Free Hunt from Spiral Horn Safaris for 2010

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WIN a FREE HUNT worth US$ 3,150 with Spiral Horn Safaris in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, two miles from the border of Botswana for 2010

Spiral Horn Safaris in cooperation with AfricaHunting.com would like to give something back to the hunting community and wanted to make a competition of it... Good luck guys and I hope all of you enjoy writing about Africa.

What to do if you want to enter the competition for this FREE BOW OR RIFLE HUNTING SAFARI.

Write a post of 1,000 words or less about “Why I would like to hunt in Africa” and post it here in this thread. This competition is open to those who have or have not hunted in Africa before.

It must be posted between October 10th and November 25th, 2009. The winner will be announced on December 1st, 2009 in this thread. Post your essays below this post by clicking the "POST REPLY" button. If you are not already a registered member you can join by clicking here.

What is up for grabs? A FREE HUNT with Spiral Horn Safaris in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. To check out Spiral Horn Safaris hunting outfit, area, accommodations, photo gallery and a lot more, please visit my website at www.spiralhorn.co.za.

HUNT includes:
- 5 day hunt for one person
- Accommodations
- All meals and beverages in moderation
- Services of a licensed PH
- 1x Blue Wildebeest Bull
- 1x Impala Male

Not included:
- Transport to Africa and hunting area
- Accommodation prior to and after your hunting safari
- Gratuities (at clients discretion)
- Additional days and/or trophies may be added at the regular price, click here for our price list
- Taxidermy and shipping of trophies to final destination

We also ask that the prize winner post a detailed hunting report with pictures about their hunting safari with Spiral Horn safaris and leave a rating and review in the hunting directory here on AfricaHunting.com. See official rules in post below.

Thanks to everyone who will be taking part in this competition and happy writing. For those of you who will just be reading the posts please feel free to leave comments.

Louis van Bergen

Free Hunt Official Rules

1. This competition is open to all registered members of AfricaHunting.com who are at least 18 years of age. If you are not already a registered member you can join by clicking here.

2. To be eligible participants must post an essay of a 1,000 words or less and post it here in this thread.

3. Posts must be done between October 10th and November 25th, 2009.

4. The winner will be selected by Spiral Horn Safaris. The winner will be notified by email on December 1st, 2009, at the email address provided on their registration form for AfricaHunting.com. The name of the winner will be posted along with the winning essay on AfricaHunting.com forum. No other attempt to contact the winner will be made.

5. Any prize unclaimed after thirty (30) days from the date of notice will not be awarded.

6. The hunt has to be taken in 2010 with dates to be decided and agreed upon between prize winner and Spiral Horn Safaris and must be made at least 2 months in advance.

7. Prize will be made available only to the identified winner.

8. The prize is non-transferable, non-assignable, non-refundable, non-redeemable for cash and no substitute prize will be offered.

9. Except where prohibited by law, the winner by acceptance of the prize agrees that Spiral Horn Safaris and AfricaHunting.com or those acting under its authority may use the winner's name, picture/portrait, likeness, for advertising and promotional purposes without consideration or further permission.

10. Spiral Horn Safaris and AfricaHunting.com, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, retailers, agencies and the respective officers, directors, employees and agents, are not responsible for distorted, incomplete, illegible, undelivered, damaged, or lost entries; and/or any contest disruptions beyond its control.

11. Entrants and winners are solely responsible for their own actions relating to this prize, and the acceptance and/or use of a prize. By participating and/or by acceptance or use of the prize, all entrants and winners agree to release and hold harmless Spiral Horn Safaris and AfricaHunting.com, their parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, retailers, agencies, other prize sponsors and the respective officers, directors, employees and agents from and against any liability arising in connection with the use of the prize.

What an awesome offer. That fits right into my budget!!

Louis, This is a great idea for someone who has bigger dreams than their bank account. :thumb:

I wish I had a compelling story but I'm just an SOB. I look forward to reading some good stories here and knowing that someone will be rewarded with a great hunt... I feel all warm and fuzzy. :biggrin:

Thank you safari hunter but hold on it is open to all and you don’t need to write a assay of 1000 words just no more than 1000 words.

Hope everyone is hard at work both myself and Jerome are looking forward to doing some reading.:)

Just wondering, what is the criteria for your essay? Is your selection based off writing skill or just the essay with the best ring to it?
Thanks

Hi Southernhunter the assay will not be judged according to writing skills it would be more about getting some good honest opinions back about why people love coming to Africa for a hunt.

We are not all born with the same skills as Hemingway, I'm a good example of someone who finds it difficult.;)

Happy writing guys and good luck.

My father and grandfather were cattle ranchers so I have been connected to the outdoors since day one. Ranchers and farmers are the stewards of our environment. I was taught respect for the flora and fauna and to act responsibly in regard to the decisions I made in and outdoors. My father started taking me hunting at an early age. I can't remember ever questioning why we hunted, we just hunted. I relished the time spent hunting with my father, brother, friends, and retrievers. I loved being in the field somewhere when the sun rose, the smell of burnt powder, the friendly competition, the camaraderie at the truck at lunch time while dressing birds, and of course the delicious fruits of our labor.

When I was 13, I showed interest in hunting something bigger than dove and ducks, so my father enrolled me in the Arizona Game and Fish Department's "Hunter Education Course." After successfully completing the course I was legally qualified to hunt big game in Arizona. Shortly thereafter we discussed what I wanted to hunt. We decided I should cut my teeth on a javelina. Dad spent that winter familiarizing me with his saddle gun, an old Savage model 99 chambered for the.300 Savage. He spent time with me at the Tucson Rod and Gun Club to help me develop my marksmanship. We also spent time in the field where I shot a coyote and a couple rabbits. All the while dad would remind me of the importance of safety.
"Remember,T.A.B."
1. Treat every firearm as if it were loaded
2. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction
3. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it "Remember, firearms are mechanical and anything mechanical is prone to failure.Be safe."

The following February he had enough confidence in my maturity and skills to take me on my first big game hunt. After 3 days of hunting hard in the Sonora Desert I harvested a javelina. The excitement took its toll. It took more than one shot and, it wasn't pretty. But, my father was proud. "You got the job done" he said. It was exhilarating. I knew then I would always be a hunter.

About that time I developed a zeal for reading. My mother was a high school teacher and encouraged me to read everything. Newspapers like the "Tucson Citizen", magazines like "Boys Life","Outdoor Life", and "Field and Stream" and a variety of books filled my free time. Writers and outdoors men like Bill Quimby, Bob Hirsch, Jim Zumbo, Dr. Wayne Van Zwoll, Fred Bear, Jack O'Connor, and Zane Grey fueled my desire to hunt, fish and explore.

In the spring of 1976 my mother gave me a first edition copy of Robert Ruark's "Horn Of The Hunter." My studies suffered that week, as I was awake late into the night reading by flashlight, under the covers, about Mr. Ruark's adventure. I still have that book as well as others by Mr. Ruark, Capstick, Hemingway, Roosevelt, and Boddington. Reading of their travels, the different eco systems in which they hunted, and the thought of hunting several different species all on one safari was fantastically exciting.

Then, in 1988 Safari Club International Foundation opened the International Wildlife Museum in my home town of Tucson Arizona.The exhibits in the museum are both educational and entertaining. I have spent many hours wandering through these exhibits. If you are ever in Tucson I would highly recommend taking the tour.

SCIF encourages all of their members to participate in its humanitarian programs. When I make the trip to Africa I'll be taking along a "Safari Care" blue bag. The blue bag is filled with donated school supplies, clothing, simple medical supplies and its contents distributed at schools and clinics near the hunting area.

I have been fascinated with Africa for over 30 years. I have read countless books, viewed documentaries, and spoken with hunters who have been there. But, I'll never know what it's like to spot game from a termite mound, what a herd of wildebeest smells like, or determine what the bark of a baobab feels like unless I'm there. I would like to hunt in Africa for the same reasons I've always had to hunt. Foremost, because I am a hunter, hunting is what I do and what I aspire to do. Hunting in Africa would satisfy my curiosities of 30 years. I would like to experience the sights, smells, and sounds of Africa and to revel in its bio diversity, sunrises, and sunsets. I'd like to experience the camaraderie around an African campfire at days end. I would have the opportunity to meet the people of Africa and learn about their cultures and traditions. Finally, and perhaps most important, as the accomplished hunter I have become, I would like to hunt in Africa and see Africa with the enthusiasm of that exhilarated young boy hunting his first javelina and with the eyes and heart of that young man reading Ruark's adventure under the bed covers so many years ago.

Hi Thomas thank you for breaking the ice, very good post.:clapping:

ThomasBeaham, Thanks for being our first essay contestant. I enjoyed your post and look forward to reading those to come...

I moved to Florida in 1989, not knowing of all the hunting here and the thought of hunting in this intense heat was too much for me to bear. Fishing was much more available. Over the past twenty years, I have seen all my hunting buddies pass (including my dad, my uncles and my best friend and hunting buddy) and I guess the thought of our fragile existance ignited a spark in me that got me going hunting again. Being 56 now, age is setting in and time is running out. I get around ok with a new hip and my hearts still great, so I should fair well on an African hunt.
Although hunting in Africa never crossed my mind as a young guy, my nose was always buried in books about Rorkes Drift, Isandwana and all the battles of the Zulu Wars and Boer Wars. A trip to Africa would provide me with much more than a hunt.
And who in their right mind wouldn't want a free hunt!

Thanks tarawa for your post.

Tarawa reading your post made me humble all over again thanks you for your input. We have so much to be thankful for in life especially our dear friends.:)

Kind Regards
Louis van Bergen

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ThomasBeaham

My father and grandfather were cattle ranchers so I have been connected to the outdoors since day one. Ranchers and farmers are the stewards of our environment. I was taught respect for the flora and fauna and to act responsibly in regard to the decisions I made in and outdoors. My father started taking me hunting at an early age. I can't remember ever questioning why we hunted, we just hunted. I relished the time spent hunting with my father, brother, friends, and retrievers. I loved being in the field somewhere when the sun rose, the smell of burnt powder, the friendly competition, the camaraderie at the truck at lunch time while dressing birds, and of course the delicious fruits of our labor.

When I was 13, I showed interest in hunting something bigger than dove and ducks, so my father enrolled me in the Arizona Game and Fish Department's "Hunter Education Course." After successfully completing the course I was legally qualified to hunt big game in Arizona. Shortly thereafter we discussed what I wanted to hunt. We decided I should cut my teeth on a javelina. Dad spent that winter familiarizing me with his saddle gun, an old Savage model 99 chambered for the.300 Savage. He spent time with me at the Tucson Rod and Gun Club to help me develop my marksmanship. We also spent time in the field where I shot a coyote and a couple rabbits. All the while dad would remind me of the importance of safety.
"Remember,T.A.B."
1. Treat every firearm as if it were loaded
2. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction
3. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it "Remember, firearms are mechanical and anything mechanical is prone to failure.Be safe."

The following February he had enough confidence in my maturity and skills to take me on my first big game hunt. After 3 days of hunting hard in the Sonora Desert I harvested a javelina. The excitement took its toll. It took more than one shot and, it wasn't pretty. But, my father was proud. "You got the job done" he said. It was exhilarating. I knew then I would always be a hunter.

About that time I developed a zeal for reading. My mother was a high school teacher and encouraged me to read everything. Newspapers like the "Tucson Citizen", magazines like "Boys Life","Outdoor Life", and "Field and Stream" and a variety of books filled my free time. Writers and outdoors men like Bill Quimby, Bob Hirsch, Jim Zumbo, Dr. Wayne Van Zwoll, Fred Bear, Jack O'Connor, and Zane Grey fueled my desire to hunt, fish and explore.

In the spring of 1976 my mother gave me a first edition copy of Robert Ruark's "Horn Of The Hunter." My studies suffered that week, as I was awake late into the night reading by flashlight, under the covers, about Mr. Ruark's adventure. I still have that book as well as others by Mr. Ruark, Capstick, Hemingway, Roosevelt, and Boddington. Reading of their travels, the different eco systems in which they hunted, and the thought of hunting several different species all on one safari was fantastically exciting.

Then, in 1988 Safari Club International Foundation opened the International Wildlife Museum in my home town of Tucson Arizona.The exhibits in the museum are both educational and entertaining. I have spent many hours wandering through these exhibits. If you are ever in Tucson I would highly recommend taking the tour.

SCIF encourages all of their members to participate in its humanitarian programs. When I make the trip to Africa I'll be taking along a "Safari Care" blue bag. The blue bag is filled with donated school supplies, clothing, simple medical supplies and its contents distributed at schools and clinics near the hunting area.

I have been fascinated with Africa for over 30 years. I have read countless books, viewed documentaries, and spoken with hunters who have been there. But, I'll never know what it's like to spot game from a termite mound, what a herd of wildebeest smells like, or determine what the bark of a baobab feels like unless I'm there. I would like to hunt in Africa for the same reasons I've always had to hunt. Foremost, because I am a hunter, hunting is what I do and what I aspire to do. Hunting in Africa would satisfy my curiosities of 30 years. I would like to experience the sights, smells, and sounds of Africa and to revel in its bio diversity, sunrises, and sunsets. I'd like to experience the camaraderie around an African campfire at days end. I would have the opportunity to meet the people of Africa and learn about their cultures and traditions. Finally, and perhaps most important, as the accomplished hunter I have become, I would like to hunt in Africa and see Africa with the enthusiasm of that exhilarated young boy hunting his first javelina and with the eyes and heart of that young man reading Ruark's adventure under the bed covers so many years ago.

---

Thomas:

A great report, and I hope you win the safari with it. I thank you so much for listing Bob Hirsch and I up there with some really great outdoorsmen and writers. Sadly, times have changed greatly since you were growing up in Tucson. As you probably know, my buddy Bob and his dear wife, Mary, died within months of each other a while back and just this year the Gannett chain decided to shut down the Citizen, Arizona's oldest newspaper. Tucson's remaining paper wouldn't publish a hunting story for love or money. (I wouldn't be surprised if the anti-hunters in that city now outnumbered hunters 100 to 1.) My wife and I still spend half the year there, but it's only because our summer cabin here in the White Mountains isn't winterized. Good luck to you, and happy fishing at Roosevelt. When you're ready for Africa, PM me if you want some advice. I was fortunate to have made a great many trips down there over the past 27 years.

Bill Quimby

What a very kind offer Louis. I do not wish to enter your contest as I think it would be best for someone who has not been to Africa. That being said, I would like to write about “Why I love to hunt Africa”.
I was very fortunate to be born into a hunting family. My grandfather, Raymond Turner was a hounds man who hunted bear, mountain lion, bobcat, and raccoons year round. My youth was spent chasing hounds in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Central California. What a wonderful childhood for a kid that thought of nothing but hunting and fishing. Although my grandfather had very little himself, he insisted that we get a good education and he began to teach me to read before I even started school.
Along with outdoor magazines I was soon reading Jack O’Connor, Warren Page, and anything else I could get my hands on. My father wished I had put as much effort into my scholastic studies but I never had time for such nonsense. Even though I was well on my way to be a professional ner’ do well with the help of O’Connor and others, I soon was pushed over the edge forever by P.H.C.
I think I saw one of his articles for the first time in American Hunter magazine and my life has not been the same since. The way Capstick wrote of danger, excitement, and adventure left me gasping for more, I knew I had to get to Africa come hell or high water. Soon the realities of life snuck up on me and before I knew it marriage, children, and a mortgage put Africa on the back burner. Two decades passed quickly but the dream never died.
Again I was fortunate and did not do without. I had hunted all over the U.S., some in Canada, and a few fishing trips to Mexico. My wife and children hunted with me on many hunts close to home, and then out of state as they grew older. Even with all of this my heart still yearned for Africa. I promised myself that I would make it by the time I turned 40, I was a couple of years late but make it I did.
I could hardly breathe when I wrote the check for the deposit; I was on cloud nine for months. I read and reread the outfitters brochure so often that it was soon falling apart. I worked up loads for rifles, checked and rechecked gear, and asked a million and one questions. I planned on the animals I just had to have because I knew I would never be able to afford to go again. Before I knew it we were on the plane (with way to much luggage) to Africa. Sleep was out of the question as excitement and nervousness kept me wide awake. Have I blown this all out of proportion? Am I in for a great disappointment?
After a flight that seemed to take days we landed in Johannesburg. It sure doesn’t look like Africa to me. We then fly to Kimberly and it still doesn’t look like Africa. By the time we load our stuff in the truck and head for the ranch it is dark and I really can’t tell what the terrain looks like. I am trying not to be disappointed when a gemsbok runs across the road. All fear and doubt is suddenly replaced by elation as our PH tells us that it is dangerous on the roads at night due to all the game.
The PH gets us into the lodge and tells us that he will let us sleep in the morning to catch up on our rest. But I am up before the dawn as I have been every morning I have ever been in Africa, willing the sun to come up so I can spend another wonderful day in this land of my dreams. I don’t know if I have ever had a bigger thrill than the first sunrise I experienced in Africa. I could see nyala, impala, and ostrich, and I saw a flock of guinea fowl fly of a hill and land by a water hole. The sights and sounds and even the smells intoxicated me.
The taste of gemsbok fillet cooked on blackthorn coals, the kudu of my dreams sneaking through the thorn bush, the glorious days of never being out of sight of some type of game. That first safari met and exceeded all of my wildest of dreams. I grieved as if I had lost a loved one when it was time to leave. If I could have figured a way I would still be there today. I began planning my next safari as the plane ran down the runway headed home.
I have been back several times since then and each time it seems to get better and better. I doubt that I will ever lose the desire to return again and again. I have had some extraordinary adventures since that first time. Tracking and taking a huge eland bull in the North West Province, buffalo and tiger fish in the beautiful mountains of Kwazulu Natal, having 46 elephants walk by camp in the Caprivi as I sat by the fire with my morning coffee.
I still love to hunt here in the States, and I have also hunted in Argentina, but I think Africa will always pull me back. Where else can you hunt and see so many different species of game? Where else can you hunt and be treated as well by the PH and other staff? Where else can you be serenaded to sleep by lions roaring in the night? There is no place but Africa.

Jaustin thank you for a wonderful post. I loved every word of it.

You reminded me of a client that I was privileged to hunt with once who cried the day he had to leave it will always be a fond memory for me so needless to say your post touched me on a personal note.

Thank you so much:worship:

I also do not want this considered in your contest, and agree the prize should be presented to a first-timer. For your enjoyment only, here is part of the introduction to the chapters on my African hunts from my latest book, "Sixty Years A Hunter," from Safari Press. It will be introduced at the SCI convention in Reno in January. I'll be signing them at the Safari Press booth but don't yet have the schedule.

Bill Quimby

AFRICA! I Wanted To Pinch Myself

MY FIRST-EVER SIGHTINGS of elephant spoor were round, dusty prints the size of the lids of small garbage cans spaced five feet apart and piles of alfalfa-colored dung as large as basketballs. These were scattered across the two-lane tarmac road that led to a hunting concession an hour's drive from Victoria Falls. I wanted to pinch myself. I was in Africa!

Just before turning onto a dirt road, Stephanus “Fanie” Pretorius stopped the Land Rover so that his wife, Joyce, and I could watch a herd of sable antelope in the thick brush a few yards off the road. The young bulls stared at us and allowed me to take several photographs. Fanie and Joyce must have seen thousands of sable antelope during their lifetimes along the Zambezi River but I was thrilled. I took it as a good sign that the first herd of antelope I encountered in Africa would be the most beautiful animals on the continent.

We went through a wire gate across the graded road and drove up on a group of Africans who were repairing a culvert. One of the four workers was armed with an AK-47 automatic rifle, which Pretorius, the outfitter for my first African safari, said the men carried at all times because of the possibility of encountering dangerous game.

Even a greenhorn visitor knew that an automatic rifle and military ammunition were not appropriate if an inexperienced shooter had to stop a charging elephant or buffalo, nor would they be likely -- unless the same novice shooter was exceptionally lucky -- to make a hungry lion immediately change its plans for dinner. Zimbabwe's revolution against white rule had ended just twenty-eight months earlier and the African majority now controlled the country. The end of colonialism had not brought good things, however. News reports in South Africa in 1983 told of unspeakable atrocities by government troops in Matabeleland. As had happened after America's Civil War, a few scattered groups of guerrillas had become outlaws. The difference ended there. In Zimbabwe they were using tactics and weapons given to them by North Koreans, Chinese and Cubans before Ian Smith's Rhodesia collapsed in 1980.

We waited while Pretorius spoke with one of the men in his language. When he returned we learned that a half hour earlier a cow elephant with an injured foot had walked across the road exactly where we were parked. This was the Africa I had read about and dreamed about. I always knew that I would see and experience it one day. Here it was, finally, just as I had imagined.

I was in Zimbabwe thanks to C.J. McElroy, the founder of Safari Club International, and SATOUR, the South African Tourism Department. When I took over Safari Magazine a few months before this trip Mac said I needed to get to Africa so I would understand what the club's members and the magazine's authors were writing about.

He first arranged for me to hunt an elephant and a bongo in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) with a safari company managed by Adelino Serras Pires, whom I later would come to know very well. The U.S. State Department and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta both suggested that travelers visiting Zaire undergo an assortment of inoculations. I had taken all the shots and was packed and ready to leave the next morning when I received a telegram from Brussels warning me not to leave home. The government of Zaire had suddenly banned all hunting, it said.

Mac, who often said he envied no one except someone on his first African hunting safari, then arranged a week-long hunt with Pretorius's company in the Matetsi region of southwestern Zimbabwe for me. At the same time, SATOUR was inviting journalists on two-week junkets to South Africa, all expenses paid, including first-class airfare. My first safari would cost me the price of a room at the Victoria Falls Hotel for two nights and U.S.$900 in government trophy fees for the buffalo, sable antelope, and southern greater kudu I would shoot.

So, in June 1983, I flew from Tucson to New York, and then on to Johannesburg on South African Airways. I was so excited that I stayed awake during the nineteen-hour flight from New York. I was thrilled when I finally saw the narrow strip of beach on the coast of what then was called South West Africa (now Namibia) below me. I felt what an Olympic medal winner must feel when standing on a platform while his or her national anthem is played. I had reached my lifelong goal. I had arrived!

When we landed at Jan Smuts International Airport I had no trouble clearing my two rifles -- a .458 Winchester Magnum and a .30-06, both super grade Winchester Model 70s. I had bought them especially for my first safari. The people at SATOUR had said that I should take a taxi to the Carlton Centre Hotel in downtown Johannesburg, where a room was waiting for me. During the drive to the city the taxi driver, a black woman, asked if I'd like to see Soweto. When I said I was tired after traveling half way around the world and wanted to take a shower and get some sleep, she told me all her fares from America wanted to see Soweto. Under Apartheid, Soweto was where black citizens who worked in Johannesburg were forced to live. U.S. media portrayed it as an awful place. That was not entirely accurate. True, much of the town consisted of brown shacks thrown together with scavenged cardboard and sheet metal. But there also were large, freshly painted, modern homes with manicured gardens. I was told on another trip that the largest and best-cared-for home in Soweto belonged to Winnie Mandela, wife of Nelson Mandela, who would become South Africa's first democratically elected president in 1994. In 1983, Mandela still was imprisoned on Robben Island after being sentenced to life imprisonment as a terrorist in 1964.

My hotel, the Carlton Centre, was a modern high-rise. Out the window were tall buildings rising twenty or more stories. Below the hotel was a three-level underground shopping mall with dozens of shops. Outside and down the street was a world-famous store called “Safrique.” It carried every imaginable item needed for a safari -- from gasoline lanterns to canvas bathtubs to bush clothes. After a shower and an hour's nap I walked to the store (downtown Johannesburg still was safe in those days) and bought Jean khaki culottes with a matching blouse straight out of the film “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

I flew on to Bulawayo the next morning and sat in its airport with Cuban soldiers injured in the war then under way in Angola while I waited for my flight to Victoria Falls. Parked outside was a Soviet military aircraft that was as large as a Boeing 747.

Fanie and Joyce Pretorius met my flight and drove me to the historic Victoria Falls Hotel, a stuffy colonial institution where each staff member wore a white jacket and a red fez. We had lunch outside under a huge tree and watched monkeys scamper through the branches above us. When Fanie and Joyce left me I walked to the falls on a trail that led through a rain forest and past a statue of Dr. David Livingstone, the explorer said to be the first European to see the falls. There were only a few people along the path that runs along the canyon and I walked slowly, enjoying every inch of the short hike. Incredibly, there was a place where I was able to stand overlooking the falls and hold a rainbow in my hands. It was an unbelievable experience.

That evening after dinner I bought a ticket for “The African Spectacular,” a show staged by a dozen male performers wearing tribal dress. I will never forget how one of the men was able to place an unattached sixteen-foot pole on its end and then climb all the way to its top and stand on it. There was nothing to keep the pole from falling except the man's incredible sense of balance.

Fanie and Joyce joined me for breakfast, then drove me to the other local tourist attractions: the “Big Tree” (a huge baobab said to be Africa's largest) and a crocodile farm with literally hundreds of crocs, including a monster that had to be five feet wide and twenty feet long! We then made a quick stop at my hosts' home and were on the road to my first African hunting adventure in their new Range Rover.
•
A wooden sign with carved letters proclaiming we had entered a concession called Westwood Wildlife Safaris Pvt. Ltd. of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, marked the entrance to their camp. The posts that supported it were topped with the sun-bleached skull of a Cape buffalo. A baobab tree almost as large as the one in Vic Falls stood just past the junction. A waterbuck bull walked slowly across the road as we made the turn toward the neat, tin-roofed and stuccoed ranch-style house about fifty yards above a shallow ripple across the Zambezi River.

Flowers, trees, and Bermuda grass were being cultivated around the house. In the bed of a Toyota Land Cruiser that had arrived a few minutes before us was an African lion killed that morning by Marie Greco, an executive for a newspaper chain based in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although she had never hunted before this trip she said she had always dreamed of going on safari and shooting a lion. She had come halfway around the world by herself to make her dream come true. Her trophy was a young male with a scant mane. Unlike those in East Africa, even Zimbabwe's oldest lions are rarely found with thick manes, Pretorius said. The big male we saw roaring at the start of those old M.G.M. movies obviously did not have its hair pulled and snagged in Zimbabwe's thornbush country.

(M.G.M. now is using a young male with a mane much like the one on Greco's lion.)

While his men took my baggage to my room, Pretorius took me to his skinning shed where we checked out the skulls and skins of recently killed Cape buffalo, kudu, bushbuck, eland, and sable. Weathered skulls of various antelope species were nailed to the posts around the high fence that surrounded his compound.

A man named Harry, a computer programmer for Federal Express in Louisiana, was packing his luggage for his return to the United States the next day. He had spent two weeks at Westwood and killed a Cape buffalo, a southern greater kudu, a Livingstone eland and a Chobe bushbuck and all would make Safari Club International's record books. He and I shared a bedroom that night and when we were settled in our beds as the generator went off, Harry said I would have a wonderful time hunting there, because he had.

He warned me not to leave the fenced area without a rifle because lion tracks had been seen just outside the front entrance. I also shouldn't go near the river behind the buildings, he said, because of its crocodiles. I followed his advice. I had read somewhere that as many as fifty humans were eaten by crocs along the Zambezi every year. That's nearly one a week, if those reports were true ...

Bill, Great introduction...I already want to read more. Thank you for honoring us with a glimpse into your upcoming book! Please be sure to let us know what your signing schedule will be like as I am sure that there will be hunters from AH who would like to have the opportunity to meet you when getting a copy of your book.

For those of you who don't know, Bill Quimby is the moderator of the most popular seminar at the SCI show every year, "Your First African Safari" (although I hear that it is very worthwhile for hunters who have been to Africa as well). It is on Thursday morning of the SCI convention from 10 to noon, for more info click here.

Bill thank you for your post it looks to be a very good book. Your descriptions almost puts me right on the spot with you.:happywave:

Jerome and Louis, thank you for the kind words.

I will post the book signing schedule when I learn it.

As for the seminar, it is our blue-ribbon panel of old African hands and true experts who have made it SCI's longest-running and one of its most popular seminars:

-- Craig Boddington, who needs no introduction, on arms and ammo for Africa;

-- Jack Atcheson (among other things, Jack O'Connor's taxidermist and booking agent) on what to do in Africa to assure the best mounts on your wall;

-- Johann Calitz of Johann Calitz Safaris on what you should expect from your outfitter and what an outfitter will expect from you,

-- Beverly Wunderlich of J/B Adventures and Safaris on the paperwork and other things you'll need for your first safari, and

-- Safari Press and Sports Afield publisher Ludo Wurfbain on what to read before, during and after your safari.

I urge everyone to stop by and say hello. I look forward to putting faces to the posts of fellow members of this forum.

Bill Quimby