quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
First time I went to Africa.

Booked a a hunt on short term from Klinebergers in Seattle, Washing, as I was visiting Boeing.

Bought second hand rifles, a Ruger M77 in 25-06 and a Remington Safari in 375 H&H.

Klinebergers offered to have the rifles shipped for me to Zimbabwe with another hunter.

No paperwork, no questions asked.

Went back to Dubai, then England, then to Zimbabwe.

At the Vic Falls airport, found my rifles in a case OUTSIDE the customs office.

It was that simple.

Then, for many years, I could ship my rifles and ammo ahead to Zimbabwe, number of rifles, and quantity of ammo was irrelevant.

Cases of shotgun and 22 ammo were shipped.

No one bothered asking any questions.

Now, your ammo has to be weighed, your rifles have to be checked, for serial number, and looked through the barrel to see they are actually empty.

Honestly, this happened in Tanziania.

Apparently some idiot came back from his safari, and when asked if his 375 H&H rifles was empty, he pointed the barrel up and pulled the trigger.

BANG it went.

Told you some people have no business being around guns!

From second hand factory rifles, to custom rifles and custom bullets, made at home.

I will go as long as I am able health wise.

73 years old, in relatively very good health, but one never knows how long one has left.

Hopefully me and Don will be able to celebrate our 100th birthday together!

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
Airport personnel are not the brightest stars when it comes to firearms.

I have MTM boxes - just replaced by home made ones on 3D printer!

The MTMs were a bit tight with fired cases, and I always take my old ones back to be reloaded.

At the customs going back, they asked if I had ammo in the boxes.

I told them no, they were all empty.

The man wasn't going to take my word.

So he gets an MTM box out, and tries to get am empty case out of it.

He did that and look at the open mouth of the case, then tried putting it back.

I have no idea idea why, but as my daughter always tells me "don't talk to them DAD!"

I asked him if he was looking for the bullets.

He said yes.

By this time he has already put the empty back.

I said sometimes they get stuck inside, you have to shake the it to make sure nothing falls out.

He proceeded to pull every empty in that box, shake it, and put it back!

I had an extremely hard time keeping quiet!

My daughter was right, I should have kept quiet!

I know, it is very hard to believe, but I have been in situations where common sense seems to have been forgotten!

quote:

Originally posted by dogcat:
I posted this in 2009 and just found it again. My favorite writer, Gene Hill, captured his feelings about Africa very well.


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.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
[QUOTE]

You could pray!


Dear God.
You gave me childhood.
You took it away.

You gave youth.
You took it away.

You gave me a wife.

It’s been years now.
Just reminding you.

quote:

Originally posted by Brec:
77 years old. 25 safaris. 35+ buffalo. Last one this past June. Have one more trip left in me. Going this May. That will be it. Memories.

quote:

Originally posted by the Pom:
Reading that description of Kenya hunting before the ban takes me back to 1975 and chasing buffalo on the slopes of Mt Kenya with Bunny and David Allen. Attitudes were so different then. I look at a black bushbuck on the wall from the bamboo thickets at the top of the airstrip near the park headquarters. We showed him to the deputy warden at his home when we made a social stop. He asked where we got him. "At the top of the airstrip." He laughed and told us that the park boundary was at the bottom of the airstrip.!
Wall space does become an issue. I built a new trophy room six years ago and it is much too small.
When my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer we started planning a new house (with a bigger trophy room) just to give her an interest and something to look forward to. It has taken a year to get planning permission and the foundation work starts this week. She won't get to live in it but it doesn't matter. It is her house.
A hunt I paid for in full in Uganda in 2020, delayed by covid and cancer now can't take place this year because they are full up.
When I am no longer a full time nurse I think I will contact Andrew Baldry and see what he can offer. While we all sympathise with poor CME on not getting his money back yet, the attacks on Mr Baldry have deteriated to unreasonable malice. African hunting will not be improved by destroying the small operators. My contract will be with him though, not some third party!

quote:

Originally posted by BaxterB:

quote:

Originally posted by the Pom:
Reading that description of Kenya hunting before the ban takes me back to 1975 and chasing buffalo on the slopes of Mt Kenya with Bunny and David Allen. Attitudes were so different then. I look at a black bushbuck on the wall from the bamboo thickets at the top of the airstrip near the park headquarters. We showed him to the deputy warden at his home when we made a social stop. He asked where we got him. "At the top of the airstrip." He laughed and told us that the park boundary was at the bottom of the airstrip.!
Wall space does become an issue. I built a new trophy room six years ago and it is much too small.
When my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer we started planning a new house (with a bigger trophy room) just to give her an interest and something to look forward to. It has taken a year to get planning permission and the foundation work starts this week. She won't get to live in it but it doesn't matter. It is her house.
A hunt I paid for in full in Uganda in 2020, delayed by covid and cancer now can't take place this year because they are full up.
When I am no longer a full time nurse I think I will contact Andrew Baldry and see what he can offer. While we all sympathise with poor CME on not getting his money back yet, the attacks on Mr Baldry have deteriated to unreasonable malice. African hunting will not be improved by destroying the small operators. My contract will be with him though, not some third party!

a proper post

quote:

"you need to start downsizing... it floats down the Bay if you leave it to me to dispose of!!"

quote:

I have done 15 trips to Africa, 19 hunting safaris, 3 cruising, 2 no hunting, last one 2 safaris and a photo safari at the end of the last cruise 2020, ending in Capetown. 94-day cruise, Auckland, NZ to Capetown and 10 more days in Africa... a full circuit around the world!! My wife had a ball, wants to go back to Hunters Hill with the Rhinos and Cape Buffalo inside the lodge complex!! I completed the SCI African 29 with Roan and #16 SCI Aoudad.... so BIG 5, Dangerous 7....

quote:

I have done 15 trips to Africa, 19 hunting safaris, 3 cruising, 2 no hunting, last one 2 safaris and a photo safari at the end of the last cruise 2020, ending in Capetown. 94-day cruise, Auckland, NZ to Capetown and 10 more days in Africa... a full circuit around the world!! My wife had a ball, wants to go back to Hunters Hill with the Rhinos and Cape Buffalo inside the lodge complex!! I completed the SCI African 29 with Roan and #16 SCI Aoudad.... so BIG 5, Dangerous 7....

quote:

Originally posted by fairgame:

You must have a wealth of photographs that you could share with AR?

quote:

Originally posted by Hogbreath:
Have more than enough money to go back but, my body has given up on me. I guess 10 trips will have to do....