Where do the prices come from?

i've talked to a guide/keeper thats had people turn up to red deer hunts in scotland with full driven shoot regalia, including the $300 ties, tailored jackets, and Wellies.
Coming from Tasmania, i've never really considered hunting to be a fashion parade, but that seems to be what it is with a certain set and their "best" english guns and rifles.

Continental Europe on the other hand seems to have almost perfect balance of quality, price, and userbility. must just be a pommy thing?

(i do wear a Purdey and Sons shirt to work tho, just not in the bush)

Originally Posted by timbear

Second Wind, thanks for putting in a nutshell what I suspected all along. Don't worry, though, I am not loosing sleep over it (hell no, I need all the beauty sleep I can manage just to show my face in public!). I totally concur, it's the memories that count, not the equipment - or even the trophy. Some of my best hunts were for meat and enjoyment, and no amount of money could buy the fun I had. As I told James Grage, I rather buy good second hand, because the tool does not matter so much in itself. As you said, we can't take it with us, but I hope to retain the memories of every hunt I ever did when I shuffle this mortal coil...

I'm very sorry to tell you that even if you pack very carefully, you can't take memories with you either!

The fact is there are memories and then there are differewnt memories! In some cases the rifle you always wanted is a memory that you can enjoy before you take thast long trip to the happy hunting ground, and the harder that rifle was to obtain the fonder the memory, then add to the dificulty in obtaining the rifle a once in a life time safari, and that memory will still be with you when you lay your head down for the last time, Nothing matters after that point so live it while you can, because the money is what you can't take with you
and once you close those baby blues, Some one else can have the physical memory you bought with that money!

"If I die today I have had a life well spent, for I've been to see the elephant, and smelled the smoke of Africa!" (By myself in the las line of my journal of my first Safari!)