with terry question about AR and africa. For all those who went to africa before AR, what made you want to go. For me I had hunted extensively in north america and guys around me would be talking about africa. Then I saw a lifesize mounted nyala and just had to go see what africa was about and get one of those beautiful animals.

I started planning for an Elk hunt and got sick of all the hoops you have to jump through. Dealing with the western states and draws and preference points. Then dealing with the outfitters was not any better. Then someone told me why don't I just go to Africa. No problems or tags or draws. Just show up and shoot plains game. Thats what I did.

work took me there the first two times and the hunting was a benifit of going.
like 300mag stated, I was getting tired of preference points,applying in 4 different states to hunt elk/mule deer and paying premo Nonresident tag fees for a 30% chance at a 300" or better bull. Not to mention sleeping in a wet tent, eating near garbage for meals and dealing with NA outfitters.

i wanted to go from the time i was a child watching wild kingdom and tarzan movies. it just got worse from then on.

As a small boy, I always loved the outdoors and hunting. Lost my Dad when I was 10 so hunting was pretty much on my own. Read many magazines, (we didn't have video back then) and dreamed of all different animals I wanted to hunt. The 3 things I wanted to do most of all were, 1-hunt caribou, 2- Hunt a Grizzly, and 3- Go to Africa, just wanted to see it once in my life!(I think I should have done the Grizzly thing first!)

I've taken 15 caribou, been on 6 safaris, but haven't done the Grizzly yet.

My reasons are similar to both degoins and Widowmaker416. I grew up in the 60s watching Outdoor Life TV, reading magzines etc. Always wanted to hunt Caribou and go to africa. My father and I made a caribou trip in 1994 and we each got two nice bulls with our bows. He was 68 at the time. Unfortunately he will not make it Africa with me in 07. So I am taking my wife and two teenage boys with me to share my dream. Fred Bear was one my heros as a kid and I remember watching films of him in Africa.

We will be going for the first time in 07. I am already counting the days etc.

crl

I have Elk hunted New Mexico once and Colorado yearly since 1992, Alaska several times, Alberta once, and enjoyed all of them much. I always wanted to take a Cape Buffalo and experience again the "dangerous rush" the Brown Bear and other animals in Brown Bear country gave me. Africa was all I thought it would be, but I really don't have a desire to take umpteen different animals just because they are different sizes and colors. That said, if I win the Lottery tomorrow I would make yearly trips for dangerous game and incidental animals along the way. For me the White Bear may be next with wise saving. One thing for sure, getting rifles ready for Africa will get you and your rifles ready for anything and anywhere. Good shooting.

crl - - - -

quote:

Fred Bear was one my heros as a kid and I remember watching films of him in Africa.

Fred Bear will always be in my thoughts.


Good luck on your first trip to Africa! Have a safe journey!

While I was growing up, I read all of the outdoor magazines I could get my hands on, dreaming of the day I might get to go and do that neat stuff I was reading about. I never thought I could afford to go to Africa, but things changed at the FNAWS convention in Hershey in 2002. I was high bidder on a hunt in RSA. It turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime. I had hunted all over the USA and Canada before that, but this was more than special. My wife went along with me and was with the PH and me for all of the animals I killed. On the plane on the way back from RSA she asked, "When can we come back?" You don't replace a woman like that.

Reading Hemingway when I was eight or nine.

JPK

Aside from hunting for about 9 months of the year anyway, Africa was always the "Super Bowl" and the dream of most people like me that enjoy the outdoors.
My interest began when I was a very little guy. A family friend in 1964 took his son on a safari to enjoy the time between his son's high school and college. While viewing the trophies that adorned his wall after he got back, I knew I wanted to do the same thing. But as the years went by, and I heard of the special times enjoyed by a father and son on that trip, I realized it was that experience that I truly wanted to one day have. So later I had a son, and as his high school graduation approached, I began the planning of our own trip. After an initial trip to Zim that I took alone in '03, we had our trip last July in Tanzania. The lifetimes of memories we now enjoy are a blessing I will always treasure.

In 2000 I went on a Dall sheep and Caribou hunt. While getting ready to go I began to read Capsticks book on part time jobs and knew I would need to go at least once.
After My sheep hunt I wanted the Grand Slam. I met my PH through my Taxidermist and booked a hunt in Zimbabwe. After a great hunt I took my second trip two years later. Now I have a double on order through Searcy and am looking at a way to fund a Lion hunt.
I guess I've given up on the Grand slam. I still put in for Desert bighorn each year, here in Utah.

Seeing the Lions of Tsavo as a little kid on a field trip to The Field Museum in Chicago.And then seeing all the other mounts on display.My teacher noticed my intrest and gave me the book to read.On every trip after that I dreamed of hunting Africa and filling museums.

http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/exhibit_sites/tsavo/

I guess I was around 12 when I picked up a copy of John Hunters book HUNTER at the local library. I was completely blown away with his discriptions of chasing crop raiding elephants and hunting rhino populations in thick bush all with a double rifle. I haven't been the same since.

465H&H

I was an occasional bird hunter when my late Brother went on his first African hunt. Over the ensuing years he literally badgered me into going. One of my prized memories is my first hunt, which was his last. I hope to take his Grandsons when they get old enough.

TerryR

Seeing the movie Hatari when I was a kid. Then, reading a magazine article by Capstick entitled "Meet the Cape Buffalo" in the late '70s.

Looking back these are the main two things that planted the seed. I went to Botswana in 1998 on a photo trip. I finally got to South Africa in 2000 for my first hunt. I still haven't hunted ol' M'bogo yet, though.

-Bob F.

I won a travel scholarship to give a presentation at an international meeting; therefore, my first trip was while I was finishing up grad school.

Now, I can't read or think about anything but going back.

I remember it well.

Watching Chuck Conners in the TV show "Cowboy in Africa" on Saturday nights (I think) when I was about 8 years old.

I saw them rope an Eland bull and I turned to my Dad and said "I want to hunt one of those - they look cool!"

I haven't made it yet - but I will !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Having had the desire since a small child to hunt and to see Africa; Watching all of the African movies that I could as a child, teenager, and adult (both black and white and color); getting sick and tired of hunting North America and getting screwed on prices, hunts, animals, and half-assed outfitters that didn't know what they were doing or where the animals were and occasionally doing such things as leaving me out on the continental divide and never picking me back up after a major winter snowstorm, being embroiled in an another outfitter's legal entanglements with the state's division of wildlife; crappy North American outfitters' attitudes, food, sleeping accomodations, equipment, etc. etc. etc. I my very humble opinion, there's no fair comparison between African hunting and North American hunting, between African Professional Hunters and those who call themselves guides and outfitters here in North America, nor the romance and beauty of the Dark Continent. No personal offence is meant, and I apologize if I have offended any of my fellow AR members, but that is how I see it with my hunting experience of over 46 years.

Read Capstick when I was 16.

Peery

I've always been interested in hunting, all kinds. In '04 I was looking on the Cabela's website. First looking at a Candian waterfowl hunt; price not too bad. Then started looking at Elk and Bear hunts in the western US and Canada. Didn't really have any idea of comparisons before that, so no real sticker shock. Then I decided to look at African hunts; I had no idea how affordable they were. I also saw that the peak times to hunt are the slow season for my occupation and US hunting takes place mainly in the peak season. That really got the ball rolling, and I went to Namibia last Aug.

Before that day looking at the Cabela's site I had never really given a safari much thought. Now I'm planning my next hunt for 2008.

Robert Ruark's books when I was 16. Then, before I knew it, 40 years flew by and I was there!
DAve

I saw a pic of a kudu

In the 1950's, I was a youngster growing up in Livingston, Montana. It is a beautiful place to live, just north of Yellowstone National Park, with the Absaroka mountain range framing the southern view from our home. My brother and I fished the Yellowstone river, and wandered the foothills to the Rockies, in a Huck Finn kind of life. We routinely saw pronghorn antelope, mule deer, bear, and lots of smaller animals. We didn't know how fortunate we might have been considered from the perspective of those who lived in the flat lands. To us it was nothing unusual and with things so familiar, it was home.
We had a physician in town who had been to Africa, and collected a basement full of trophies. One day he opened his home to my class-room for a field trip. I was probably in third grade when he put us before a window to strange people and strange lands, full of exotic animals. I was enthralled and so began my dream. A dream to one day visit and hunt in Africa.
Over the years I read all the classic safari literature. Hemingway, Selous, Ruark, White, Roosevelt and many others. I also haunted Lentfer Brothers Taxidermy shop, a small store-front edifice in Livingston. Considering the small size of our town the shop must have had a world-wide reputation for it was always full of animals from all the hunting fields. The very smell of the place, pungent with the chemical magic of leather being tanned, pleasant and exotic like a fine tobacco. Still, Africa was a dream and dreams are not real, and from then to now, well into my adult life, I never really expected it make such a trip. And I didn't let myself think too seriously about it either, for it was an impossibility and there was just no point in dwelling on it. 
Then I met and married Sharon. I've already shared with you all how she learned of my dream and set the wheels in motion. To rephrase what patrkyhntr said here, "You can't replace a woman like that".

I grew up in Africa (Ethiopia) with a slingshot / "catty". There was a kudu shoulder mounted in my boarding school dining room, "halal'ed" by the tribesmen who found / killed it before the missionary could stop them ruining the cape. Always wanted to rectify both situations -- full cape mounted kudu on my own wall, produced from a personal rifle.

Another image was of Prince Palavi and a mountain nyala, "ye dega agazain" or mountain kudu in Amharic. Being born in Africa I sorta expected the "right" to hunt would come my way. Thirty years later, God be praised, thanks to RSA opportunities and AR's baboon (hey, Mark!) I have my own kudu -- pictures only until Roland Peacock, Mike Rex and ABX Logistics complete the journey of getting my trophies "home". Then maybe Bruce Gotcher can put tanned cape and shield mount together for a shoulder mount.

BNagel

I was laying in a hospital bed with only my right cheekbone intact in a very deep coma. My wife holding my hand promised to send me on safari if I ever came out of it.

I woke up. She's making good and I'm going to do this. Won't be able to take as many animals as I could have before. But I still get to go. I came perilously close to missing out on that experience completely.

Don't ever think someone in a coma can't hear you or remember your promises. It may in fact be these promises they are fighting for.

Haven't been yet, but, I have been wanting to go since the Jungle Book ride at Disneyland. Shooting that hippo that charged the canoe was very cool to a 5 year old.

AR has fueled my desire to go to Africa.I remember a sunny weekend afternoon at a young age being in my room looking at the african animal books from the school library.It seems to me that I am trying to make the most out of chilhood dreams.I will soon make my first trip.

When I was a kid, I used to look forward to my monthly visit to the barber shop so I could read the stories in True Magazine, and if my dad and the barber weren't looking, Policeman's Gazette. They used to have some great hunting stories and photos in them. It didn't take long to start dreaming.

I read Hunting in Africa by Frank C Hibben when I was 9 or 10 years old (mid 1960s) followed by anything & everything else on African hunting and from then I dreamt most nights & many school days of hunting Africa. I made my first trip and first African hunt in my mid 20s, qualified as a PH 10 years later or so and am now in my 16th year of Professional Hunting. Been living in Africa fulltime for the last 6 years.........Given the chance, there's not many things I'd change in my life. Except perhaps to have made my first visit to Africa and my move to Africa at an earlier age......

John Hunters book Hunter got me started and Capstick, Hemmingway, Raurk, and Corbett made sure I had to go.

I went to Africa in 1977 to work and lived in 4 different African countries from 1977 to 1993. Hunting there came later and seemed quite natural, although hunting as a resident is a lot harder than most who fantasize about it would care to know.

My interest in hunting really took off with watching the 1960's movie, "The American Sportsman," and later the TV series hosted by Curt Gowdy. I began following hunting magazines and show, and some of them featured a few trips to Africa. This grabbed my interest and attention like nothing else, and I always had a secret desire to buy a Weatherby Rifle and hunt Africa, ever since I was a boy. However, we were a blue collar family, so deer hunting in Pennsylvania was a close as I ever got until I became established in my career.

In my mid 30's, I went on my first series of guided hunts in North America. Had the same experiences as "Use Enough Gun" and was put through the assembly line in US and Canadian hunting camps. Have had a few good experiences with some wonderful people, that I would have no hesitation in sending my best friends to. However, have had to learn how to wade through the many that promise far more than they can actually deliver, and really don't care about taking any ownership in achieving the client's hunting goals.

The dream of hunting Africa had never left, and I was tired of being disappointed (and once ripped-off) on the quality of North American hunts. Most of my hunting friends did not have a lot of guided big game or international hunting experience. So, I decided to join my local chapter of Safari Club International in order to be able to meet people who shared my hunting goals, and to get references for good outfitters for the type of game which I wanted to hunt. It was the best decision of my hunting life -- About a year after joining I had a wealth of new information about where the best specimens of the species I was intereted in lived, and references for quality outfitters for many big game animals. At the time, my interest was in a big Western Canadian or Alaskan Moose. However, my SCI buddies kept pointing out that I could go to Africa and take 1/2 dozen top quality plainsgame animals for less money, and be treated like a King. They showed me pictures and shared many African tales that had me captivated (they all still hunted North America, but all insisted that I must experience Africa to be fair to myself, and stressed that dollar for dollar it was head and shoulders above a better deal) Finally, Africa seemed really possible. At the next SCI convention, I booked a 10 day 1x1 bow hunt in the Northern Province (now Limpopo) for Kudu, Gemsbok, Impala, Warthog, and Duiker, including round trip airfare for $4500 (this was 2002) -- and, ended up taking 10 animals in 11 days (some from hides, some spot and stalk), all but one were SCI Gold Medal, had the time of my life, was spoiled rotten with food and creature comforts, and my every desire was the immediate focus of the PH and staff. Since then, I have been on 3 African safaris, and am going back in May to start hunting Dangerous Game. I'm hooked -- while I still hunt North America, Africa is my first love. African PH's take ownership of their client's hunting goals and are usually well prepared for the hunt prior to the client's arrival. Also, it appears to be an extreme professional setback for them to send a client home without the prime species that they came for. I've been on several NA hunts where my guide was ill prepared or there was really not much chance to achieve what I was led to believe, with the reply at the end of the trip "that's huntin."

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded reply. To sum it all up -- When I book a Safari, I expect to have a fantastic hunting experience and achieve the overall goals. When I book a North American hunt, and have a great experience, I really appreciate it and ensure that I spread the word about the outfitter's performance, and send a few of my friends.

I knew about the "golden age" of African safaris, of course, but never thought I'd ever do it. The awakening to the possibility of hunting in Africa was due to Jeff Cooper's tales of his exploits while taking classes and teaching at Gunsite. The tipping point came when a friend and fellow Gunsite alumnus got to hunt in South Africa while on business there and organized a hunt for a few of his friends with the PH he met. That was in 1997 and I've been back twice thereafter in 2002 and 2004.

I guess I always knew I wanted to go to Africa and the stories in magazines like Outddor Life when I was a kid just fueled the dream even though the dream stayed on the back burner for many years.

In the 80's it started to become apparent that maybe Africa could be a reality. About 16 years ago I started a plan and off we went. I've been basically lost in this Africa thing every since. Fortunately Sadie is as enamored with the whole business as I am which has made it easier to stay longer and shoot more on our Safaris.

Mark

Hey Mark,
I think Jane and I saw you on your first day in africa.
Gary

I heard from friends in my shooting sport (IPSC)how you could fly to RSA and get off the plane and they gave you a permit to carry. That sounded good, so I looked into hunting in Africa.

When I saw how much hunting one could do for the money, I was sold. Plus, I like to go places where my cell phone doesn't work. I was also bored with hunting in the states. To many hassles and too much money for to little hunting.

Give me Zim where the bullets fly and the critters run wild--especially baboons.

Regards, PG

Read Capstick in late 80's, got on AR in the late 90's, hunted Zambia, Luangua Valley, in '99. Thanks to Saeed, again.

I was born in 1962.

Tarzan (the originals)
Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins
The MacCumber Affair
Hunter by JA Hunter

Obsessed ever since.

In 2003, I had a major disc herniation in my neck that resulted in my left arm becomming partially paralyzed and excruciating pain. In July 2003 I underwent surgery to fuse 4 vertebrae and began to rehabilitate myself. I had recovered very well by the fall. I had always wanted to hunt in Africa, and one afternoon in December 2003, JudgeG was at my home and invited me to hunt with him in Africa in 2004. The rest is history as they say. I went in 2004, 2005, and am taking my wife with me this year.