New Botswana Hunting Quota Propose Lions & Year-Round Elephant Hunting

Hunt anything said:

Does Toby realize that given the chance said lion would happily eat him or you.
I’m in the same boat, even though I would love to hunt a wild lion or a leopard the wife says NO CATS.

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Wildwillalaska said:

@Hunt anything … but cats. This made me laugh this morning. Thank you.

I am really in the same boat. My misses, who doesn’t hunt but has zero issue with it being my passion, simply asked one thing when we started dating seriously…hunt anything you like, just no elephants. At the time, I was like no worries. I was in the height of my sheep hunting mania and figured a decent elephant hunt would start at 100k or more and why would I ever want to. Plus I don’t want to hunt something just because it’s rare or marginally endangered. Skip forward several years, my how the tides have changed.

I learned more about elephant populations and shocked at just how ignorant I was about all things Africa. I had my head in the sand globally, just hunting Alaska for a couple decades. Now I could see wanting to hunt one or three. But I promised.

Skip forward to 2023 and we were about to totally rebuild a house on a lake that was floatplane suitable. Building a proper dock for same and was a few months away from starting a Piper Supercub build and starting my pilots license. One of my best buds who is a phenomenal airplane mechanic and builds/rebuilds cubs in the offseason and had flown me all over the state for more than 15 years, had retired from his transporter/outfitter business and taken up building full time. Exciting time.

Sadly, as I flew out of sheep camp in August, my bud’s dad was flying us out and asked where Jesse was and he said helping out with J-Birds thing. Asked more, learned he had wrecked and made it sound like Jesse went down to help wrench on things to get everything going again, since it was one of the busiest times of year. Things get tweaked now and then or have a rough landing and folks pitch in to get them going as quickly as possible so hunters aren’t stuck, etc. Having all this convo while flying. Inquire further to learn how bad his plane was and that’s when he realized I hadn’t heard yet. Jesse wasnt down to help wrench, he went for the memorial. Fact was my buddy JBird had a catastrophic wreck, with a client on board, both men in the prime of their lives and children at home, and had ended up in a deep ravine within the Denali Park boundary, where the aircraft and men remain. I was and am still at a total loss. JBird had flown me on countless scouting trips in years passed, flown me and several of my family in and out of the field, flown me for my 2022 sheep hunt. We’d shared countless dinners and stayed at his house, it really hit home. But admit, it didn’t change my mind even the slightest about getting my license and starting to fly.

As 2024 came around and we were in total rebuild on the home, as I also readied for the supercub build, my other friend had brought a chassis and engine up from Wyoming that was his fathers and we were going to use it as our base. My now fiancée broke down and said she really didn’t like the idea. We went back and forth a bit, and she was serious, she didn’t want me to do it. She was respectful and did forbid or demand, more of a rational plea. It had remained after all a childhood dream of mine. I would have done it years before except for my one friend who was now about to build my cub talking me out of it. He just always said where the hell you want to go that I don’t already fly you, which was true.

Long story short, she had also heard me talk about interest in elephants, and ultimately she came back and as we talked about her preference to no cub, she asked that I at least wait until my youngest daughter is out of high school, and me being a bit dramatic saying it was fair to have me abandon or at a minimum delay a dream, but two, I already promised not to hunt elephants, now no supercubs?

Her response…you should go hunt elephants. We reached a couples bargain, no cub for now, and elephants are free game…now I just need to hunt one. And still fly in tiny little planes around this wilds of this state, but also admit while I find some joy in it, just not the same after August 2023.

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