Search results

You must’ve hit the one in your left hand with the whole dang wad. Good lead!

Thanks for giving a really thought out response. You raised some questions to ask that still hadn’t crossed my mind. I’ll be much more prepared before next time thanks to help like yours!

We’ve had some time to chew on it, and when family and friends ask we don’t have to lie to tell them how much fun we had. But if there’s any group of people who can stand to hear the bad and the ugly along with the good, it’s y’all!

However, something as simple as, “You guys have a question? Sorry, it’s a well-established rule, I’m sorry you didn’t know, but if it’s wounded, I have to take it off my books,” would have sufficed. To scream at paying clients, in front of your other clients? Unconscionable. And we were men...

It’s important to remind you here I did not name the outfitter, nor will I. I’ll speak my reasoning. - This is my side of the story, surely, he would see it another way. - This man went out of his way to fit us in on short notice, when he had a full schedule prepared. - We did not stop our PHs...

We pack, we prepped to leave, we finished our suitcase whiskey, and we discussed final payment with the PHs over the animals shot—and the wildebeest wounded. It’s worth noting that despite my frustration and disappointment with the PH John, he kept us safe, was politely professional, and never...

The whole event happened within sight of the truck. Once I hooped and hollered again, the rest of the group came to celebrate. And in the dying light of our final sunset over the savannah, and with no more pressure or time left to hunt, we were able to admire the absolutely astonishing beauty of...

The fifteen-minute drive becomes an hour, surprise, and its after four o’clock before we’re genuinely hunting again. Sunset is around five, leaving us no more than an hour to hunt, plus a nighttime track, if we’re lucky, before we have to pack to leave. It’s getting dire. We’re forty minutes in...

Day five, our last day. We have hunted from before to after dark, every day we’ve been at camp. We still have on our list blesbok, two impala, and a Zebra. It’s quite apparent to all of us we won’t come remotely close to getting all the animals we planned on and came for. We are dropped off at...

Throw the nyala in the trunk with the wildebeest, who’s beginning to gurgle and expand at this point, and we go back to drop them off. A quick loose meat sandwich of some sort of bushmeat, and we load back up. We hunt until sunset, never again setting up the sticks on another animal, but John...

Now, I had long feared the idea of seeing a trophy animal, a survivor for a decade, minding its own business, and killing it within seconds of your encounter. This is exactly what I had just done. But in my first true year of big game hunting in America, and in my two years of planning the...

What happened next I hope to never do again, but desperately wish we had caught on film. Jack grabs him by the horns and forces down his head to the dirt. The tracker grabs his front legs and pulls them towards the head. John grabs the barrel of the .308 and puts the muzzle to his fur and tells...

Now that our bushbuck hunt had been a wash, I had some extra money in my pocket for a “plus one” surprise animal. I let my PH Jack (the competent one, whom I trusted) know that morning that I would be very happy paying for a waterbuck or even a nyala if the opportunity arose (ain’t got no space...

So with the only tracker working the wounded wildebeest trail with John, Jack was left to drive the car, making me the spotter in the back. I mount up, a lone man on a mission, and off we drive into parts unknown. Thankfully, and I can say these things because it’s anonymously on the internet...

It’s worth mentioning the entire time we stalked and tracked, the two ladies stayed at the truck, alone in the bush, and kept a smile on their face. We are men undeserving.

Daybreak on day four. Not five minutes into the drive, and a small flock of blue wildebeest are down the end of a road, to the west, so we can approach with the sun at our back. We dismount and begin a stalk, the two hunters, the two PHs, and the one tracker. At about 130 yards, John determines...

The morning of day three, we split into two trucks. My wife and I are now with Jack, our other PH for the week, who heretofore was silent and in the background. We opened up conversation with him and our week and mood just changed completely. He is brand spanking new at this outfitter, it is his...

The next morning, we return with a vengeance to the river. Both PHs, us two hunters, and a tracker. From 7 AM to 1 PM we walk slowly and silently, with five pairs of eyes scanning the brush, and we never see hide nor tail of a bushbuck. We, the paying clients, at this point make an executive...

Finally at the Happy Hunting Grounds, we dismount to go safari. John, our head PH of the two, remarks that we are too many people, and there is only one gun, so he will only be taking me and the tracker, and everyone else must remain at the car with Jack. This is again unexpected. We have come...

Upon arriving we sat down for a meeting with the head honcho of the outfitter. The animals we intended to hunt as paid add-ons were Bushbuck and Zebra, as well as Blue Wildebeest, Impala, Blesbok, and Warthog, which were the included animals. We were two couples, and though against our desire...

This long-form studying did have some pitfalls, though—your wife can only hear so many times about the various subspecies of the bushbuck. While I joke, she was a loving and supporting partner in this venture, what I failed to do was expect a similar level of personal investment among our other...

Limiting a bullet point or paragraph to “prep” would be short-selling how important and wide-reaching the preparation aspect of your safari will be. I don’t know of anyone who planned any less than a year for their safari, even the fellas who’ve already been there and back again. If you search...

This isn’t quite a traditional hunting report. I won’t name the outfitter I used, though you might reasonably guess where I was. But I know you’re reading this either because you’ve already caught the Africa bug (not monkeypox), or you want to join the party and see what this is all about. Well...

You can come say hi to us, we'll be in steerage. See ya in the sky

Delta is beginning direct ATL to JNB, DL200, seven days a week on May 24. I couldn't find this online, and FlightAware and trackers just show it on W,F,Su right now and I needed to leave on a Saturday. It had me sweating. I did the long hold with Delta for a rep and got the answer, now I pass it...

I just got off the phone with a Delta rep - seven day a week direct flights from ATL to JNB begin on Tuesday, May 24. But anyone getting cold feet about the seven-day-ticketing for three-day-a-week flights can rest a little easier on that point. Pricewise, we got tix from Houston to JNB via ATL...