The Early Life of W.B. Carson by Robert M. Anderson
W. Burch Carson is known and remembered for his important work in conducting a thorough, on-the-ground census of the scant remaining population of native Texas desert bighorns in the Texas Trans-Pecos region in the 1940s. His work was invaluable to subsequent restoration efforts for Texas bighorns. But Burch was a fascinating personality in his own right, a consummate outdoorsman and loner who knew the Sierra Diablo, Baylor, and Beach mountain ranges better than anyone else has, before or since, and he was a student of their mysteries—the lost mines, the caves, the cliffs, the ghosts and legends. While Carson left Texas after World War II and became a successful rancher in Arkansas, his early life roaming the hills of West Texas is what shaped his life and outlook.
Robert M. Anderson, who has authored a shelf full of books about North American mountain hunting as well as numerous biographies, was a friend of Carson’s for some thirty-four years. His fascination with Carson’s early life in the Trans-Pecos and his groundbreaking studies of the declining desert bighorn population inspired him to write this book about Carson’s early life in the Texas wilderness. The book, lavishly illustrated with photos of Carson and his adventures, covers much more than his work with bighorn sheep. Anderson recounts Carson’s successful career as a taxidermist, his spelunking adventures, his ongoing search for gold and lost mines in the region, and his research into little-known incidents in the region’s history. It’s a fascinating glimpse not just of a one-of-a-kind, pioneering outdoorsman, but of a remarkable, mysterious, and still little-known region of the American Southwest.
Judging animals is more art than science. It takes experience, and that means, in unfamiliar circumstances, none of us can be particularly accurate. Ease or difficulty depends largely on the animal. Lacking horns, antlers, or tusks, all predators are tough to judge, and calls are based on body and head shape, even attitude. Sheep aren’t so bad, offering curl and mass. Goats are tougher, especially the varieties with straighter horns. Antlered animals are the easiest; we can count points and estimate spread and mass. African plains game, myriad antelopes of various sizes and horn shapes, is probably the most difficult of all: Simple, unadorned horns offer the least for comparison and, in the early stages of one’s African experience, all are bewilderingly unfamiliar.
Wildebeest are easy: like buffalo, they offer us spread, shape, and mass. Hartebeest aren’t as tough as they appear; you look at mass and horn length between the turns. More importantly, however, look for long and preferably parallel tips behind the last turn. All spiral horns are trickier than at first glance, because so much depends on width and depth of the turns. These, plus shape, are important and, depending on species, length and direction of tips above the last turn often reveal maturity. Gazelles and springboks aren’t easy, but their horns have shape and, on all smaller varieties, we have ear and facial lengths for comparison.
Most difficult of all are straight-horned antelopes without shape, curve, or feature. These include the many pygmy antelopes and, at the larger end, the oryxes. In a good example of “less is more,” the smallest antelopes are fairly easy because horns can be judged against ear length. The bigger they are, the more difficult: steenbok and vaal rhebok are harder to judge than duikers, grysbok, and dik-diks, but the several oryxes are the devil: both sexes have horns, and differences in horn mass between males and females are subtle. At first, they all look long. If you can find me a PH who claims to have never made a mistake on an oryx, I’m gonna call BS.
Then there’s a large group of antelopes with distinctively curved horns. Straighter horns are taller and appear longer, but a lot of invisible length is hidden in the curve, harder to see and harder to judge. Some of these animals are closely related, such as the kobs, lechwes, reedbucks, and waterbucks. Others, such as impalas, sables, and roans, are of different genera, but judging the curve is critical to the decision.
In a few hundred words I don’t pretend I can offer proficiency (nor do I claim to possess same). This is your PH’s job; he sees these animals every day, making and verifying judgments and, always, getting better with experience. It’s useful to study pictures and film, and the various records books. Mind you, I am not record-book-centric; the idea is to take mature animals. The best advice I can offer on any safari is: “Listen to your PH.” However, it’s useful to know what he’s looking for. And why he so quickly discounts an animal that looks just wonderful to you. In the field, looking at live animals, you’ll be surprised how quickly you catch on.
Impalas: With its lyre-shaped horns, the impala is probably Africa’s most recognizable antelope. The impala’s horns grow out, curve back, and then turn upward. The curve is important and width matters greatly, but what your PH is really looking for is tips that are straight, upright, and parallel, and as long as possible. No indicators are consistent, but parallel tips are usually a mark of maturity, while inward-pointing tips suggest an animal that can grow a bit more.
Going away is a bad angle on almost any animal, but the impala on the left looks good: Long, parallel tips. The ram on the right is long, but he’s narrow, with points still tipping in.Johan Calitz and Donna Boddington with a nice impala: Wide and tall, with long, near-parallel tips.
Kobs: The several kobs range from Zambia (puku or Vardon’s kob) discontinuously north to the Uganda kob (largest), and then progressively smaller all the way to West Africa. At first glance, a kob looks like an overgrown impala, larger in body with thicker horns of similar shape. Often, they replace the impala as the most common medium antelope, but prefer wetter, grassier habitat. With kobs, length is truly “all in the curve.” You want the initial curve to be outside the ears. Like impala, the tips rise upward from a second turn but with kob the tips conclude with a forward flip, and this final curve is often what separates good from great.
With a big kob, a frontal view will show horns wide than the ears. You still want to see the tips, but on first glance this is what you’re looking for. With both kobs and lechwes, you want that final “flip” that brings the horn-tips forward. This an excellent Uganda kob.
Lechwes: Although more aquatic in habitat, the lechwe is essentially an overgrown kob. Three races of kob occur naturally from Namibia’s Caprivi up through Zambia, with the fourth (Nile lechwe) far to the north in the Great Sud swamps of Sudan. The lechwe is a robust animal with thick bases and longer horns than the kobs produce. Horn configuration is similar, but the curves are subtler, and the forward flip of the horn-tips is essential for both maturity and length.
Red lechwe in Caprivi. The bull on the right is impressive, but the left-hand bull is probably bigger…because of the curve that brings the horn-tips forward.A fine red lechwe in the Okavango. This bull shows the classic final curve that “flips” the horn-tips forward and adds significant length.
Reedbucks: As the name implies, the reedbucks are creatures of well-watered grassy plains and pockets. Smallest are the mountain reedbucks, then the several bohor reedbucks, with the common reedbuck the largest with the longest horns. All reedbucks have a bulbous horn base that is incipient horn, hard to see and useless to judge because it will be boiled away in trophy preparation. Mountain and bohor reedbucks have short horns that curve up and back, then tip forward. The mountain and bohor reedbucks are much easier to judge, because the horns can be easily judged against the ears.
Steve Hornady with an awesome East African bohor reedbuck from Uganda. Bases appear as thick as bases of the ears, and these horns are all curve!
Common reedbucks are twice as large, with twice the horn length, but have wider horns that often grow outward at nearly a 45-degree angle. This is deceptive. For best length you want the tips to curve forward. Again, it’s all in the curve. Blunt, worn tips are an indicator of maturity, but, as with many antelopes, as they age, tip wear often exceeds growth so, regrettably, the oldest reedbucks are often not those with the longest horns.
PH Julian Moller and Bill Owens with an excellent common reedbuck: On this ram, the length is “all in the curve.”
Sables and roans: These animals are closely related, with thick (gorgeous) horns that rise up and immediately curve back into sharp tips that these animals know how to use. The roan is larger in body with shorter, thicker horns: Roan antelopes are “shootable” in the mid-twenty-inch class; sables about ten inches more. Thirty inches is the Holy Grail for a fantastic roan; forty inches is the magic number for sable. Judging this length is the hard part. It’s all in the curve, and the curve varies tremendously. In both species, some animals have a very pronounced “C” configuration, with the horn tips curving down toward the back. Other individuals have horn tips that grow back, almost parallel with the spine, and some horns tip out, offering a bit of bonus in the curve.
Greater length usually comes from horns that sweep back, but these animals are difficult to judge because it also depends on the angle of the initial curve: How high the horns rise before they start to curve back. Unlike all other antelopes discussed so far, the sable-roan group is made more difficult because both males and females have similar horns. Female horns are thinner and usually shorter, but a herd looks like a forest of similar horns. Thickness is subtle, but a dominant bull will stand out in body size, and will typically be slightly apart from the group.
Two awesome sable bulls, both well over 40 inches. The bull on the right is probably bigger; there’s some extra length in horn-tips curving outward.Boddington and Michel Mantheakis with a good Roosevelt sable from Tanzania. This bull is just shy of 40 inches, with classic shape.
Waterbucks: The common waterbuck has the distinctive rump ring; the several regional Defassa waterbucks do not. Only males have horns, and although the races differ somewhat in body size, horns are indistinguishable: Long, heavily ringed, curving up, slightly back, and (preferably) slightly forward. The waterbuck is an attractive and important prize, and one or another race is found in all just about all African hunting countries.
Perhaps because of extreme length with little feature, I find waterbucks the most difficult of this entire group to “guesstimate.” Maybe not as difficult as a gemsbok, but close! Waterbucks become impressive long before they reach maximum horn growth. With almost any game animal, going away is a terrible angle: Everything looks bigger! Full frontal is better, but with waterbucks, almost equally misleading. It’s essential to study waterbucks from the side, because they are perhaps the best example that it’s “all in the curve.”
At first glance all waterbucks are impressive. This bull is going to be a dandy someday, but he’s still young, with horn length in the mid-twenties.
Only from the side can you really see how much the horns slant back, and then gently curve forward to sharp tips. A wide, straight-horned waterbuck can be very impressive and may appear longer, but in order to reach that magical figure of around thirty inches, you almost always need quite a bit of curve.
Mark Haldane and Donna Boddington with an excellent waterbuck. From front or rear this bull doesn’t appear as long as he is; it’s the tremendous curve that gives the length.
Making such judgments is your PH’s job. Even the very best won’t get it exactly right every time, but their ability to come close (and certainly determine mature from too young) is art they have studied, and it’s part of why you have hired them. It’s fun to study and learn alongside them but also wise to keep quiet: Final “shoot or don’t shoot” judgment is one of those times when you should listen to your PH.
Face to face with black bear on the West Coast’s largest island.
When we first spotted the huge black bear, it was lumbering down the slope onto a high plateau that had been clear-cut years before. The cut was regenerating with a mixture of high brush and small trees, and the bear had moved out of the heavy, dark timber on the hillside and was walking across the opening in the cool of the morning. It was moving with a purposeful, rolling gait like a fat man on his way to a bar, and even at more than half a mile away, the bear looked big.
Kim Cyr, my guide, studied the bear through his binocular and seemed to get more excited as the minutes passed. “That’s a four-ear bear,” he finally said in a low, awed tone. “Twenty inches, plus.”
Kim had spent the past couple of days coaching me on how to judge a big bear since I’d told him that, frankly, every bear looked huge to me. Kim explained that one of the tricks to judging a particular bear’s skull size was to look at it as it was facing you and figure out how many imaginary ears you could place between the bear’s actual ears. The more ears, the wider the skull and (presumably), the older and larger the bear. Three ears was a shooter. Three and a half was huge. Four . . . we hadn’t even discussed four. Four would be a monster.
I stared, but the bear was moving through the brush and I had trouble getting a good look at its head. I fixed its direction of travel in my mind and lowered the binocular. A grassy, brush-lined, grown over logging road snaked along the edge of the clear-cut. The bear was angling toward it.
“We could sneak up that road and maybe get a shot,” I suggested.
Kim was already getting to his feet. “We’ll take it slow, and try to stay out of sight,” he said. “The bear’s probably heading for the road to feed on some of that grass, so he’ll be there for a while.”
As we catfooted our way up the old road, the breeze blew directly in our faces. The track curved just enough so that the brush along its side shielded us from the bear’s view. As the sun kissed the mountain peaks, the low booming of blue grouse provided an occasional background bass note. I couldn’t believe it: On the third day of my Vancouver Island black bear hunt, with one of my two bear tags already filled, I was stalking a Boone-and-Crockett-class bear under ideal conditions: easy, quiet walking, perfect wind, and good cover.
We took more than an hour to move three-quarters of a mile up the old read, exercising great caution with every step since we couldn’t see the bear’s exact location. I spent the last fifteen minutes on hyper-alert, expecting the bear to step onto the road in front of us at any moment. I’d cranked the scope on my .308 down to its lowest power. Suddenly I froze in place, staring at a tree limb as it moved unnaturally up and down, pulled by the feeding bear on the other side. We had closed the distance to less than twenty yards. The wind was still in our faces, and the bear couldn’t see us as it fed behind the screen of brush and trees. The problem was, I couldn’t see it either. Ever so slowly, I edged across the road, trying for a clear field of view.
Finally I could see the bear, but only its top half. It was intent on feeding, but I hated to shift position at such point-blank range. Even a nearsighted bear would spot my movement.
Kim whispered urgently from behind me: “Shoot!”
Through the scope, only the bear’s back and the upper part of its chest was visible. The rest of the bruin was hidden behind a round, white log. Fearing to shoot too high, I held the cross hairs as low on the chest as I could—just above the log—and touched off the shot.
Confusion reigned after the rifle’s report echoed across the plateau. I worked the bolt and tried in vain to get the bear in my scope again as it whirled and sped across the clear-cut astoundingly fast for an animal of its size, disappearing behind a rise. When it was gone, we looked hard for signs of a hit and found none. The day before, I had killed a much smaller bear at a hundred and eighty yards, so I couldn’t imagine how I could have missed the huge one at twenty.
“You didn’t shoot the log, did you?” Kim asked, at last.
With sinking heart, I walked over to the fallen log. I traced the deep groove cut through it by my bullet and visually followed the shot’s deflection into the soft ground.
I fumed at myself for not thinking. Naturally, at such close range, the path of the bullet would have been a couple of inches lower than my cross hairs indicated. The difference should have been obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me before the shot. But then I had never expected spot-and-stalk bear hunting to be such a heart-pounding, close-range game.
“We’ll find another bear,” said Kim, encouragingly. Then he added wistfully, “But that one was really big.”
Black bears are found across the continent from Maine to Arizona, from Florida to Alaska. The Boone and Crockett record book lists almost as many huge bears coming from southern California as from northern Pennsylvania, and from many places between and beyond: Minnesota, Alaska, Utah, Newfoundland. I’ve watched bears tearing up rotten logs on the Allegheny Plateau, gnawing on deer carcasses in Canada, and munching spring flowers in Montana meadows.
Many of the places bears live, especially in the East, are heavily forested, and that makes them tough to hunt. You have to hunt over bait, use dogs, organize a drive, or wander around the woods and hope you happen to see one. That’s why I like hunting bears out West, where they emerge from the heavy timber into meadows and clear-cuts and you can spot them and stalk them in some of the most scenic surroundings imaginable.
Glassing for bears on beautiful Vancouver Island.
I’d done that before, but never on Vancouver Island, where “scenic” is taken to the extreme. V.I. is covered with thick forests of tall firs carpeting five-thousand-foot mountain peaks that soar straight up from sea level. In late May, those peaks are still snowcapped, with skinny fingers of waterfalls pouring off the cliffs and crashing into snowfields below. The dark forests are checkered with huge clear-cuts that are in turn crisscrossed by old logging roads. The clear-cuts make it possible to spot and stalk the many bears on the island. We saw several bears every day, moving along the creek bottoms, feeding in clear-cuts, and moving up hillsides to bed down in the heavy timber.
And it’s not just that bears are numerous on V.I. They also get big there. There’s no shortage of food in this ursine Utopia, and bears take full advantage of all of it. After their craving for spring grass wears off and summer moves toward fall, they’ll move on to gorging on berries in the slashings, gulping steelhead and salmon in the streams, and even munching crabs on the beaches.
The area I was hunting provided plenty of ground to cover, too. Outfitter Darren DeLuca is the son-in-law of legendary V.I. outfitter Wayne Wiebe, the man who originally put the island on the map as a major bear-hunting destination. DeLuca, an experienced guide-outfitter in his own right, has some two thousand square miles of forests, mountains, and clear-cuts for his hunters to explore, stretching from Herbert Inlet on the northwestern side of the island to Alberni Inlet near the town of Port Alberni on the southeast.
Typically, bear hunters drive the logging roads, glassing, spotting bears, and stalking to within a couple hundred yards for the shot. But many of the roads have been closed to vehicles and seeded, and hunters can also sneak along these tracks watching for bears. That’s what Kim and I had been doing, often encountering bears at less than fifty yards as they foraged in the new grass along the old roads.
Black bears may be ubiquitous, but that doesn’t make them less deserving of respect. It’s true they’re rarely aggressive, but as soon as a bear feels threatened or cornered, it’s capable of wiping that smile off your face in a hurry. So if you’re still-hunting where bears tend to appear in front of you at point-blank range, it pays to stay alert and keep a shell in the chamber.
As the remaining days of my hunt ticked down, Kim and I continued to hunt hard. I saw the waterfalls getting wider, pitching down from the sheer peaks as the spring melt really got underway, and black-tailed deer fed on the new growth along the edges of the clear-cuts. Teal bobbed in small mountain ponds, and hummingbirds zipped around newly grown wildflowers. Spring in the coastal mountains of British Columbia is exhilarating, and for a bear hunter, each new day holds particular promise.
The last evening of the last day of a memorable hunt always seems bittersweet, especially if you’ve still got a tag to fill. I was hoping for another bear, but I also wanted to burn into my memory the look of the jagged peaks and the tall firs, and the way the air smelled like a combination of sea air and pine forest.
Kim and I left the truck at the base of another old logging road, one that snaked up a narrow ravine cut by a raging, ice-cold stream. We’d hunted this same road several times and had seen bears attracted to the green grass that carpeted the long-unused track. At one point we’d even crossed the roaring creek on wet, lichen-covered rocks to look for bear farther up the mountain. This evening, though, we decided to still-hunt along the twisting road as the sun slid toward the west and the end of my stay on Vancouver Island.
On Vancouver Island, stunning scenery is around every bend.
The road climbed through an area that hadn’t been cut, and the big firs loomed close on either side of the road. Clusters of alder brush, devil’s club, and yellow broom grew along the sides of the grassy track. Now and then Kim pointed silently to a bent-over, broken-off alder sapling, and once we stopped to stare in astonishment at a particularly large one that had obviously been torn and gnawed by an enormous bear. Piles of huge, fresh scat littered the road. I settled my boot down carefully with every step, trying to keep the noise of my footfalls to a minimum.
As we eased around a sharp bend, we spotted a big bear just ahead, working its way in our direction through the trees just above the road. It hadn’t seen us, so we dropped down quickly behind an enormous log that lay beside the old road. With my earlier failure fresh in my mind, a solid rest and an unobstructed shot were my immediate priorities. I knelt behind the log, settled the .308 across it, and watched the bear. It was big-bodied and beautifully furred, and as it turned to glance in our direction I saw that there was room for at least three imaginary ears across its skull.
The bear picked its way through the trees, then started down the bank onto the road, heading for our side. Determined to take no risks with the shot, I waited for a broadside angle. My single 180-grain Core-Lokt Ultra round center-punched the bear’s shoulder at 45 yards. The effect was immediate: The bruin simply sank to the ground and rolled onto its back, paws up.
The author with her Vancouver Island black bear.
It was a fantastic bear, a massive old bruin with a beautifully furred hide that squared 6 feet, 6 inches, and a skull that was later officially measured at 18¼ inches. After skinning and quartering, Kim lashed the hide and most of the meat to his packframe. I slid the remaining hindquarter into my pack, secured the rest of my gear on top of it, and hoisted the load onto my back. Heavily laden but happy, we hiked back down the old road in the gathering dusk. The tall peaks of Vancouver Island glowed like church spires against the setting sun, appropriate monuments to honor a magnificent animal.
Contact Darren DeLuca, Vancouver Island Guide Outfitters: 250-724-1533, [email protected]; or visit HuntWild.com.
Just in time for spring turkey hunts across the country, Sports Afield Products has introduced its new Jake & Hen Combo set of turkey decoys. This set of two decoys, one jake and one hen, are made of a foldable, rubberlike material that is easy to transport yet snaps back into shape easily. Both come with two-piece metal stakes for easy setup. The hen comes with two stake holes to allow it to be set up in two different body positions, upright or relaxed. Both decoys feature realistic paint and natural, taxidermy-quality eyes. These realistic and attractive decoys will help you punch your turkey tag this season. Available at select Costco Wholesale locations.
The hen decoy can be set up in either the upright or relaxed position.Both decoys feature realistic paint and natural, taxidermy-quality eyes.
Scientists call on researchers to better define their terms and metrics in studies involving trophy hunting.
Six well-known wildlife scientists recently published a paper in The Journal of Wildlife Management calling on researchers to provide more details and better context when tacking the subject of trophy hunting. Concerned that many studies are being misunderstood or their conclusions misapplied, the authors of “A Call for More Nuanced Dialogues About Trophy Hunting,” propose that any discussions of trophy hunting include a definition of how the researchers use the term “trophy,” details of variables measured, and explanations of the scales applied.
The paper’s authors, Carl D. Mitchell, Vernon C. Bleich, R. Terry Bowyer, James R. Heffelfinger, Kelly M. Stewart, and Paula A. White, express concern that simplistic portrayals of trophy hunting present an incomplete picture and result in the absence of a balanced, objective approach to trophy hunting in some publications. “A more nuanced treatment of these issues is the first step in resolving some debates surrounding this controversial topic,” the authors note. Read the full text of the paper here:
If you’ve seen “The Revenant,” you might think you know. But there are many versions of the story.
Probably the most famous “true story” from the mountain man period of the American West is the saga of fur trapper Hugh Glass. The generally accepted version goes something like this: Attacked by a grizzly, severely mauled, Glass is considered beyond saving and is left behind to die. Two fellow trappers, one of whom is the young Jim Bridger, are paid to stay with him until the end and provide a proper burial. But Glass hangs on. The men are increasingly worried about nearby hostile Indians, who might discover them at any time. So they abandon the dying man, taking his rifle, knife, and other vital gear. Glass is left on his own, deep in the wilderness. But somehow he manages to survive, drinking stream water, eating berries and whatever else he can find for sustenance. His wounds are terrible–he can’t stand or walk–but he slowly gains enough strength to begin crawling over the prairie, aiming for a fort hundreds of miles away. He is driven by a fierce will to live and a burning desire for vengeance on the scoundrels who robbed him and left him for dead.
It is, of course, the stuff of legends, and a great story, which is why the Glass story has been told and retold, first as ostensibly true accounts, then as blatant fiction in novels and movies, most recently The Revenant. “Everyone knows” about Hugh Glass, but as is often the case with what everyone knows, it turns out that much is doubtful or plainly false. In fact, there isn’t one Hugh Glass story, but several conflicting versions. Some historians even believe the whole chronicle is largely made up, a tall tale first spun by Glass and then embellished by others. Let’s take a closer look at some of the details.
Little is known about Glass’s origins, but it is believed he was born circa 1780, near Philadelphia. At the time of the bear attack he was probably in his mid-forties, which was elderly for a mountain man and explains the frequent reference to him as “Old Hugh,” or “Old Glass.” He spoke of being a sailor in his early years and claimed to have been captured, along with a comrade, by the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte. They were given the option of joining the plunderers or dying; naturally they chose life. After a miserable year with the pirate colony, word came that they were going to be tried as unworthy and executed the next day; so they jumped ship in the middle of the night and swam to the Gulf-coast shore near present-day Galveston. Here they made their way with difficulty, living off the land while avoiding the dangerous Karankawa Indians, who were said to be cannibals.
When they reached the Great Plains they were captured by the Pawnees and slated to be tortured and burned alive. Glass’s companion went first. He was stripped, tied to a stake, and impaled with dozens of pitch-pine slivers, which were then set afire. Glass made himself watch stoically, showing no emotion or fear. When his turn came he bowed slightly and offered the chief a packet of vermilion he’d been (somehow) carrying. The chief found this display of courage and grace impressive. He decided to spare Glass’s life and adopt him into the tribe. By one account Glass lived with the Pawnees for several years before making an escape; another says it was several months. From the Indians he learned survival skills such as how to forage for wild edible plants. Later he entered the western fur trade, eventually enlisting in Major Andrew Henry’s trapping expedition up the Missouri. By late summer or early fall of 1823 he and his group were traveling by foot along the Grand River in present-day South Dakota, heading for the Yellowstone country. It was here he met the grizzly.
A graphic image of the mauling of Hugh Glass.
According to one account, Glass and another man were sent ahead of the group to hunt for game, when he suddenly encountered a “white bear” (as grizzlies were often called) only three yards away. Before he “could set his triggers or turn to retreat, he was seized by the throat and raised from the ground,” then mauled viciously. But other accounts put Glass at fault. Disobeying orders to stay in close file because of nearby hostile Arikaras, Glass “went off of the line of march….and met with a large grissly Bear which he shot at and wounded,” trapper James Clyman recorded in his journal. Then the bear–a sow with near-adult cubs–attacked. In words attributed to another trapper, Hiram Allen, who was at the scene: “…the monster had seized him, torn the flesh from the lower part of the body, & from the lower limbs–He also had his neck shockingly torn, even to the degree that an aperture appeared to have been made into the windpipe, & his breath to exude at the side of the neck.” Allen noted that Glass’s arms and hands were unhurt, and he suffered no broken bones. (This despite the several versions of the story that say Glass later set his broken leg himself.)
After the bears were killed, the group did what they could for Glass’s wounds, but considered the man a goner. By one account, they then left him to his inevitable death, taking his gun and equipment with them. But in other versions the trappers built a litter and placed the torn man upon it, laboriously carrying him for several days. Glass “retained all his faculties but those of speech & locomotion.” He was “too feeble to walk or help himself at all, his comrads every moment waited his death.” But the tough old mountaineer wouldn’t die. Finally the difficult decision was made to leave him behind. Two men agreed to stay until the end and provide a proper burial–for a fee. (Eighty dollars in one account, $300 in another, or $400–a near fortune for those times.) One man was John Fitzgerald, and the other was a mere boy of 18 or 19. “Bridges,” was the name first reported. Much later–more than 70 years after the event–a prominent historian would use an elderly man’s second-hand recollection to conclude that the boy at the scene was in fact the now-famous mountain man Jim Bridger. This became accepted as part of the story, though some, including Bridger’s main biographer, strongly deny it. (When interviewed in his later years, Bridger recalled the Glass incident but made no mention of playing any part in the drama.)
In any case, after some days (two, three, or five) the care- givers began to worry. Glass kept hanging on. An escalating fear of nearby Arikaras and the increasing distance from the main band were wracking the men’s nerves. Fitzgerald convinced the youth it was time to depart. Just take Old Hugh’s gun and gear and leave him to his inevitable death, which could come any time now. In two accounts, Glass is asleep when the men slip away, and wakes to the horror of being disabled and alone. In another version, Glass hears them planning to abandon him, but cannot speak. He can only plead with his eyes and reaching hands.
Some say the two men took everything–gun, knife, pouch, kettle–leaving Glass on a pallet with just his clothes and a blanket. In a different telling, they left a kettle containing his wallet and an old razor–a precious cutting tool he would later use to survive.
Glass’s reaction varies with the source: 1) “He didn’t despair.” 2) “Oppressed with grief and his hard fate, he soon became delirious.” But then, “visions of benevolent beings appeared…. exhorting him not to despond.” Whichever, he drank water from a nearby stream and ate wild berries to sustain himself. He rested over many days and planned a course of action.
The Crawl
The four original “true accounts” of Glass’s ordeal vary considerably in significant details. In the earliest publication (by James Hall, 1825): “Acquiring, by slow degrees, a little strength, he now set off for Fort Kiowa, a trading establishment on the Missouri River, about three hundred and fifty miles distant.” (Actually, 200 miles.) “It required no ordinary portion of fortitude to crawl…through a hostile country without fire-arms, with scarcely strength to drag one limb after another, and with almost no other subsistence than wild berries.” In Hall’s version as in one other, Glass drags himself the whole way to the fort.
In a perhaps more reliable rendition by trapper George Yount, who claimed to have gotten the story from Old Hugh himself, Glass did build up his strength by drinking creek water, resting and eating berries. But “one morning…he found by his side a huge Rattlesnake–With a small stone he slew the reptile, jambed off its head & cast it from him–Having laid the dead serpent by his side he jambed off small parts from time to time & bruised it thoroughly & moistened it with water….& made of it a grateful food on which he fed from day to day…After a long period his strength began to revive.” He “crawled a few rods” and then rested, building his stamina. Eventually he “found himself upon his feet & began to walk–Soon he could travel nearly a mile a day.” He fed on buffalo carcasses along the way; and once drove a pack of wolves from a fresh kill, gorging on the raw meat. He ate berries and “nourishing roots” dug from the earth, as he had learned from the Pawnee.
Most accounts agree that he drove himself forward with a near-feverish lust for revenge on the two men who had stolen his rifle and gear before leaving him to die.
In two versions, when close to collapsing he came upon a band of friendly Sioux, who gave him much-needed food, tended his wounds, and helped get him to Fort Kiowa.
How long was his arduous journey? Some say several weeks, others several months. He was met at the fort’s gate with shock and disbelief; the return of a man believed to be dead and buried, a revenant. He sought out the youth (“Bridges” or Jim Bridger?) who had abandoned him. As the young man quaked with guilt and remorse, Glass decided not to kill him, allegedly saying: “Go, my boy–I leave you to the punishment of your own conscience & your God….but don’t forget hereafter that truth & fidelity are too valuable to be trifled with.”
The older man, the real culprit, Fitzgerald–who still possessed Hugh’s rifle–had gone to distant Fort Atkinson. Some say Glass spent only a few days at Kiowa before joining a group headed for Atkinson. Others say he spent the winter recuperating and departed in the spring. En route, the men stopped to camp. Glass went off to hunt for food and was barely out of sight when a band of Arikara attacked, killing every white man present. Once again Hugh had defied the odds with an improbable, or spectacularly fortunate, escape from death.
When he finally encountered Fitzgerald, who had enlisted and become a soldier, Glass could not take revenge without Army reprisal, so he only chastised the man for his “shameful perfidy & heartless cruelty–but enough….Settle the matter with your own conscience & your God. Give me my favorite rifle.”
How much of this is actually true? The bear attack and subsequent abandonment seem reasonably well documented, but beyond that, was Old Hugh mainly a spinner of tall tales (like most mountain men of the day), fabricating the many implausible escapes and freely elaborating on his adventures? And how much did the several original “reporters” of the Glass story bend, embellish and fictionalize to make a more dramatic yarn, one ripe with great American values such as courage, grit, self-reliance, prowess, an indomitable spirit–and even, as a capper, forgiveness with a moral lesson? We will probably never know the answer to these questions. But whatever the actual truth, the tale has proved too poignant and arresting to dismiss. Hugh Glass has become a permanent American legend.
And what of the man himself? In the early spring of 1833, nearly ten years after the bear attack and the survival trek that would make him famous, “Old Hugh” ventured out with two companions to trap beaver below Fort Cass, near the junction of the Bighorn and Yellowstone rivers. As the men were crossing the ice they were attacked, killed, and scalped by a large war party of Glass’s longtime enemies, the Arikaras.
Author’s Note: For much more detail about the Glass story and legend, see historian James D. McLaird’s excellent book, Hugh Glass: Grizzly Survivor (South Dakota Historical Society Press; 2016). For maps, informational articles and access to the original accounts of Glass’s ordeal, visit hughglass.org.
The Selous, Africa’s largest hunting reserve, is being destroyed.
Photo above: The dam construction site at Steigler’s Gorge. Photo: Archive Baldus
The Selous Game Reserve was once Africa’s oldest and largest nature reserve. It was established by Germany in 1896; at more than 31,000 square miles, it was twice the size of Vermont. It was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1982, one of the most important natural monuments on earth. It was one of the leading hunting grounds in Africa, and hunting proceeds kept the reserve going for many decades. Tanzania’s government has traditionally held the protection of the country’s rich wildlife in high regard, although in practice conservation performance was often lacking. In the Selous, mismanagement, lack of funds, and bad governance has twice led to serious episodes of commercial poaching, which reduced the rhino and elephant populations. This happened in the first half of the 1980s, and again between 2006 and 2013.
Germany, together with Tanzanian partners, rehabilitated the Selous between 1987 and 2003. Elephant numbers rose during this period from 30,000 to over 70,000. One of the most important achievements was the introduction of a system of self-financing. The Selous was allowed to retain half of its income and use it for running costs and investment. In the mid-1990s, this was $3 million dollars, 90 percent of which came from hunting. Thus, international hunters, most of them from the United States, safeguarded one of Africa’s last remaining wildlands and facilitated the conservation of its wildlife, including elephants, lions, leopards, and plains game. After the project ended, however, the Tanzanian government broke all agreements for self-financing of the reserve. Poachers once again targeted the elephant population, with quite a few senior politicians and officials participating. The elephant population fell from more than 70,000 in 2005 to 13,000 in 2013. Value of the looted ivory: over 100 million Euros.
Another disaster befell the reserve in 2012, when a uranium mine in the southwest of the reserve was permitted. This is against the rules for a World Heritage Site. Tanzania promised, however, that this would be the last major violation of the ecological integrity of the Selous. Nolens volens, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee swallowed the toad.
Location of the proposed mega-dam in the Selous Game Reserve. Photo: Archive Baldus
President John Magufuli has been in office since 2015. A former minister for roads and infrastructure, he loves large projects and has no regard for nature, neither for its intrinsic values nor for its ecological and economic significance. In addition, he is increasingly turning into an autocratic ruler. In flawed elections last October, his party got a North Korea-like 98 percent of all seats, and he was re-elected.
As his latest mega-project, Magufuli is having Egyptian and Chinese construction companies build a huge dam with a 2.2 megawatt power plant at Stiegler´s Gorge on the Rufiji River in the heart of the Selous for an estimated 10 billion US dollars. He wants to use the electricity to industrialize Tanzania. Whether that will work is questionable. A serious analysis of the environmental impact, economic efficiency, or financial viability is lacking. What is for sure is large-scale damage to the game reserve. The reservoir alone will flood 500 square miles, including some of the most beautiful and valuable areas of the reserve and one of the last habitats of the black rhino in Tanzania. Another dam is to be built at the northeastern corner of the reserve on the Ruvu River. The president does not think highly of sustainable hunting. In his eyes, it has no economic significance for the country. He spent one night in the Selous in the VIP suite of a lodge. This suite is equipped with air conditioning, satellite TV, and a Jacuzzi; however, it is mostly unoccupied due to the price. When he heard that the suite cost $2,000 per night, he quickly calculated this for 365 days and all tourist accommodation in the Selous. Compared to that sum, he said, hunting is unprofitable.
Hunting blocks throughout the country have been released for agriculture under his rule, and others have been declared national parks. The Selous is now divided. The western and southern part, with about 19,000 square miles, has become the Nyerere National Park. Only the smaller, eastern part (about 12,000 square miles) will be hunted in the future. The division was done without the legally required planning procedures.
Large parts of the new national park could be hunted sustainably, but are unsuitable for phototourism (this region is not attractive for tourists, has a long rainy season, is tsetse- and malaria-infested, and is remote and therefore logistically expensive). The new park has become a financial drain for the Tanzania National Parks Authority (TANAPA), while at the same time the hunting administration is losing millions of dollars in revenue. Only three national parks in the country generate any surpluses at all. All others are lose money and are cross-subsidized. The most money is earned at Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain. Without the high-priced mountaineering traffic, TANAPA would have had to file for bankruptcy long ago. To make matters worse, the government has decided, in view of empty coffers, that the three previously autonomous nature conservation authorities: TANAPA; the Ngorongoro Crater Administration; and the Tanzania Wildlife Authority, which covers the hunting blocks and all other conservation areas, must submit all of their revenues to the state. Then they will receive state subsidies. Such a system existed decades ago. It resulted in a pronounced underfunding of the nature reserves and massive poaching. In any case, hunting income in Tanzania has fallen by more than half in recent years. There are several reasons for this: Mismanagement of the hunting administration, excessive government taxes and fees, several failed auctions to allocate unused hunting blocks, a trophy import ban by the USA, and now, the coronavirus. In the meantime, dams and mining are not the end of the story. An extensive program for the construction of a road network is on the way. It is becoming obvious that one of the last largely untouched wilderness areas in Africa is gradually being dismembered. Hunting, with its small environmental footprint, has so far preserved nature. The national park, however, will result in infrastructure, hotel buildings, and roads. Experience shows that such roads are not only used by tourists, but also by charcoal trucks, poachers, and through traffic.
The World Heritage Committee declared the Selous a “World Heritage in Danger” some time ago. At the next General Assembly of the Convention, the 194 member states have to decide whether the status will be withdrawn from the Selous altogether. It seems that the “Outstanding Universal Value” of the Selous Ecosystem has been surrendered by the government of Tanzania. Hope dies last, but today there is little hope left. Hunters are losing one of the last wilderness areas in Africa.—Rolf D. Baldus
The idea that sheep hunts require super long-range cartridges is mostly myth.
Photo above: Boddington and Steve Hornady with a good Dagestan tur, taken with Hornady’s .280 Remington. Hornady has done as much mountain hunting as anyone in the industry, mostly with the .280 Remington.
According to Grand Slam Club Ovis (GSCO), an organization that keeps records on such things, just over 2,100 hunters have taken at least one each of the four North American wild sheep. That’s 8,000 North American wild sheep!
In this group were 75 bowhunters, plus half-dozen muzzleloader hunters. The rest have used an eclectic array of calibers. Experienced sheep hunter George Lawrence III recently took one each of our four North American rams with a .30-30. But my Grand Prize for “most unlikely sheep rifle” goes to Charlie Ren, who guided hunters to desert bighorns in 1930s Sonora. Clients included Grancel Fitz, Frank Hibben, Jack O’Connor, and my uncle, Art Popham. Ren relied solely on his open-sighted 1899 Savage .25-35.
It’s a myth that all sheep and goats are taken at long range. So many rams taken with archery tackle and short-range arms shoot holes in the legend. With a scoped centerfire rifle, nobody plans for a short-range shot, but it happens. Now, if you know your range is limited, you plan your stalk accordingly. There will be rams you cannot approach, so you keep glassing, reading the terrain.
So, I don’t buy that hunting sheep and goats requires long-range shooting. Yep, shots average longer than close-cover whitetails, but not farther than elk, mule deer, or caribou. Thanks to Asian hunting, I have taken a lot of sheep and goats. One thing about mountains: They don’t change much from one range to another. The tall Asian mountains are more open, but you can still stalk. If you can’t, you might have to wait, or seek another opportunity.
I figure my average shot is about 250 yards, much the same for elk, mule deer, and caribou. Sure, there have been “take it or leave it” shots at twice that distance. Many more long shots have been passed. And, there have been very close shots!
I go into a mountain hunt prepared for the worst, hoping for the best. I spend time on the range ensuring my rifle, scope, and load are set up to handle shots at least twice as far as I’m likely to actually shoot. In Mongolia in 2018 we shot six sheep and ibex. Those mountains are big and open, and severe wind complicated some opportunities. Even so, the average shot was less than 250 yards.
Although the Asian mountains are often fairly open, this Gobi argali, glassed bedded from a couple of miles away, was stalked to about a hundred yards, not all that unusual in mountain hunting. The rifle is a Blaser R8 with .300 Weatherby barrel.
Being ready for the worst instills confidence, and sometimes you need all the capability you have. You bet, I’ve stretched the barrel now and again. Not often, because a cooler head prevails. You realize you can get closer. If not today, maybe tomorrow. Mountain animals move little at night, so leaving them at last light and trying again at dawn is often sound.
I don’t consider sheep or goats “superior game” in any way, but there are practical and psychological considerations. Hunts for most goats are less expensive than most sheep. But, except for resident hunters, there are no “cheap” mountain hunts. Even for residents, drawing a tag may take decades. There’s a lot of pressure, and when the shot comes, you don’t want to blow it. Sensibly, you try to make the shot as certain as possible.
Sure, misses happen. I’m not a good enough liar to say that I’ve never missed! But, although I’ve had plenty unsuccessful mountain hunts, I’ve never had a failure because I missed. So, I’ve passed “possible” shots as too far, or unreadable wind. It’s always best to pass “possible,” wait for “reasonably certain,” and avoid unnecessary chances. If undisturbed, mountain animals are unlikely to leave a mountain system, so there’s strong rationale for biding your time and waiting until a good stalk is possible, rather than risk blowing them out.
Boddington is ready to shoot his 1998 Wyoming bighorn, using a Rifles, Inc. .300 Weatherby Magnum. Distance is 265 yards, an average shot. This is the eleventh day of a ten-day hunt, first opportunity: Regardless of distance and rifle/cartridge, better make the shot count! The ram was bedded; as soon as it stood up, Boddington dropped it in its tracks.
Although their vision is superb, sheep and goats are not as wary as deer. The real trick: You must first conquer the mountain! So, there is an opposite dynamic. Once you get to the top (and the top after that), and are moving into position, you really want to take the shot. Because: You can’t imagine doing it all over again the next day, and you aren’t sure you can! Many shots at sheep and goats come at the end of a long stalk, when you’ve pushed your limits. Many important hunts culminate at the tail end, after successive long days. Better make it good, because, even if there’s a tomorrow, you’re at your limit and there’s no coming back.
This topsy-turvy psychology dictates that you must have absolute confidence in the cartridge you choose and the rifle that launches your bullet. Not all shots are difficult, but there’ s too much at stake. Most experienced mountain hunters settle on one cartridge and rifle that works. It may not be perfect, if there is such a thing, but it’s a comfortable and familiar combination, like Charlie Ren’s .25-35!
In the recent American Hunter, I noted with pleasure that my old friend John Zent, NRA’s Director of Publications, recently completed his four North American wild sheep with a fine desert bighorn. John and I came into the business about the same time, and have been friends for forty years. Few in our industry have had the determination to create and pursue such opportunity; among living gunwriters and their editors, I think just Jim Carmichel, John Zent, and me. So, Zent’s desert ram is a big deal. Their website carried a synopsis, and I was interested to learn that John’s four rams (plus extra), were all taken with the .300 WSM. Nearly twenty years ago, on his first sheep hunt, Zent found his comfort zone and has stuck with it. I have not been so loyal or steadfast.
Left to right: .300 WSM, .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Weatherby Magnum. Any of the fast .30s are always sound choices for mountain hunting. But, although he often relies on various .30-caliber magnums, he concedes that .30-caliber power isn’t essential for any sheep or goat hunting.
The .300 WSM is a good choice; a recent Weatherby winner also prefers it. I’ve never done any mountain hunting with a .300 WSM, but I have used its fast little brother, the .270 WSM. Often, I default to traditional fast .30-calibers, .300 Winchester and .300 Weatherby Magnum. There are more modern and “better” fast .30s, including the .300 RUM, .30 Nosler, and .300 PRC. For many years, the .300 Weatherby Magnum was a perennial favorite among serious mountain hunters. It still is, but in recent years some have shifted to newer case designs like the RUM and Nosler (which is based on the RUM case shortened). I accept the greater efficiency, but since mountain hunting is first about confidence, I haven’t shifted.
Another thing about sheep and goats: They aren’t much different the world over. In the Old World, chamois are small, and the Asian urial sheep are also small (read: smaller targets, more accuracy). The biggest Asian sheep are larger than ours and some of the Asian ibex and turs are big and blocky, but not significantly larger than a big Rocky Mountain billy or Texas aoudad. No sheep or goat anywhere in the world is as big as an elk, or as tough as a bear. So, in the “pure” world of sheep/goat cartridges, and despite my own frequent choices, I’m not certain .30-caliber power, bullet weight, and recoil are needed.
I want velocity, for downrange energy, wind resistance, and confidence that comes with flat trajectory. There are lots of options. I’ve been happy with faster 6.5mms (read: minimum 140-grain bullet at 3,000 fps). I used the .270 WSM on several mountain hunts, and I’ve used the .270 Weatherby Magnum, both awesome. Winchester’s brand-new 6.8 Western has great promise, not as fast as the WSM, but based on extra-heavy bullets that, until now, no .270 cartridge has enjoyed. That said, I have yet to be on a mountain hunt that the old .270 Winchester couldn’t handle, including the largest-bodied Asian sheep and goats.
The late Joe Bishop with a wonderful Marco Polo argali, taken in 2003 with a Sako in 7mm Remington Magnum. Bishop used the 7mm Remington Magnum for almost all his mountain game…with confidence and success.
Many serious mountain hunters compromise between the 6.5mms and .270s, settling on fast 7mms. My old friend Joe Bishop used a 7mm Remington Magnum for almost all his mountain game; so did Bert Klineburger, who, together with his brothers, pioneered so much Asian mountain hunting. I’ve used various fast 7mms but, as with .270s, “magnum” 7mms are not essential. Jim Carmichel and Steve Hornady did most of their mountain hunting with the .280 Remington, a great choice. If I were to start over, I’d give serious thought to the suddenly popular .280 Ackley Improved, and for sure I’d have a look at the 6.8 Western.
It’s a bit late to start over so, for the mountains that remain to be climbed, I’ll mostly stick with old favorites, .270s and old-fashioned belted .30s. With cartridges (and rifles), familiarity doesn’t breed contempt; it breeds confidence. When you’re on the last ridge and there’s no coming back, you must know your rifle and cartridge can handle the shot you must make, whether close or far.
Mongolia’s Altai argali is the world’s largest wild sheep. Boddington used a .300 Weatherby; Donna used a .270 Winchester: Opposite approaches, but both worked just fine!
International hunting travel is different, but still possible, in the era of COVID.
Photo above: Boddington tracking buffalo between palm islands in Botswana’s Okavango Swamp in 1985. Botswana is open, and elephant hunting will resume this year. Unfortunately, there is no longer any hunting in the Okavango.
My rationale (“excuse,” if you prefer) for my first safari was to get Africa out of my system once and for all. It didn’t exactly work out that way. Africa has a way of grabbing you and not letting go. In the forty-four years since that first African experience, I can almost count on the fingers of one hand the years I haven’t hunted somewhere in Africa.
When I was younger, there were a few years when I couldn’t afford it. I also took a couple years off so I could make appearances in the Gulf Wars. Otherwise, I’ve been to Africa almost every year, and enjoyed every minute of it.
One of the years I didn’t get to Africa was our unlucky and unlamented 2020. I had plans, for sure, but they dissipated in the viral-laden mist. But it hasn’t been the end of the world. I’ve had the rare opportunity to reset a bit and reflect on past hunts, even spend time going over old photos. In the era before digital cameras, I spent thousands of dollars annually on film and processing. When I went digital those costs vanished, but I had thirty years of black and white proof sheets and thousands of slides in file cabinets. I’d like to say they were perfectly organized, but why lie?
I hope most of us had “pandemic projects” to keep us occupied as this thing dragged on, stuff we’ve put off (for years). I had some good ones: I built a shop and set up a new reloading bench, with the opposite end for studio photography. Another project: I went through all the old photo files, and I found good images I hadn’t seen in years. At the end, I had several hundred slides scanned at high-res, now added to digital storage. These were from all over, not just Africa, but many were from safaris long past, some in areas no longer available, and with absent friends.
A beautiful wadi in the Ennedi Mountains in Chad. In 2001 it hadn’t rained here for a decade! Southernmost Chad is open, but the Ennedi Mountains, where native aoudad roam, hasn’t been hunted since the early 2000s.
They brought back a lot of fond memories. I’m fortunate to have a lot of great African memories to fall back on. I can’t imagine how I might feel if 2020 was supposed to be the year that I took the Great Plunge and embarked on my first safari, only to have it snatched away. Many were in that boat, and I’m sorry.
Fortunately, Africa and her wildlife are still there, and the life-changing experience of safari still awaits. At this writing, Africa is reopening fast. My crystal ball is no better than anyone else’s, but I expect travel and access to steadily improve. Some countries are fully open (sort of); others with more restrictions.
We all have different views of pandemic politics, and COVID-related risk assessment is a personal thing. However, if we wish to get on with our lives (and if our lives include travel), there are real considerations to deal with. I didn’t get on a commercial flight for ten months. When I did, I was required to wear a mask. I took a “selfie” and posted it, and one of the first comments I got went something like “How could you buy into this stuff? I have lost all respect for you.”
When Boddington took his first commercial flight in months, he wasn’t surprised that a mask was required. Special “Covid requirements” will probably be with us for some time!
Well, if you choose to stay home, that’s your decision. Depending on age and health, some of us should stay home for a while longer. But, if you choose to travel, you will wear a mask on common carriers; you won’t board without face covering, and you’ll keep it on. I find the mask claustrophobic, but you get used to it, and in public, in much of world (and on public carriers), masking is now simply a fact of life.
So is testing. In order to fly internationally, at this writing you must have a negative PCR Covid-19 test—within a specified time frame—in order to board. (72 hours before departure seems most common, but this varies and is subject to change.) You must also have another negative test (also with a time limit) to get back into the U.S.
These are things you must think about and plan for, and, although nobody likes to hear this, you must be a bit flexible. In February, Donna and I had a trip planned to Uganda, rescheduled from last year, and we were looking forward to a great buffalo hunt. We watched the Super Bowl at a neighbor’s house, just four people in a large room, no raucous gathering, everybody healthy. Out of the blue, one of them came down with COVID. Suddenly, we weren’t going to Uganda. It’s irresponsible to travel if you know you’ve been exposed. You don’t want to pass it along but, even if you prefer to be completely selfish, do you want to be ill in a foreign country, and have to quarantine there in order to get home?
These are practical concerns. We did get tested, remained negative, and rescheduled our trip for mid-March. So, hopefully, while you’re reading this, we’ll be stalking buffalo on a hot, sunny day in Karamoja. But we have to run the viral gauntlet once more. The airlines are good about rescheduling, but these days one shouldn’t even think about non-refundable or non-changeable tickets. The virus is still out there, and there’s no guarantee a test will come back negative. Also, the time-date-stamped test results are unarguable. Time required to get test results varies with area; it’s essential to do your homework and get tested so that you can get the results back before your flight but, as with the test itself, there’s no guarantee. Be flexible!
Same thing on the other end: You must be sure you can get tested and get results before you head home. This is just one more logistical challenge hard-pressed outfitters must solve, and they are. After a terrible 2020, operators able to resume are fully aware of this requirement and figuring out the best and surest ways. Just ask the questions before you go, and be certain of the answers.
Travel routing has also changed, and will continue to change. I’m writing in late February, still early in the game. South Africa officially opened to travel on October 1, 2020. In southern Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe are also open. This is great news. However, at this writing, U.S. citizens are still not allowed to travel in or through various European countries. Flights and potential routes are thus much more restrictive! In this infancy of reopening, flights through the Middle East have been popular, and our routing to Uganda is Turkish Air through Istanbul (a great airline for travel with firearms).
From a practical business standpoint, airlines must view travel restrictions as opportunities (as well as barriers). They are working aggressively to open new routes, but this takes time. As the year unfolds, there will be more direct flights into Windhoek, and I just learned that Air Ethiopia (another fine carrier) is opening a direct flight from Addis Ababa to Beira in Mozambique. For safari travel, I have always recommended using an experienced gun-savvy travel agent. In these times of COVID, with things evolving quickly, this is even more important.
If you lost a safari last year, don’t give up. Things are improving, and as the vaccine(s) become more widespread, the curve should accelerate. Whether we make it to Uganda this month depends on the vagaries of a tiny little virus, but, for sure, I won’t go through 2021 without getting my “Africa fix.” This will be a great safari season!
A nice lion, taken in Masailand in 1988 while tracking buffalo. Tanzania is currently open to hunting and tourism.
Thoughts on what works, what’s popular, and what’s trending—based on a small sample of Kansas deer hunters.
Photo above: John Sonne used his .30-06 to take the best buck of the 2020 season on Boddington’s Kansas farm. With a 40-yard shot, you could say he was overgunned, but the buck was moving in thick cover, where it’s a good idea to have plenty of gun and bullet.
I recently wrote about the continuing (and seemingly endless) procession of new cartridges coming out these days. It isn’t anything like the ridiculous flood of new unbelted magnums we saw at the turn of the millennium, but there are still too many, and they come too fast, for any one writer to wring them all out. And, as gunwriters, do we really evaluate cartridges? Especially hunting cartridges?
The late Bob Penfold was a pioneer outfitter who essentially put South Pacific hunting on the map. In his younger days he did a lot of writing for Australian shooting and hunting magazines, and I’ll never forget what he said to me one day: “Mate, you American writers take a new rifle, cartridge, or bullet out and shoot one or two deer, and call it ‘field testing.’” In Australia, which has serious overpopulations of various feral animals, the situation is a lot different. “Over here,” he went on to say, “when we get a crack at something new, we go out and shoot fifty or sixty pigs or feral goats. Now, that’s field testing!”
We can do range testing, either exhaustive or cursory, and we can work up loads and shoot groups or ring steel to our heart’s content. However, with our short seasons and limited bag limits, it’s difficult and expensive to acquire significant field experience with any single cartridge, bullet, or load, whether new or old. I’ve never forgotten Penfold’s words, and I’ve kept them in mind whenever I find myself waxing a bit too eloquent on the near-magical properties of something new, or new to me.
That said, some extrapolation is valid. I first used the .264 Winchester Magnum in about 1965. I have not tried all of the new 6.5mm cartridges, and don’t need to in order to know how a good 140-grain 6.5mm bullet at about 3,000 feet per second performs on game, which, depending on who does the loading, is roughly the speed of the 6.5-.284 Norma, 6.5 PRC, 6.5 SST, the new 6.5 Weatherby RPM, and undoubtedly a bunch of other 6.5mm wildcats and proprietaries I don’t even know about. I can make the same comparison with the several 7mm and .30-caliber cartridges that (more or less) emulate the velocities of the 7mm Remington and .300 Winchester Magnums.
Left to right: .264 Winchester Magnum, 6.5-06 wildcat, 6.5-.284 Norma, 6.5mm PRC, 6.5mm Weatherby RPM, 6.5mm SST proprietary. All of these cartridges propel a 140-grain bullet at about 3000 feet per second. Accuracy will vary with rifles, but performance on game is about the same; it’s not necessary to hunt with all of them to know that.
Benefits of modern case design are real. More efficient cases produce more energy per grain of powder burned because of a smoother burning curve, which is conducive to accuracy. However, I’m probably not going to spend time with a dozen 6.5mm PRC rifles to prove that the group average is better than the average groups I get from my .264. I’m not even sure a dozen rifles would prove it, because that .264 has an exceptional Obermayr barrel, and it shoots, despite archaic belted case and unpopular, near-obsolete cartridge.
This fall I hunted with a Springfield Armory Waypoint in 6.5mm PRC, the first time I’ve messed with that cartridge. The rifle is very accurate, and accounted for several whitetails. On game, the 6.5 PRC performed much like my old .264 (which is not damning with faint praise!). I have not yet squeezed the trigger on a .30 PRC, which should perform about like my .300 Winchester Magnum. Nor have I used a 30 Nosler, which should perform much like my .300 Weatherby Magnum. In time, perhaps I’ll try these or other newer cartridges. Maybe the rifles I try them in will be so spectacularly accurate that I’ll be an instant convert. Maybe not! I concede better case design, which, with barrels and ammo of similar quality, should produce better accuracy. But a blanket statement that new cartridges are “better” is a tough call to make.
These days, I have limited interest in proving the point. If I were a competitive shooter, even the slightest accuracy edge might be worth pursuing. As a hunter, for the handful of game animals we take each year, not a big deal. So many cartridges, and so few days afield! Some hunters are rapidly drawn to the latest cartridges. If they’ve made their choices based on serious study, without blindly accepting all the stuff that’s out there, they may see improved performance. Even if real improvement is illusory, confidence counts for much. However, a lot of hunters continue to rely on the old, reliable combinations. For sure, this isn’t wrong. In terms of the degree of precision required, hunting is neither benchrest nor 1,000-yard competition. If you already know what works for your hunting, why make a radical change?
On the next-to-last day of 2020 rifle season, Boddington took a cull eight-pointer with his Savage 99 lever-action in .300 Savage. With the season running down, this buck was a year too old…with antlers too small for its age…and Boddington wanted to take a buck with this old rifle!
For about a decade, my Kansas neighbor and I have been hosting deer hunters during our short rifle season. They come from all over, ten or a dozen a year, and I look forward to seeing the selection of rifles and cartridges they bring. It’s a small sampling, not meaningful data, but I consider it a minor bellwether of trends. If you believe what we read, you’d think the 6.5mm Creedmoor is the only deer cartridge left in America, but it wasn’t until the 2019 season when young Brad McCarty brought the first Creedmoor we’ve seen. By then I’d joined the Creedmoor Club myself!
Other than advising hunters that our terrain and stands don’t offer long shots, we don’t put anything out there to influence rifle/cartridge decisions. However, literacy is required to negotiate the Kansas permit application, and I suppose my own preferences aren’t altogether unknown. We tend to think of the Creedmoor as appealing to younger shooters, so it was also surprising that, for the 2019 hunt, Lee Murray, over eighty, turned up with another 6.5mm Creedmoor. We were checking zero; Lee quickly added that he’d also brought a .30-06. I wasted no time in saying I was glad he’d also brought a “real gun.” Seriously, the Creedmoor is adequate for any shot (and any buck) we have, but we haven’t seen it much. And, only once ever, has anyone brought a cartridge below .25-caliber. In 2019 that was Erin Tremaine’s .240 Weatherby Magnum, the only time I have ever seen the .240 used in the field.
Left to right: 6.5mm Creedmoor, 7mm Remington Magnum, .300 Winchester Magnum. The cartridges most hunters bring to Boddington’s Kansas deer camp run between these extremes. The little Creedmoor is perfectly adequate for all shots and the fast magnums aren’t needed, but these and the dozens of cartridges in between them all work just fine if the shot is placed well.
Among our two dozen stands, the longest possible shot is less than 300 yards. In 2019, we had a couple of deer taken at about 200 yards. In 2020, no shots exceeded 150 yards. At such distances, with good shot placement, almost anything will work, and most centerfire cartridges shoot plenty flat enough for our conditions. We do see a lot of faster cartridges. Even though this does not apply to the heavy timber in our southeastern corner, Kansas has the reputation for wide open country and longer shots. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me that every year somebody brings a fast .30, usually a .300 WSM or .300 Winchester Magnum. We’ve seen several .270 WSMs and the occasional 7mm Remington Magnum. In both 2019 and 2020, we had 6.5mm PRCs in the field. Considering we’ve seen only two 6.5mm Creedmoors, this is interesting.
The 2020 “cartridge crop” was, well, sort of normal, and, just perhaps, what you might expect to see in a lot deer camps throughout North America. Three of our hunters carried the .30-06; two had .270 Winchesters, and two more .308 Winchesters. Extra-fast cartridges included a 6.5mm PRC, a .300 WSM, and a .300 Winchester Magnum. Having been here before and knowing our conditions, Larry Tremaine shot his 2020 buck with a Marlin lever-action .45-70.
I’m sort of an extra, taking a leftover stand after I get everybody else out, and looking for a cull buck. As much as I would like to, I rarely risk my buck tag with an iron-sighted rifle. Fine for the distance, but in timber the light comes late and leaves early. So, until my buck tag is filled, I usually carry something with an optical sight. In 2020 I carried a scoped Savage 99 in .300 Savage. By the way, everything worked just fine; under our conditions, it’d difficult to make a bad choice!
One of the .308s was a Browning BLR lever-action. This is the first year we’ve seen more than one lever-action among our buck hunters, and that made three! We hear that the all-American lever-action is selling well and making a comeback, so maybe that is a small bellwether.
Larry Tremaine’s Marlin .45-70 flattened this Kansas eight-point at about 90 yards. Oddly, this is the first time anyone has used a .45-70 at Timber Trails. More unusually, on this hunt there were three lever-actions in the field, definitely a first…possibly a trend?
