expense to go to Colorado for elk, I have a hard time not just going to Africa.

I need to join AA ( AfriHuntingholic Anon)--perhaps we can form a group here in So. California, so we can help each other get through the days until our next safari.

Regards, PG

I must really be ruined....about the only reason I hunt here in AK anymore is for meat. Another trip to Namibia is in the works though.

Guess I am an odd one out, I find the "Top End" of Australia quite a satisfying subsitute.


.

Thinking about my June buffalo hunt in Zimbabwe; I find myself breathing shallower. I guess I'll know why when I get back.

Hunting kudu was a little of a letdown in 2002. I could just as easily been in Central Texas judging by the surroundings. (The kudu itself was not a letdown.)

The Kalahari was a disappointment. The desert around El Paso is more desolate.

quote:

Originally posted by NitroX:
Guess I am an odd one out, I find the "Top End" of Australia quite a satisfying subsitute.


.

No, not the odd one out, sometimes I think it is almost a tossup as to what is more fun, hunting "down under" or hunting Africa. After several Australian hunts, it's hard to choose. Short of buffalo, Australia is a little short on the "dangerous game", but it is a beautiful country, the people are the friendliest in the world, most of them at least, and they really have a lot of great animals to hunt. I can't wait to go back!

PG can I join?

Dozens of hippo fighting, farting and fornicating in the river before me... hyena whooping, lions roaring... a damn bush baby screeching above... a bushbuck poking his head periodically from the reeds, frightful of the leopard that left tracks last night on the sandbar nearby... and I'm 8500 miles away from my office and I can't do one damn thing about what's going on at home... A great single malt, a Partagas #10 in hand and some some eland meat in my belly... That's peace!




I still really enjoy hunting in the U.S. and Canada (and have been lucky to have shared some of that with Spring above), but the picture explains the allure of Africa (and particularly the Selous) much better than any words that can come from me.