African Safari
Rifle and Bow and Arrow
Your First Safari and Preparation
By Ed Hale
Copyright 2011 Ed Hale,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0146-1
69 Sweet Hill Rd Plaistow, NH 03865
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system except as an authorized ebook, or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are so many people to remember to thank in the very long process of making of this, my very first safari book. Most importantly I wish to thank my wife Susan for her patience and understanding while I burned the midnight oil almost to the exclusion of all else and to my sons Christopher and Jason for sharing my passion for the outdoors. Special thanks to Dr. Oliver Ford in sharing my enthusiasm and providing valuable assistance in the creation of this book.
A very special thank you to Andries and Debby van Zyl for their terrific Mount Carmel Safari Operation, it provided the core safari material for this endeavor.
Thank you the New Hampshire Wildlife Federation for its dedication in defending hunting, fishing, and trapping and the promotion of conservation efforts in the state of New Hampshire and for providing the best annual sportsmen’s fundraising banquet, without which I could not write this book.
Thank you to Safari Club International for their global efforts protecting our freedom to hunt and for their conservation efforts for wildlife worldwide, and for the SCI scoring systems that allows hunters a way to be recognized for superior achievements in the hunting community.
Thank you to my friend Rege Podraza, the author of “Where Elephants go to Die” for permission to use some of his poetry in my book.
To Beth McAllister of Sturm Ruger & Co, Inc for her heroic efforts in providing a Ruger M77 Express rifle.416 Rigby caliber for me to test and for the assistance of Vern Briggs in providing Ruger manufacturing photos of the hammer forging process.
To my friend Pat Mundy, Leupold Media Supervisor for providing products to test and his shared enthusiasm for hunting.
To Jon LaCorte of Nikon Media Relations for providing products to test.
To Marcie at Simms Vibration Laboratory for providing products to test.
To Miles Herrick at Lyman for Digital pull gage and Pachmayr Pads for providing products to test.
To Chris Ellis of Timney for his sharp image of Timney triggers for use in Ruger rifles.
To Justin Moore of Nosler, Inc. for allowing me to test AccuBond and Solid bullets for the .375 Ruger.
FOREWORD
To have the chance to hunt in Africa with my son Jason was a dream come true. I know of many hunters like you and me who have wanted to go on an African safari someday. Africa is about high adventure and the adventurer’s spirit. It is our dream. I hope that you have an opportunity to hunt Africa too. With rising fuel prices, it seems that a trip to Africa is getting further and further away. Now is the time.
I discuss in these pages the preparation that Jason and I went through with rifle and bow to prepare for our adventure of a lifetime. In addition, I cover the details of putting a safari together, including budget preparation, taxidermy and importing your trophies, and of course your trophy room that are not readily covered in any single publication that I have seen.
This book is organized so you can skip around to chapters you find more pertinent to your immediate concerns.
As you already know, there are two parts to the hunting equation, the equipment and the hunter. We will endeavor to explore some of both. On hunting with gun and bow, I have a half a century of mistakes and successes to draw from and consider myself a veteran mistake maker, however, I learn quickly from them.
I reload my own bullets and often build my own arrows, and I like to experiment with them to see what works best. I don’t like to get beat up by my gun, but I want ENOUGH GUN. I expect my trigger to break when I want it to, not when it wants to. I like good optics and rangefinders, but I don’t want to pay too much for them either.
I do want equipment (rifle, bow and accessories) that is up to the task at hand. In addition, we will explore new products and review products that you can consider for your safari.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to
My father
Edward J. Hale
For passing his love of the outdoors to me
CHAPTER 1
EARLY HUNTING LESSONS
I am a studious “do it yourselfer” and perhaps that comes with my New England heritage. My wife will tell you “No venison in the freezer makes for a grumpy winter.”
I grew up in a family that was of the “great depression era” mentality. My dad literally saved everything: screws, nuts, bolts, broken tools that he would fix… you name it. He took great pride in his ability to make do with what was at hand. Perhaps your father was, too. Dad was a good shot with a rifle and trained my twin brother Richard and I well, starting with the BB gun, graduating to the single shot .22 and so forth. Mom was a do-it-yourselfer, too in the kitchen making jams, jellies and preserves for the cold New England winters. Oh, the aromas that came from that kitchen. My dad’s favorite dessert was venison mincemeat pie. He would say; “Mincemeat pie was not real unless it had venison in it.” Those days of the depression brought forth the hunter gatherer in my father and thus it emerged in me. My father would be hard pressed not to have food and vegetables on his table that were nurtured by plantings of his own hand and game meat for the table, whether times are hard or not. The bond with the land and the earth and its wildlife that he nurtured in me is so paternally strong that I in turn feel the urge to pass it on.
On the lighter side, as he recounted it, on one of my mom and dads first anniversaries, he would not get out of bed until his wife made him a mince meat pie for breakfast. He did eventually get the mincemeat pie, (no, not in the face like you might think) but he was on the receiving end of a lot of my mom’s unintelligible Italian adjectives. I learned that lesson early;
Keep your mother happy….
As a boy I honed my hunting, stalking, and shooting, skinning, gutting, food prep skills on the wily woodchuck. I discovered that a woodchuck would duck in its hole even if mortally wounded unless I was successful with a well-placed headshot from my single-shot .22. At the age of ten I was determined to bring home the bacon and accuracy was always an issue to be dealt with. Not from my gun necessarily, it shot fine most of the time. It was usually me. Well… maybe it was the gun some of the time. After all, the shooter can’t be blamed for everything. After the mental struggle of a missed shot, I learned to:
Get closer to the game, be patient and wait for the right shot to present itself.
Eventually these anvil headed varmints would come out and sit up. If I was close enough, my open sights would settle on the center of the anvil (head) and “Kerpow”,