I grew up reading/looking at National Geographic and watching Martin and Olsa Johnson but in a family that didn’t hunt or even shoot guns. I followed my husband and his friends to Gunsite Academy and learned to shoot pistols. I never really developed a passion for “defensive shooting”, but when I started shooting rifles and hunting, my internal huntress came to life. Jeff Cooper talked about the wonders of Africa. I read all the Capstick books. I announced to my husband that I wanted to take a Cape Buffalo for my 50th birthday. We worked toward that dream for a few years. So at the SCI convention in 1996 my husband and I booked a “once in a life time” safari to Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where we were told God lives. In May prior to our planned, August safari my husband had a heart attack and was recovering well, but his doctor didn’t want him that far away. So I took his sister, my former college roommate, who was also turning 50 in August, and went on safari with my sister-in-law. What a sight we were, but got my first Cape Buffalo. Of course, while there, I contacted the dreaded addiction, and now 14 years later, my husband and I are headed off in August for my 11th African safari. We have done a few other international hunts, but they don’t tug at your heart like Africa does.

Wonderful story Mrs. Nelson! That is just wonderful.--Would like to know more one day the story about how you fell in love with your roommate's brother too! BTW did you get all squared away with your target order?

Regards,
Marc

Found out how much it costs to MAYBE shoot an elk out west.....

No brainer....

I've always had firearms in my life and began hunting at 12yo. It was never an obsession, just part of my lifestyle and culture.

I didn't really start a Safari career, more a love affair with Africa.

In 1984 at 26yo I'd just taken my discharge from the Australian Regular Army after 6 years service and with a mate was back packing south through Zimbabwe towards South Africa. We met a local farmer at the Gwanda pub. His wife was visiting family in South Africa with their kids and he invited us back to his farm for a week. A week of red meat, beer and BS. We had a ball. He had a G3, R1 and an old .303. We shot a warthog and a smaller antelope for food with the .303 and solids and I thought to myself 'I've got to do more of this'.

It took a long time to go back hunting but I have enjoyed every trip. Hunting or not.

Marc;

quote:

BTW did you get all squared away with your target order?

I had a friend order it for me, but your people did email to make sure I had connected. I can't wait for it to arrive...I loved shooting on my friends. Very well made and "pretty" too (if you can call a Cape Buffalo pretty).

Best regards, Darin

Mine started at age 2 with a very small pith helmet, a rubber knife and a double barreled dart gun. I guess I never got over those cool toys. Now the toys as well as the adventures cost a hell of a lo more.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in a hunting family. My dad was mostly a Midwestern fisherman and bird hunter, but my two older brothers and I dreamed of bigger things. As a teenager I sent away for lessons from the Northwestern School of Taxidermy. When I received them they looked like they had been written in the 1920s, and probably were. But I perservered anyway and started mounting a few of the things we shot.

There was a house in our town that had those big picture windows in the shape of a ship's prow, and in the middle of them were two huge elephant tusks. Behind the tusks you could see the walls were covered with African game heads. We always slowed down when we passed that house. One evening, my oldest brother was driving my middle brother and I home from somewhere, and we passed that house. My brother turned to us and said, "Hey, why don't we just go knock on that guy's door and see if he'll talk to us and let us see his stuff?"

So we went to his door, and he was the nicest fellow, and he let us in and told us three boys many great stories of his African adventures. He had a lion-skin rug on the floor. He told us that his friend had wounded the lion, and it had run into some very thick cover. They and the trackers tried to find it, but with no success. So the PH and two hunters climbed into a topless Landrover Series I, and started to slowly drive thru the thick area on a two-track road. The lion came from behind and jumped into the back of the truck, and this guy turned around and stuck his rifle muzzle into it's mouth and pulled the trigger. Boom, the big cat was dead, two feet away, inside the vehicle. His friend was grateful, and let this guy claim the lion. The lion rug indeed had a bullet hole through the back of it's head. I don't know if the story was true, but he seemed to be a very humble and straight-forward guy.

He had a coffee table made from an elephant ear. He even offered me the skin from an elephant foot for free. Stupidly, I declined, because I didn't know how to make it into a foot stool. My dad and us brothers spent the next umpteen years hunting and fishing from the Midwest to Montana, Wyoming and Oregon.

Fast forward many years to 2004. I took my wife to South Africa to Kruger Park for a week. Right there, while parked near a herd of cape buffalo, I decided I had to get my dad over to Africa before he died. I called a PH I had talked to for 3 years in a row at the Salt Lake ISE show, Johan Spies, and booked our safari. The next year, in 2005, Leon (my dad) and his three sons went on safari to Africa. My dad, an old WWII vet, was 88 at the time, and we had the time of our lives, and shot some very good animals. My dad talked about that safari every day of his life until he died two years later in 2007. My brothers and I have caught the Africa bug bad, and we're not looking for a cure. I'll be making my 7th trip to Africa in August. (Sorry I'm so long-winded.)

My dad's college friend lent me Death in the Long Grass. Since then I've been obsessed with reading and learning about Africa and African hunting. My grandfather left me money when he passed away and I went on safari in 2006........and I'm overdue to head back!!!!!!!!

Brett

First Safari 2001
Second Safari 2002

Packed up and moved to the continent....2004.

Love/Hate relationship with this place ever since.

For me it started at age 9. No one in my family had ever hunted or even owned a gun. It started when one of our neighbors was cleaning out their garage. They gave me a collection of books by Stewart Edward White. That's all it took but Robert Ruark's columns added to the desire. I wasn't until 1986 at age 46 that I was able to make my first African safari. Since then I have made 15 and we are off on our 16th next month.

In 2004 I took a job in Guinea Two months later I went on my first African hunt with a local french man who had lived there for over twenty years. It was just a three day affair but I took my first African animals, warthog, baboon , and bushbuck.After that I was hunting almost every weekend. At the time I didn't know what animals were in west Africa I soon learned of buffalo , not the cape which had been the only one I was aware of before. Then there was waterbuck,duikers red forest hog, hartbeest,roan and so many others I hadn't none existed.
Six and a half years later I am still in Africa although it is now East Africa and I don't know if I will every leave for good.

As a kid I thought that the days of African hunting were long over, much like the days of the American buffalo. I was 8 when I came across a book called Safari in the tiny library of our tiny school. It followed a hunters career through porter style hunts and eventually, mentioned automobiles. Could this be?
Turns out, yes, one could hunt Africa for what seemed like more money than there was in that little hamlet. All I needed was the right job and a plan.
Things didn't quite go the way they were hoped, but I did start getting my life together in my young 30s. That's when disaster struck, and an accident put me on a backboard and into 3 years of rehab.The doctors said I'd never work again, and through that the hardest pill to take was that my African dream would die where I probably should have.So close, and yet so far.
Turns out that doctors know little of oilriggers, and at least mine knew nothing of Africa. The path wasn't easy, but I got off that board, through the surguries and back to work. Somewhere along the line I also got to Africa 4 times, shot a pile of plainsgame, a couple elephants, and 4 buffalo on 2 continents. If I had a dollar for everyone who said I'd never do it, it would have been both sooner and more often.

Somehow the local SCI chapter got my name and invited me to a local fundraiser. I had no intention of going to Africa, but was planning on going to Newfoundland for a moose/caribou hunt. I ended up bidding on and winning a basic 7 day RSA plains game hunt. It was a three margarita decision. It turned into a 10 day Buf/Leopard hunt in Zim. My first trip was in September 2002. I just returned from my 15th trip from Zambia/Namibia. I go back this September for a 10 day double tuskless in Makuti with CM Safaris. I have spent a ton of money and have never regretted it.