8 Million dollars worth of hunting trophies

[Inkstainz]

man i bet he has led one heck of a life!

 

[REM7]

WOW

 

[ROUGH COUNTRY HUNTER]

a blessed life for sure

 

[Hunter 257W]

I've always read all I can get about African hunting and this guy has gotten to live that dream out. He's very fortunate. What fascinates me about African hunting - beyond the obvious tremendouse variety and quantity of game species - is the way they are hunted. Practically everything there is stalked rather than sitting day after day the way we do for deer.

Shifting gears a bit but not totally, if any of you ever get the chance while in Chicago, go to the Field Museum. They have an unbelievable display of African Game. It goes on and on and the animals are mounted in glass walled rooms complete with habitat that each species prefers out in nature. You have to see it to believe it. They also have the infamous Lions Of Tsavo there.

http://fieldmuseum.org/

 

[Deer Assassin]

cool

 

[spitndrum]

dang

 

[Hunter 257W]

I'll admit to not knowing a whole lot about African Hunting, but what I have seen of it, doesn't look so intriguing to me. I would definitley have little interest in riding around with a crew of 7 people including a guy who's job it is to deploy your shooting sticks. I would also have 0 interest in sitting over a water hole in a pimped out hooch with picture of game on the wall with price tags next to each one.
The only "poor man's" African hunting I have heard of is an acquaintance of mine who is going there for a couple of weeks just to hunt warthogs (that' all he could afford). He said he worked out a deal for $100 a day for lodging and food. He's entirely on his own as far as getting around, hunting etc on a large ranch to trim the warthog population. Curious if there is such thing as or equivalent to DIY African hunts. Based on my somewhat limited observations of it, I think I would choose a lifetime of hunting North American backcountry to a collection of African trophies.

I don't know about modern African hunting as all my reading is from the Golden days of Africa - say 1880's to 1950's or therebouts. If I were going now, I think I would start with getting some of Craig Boddington's books as they are current and would represent the current situation. In fact, I think he has written one that is more geared towards informing prospective hunters on how to set up a safari rather than just a collection of hunting stories. Believe me, if you could hunt the way the old guys did, deer hunting would seem boring afterwards. Those guys walked miles and miles every day following tracks. John Taylor was one in particular that carried his own rifle every step of the way and would stay out for months on end. I agree with you on a hunt where all you do is pull the trigger. I would demand my money back if I ended up on a hunt of that type. That's why it would be so important to have lots of communication before an African hunt. With all the time and especially money involved, for most of us it would be a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

 

[CBU93]

For me, it is all about the experience, not the result.

Dangerous game may very well be a pipe dream for me unless I hit the lottery. Plains game is much more affordable.

As far as methodology of the hunt, my understanding is this: unless you are hunting dangerous game where you have spent so much $$$ on a specific tag and target that specific animal (baiting for cats or hunting the large buffalo herds), plains game is more a hunt of opportunity. You hunt a specific area and find sign of a specific animal species that you have tags for, then pursue them. Also, the challenge is not neccessarily finding a specimen of that species but picking out a specific animal of that species that meets the culling requirements as well as trophy requirements...usually out of a relatively large number of specimens in a herd. Fooling that many noses, eyes and ears is in itself the challenge. Most of those animals senses are the equivalent of our whitetail deer.

I came within a hair of booking a 10 day, seven animal plains game safari on a couple of occasions. I still hope to take my wife and son at some point in the next seven years or so as a family vacation...the safari as a part of a larger vacation in parts of Africa that deserve to be seen!

Several members here have gone and have posted some fabulous photos of their adventures!!!!

 

[Hunter 257W]

I bought a 460 Weatherby rifle 25 years ago as a way to somehow soothe my craving for killing a charging cape buffalo. That's alway been a dream of mine ever since I got Peter Capstick's series of "Death in the ......" books. The plains game would be great fun but it's the Big Five that I dream of.

I DID get to shoot a dying black Angus cow one time with the 460. Wasn't the same.