Will you share your mistakes?

Charlie P

AH member
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Africa
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South Africa 2X, Alaska 3X, Idaho 2X, Wyoming, Alabama lifelong
I'm 63 so have made a few mistakes in my time. We often hear what we should do. It is not as often we share real life experiences of "this is how I screwed up so no need for you to do it also". Wisdom= information gained right after you needed it! I'll share some of my ignorance and hopefully others might do the same. It should be entertaining as well as helpful to those that will take the time to read and try to understand. I look forward to what others have to offer, especially things specific to Africa.

1. In my youth I did extensive backpacking so you would think wise to moving about in the outdoors. Once I was in Alberta on a weeklong horseback wilderness trip. At a point in the trip we stopped and the guide announced that there was a waterfall up the mountain and we tied the horses for the walk up to it. Now picture this, I'm in full riding gear, chaps and all. Having the information at hand and a bit lazy to be honest, I struck out behind the group, me being the eldest. Let me tell you what, you take a fellow from sea level in south Alabama and put him in Alberta going up a mountain side through raw brush, over and under dead falls and it don't take long before he's out of gas. Now, I was in decent shape but you put on jeans and then heavy leather shotgun chaps on top of them and every leg lift is a major physical effort.

So you think lessor learned right? Well of course not. I later in life found myself at the Canadian border in Idaho, January, waste deep snow hunting Mountain Lion. The dogs were on the trail and the snow machines parked. The Guide says to shed the cloths, time to go in after him. Being it was freezing I had on extra heavy long-johns and waterproof double layered pants. I remembered the mistake I'd made that is mentioned above but what was I to take off, unlike the chaps I could have taken off that time? So, off I go. Do you know how long it takes to be spent going through waste deep snow, going over, under and through stuff that you can't even see because it's hidden by snow. I can testify, not long. The outfitter had brought his wife along and one of the guides had brought his daughter (a delightful family affair). They're moving about like it's a cheerful, sunny afternoon in the park and I'm doubting I can take another step and will likely die right here. Very humiliating.

Lesson learned- if you will be hunting, unknown circumstance's will occur and you may need to travel through harsh terrain. DO NOT RESTRICT YOUR ABILITY TO MOVE YOUR LEGS! Sacrifice some comfort, take an extra minute, but by all means maintain your agility and thus stamina.

2. Watch out for the drugs! No, not those kind of drugs. Again, back when I was younger I had a Moose hunting trip out of Dillingham, AK. At that stage of my life I was more sensitive to air sickness so had acquired with a doctor's prescription the patches to place behind my ear. So I put the patch on and flew over to Dillingham from Anchorage after seeing my wife off on her journey home. We had just spend a week touring the state together. I arrived in Dillingham and began looking for my outfitter to meet me. Nothing, nobody there to meet me. I set down and wait. Hours later the airport is closing so I call my booking agent. He says that it's Alaska and things happen. The Outfitter will eventually show. I go next door to the bar/hotel (plywood bed and community bath) and get a room. The next morning I'm back in the airport waiting room. I set there all day and again nothing. Needless to say I'm worried. The booking agent gives me a repeat on the advice. Back to the hotel. Next day the outfitter shows up just before noon with a story about the weather delaying him. We fly into basecamp and there are caribou everywhere. The plan is to take a caribou then take a short flight out to a spike camp for moose. I settle in and the next morning it isn't long before there is a Caribou on the ground and the rest of the day is spent tending to him. The next day is spent about camp and plans are made to fly myself and a guide to spike camp the next day. We're up and gone to the new camp with plans to be there a couple of days. Can't hunt the day of arrival, but the next morning we're up and out. The couple of day's pass and nothing. Food is getting down to peanut butter and crackers. No plane shows. The next day the plane does arrive but he says there's big moose right over there if you want to stay another night and try him tomorrow. The guide and I choose to stay. The next day we go in and spook the moose. The young guide takes off running after him down a muddy trail with me in tow. I'm having a hard time navigating the trail. He side steps a bog that I don't see and now up to my knees in mud and stuck. He's hollering to come on and I'm struggling to get out. Finally successful we make it to a slue's edge and the guide is hollering shoot, shoot! I lay the rifle in and something's not right. I do the biggest of no, no's at this point. Confident I'm looking at the moose, although he's a blur, I take the shot, and off he goes. The "kid" keeps hollering shoot again but I can't see the moose. As we all know moose are big. How is it I can't see a moose. Furthermore, at that time I shot competitively and was good at it. How did I miss a moose? Later the outfitter flies back in and defeated we fly back to basecamp. A day or two later I'm back on a commercial airline headed back home. The concern of airsickness over I remove the patch from behind my ear. Many days later after my eyesight recovered I read the details on the patch instructions- "do not wear over 8 hrs or blurred vision and dry mouth will occur". I'd wore mine for over a week and had severe problems with both issues.
STUPID on my part.

3. This is a simple one. I was hunting black bear out of Valdez. It rains constantly there. I was hunting two hunters to one guide. We maneuvered around the bays looking for bear and I noticed the guide and the other hunter were always spotting the bears before myself. I felt a bit humiliated at my lack of equality. After studying the what's wrong I came up with two explanations but one answer. With the constant rain my glasses were always covered with water drops obscuring my vision. Secondly, the glasses were photo grays. Although that makes them good for not allowing certain harmful light to reach the eyes which is good in one sense it is that very light that makes a black bear stand out against the background. So lesson learned, no darkening glasses for such hunting and a better option would be contact lenses so that rain does not build up on them.

Hope some find this helpful or at least amusing and will not think of me as always being stupid. Looking forward to the replies.
 
Not a hunting experience but one from work.I've worked construction for over 60 years now and never once used the blade guard on a skilsaw. Never even had a close call until one day. I had just bought a new saw and hadn't had time to block the guard. I always pull it full up and put in a screw to hold it.

I was doing plunge cuts in lattice, left hand holding the guard up, right hand running the saw until it pinched and kicked back. It caught my left index finger and took all the hide and skin off the thumb side right down to the bone. Then it got my second finger and just about completely severed it. It was hanging by a small strip of skin. Next was my ring finger. Put a scratch in my ring and took a little hide.

I was working alone so I dropped my tool belt, grabbed my handkerchief, wrapped up my hand and drove home. The wife was a little unhappy when I came into the house hollering for a little help. Disturbed her phone gossip session, y'know. So, off to the ER at the hospital where they finished dressing my hand then they airlifted me to San Francisco to the Bunke Clinic. They are world renowned micro surgeons.

By then it was late evening. The surgeon came in and looked at it. I figured he'd just finish taking the finger but he said he could save it and by God, he did. It has a permanent bend of about 45 degrees at the second knuckle but it is stiil there and works just fine. I asked him why the bend rather than straight and he said it was much more functional and natural.

Needless to say, as soon as I got home from a week in the hospital, that damn guard got pinned up and I have never used one since on any of my saws. Sometimes these socalled safety features are more dangerous than if they weren't there.
 
The universe does not hold enough gigabyte space for me start in on my mistakes but two of them are…

1. Not hunting Africa sooner.

2. Not hunting Africa more.

I can’t do anything about the first one but working hard on the second.
 
I should have never got talked into that first Safari with Jaco Strauss. It has turned into 5 trips and more being planned.
 
I like Randy F's list. Spot on.

Probably the biggest mistakes from my younger hunting life boil down to these two the most: 1) Be patient. Always give it ten more minutes than you want to. 2) Always get out there and don't talk yourself out of it because you're tired, the bed is warm, it's raining, etc; You can't kill something from your bed or couch.

Charlie... What year was that? I have been in DLG since 2002.
 
I like Randy F's list. Spot on.

Probably the biggest mistakes from my younger hunting life boil down to these two the most: 1) Be patient. Always give it ten more minutes than you want to. 2) Always get out there and don't talk yourself out of it because you're tired, the bed is warm, it's raining, etc; You can't kill something from your bed or couch.

Charlie... What year was that? I have been in DLG since 2002.
Dillingham was 1992
 
One of the two hardest hunts of my life was a cougar hunt very similar to yours-only we all got wet and tired and I was sure we would die of hypothermia before we got off the mountain.
Just last month chasing hounds after a bear the young guy I was with got very sick-vomiting and stomach cramps. Long story short, he had run out of water and filled his bottle from a cow trough we had gone past-poor sucker never had heard of giardia. I bought him a filter bottle for the next race!
 
Not checking ammo close enough and sending a .270 round down a 7mm mag, lotsa stuff comes out those ports on the side of the barrel. And lotsa teasing comes from the hunting crew.

shooting over the back of a steenbok because, due to their diminutive size, they look so far away in the scope that it was easy to hold high as if I was shooting at an elk size animal at 400 yards.
 
Getting older changes perception. Now days I look to the difficulty of the carcass extraction rather than the quality of the rack lol. I've caused so much bodily pain over the years extracting stuff that I never should have pulled the trigger on.

.....and of course, as Randy F says, should have started hunting Africa earlier!

FN
 
Me too in not hunting Africa sooner. Had a friend try to talk me into it about 1990 but I was on a roll DIY hunting and fishing in Alaska and at that time my budget dictated DIY Alaska- not Africa. Of course if I had gone to Africa that would have started the inevitable trend of... well you know :) I do not regret my 18 or so hunt/fish trips to Alaska beginning mid-70s. Having friends and relatives scattered around up there helped assure that trend. One mistake, nearly very serious, was also a moose hunt in AK. Got some very minor frostbite on all my fingers.

The covid scamdemic of the last couple years worth of cancelled Africa trips has me staring, as we speak, square at a date with a few 30" plus rainbows on the Naknek just after Labor Day. All in all- only a couple of mistakes over the years in not preparing due to the arrogance of youth or not doing something when coulda-shoulda. The plusses have far outweighed the minuses- I've been both lucky and blessed.
 
I have a piece of shrapnel in a finger on my left hand. Years ago I was shooting over the side of my truck bed. All was fine except the scope was above the other side of the bed but the barrel wasn't. It was a little below and when I fired a piece of jacket came back and hit me. Put a nice hole in the bed. Moral of the story: Don't rest your rifle on the side of your truck bed.
 
I have a piece of shrapnel in a finger on my left hand. Years ago I was shooting over the side of my truck bed. All was fine except the scope was above the other side of the bed but the barrel wasn't. It was a little below and when I fired a piece of jacket came back and hit me. Put a nice hole in the bed. Moral of the story: Don't rest your rifle on the side of your truck bed.
That left hand of yours gets into a lot of trouble don't it!
 
That left hand of yours gets into a lot of trouble don't it!
You could say that. Let's see. Fingers almost cut off by a skilsaw. Shrapnel from shooting. One side of left index finger shredded by table saw. Hammered too many times to count. Middle finger broken catching baseball. All that and I still have it and it works.
 
30 years construction, youth listening to music as loud as I could crank the knob shooting without enough ear protection. I truly never knew how bad my hearing has gotten until this past year, when everyone wearing masks made me realize how much I depend on lip reading.
 

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