Anybody Want to Shoot an Elephant?

[mudbrook]

Anybody Want to Shoot an Elephant?
 I was talking with a colleague the other day and he asked, “So Hanback, when’s your next trip over my man?”

“Over where?”

”To Africa man!” he roared. 

I explained that I had never been over and that I had never really wanted to go all that much, that I was a North American hunting guy; he looked at me like I was the village idiot.

“Ah, there is nothing like it,” he opined, a touch of British high-brow creeping into his Yankee voice. “I was bitten by the bug several years ago and I hardly want to hunt anywhere else, it's in my blood.”

The guy is not alone. Have you noticed all the safari stories in magazines and African hunts on TV lately? African travel and the safari business are booming.

I was talking with another man who shot his first elephant. With eyes welling up he told me how he’d dropped the magnificent beast with a brain shot at 20 yards and that it was “a life-changing experience.”

Always one to ask deep and poignant questions I blurted, “Did the ground shake when he went down?”

“Ah, yes,” he replied, almost sobbing now, speaking Brit too. I find it strange that people start talking like that when they come back from Africa.

From what I understand this recent fascination is largely economic. They tell me you can hunt Africa for a week or 2 cheaper than you can go to Alaska, which I consider to be the world’s top hunting destination (been there 6 times for sheep, moose, etc., magnificent). But I bet they are leaving out all the taxidermy bills and especially the trans-oceanic shipping fees.
more.. http://mikehanback.blogs.com/bigbuckzone/2007/04/anybody_want_to.html