Brand new, never-before-published stories from famed elephant hunter Walter “Karamojo” Bell!

Those who have read Walter D.M. Bell’s previously published books, which include Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter, Karamojo Safari, and Bell of Africa, will be excited to learn that a treasure trove of new, previously unpublished material written by Bell has been discovered and is now in print for the first time, in a new book called Incidents From An Elephant Hunter’s Diary.

The new stories were owned by a private collector who has had them for years. He contacted Safari Press and provided the materials in hopes that a book might be published from them. They consisted of ten bound school-type notebooks in which both handwritten and typed manuscripts were found. There were also two ring binders with folders full of handwritten notes and drawings by Bell, as well as photos. These have now been collected into this fascinating new book.

Incidents from an Elephant Hunter’s Diary is a must-have for all Bell enthusiasts and anyone interested in Africana. Order it now from Safari Press.

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As more people take up hunting in order to eat healthier, a new study is exploring the importance of wild game as a food source.

In today’s world, our food mostly comes to us purged, processed, and packaged. We acquire it not by growing it from a seed or raising it from a calf, but by swiping a card or clicking a mouse. Burgers sizzle on our grills, but we’ve never been to a feedlot or slaughterhouse. We crunch an ear of corn, but the machinery that planted and harvested it remains only a vague impression gleaned from a drive down a Midwestern interstate. It’s incredible, really, how separated most of us have become from the basic elements that keep us alive.

That’s one of the many reasons we are so lucky to be hunters. Like traditional farmers and ranchers, we are some of the few in the modern era who have not entirely lost the connection to our origins, the understanding of the personal
responsibility we have toward the ecosystems and the animals that nourish us.

Thanks to a push toward healthier lifestyles and the popularity of books such as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a larger segment of society is starting to think beyond packaged and processed food and wonder what, exactly, we’ve been eating all this time, where it came from, and whether we can do better. As people around us begin to explore this in their own way—whether by shopping at a neighborhood farmer’s market or cautiously sampling the elk steak we share with them—we hunters have a lot to teach and talk about.

Shane Mahoney examined this topic in detail in a recent article for Sports Afield called “Hunters: The Original Locavores.” In it he suggested that much of the increased interest in hunting in recent years is coming from people who are focused primarily on the health and environmental benefits hunting can provide. And these, he contends, may be key to preserving our hunting traditions long into the future.

Shane, who holds a Masters of Science degree in Zoology from Memorial Institute of Newfoundland and has worked as a scientist, wildlife manager, and policy innovator for more than thirty years, understands the importance of solid scientific facts and quantifiable information in making the case for hunting’s future. Accordingly he is taking our understanding of wild game as food to an entirely new level with his Wild Harvest Initiative, a multi-year study designed to measure and analyze the biomass of wild animal protein eaten by citizens of the United States and Canada, and determine its nutritional and economic value.

Amazingly, this is the first time the amount of food taken by hunters has ever been examined on a large scale. The project is expected to prove the importance of recreational hunting as a food source and economic benefit, providing another important reason to conserve habitat for game animals around the country. You can learn more about the Wild Harvest Initiative at www.conservationvisions.org/wild-harvest-initiative.

A lot of us who are fortunate to at least occasionally eat veggies from the garden and venison from the hill above the house may not think of ourselves as part of a lifestyle with the fancy name “locavore.” We just enjoy being part of the process of acquiring our own food. But that concept, simple as it may be, is a bridge that offers a way to connect with others who are interested in a more elemental lifestyle, even if they aren’t hunters—yet.

Photos courtesy Tweed Media

Opportunity or Plague?

I’m not very good at sitting on a stand. In fact, I hate it…but in a lot of areas it’s the only sensible way to hunt whitetails. So I deal with it. Most of the time I fidget, unable to sit still…but that last hour of daylight holds my full attention. For me that’s the most exciting time. In the morning dawn brings promise, but after the sun comes up chances get slimmer by the minute.
It’s the opposite in the evening…with every minute that passes chances improve. Until,suddenly, you realize it’s just too dark…depending on weather and vegetation, there may be minutes of “legal shooting time”…but if a buck shows up you can’t judge antlers.

That’s a big let-down with a lot of my whitetail hunting, but those last few minutes of near-dark remain exciting at my friend Zack Aultman’s place down in Georgia. Too late for deer or, in the spring, the turkeys have gone to roost…so now it’s time for pigs! Folks who have hogs on their place generally don’t love them…but folks who hunt on places with hogs often do. Well, not always. On my last night in Georgia in December ‘16 I had a half-dozen does and a young buck on a food plot to my right, and it was a perfect evening, misty and cool. Then four hogs came out
to my left.

About 45 minutes of light remained, so although I was sorely tempted I didn’t shoot…but I might as well have. Deer don’t like hogs. Because of a slight roll to the terrain they couldn’t have seen these pigs, and with the breeze it’s impossible they smelled them…but even though I couldn’t hear them the deer could, because, a quarter-mile from the hogs, they ran like the hounds of hell were after them. The hogs left as well and I finished the hunt in solitary splendor.

Videographer Kelly Bertellotti with her first wild hog, taken while filming a spring turkey hunt in Georgia. After the turkeys roosted we went hog hunting, and she shot a nice
“eatin’ size” pig just after sunset.

Nearly 15 years ago gunmaking legend Kenny Jarrett took me down to hunt at Zack’s “Aultman Forest,” literally a pine plantation. There were hogs present back then, but only a few, and sightings were rare. I’ve been there a number of times since, and I’m shocked at how the hogs have increased. Zack declared war years ago—shoot on sight—but it’s like closing the barn door after the horses are gone. The pigs didn’t descend on Aultman Forest in a surprise porcine wave attack. There was no intelligence failure, no “Dugout Doug” MacArthur at a remote base ignoring reports. Their increase was noted, action was taken, and Zack’s troops haven’t run out of bullets…but the pigs are winning. From perhaps thirty pigs taken a year when I first hunted there, in recent years the take has climbed to 1200 pigs per year…and their numbers keep growing.

This is just a small microcosm of what is happening across much of the Southeast…and northward and westward from there. Feral hogs have been present since before the Civil War, so exactly why the current exponential expansion (in both numbers and range) is occurring is unclear…but for sure it’s happening. Current estimates place the feral hog population in the United States at about nine million…the second largest large wild mammal population in North
America after the whitetail. Feral hogs are well-established in various enclaves from Mexico to quite far up in Canada, with sightings in every U.S. State except Alaska. Agricultural damage now exceeds two billion per year.

Now, in Georgia I enjoy shooting hogs. That’s the right term, because it’s stand hunting, and when they appear we shoot them if the timing is right. Realistically, this doesn’t do much good; we take one or two out of a sounder, and the rest are educated, because pigs are smart. In California I enjoy hunting them, which is also a correct word, because we’ve lived with feral hogs for generations, and hunting them is business on the Central Coast. A small sounder can destroy a barley field in a night, but the pigs out there are self-limiting. Periodic drought gives
them up and down cycles, and they aren’t the plague they’ve become in the Southeast. In fact, they are a resource: Wild hogs have replaced deer as California’s top big-game animal, and in our Central Coast region hunting them, processing them, and housing and feeding the folks from our big cities who hunt them is a mini-industry.

Now, I’m from Kansas. When I was a kid I doubt there was a single feral hog in the state of Oklahoma, just to our south. Today the population is climbing toward a million, established in all counties. They’re a problem there, but also a business; hog outfitters have sprung up all over Oklahoma.
They’re definitely a problem in Texas, several million strong—but they’re also a resource, with hog hunting (including, now, from helicopters) an active business.

I’m a landowner in southeast Kansas, fifteen miles from Oklahoma. My neighbors and I keep watching for hog rootings, and indeed we have an ideal situation for hog movement: Wooded, interconnected river corridors, much of it public land; unlimited food; and lots of nonresident landowners. Hogs are known to have established themselves off to the west, and to the east along the Kansas-Missouri line. Once they’re in breeding populations they’re hard to get rid of…but we don’t have them…yet.

Recently I attended a local seminar for landowners on feral hogs, conducted by the government hunters for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Two years ago a farmer shot two hogs less than ten miles from my place. I assumed we’d see pigs in six months, but it hasn’t happened. In our area these guys are doing an awesome job holding the pigs at the Oklahoma line! As a hunter I’d be happy to see them…just at dark while I’m sitting on a deer stand. My neighbors, however, are farmers; they dread them, and we assume they’re on their way.

Because they are so smart, and because they are so prolific, once established it is almost impossible to get rid of them. Ask the folks in the Southeast, and in Texas, and in Oklahoma! In Kansas we’re not smug; we’re scared. The USDA boys showed how the progressive proliferation of hogs in Tennessee and Oklahoma could not have been altogether natural. The geographic jumps were too large, so it must have been aided by folks releasing truckloads of feral hogs so they could hunt pigs.

That genie can’t be put back in the bottle, but our position in Kansas is that landowners or designated agents can shoot hogs…but it is unlawful to possess or transport wild hogs, and there will be no selling of pig hunts. We don’t want to follow the Oklahoma example. Crop damage is just one issue, but hogs will hurt our deer herd and our deer hunting, along with our turkeys and everything else.

I support this position. I’ve seen the advance of the feral hogs in too many places. They don’t need help, and I know how destructive they can be. But, every night just at dusk, when I sit on a deer stand in Kansas, I imagine I’m in Georgia, waiting for hogs…and I wonder if this will be the first night when wild hogs make an appearance at my place. For sure they’re coming, and I’m pretty sure they can’t be stopped.

In most areas feral hogs occur in a wide range of colors and patterns, although black seems to be predominant for most mature boars.

Why it’s a good idea to use a hiking stick on your mountain hunts.

I guess a fancy word is “seminar,” but let’s just call them “presentations.” I do quite a few, so of course I have to switch them around. I have a fairly new one on “favorite hunts,” naturally including a few mountain hunts, certainly some of my most memorable. I don’t know what’s going on, but this presentation has sparked a question I’ve never heard before, and it’s been asked more than once: “How much longer do you think you can keep doing this stuff?”

Scary, especially with another “sixty-something” (never mind which) birthday coming in a few days. Apparently that’s starting to show! The answer, of course, is that I have no idea. I have noticed that the mountains are getting steeper, and the knees are definitely getting creakier. It’s not yet time to have them fixed—but that day is coming. Every person is different; at the shows I hear about—and occasionally meet—octogenarians who are still able to hunt tough country.
They give me hope! I’m pretty sure I can still get up the mountain for a few more years, but without question the window is shrinking.

Climbing with a commercial hiking pole in good aoudad country in West Texas. With a single pole I’ll tend to have it in my left hand. This is not because I’m left-handed, but because my left knee is far the worst and needs the support.

The best hedge I know is to keep in shape. I try! I can’t run like I used to; the knees just won’t take it. So I spend more time at the gym and more time walking and hiking. There’s another hedge that really helps, and I wish I’d started doing it a lot sooner than I did: I always climb with sticks. Any sports doctor will confirm that use of a walking stick takes significant pressure off the knees, especially when carrying a load.

Two sticks are better than one. These days, on serious mountain hunts, I carry two adjustable hiking poles. They’re light, and you can get them at any big-box sporting goods store. Honestly, I don’t always use both; with a rifle slung I find it awkward to not have a hand free. And, anyway, my left knee is a lot worse than my right; old injury on that side, just mileage on the other. So one pole often winds up on the pack, but even one helps a lot. Commercial hiking poles usually have removable rubber tips with steel tips underneath. On early hunts the rubber tips are okay, and certainly quieter, which is important for hunting. On later hunts, or any time there might be snow and ice, you want a tough pointed tip that will dig in.

My African addiction is hardly a secret, and the three-legged “African shooting sticks” are almost universal over there. They take practice to get used to, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suggested—in print and during presentations—that Africa-bound hunters should get or make a set of shooting sticks and use them regularly. I practice what I preach. We regularly shoot with shooting sticks on the range, and I’m so comfortable with them that I take them almost everywhere…only replacing them with genuine hiking poles for serious mountain hunts.
Folded together, the three-legged sticks, though a bit heavier than necessary, make a very fine hiking staff. There is one caveat. If three-legged sticks are used as a staff it’s important to secure the three legs together—fairly tight—so they are mutually reinforcing. Otherwise, sooner or later, the tip of one leg is sure to catch on something and snap. I’ve broken two sets of good shooting sticks this way!

These days the three-legged sticks I carry are from African Sporting Creations with jointed legs. This allows me to take them down and stow them in the guncase, and also allows them to be used as a lower tripod for support in a wide variety of shooting positions. But this isn’t really about using sticks in their intended role for shooting support, but about the use of sticks, staffs, and poles for hiking and climbing.

Like anything else, some learning is required. I was fortunate. Clear back in 1975 one of the better deals I got from the Marine Corps was a several-month assignment to the Army’s excellent Mountain Warfare School at Fort Greeley, Alaska. Always a bit scared of heights, this almost cured me. We were taught all sorts of useful stuff, including technical climbing with ropes, pitons, and rock hammers; and glacier and river crossings and more. Some of the skills
involve use of sticks, and this is stuff I use on every hunt in hills and mountains.

First off, whatever stick you carry allows a critical third point of contact while negotiating steep terrain. Keep a stick on the uphill side, and lean slightly into the pitch. A staff or single pole can be held in both hands, across your body, offering both support and contact. In Azerbaijan, where the same guides (and now their sons and grandsons) have hunted tur for forty years, there’s a rack of steel-tipped staffs at base camp. The Caucasus Mountains aren’t especially high, but they are extremely steep. This is where Art Carlsberg (the only posthumous Weatherby winner) fell to his death many years ago. Ever since use of a staff is absolutely required…and it really helps!

Downhill is actually worse than uphill, harder on the knees and more dangerous because gravity is trying to pull you down faster than you want to go. Ground the pole(s) before moving your feet, and take it slow, one step at a time. When it’s icy one must be especially careful—steel- tipped poles help—but on open scree and occasionally on snow there’s another technique. You can take your staff or pole and ground it behind you, using it as a brake. Lean back into the pole and put one foot in front of the other, allowing gravity to carry you down. This is called glissading…just make sure there isn’t a drop-off below you! Whether uphill or downhill, if you slip and are sliding down, roll into the slope, face-down. Dig in with stick(s) and toes. And maybe pray a little bit…

Donna, a few years younger with no knee issues, has resisted use of sticks—she likes to keep her hands free. Last year we hunted Dall sheep in the Brooks Range, and this fall, after a couple of previous failures, she got a nice Rocky Mountain goat on a tough hunt in northern British Columbia. I have finally convinced her to use at least one hiking pole. Grudgingly, she has conceded that it helps a lot.

Part of the problem is she hasn’t had any training. More than ten years ago, on one of our first hunts together, my buddy and now partner in several ventures, Conrad Evarts, and I were on a goat hunt in B.C., me with rifle and he with TV camera. Turns out he’d never been in really steep country before, and he thought I was nuts. This business of glissading down a relatively gentle scree slope terrified him. I have never fully conquered my fear of heights, so I finally convinced him that he needn’t be scared unless I got scared. A couple days later, on a particularly bad ascent, I got really scared and we backed off…carefully. To Conrad’s extreme credit, after that hunt he took a mountain training course, readily available in his home state of Montana (and in every mountain range in the U.S. and Canada). If you’re serious about mountain hunting, consider training. It’s important to know what you can do and what you shouldn’t try, and when it’s truly time to be scared. Trial and error is dangerous, and just a little bit of training in proper techniques goes a long, long way.

So, these days, sticks of one type or another are part of my hunting kit. Unfortunately, I’ve now added another piece of essential gear. In B.C. a couple months ago we got Donna’s goat with few problems…but downhill is the worst on creaky knees, and my pesky left knee locked up several times on the descent. So now I’m training with knee braces. They help, and may ward off surgery for a few more hunts.

I carry African shooting sticks almost everywhere. They serve as hiking staff, shooting support, and, as a gunwriter, I can use them like this to display the rifle used. In this case that’s Donna’s MGA .270, used to take a great blackbuck in northern Argentina.

A hunt for big bears is one of North America’s top outdoor adventures.

Two years ago daughter Brittany, my friend and cameraman Conrad Evarts, outfitter Ron Fleming, his wife, Benda, and I were sitting on a high ridge just south of northern British Columbia’s Spatsizi Plateau. Ostensibly we were glassing for caribou, but really we were just glassing. I was picking apart a bare ridge far across a deep valley when I saw him, the biggest grizzly bear I’ve ever seen.

I told Ron, and I’ll never forget what he said: “Where is he from that big rock?”

The rock was the bear, but I understood the confusion. The bear was very far away and, at the moment, lying still on the hillside. He looked like a boulder…a very big boulder. Then he started to move again, rooting around. We got the spotting scope on him and watched him for a long time. An interior grizzly simply should not be that big. I don’t claim to be a great judge of bears—that’s a fine art—but I’ve seen some big Alaskan brown bears, and this bear would beat most of them.

That was just one day in an amazing ten days during which we glassed grizzlies pretty much every day, mostly on the hillside across the lake from camp. We had no bear tags and Ron had no quota available, and until I saw that bear it didn’t matter in the least. Some years back I shot a very nice grizzly with Dave Leonard, on the Noatak River in Arctic Alaska. At that time it had been many years since I’d taken a grizzly bear, and this was by far my biggest and best. That being the case, I said at the time that it would be my last grizzly. I’ve had no trouble holding the thought…until I saw that bear.

Fast forward two years. I’ve just come out of the same camp, having spent quite a bit of the last ten days glassing for that bear. This time I had a tag and Ron had the quota, so I suppose I would have taken that bear if I’d seen him. Whether I would have taken a lesser bear or not is up for grabs. We saw a gorgeous blond grizzly the first day, not a big bear and not tempting, and in a long spell of intermittent rain and fog that was the only grizzly we saw. But if intent counts, I broke my word: If I’d seen that bear I would have shot him if I could have.

Interior grizzlies are widely scattered, so hunting is usually a matter of extremely painstaking and patient glassing. 

I don’t claim to have a great deal in common with that most uncommon American, Theodore Roosevelt, but one sentiment we share is revering the grizzly bear as the true symbol of the American wilderness. Unlike many young Westerners today I didn’t grow up with grizzlies, but I took my first more than forty years ago, also in B.C. but down in the Kootenays, probably just three miles north of the U.S. border. That was just before I reported to Marine Corps Basic School, so my classmates quickly dubbed me “Griz.” Fortunately the nickname didn’t stick, but I have retained a special affinity for the long-clawed, dish-faced, hump-backed grizzly bear.

Although there are no real limits on a grizzly bear’s size he is generally not as large as his better- fed coastal brown bear cousins, and his population is much less dense as he forages for scarcer food. There are no guarantees on hunts for any of our big bears, but if the weather cooperates and one chooses well in area and outfitter most coastal brown bear hunts are successful. The grizzly is another story: 50 percent is very good, and a one-in-three chance ain’t bad. When I shot my big grizzly on the Noatak I knew I was in the right area, and I knew I had a great outfitter…so I went three times before we caught perfect spring conditions and I took what should be (but may not be) my last grizzly. So I’m not in the least bothered that I didn’t get a bear these past ten days. Whether I’ll try again is uncertain. That monstrous bear was seen a year ago, but hasn’t been seen since. On the other hand, most of the time there’s no one to see him. So maybe he’s still alive, and maybe he isn’t…and maybe I’ll try again.

I will tell you that it is a huge luxury to be able to even consider targeting just one bear in the vastness of the American wilderness. That’s not necessarily something I recommend, but it’s a luxury I can enjoy; I don’t need another grizzly, and morally perhaps I shouldn’t take another. However, I want grizzlies in the American wilderness, and I want them to be hunted. Pursuing a grizzly is a unique and dramatic experience, perhaps the apex North American adventure. But there are two more pragmatic reasons why I believe the great bears should be hunted where populations allow it. In our often topsy-turvy world of political correctness gone mad there is no better proof of a stable wildlife population than a regulated hunting season. Grizzlies are stable or increasing where they are hunted. And there is evidence that limited hunting reduces human-bear conflict, not by sheer removal of bears but by instilling respect for humans rather than contempt.

At this writing there are four options for hunting grizzly bears: Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon, and Northwest Territories/Nunavut. Alaska and B.C. have the largest populations. Alaska estimates about 30,000 brown/grizzly bears, but does not distinguish between interior grizzlies and coastal brown bears; B.C. estimates over 15,000 grizzlies. Bears are stable or increasing, and both jurisdictions have a carefully regulated harvest that, at less than three percent, is totally sustainable. Yukon is far north interior; the bear population is widely scattered, but with just 35,000 people many of her wildlife populations exceed the human population. This is not true of grizzlies, but Yukon has several thousand grizzlies and they’re doing just fine. In Northwest Territories the largest population is in the far west MacKenzie District where, inexplicably, grizzly hunting has been closed for many years. To the east and on into Nunavut the grizzlies are considered barren ground grizzlies, a bit smaller but with exceptional coats. The population is not dense, but specialized Arctic hunts by snow machine are highly successful.

There may actually be room for growth. Alberta has had a moratorium on grizzly hunting since 2010; their grizzlies are both increasing and spreading east toward the prairies, with escalation in human/bear conflict. It doesn’t appear that hunting will resume any time soon, but it’s not impossible. In the Lower 48 recovery continues in the Yellowstone and Glacier Parks ecosystems, with individual grizzlies now roaming far and wide and bear accidents continuing to increase. Both Montana and Wyoming are ready to reopen (very) limited hunting. The Feds are not—yet—but it seems reasonably certain that these populations will be downlisted (as happened with wolves), and when the states take over management limited hunting is likely to be part of the plan. So I actually think I’ll see grizzly hunting in the American Rockies once again. Whether I’d try to participate or not remains to be seen, but a handful of Montana or Wyoming grizzly permits would be ultimate proof of a huge conservation success!

The 6.5mm is red hot—and for good reason!

At the 2017 SHOT Show I was surprised and bemused to find that, in the sporting rifle world, the 6.5mm Creedmoor cartridge was the talk of the show. Suddenly everybody is chambering for it—more rifles and more loads, apparently feeding a growing demand. This was surprising because the Creedmoor isn’t new; it’s a ten-year-old cartridge, developed by Hornady’s Dave Emary and his engineers as a long-range competition cartridge, designed for accuracy. Long-range shooting is more popular than ever, but this market still isn’t big enough to fuel such a furor, so it seems obvious that American hunters are discovering the Creedmoor.

Bemusing because it is, after all, a 6.5mm, caliber .264—a popular European diameter that has never done well over here. Exactly why is hard to explain, but some bullet diameters have remained primarily “American,” others “European,” and a smaller number are truly universal. The .25-caliber, diameter .257-inch, is primarily American, hearkening back to our .25-35 in 1895. The .270, diameter .277-inch, is primarily American, going back to the .270 Winchester introduced in 1925. The 7mm, diameter .284-inch is one of the universal favorites, as is our own .30-caliber. Numbers are boring, but they don’t lie, so let’s take a quick look at numbers. The difference in bullet diameter between the .257 and the 6.5mm is .007-inch, not much. The difference between the 6.5mm and the .270 is .013-inch, still not much. The leap from .270 to 7mm is another tiny .007 inch. So the whole difference from our .25s to the 7mms is .027-inch. In comparison, the leap from 7mm to our .30-caliber (.308-inch) is .024-inch. I think I can argue that the .30-caliber takes a noticeable upward leap in bullet weight, frontal area, and performance on game (along with attendant increase in recoil)…but the upward steps from .25 to 6.5mm to .270 to 7mm are more subtle.

The 26 Nosler was still experimental when I used it to take this ibex in Turkey in 2013. I was all set up for a long shot, but wound up flattening this big-bodied goat with a single 130-grain AccuBond at less than 150 yards.

This is a crowded field, and since 1925 Americans haven’t made much room for the 6.5mm. Prior to the .270 early 6.5s made inroads in this country, but only the 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser hangs on. Despite several attempts the track record for domestic 6.5mms hasn’t been good. I can come up with about eight domestic 6.5mm sporting cartridges from major manufacturers in the last hundred years—provided we include the 6.5-284 Norma, American-designed but standardized by Norma, and ignore the 6.5mm Grendel, more of a tactical number for the AR15 platform. Of these, half have attempted to avoid the curse of the 6.5mm by using English designations: .256 Newton, 1913; .264 Winchester Magnum, 1958; .260 Remington, 1997; and 26 Nosler, 2014. Success of this ploy is obviously mixed. The .256 Newton is long gone and the .264 is just hanging on. Reception to the .308-based .260 Remington has been slow, although seems to be picking up now as part of the new 6.5mm craze. When introduced the 26 Nosler was the fastest factory 6.5mm ever and garnered a lot of headlines, but the jury is still out.

Cartridges designated “6.5mm” have also enjoyed mixed results. The 6.5mm Remington Magnum (1966) is pretty much a dead duck. Using the fat, rebated rim .284 Winchester case, Norma’s 6.5-284 (1999) was, like the Creedmoor, designed for long-range competition. It has done well in 1000-yard competition and, like the Creedmoor, has spilled over into the hunting market. As with the 26 Nosler, it’s too early to speculate on the 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum, formally introduced just a year ago. The Weatherby number is faster, pretty much the last word in fast 6.5mm cartridges. As drawbacks, it is based on a long belted case, clearly no longer the style. But it is fast and has earned its headlines. Now time will tell.

The 6.5mm has much going for it. From the 1890s 6.5mm bullets have traditionally been long for caliber, which means they hold velocity well. Much heavier bullets are available than for our .25s; though the diameter leap is small, there’s a big difference between the most common 140-grain 6.5mm and the heavy 120-grain .25-caliber bullet. Against the .270 bullet weights are similar and performance on game is similar—but today we have 6.5mm cartridges designed for utmost accuracy, while the .270s have been developed as sporting cartridges.

In long-range shooting (as opposed to long-range hunting) retained energy means nothing. All bullet drops are measured in yards, so trajectory becomes just a series of numbers to calculate. Likewise wind deflection. Three things do matter. First is accuracy; second that the bullet remain supersonic to 1000 yards so as to avoid the accuracy-robbing turbulence of crossing the sound barrier a second time (the first crossing happens in the barrel); third is that it gets this done with as little recoil as possible. It turns out that with aerodynamic shape, the high Ballistic Coefficient (BC) of the long-for-caliber 6.5mm bullet enables it to remain supersonic to 1000 yards without a whole lot of velocity. It depends on the bullet shape, but a good 140-grain 6.5mm spitzer at a modest 2700 fps or so will get the job done. So, in good barrels with match-grade bullets and good ammo, and in skilled hands, the .260 Remington, 6.5mm Creedmoor, and 6.5-284 Norma have all been placing in a lot of matches. Thousand-yard competition means little to the larger hunting market. But it’s nice to have accuracy and efficiency without getting beaten up.

Left to right: 6.5mm Creedmoor, .260 Remington, 6.5-284 Norma, 6.5×55 Mauser. From a hunter’s standpoint these cartridges are essentially equal…the 6.5-284 is the fastest and, as factory-loaded the 6.5×55 is the slowest…but all four are excellent hunting rounds.

There is another number long associated with the 6.5mm: high Sectional Density (SD). Essentially an index of weight to diameter, if bullet construction and velocity are similar then a higher SD translates to deeper penetration on game. Hunters discovered this about the 6.5mm in the 1890s, using early military 6.5mms with heavy full-metal-jacket bullets to take game all the way up to elephants. A long time has passed since anybody thought a 6.5mm was adequate for pachyderms, and in most American jurisdictions “FMJs” are illegal for hunting. But the principle remains. Because of bullet weight the 6.5mm is better for larger game than the .25s, and about equal to the .270s. With the 7mms we have to compare apples to apples. There isn’t much to choose between a 140-grain 6.5mm and a 140-grain 7mm if velocity and bullet construction are similar…but there’s a difference if you step up to a 175-grain 7mm bullet!

Bottom line: Our milder 6.5mms are awesome for deer-sized game at moderate ranges. This includes not just our modern cartridges—the .260 Remington, 6.5mm Creedmoor, and 6.5-284 Norma—but also oldies but goodies like the 6.5×55. With more careful bullet selection all can certainly be used for game up to elk, but for hunting, as opposed to target shooting, higher velocity translates to more downrange energy projected; flatter trajectory that simplifies shooting solutions; and reduced flight time, which decreases wind deflection. Steve Hornady, ever loyal to his own cartridges, has done a fair amount of mountain hunting with his 6.5mm Creedmoor. I would prefer not to. To me this is where the fast 6.5mms come in. None of them, whether the .264, 26 Nosler, or 6.5-300 Weatherby, are likely to develop reputations for winning matches. But they project more energy farther, are better for larger game such as elk and the general run of African plains game…and better for mountain game. Considering the power level, recoil remains surprisingly mild.

It seems to me more American hunters and shooters are rediscovering the 6.5mm. It’s really amazing to walk a mild 6.5mm out to 1000 yards. It’s equally amazing to see how well they perform on deer-sized game, just as they did in the 1890s. But there are really two paths, efficiency and low recoil; and high velocity performance. I’m still a fan of the .264, but now with two faster choices I doubt it will make a comeback. Both the 26 Nosler and the 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum are a lot faster. I’ve used both, and it’s amazing how fast the bullet gets there!

The fast 6.5s aren’t for everybody; the big surge right now seems to be toward the Creedmoor. The point, however, is that suddenly we have more 6.5mm choices than ever before. The Europeans have long recognized it as an exceptionally useful bullet diameter. It seems to me we backward Americans are finally catching on!

Once a cattle region, now a hunting mecca, Zimbabwe’s Bubye Valley Conservancy shows how hunting can help both humans and wildlife to flourish.

Zimbabwe’s Bubye Valley Conservancy (BVC) lies in the southern portion of the country, comprising portions of both the Matabeleland South and Masvingo Provinces. In the early 1900s, huge cattle operations were established on the two-million-acre property and livestock remained the principle source of revenue in that area until the early 1980s. But there are issues inherent to such large cattle operations in southern Zimbabwe; the fragile Lowveld soil is not conducive to large livestock; native species competed with domestic cattle (and were subsequently exterminated); and local communities did not share in the profits from these operations. In addition, periodic drought is common in the region, and die-offs of domestic stock were commonplace in especially dry years. Lions, elephants, rhinos, wild dogs, and buffalo were extirpated, and a bounty was paid for anyone who presented the tail of a zebra or wildebeest as these two species represented the primary competition for the domestic herds.

When the Bubye Valley Conservancy was formed, elephants were reintroduced along with many other native species.

Following the brutal droughts of 1982¬1983 and 1991¬1992, ranchers in the region began to face the reality that cattle operations were not the best financial option in the arid Lowveld. A group of investors, spearheaded by Charles Davy, purchased the remaining LEMCO (Liebigs Extract of Meat Company) lands and several adjacent farms and established the Bubye Valley Conservancy. A double, seven-foot electrified perimeter fence was erected around the entire boundary of the 1,250-square-mile property (larger than the King Ranch in Texas); the double fence had a 30-foot gap to separate the conservancy’s buffalo from neighboring cattle to control the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease. A number of native wildlife species were then reintroduced into BVC. Since they were adapted to the environment, these native species—lions, buffalo, elephants, wild dogs, rhinos, and many others—thrived in the BVC. And, of equal importance, they did not damage the habitat as the domestic livestock had. As wildlife populations grew, the habitat improved, and soon the massive BVC landholdings looked much as they did in the days prior to the introduction of cattle. Shareholders paid the bills for the establishment of safari camps, game reintroduction, anti-poaching measures, and the perimeter fence until the funds from safari hunting could support BVC operations.

The funds generated by sport hunting have helped not only the wildlife in BVC but also local communities around the conservancy. The statistics speak for themselves: Since 2011, eight bore holes have been drilled to provide fresh water to schools and villages, youth athletic teams have been able to afford uniforms and transportation to sporting events, cold rooms and refrigeration units have been established to store fresh meat, schools were provided with new buildings, restrooms, doors, windows, and roofs. Most important of all, more than three and a half tons of fresh meat is donated monthly to local schools, villages, and orphanages. The lengthy list of improvements continues (for complete totals visit bubyevalleyconservancy.com), but the message is clear: When wildlife is managed for hunting and local communities either benefit or become shareholders in the responsible use of natural resources, then wildlife has a future in Africa.

From the establishment of the first cattle ranches in the region until the early 2000s, rhinos were scarce in the BVC—the sole population was a handful of white rhinos that had been imported from South Africa. That changed in 2002, when 135 black rhinos were reintroduced to BVC, making the area home to the third-largest population of black rhinos in the world and the largest collection of rhinos on private ground (only Etosha Park in Namibia and Kruger Park in South Africa are home to larger herds).

“This population is highly valuable not only in terms of numbers of individuals, but possibly more importantly in terms of genetic viability,” says professional hunter John Sharp, who operates in the BVC. “The black rhinos in BVC are of Zambezi Valley stock—in fact some of the black rhinos living on BVC today were actually born in the Zambezi Valley. The 35-year-old bull, Shrapnel, was captured in 1992 in Chete. The forty-year-old cow, Inunwa, was captured near Rekomechi Bridge on the way into Mana Pools. These rhinos contain vital genetic diversity as they are from what in the late 1980s was the world’s largest population of black rhinos, estimated at in excess of 1,700—over half the world’s population at the time. South Africa and Namibia had barely 500 black rhinos each at this time.”

The War on Poaching

The Bubye Valley’s rhino population is carefully maintained and monitored, but even this remote corner of Africa is not immune from the infiltration of poaching gangs who—fueled by a rise in the value of rhino horn and equipped with an effective arsenal of semiautomatic and automatic weapons with telescopic sights and silencers—began targeting the BVC rhinos mercilessly in the late 2000s.

In early 2008, criminal syndicates behind the massive rhino poaching in South Africa turned their attention to BVC in conjunction with Zimbabwean gangs who had almost annihilated the rhinos in other areas within Zimbabwe. Between 2008 and 2009, an adjacent property lost all seventy-two of their rhinos to these gangs, and BVC scouts suddenly had to shift their attention from local poachers using dogs and snares to well-funded, well-organized militias bent on exterminating rhinos for profit. The funds generated by hunters and non-governmental organizations helped equip the anti-poaching units to fight a more sophisticated and far more dangerous enemy.

BVC issued each of its eighty scouts semi-automatic .223-caliber rifles. Secure communication networks were established. Training in basic tactics was conducted to build confidence. Working with staff from other conservancies, intelligence was gathered on the poaching syndicates. By mid-2010, after losing some fifty rhinos, the tide turned and losses dropped dramatically as the opposition suffered several major setbacks and found that there were easier pickings elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the potential profits for slaughtering rhinos spurred these armed syndicates to regroup and reorganize. Soon poachers began incentivizing BVC scouts to provide intel that allowed them to operate once again in the Bubye Valley.

A key factor that assisted the resurgence of poaching was there being cell phone coverage in most parts of the BVC. This provided poachers with real-time intelligence on deployments, detection of incursions and whereabouts of rhinos. Poachers also perfected a system of crossing the two perimeter fences without leaving any evidence of their passing. (They put socks over their shoes, foiling even expert trackers.) They also became very mobile, on occasion traversing the BVC from east to west, some forty-four miles, in twelve hours, negating the efforts of stop groups. But the BVC did not back down; the rhinos in their charge were not their own property but the property of the Zimbabwean people, and with funds from hunting and private donations, BVC upgraded its fences, paid substantial sums for information leading to the capture of poachers, organized a rapid-response unit to quickly address poachers, undertook more advanced training and, in 2016, added a canine response unit. Poachers have responded by trying to ambush rangers; to date, thankfully, there has only been one relatively minor injury. The BVC has become one of the hotbeds in the war on Africa’s poachers, but thanks to the funds generated by hunting and the selfless efforts of dedicated scouts on the ground, the BVC rhinos are surviving. Were it not for hunter dollars, these valuable animals would have been lost long ago.

The King is Back

“As the apex predator, lions are a vital component of functioning ecosystems,” Sharp says. “However, without the incentive of trophy hunting, we could not afford to have as many lions as we do. Lions eat other animals, and in real terms consume hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of wildlife on the conservancy each year. Lion hunts are not cheap, but this is why. If we were unable to continue harvesting our lions, their population size would unfortunately need to come down, and this means culling them, as there is currently nowhere left in Africa to introduce a viable lion population.”

The future of places like BVC is crucial to the future of lions in Africa.

Lion ecology is widely misunderstood. The general public seems determined to vilify trophy hunting when, in reality, the loss of habitat, a rapidly-growing human population, and poaching for profit are the true risks to wild lions. To that end, the BVC has partnered with the University of Oxford Wildlife Conservation Unit to help study these cats in the BVC.

“Lions are an important cog that makes the ecological machine work, and we don’t want to lose the lions,” Sharp says. “Responsible trophy hunting cannot significantly affect lion population density or survival, as it is only the old males no longer contributing to the gene pool or protecting their pride that are hunted. Indeed, the lion abundance has increased exponentially despite, and indirectly because of, hunting.”

Sharp points out that the BVC’s success with lions has resulted in the area accounting for more than a third of the CITES harvest quota for the entire nation of Zimbabwe. In late 2015, BVC representatives, along with lion experts from Hwange Park and the Save Valley Conservancy, met with officials from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to discuss the future of lions and lion hunting in Zimbabwe. According to the official USFWS statement, “The Service found that sport-hunting, if well managed, may provide a benefit to the subspecies. Well-managed conservation programs use trophy-hunting revenues to sustain lion conservation, research and anti-poaching activities. However, the Service found that not all trophy hunting programs are scientifically based or managed in a sustainable way. So in addition to protecting both lion subspecies under the ESA, we created a permitting mechanism to support and strengthen the accountability of conservation programs in other nations.”

The fact that there are any lions at all in the conservancy is a testament to the BVC’s commitment to conservation. While lion populations continue to decline across much of the continent, the Bubye Valley’s population of big cats remains stable thanks to careful management bolstered by ecological research. More importantly, the future of lions in the valley is a benefit to the shareholders who live alongside these cats. Since there are more wild lions on hunting areas today than in parks and preserves in Africa, it is time that the world began to understand why the future of places like the BVC is congruent with the future of the lion as a species.

The Bubye Valley Conservancy is an example of what hunter-based conservation can accomplish in Africa. The financial success of the BVC has provided for local people and incentivized them to protect wildlife. The funding has also helped provide ground troops to fight the war on poaching. It’s important to note that the original shareholders who established the BVC twenty years ago have not seen any personal financial gain from the success of the conservancy; the money returns directly to the communities and to the preservation of wildlife. The vast, remote BVC remains one of Africa’s great ecosystems, with healthy game populations and a goal for long-term conservation in a world consumed with rapid profit. And we have hunters to thank.

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Hunting is by far the largest funding mechanism for wildlife, and the economic benefits go far beyond conservation.

Gifford Pinchot, first chief of the United States Forest Service and the twenty-eighth governor of Pennsylvania, famously declared, “Unless we practice conservation, those who come after us will have to pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure for the progress and prosperity of our day.”

While many of us now accept the truth in this, it is imperative we also recognize that conservation is not free. There is a price to pay for the management, protection, and enjoyment of our natural world. Wildlife abundance is no accident, and it isn’t free, either. Somebody, somewhere, pays the bills.

While there are many institutions that play a role in conservation, state agencies in the United States are on the front lines. Yet, despite the fact that the average U.S. state wildlife agency requires a budget of $40 million annually to operate, it seems the American public remains largely unaware or indifferent to the costs of conservation. Citizens certainly benefit from the conservation services state agencies provide, but seldom is there public recognition for how the agency staff and programs are funded. It is time this was recognized.

The current system of funding for U.S. state conservation programs relies heavily, though not exclusively, on expenditures by hunters, and anglers. On average, more than half a state agency’s budget comes directly from sales of hunting and fishing licenses or other user fees. How much money are we talking about? Well, in 2015, there were approximately 35 million hunting licenses, tags, permits, and stamps sold in the United States at a cumulative cost of $821 million. The great bulk of this money went to conservation, in one form or another.

It is true that approximately one-quarter of the average state wildlife agency’s budget comes from federal funding. However, this funding is almost entirely provided by the Pittman-Robertson Act (Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act of 1937), which imposes an 11 percent excise tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition products. Since 1939, $10.1 billion of these tax dollars has been awarded to states in support of conservation initiatives. When combined with contributions derived from angler taxes via the dedicated Dingell-Johnson Act of 1950 and the Wallop-Breaux Amendment of 1984, this number increases to an impressive $18 billion dollars in direct funding for state conservation efforts. Can anyone name any other source of conservation dollars that even approaches this?

But that is not the end of the story. Tax contributions and user fees aside, it is estimated that American hunters contribute an additional $400 million dollars per year to wildlife conservation through membership dues and donations to organizations like DSC, the Wild Sheep Foundation, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and many others.

No other country in the world has such conservation funding mechanisms in place. Nor does the United States itself have an alternative mechanism to replace these funding sources, should they decline or disappear. This is not to say that other citizens do not financially support conservation; they certainly do. What it does say, however, is that hunters (and anglers) make enormous contributions and have been doing so for a very long time. This fact ought to be acknowledged, if for no other reason than to provide insights as to how other communities might be incentivized to financially support wildlife conservation programs.

While the numbers quoted are impressive, the economic significance of hunting and angling extends far beyond conservation itself. Overall, hunting in the United States generates $25 billion dollars in retail sales and more than $17 billion dollars in salaries and wages each year, while creating sales tax, and state and federal income tax revenues for government agencies and public services of all kinds. American hunters spend $5.3 billion dollars each year on hunting-related travel, $6.4 billion on hunting equipment, and $8.4 billion on other, related, “big-ticket” items. All things combine for an annual expenditure of $2,800 per hunter. Economic multipliers may be used to estimate the compound rippling effect of these expenditures, showing an economic impact of more than $86.9 billion dollars a year to the U.S. economy.

These numbers are incredible, of course, and comparisons with other economic drivers help put them in perspective. The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation reports that sportsmen and women spend $605 million a year on hunting dogs, which is more than skiers spend on ski equipment, and that the annual federal income tax revenue generated by hunter spending could cover the annual salaries of 100,000 U.S. Army troops. Between 2006 and 2011, USFWS reports that the number of hunters in the U.S. increased by 9 percent. However, in the same time frame, spending on hunting-related products and services grew by more than 30 percent. As an economic driver, therefore, hunting is actually growing in importance. Even following September 11, 2001, when the U.S. travel industry was in dire straits, hunters spent a remarkable $276 million dollars on lodging alone. The National Shooting Sports Foundation reports that if hunting were a company, the amount spent by American sportsmen and women to support their activities would make it number 73 on the Fortune 500 list. Hunting, by any standard, is not only personally important in the lives of millions of U.S. citizens; it is big business.

But don’t be blinded by the statistics. This economic activity has real consequences for real people. In fact, hunting related activities and services annually employ more than 600,000 Americans. These jobs are often created in rural areas where employment opportunities may be limited. In some rural areas, dollars spent by sportsmen and women during hunting and fishing seasons can be enough to keep small businesses operational for another year. By doing so, these traditional activities remain the lifeblood for many small towns and businesses across America today.

The American traditions of hunting and angling fuel an enormous economic engine of tremendous value to conservation as well as to the socioeconomic well-being of the nation. True, these pursuits are not for everyone. Yet, whether one supports these activities or not, it is important to recognize the contributions they make and to appreciate that we have yet to devise any alternative funding sources that can replace them. Indeed, our pursuit of such new funding sources ought to reflect our conservation commitments and thus we should seek to add to the benefits of this economic colossus, not replace it. In a world challenged by human population growth and climate change, wildlife conservation is becoming more expensive, not less. We need to increase our conservation efforts; not just maintain the status quo. To do so will require a greater effort by a wider community of citizens dedicated to never losing our priceless wildlife heritage.

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The Friedkin Family and Tanzania’s government make a long-term commitment to conservation.

The hunting news from Africa is often troubling these days: dwindling game, rampant poaching and corruption, massive habitat encroachment. But this article is about some good news for a change. At the center of the story is an American safari company with a history of conservation leadership that is doing remarkable things in Tanzania.

The story began, for me at least, on my first safari to Tanzania’s Maswa game reserve in 2001 just a couple of days after 9/11. Very little news got through to us in the bush, isolated as we were amid more than a thousand square miles of thornbush and rocky hills, and the contrast between our remote little corner of Eden and the turmoil rampant in the rest of the world couldn’t have been more pronounced. On subsequent safaris to Maswa in 2003, 2008, and 2011, that sense of blessed isolation remained intact even as the pressures on wildlife and habitat increased throughout East Africa. We continued to see elephants calmly parade through camp, the cows leading tiny calves past our tents to water in the evening, and the other animals—the buffalo, the myriad antelope species, the baboons, the birds—seemed to increase in number with each visit.

This year, professional hunter Paul Olivier came around a corner in Maswa not far from the Mbono River and stumbled on three black rhinos. The rhinos had apparently moved into the area from the nearby Serengeti, found Maswa to their liking, and decided to stay. In a hunting area. That just doesn’t happen much in Tanzania, and probably not anywhere.

The magic behind Maswa, not surprisingly, is not magic at all but a long history of hard work and substantial investment. The Houston-based Friedkin Family Companies, a group of prominent hunting and photographic safari outfitters that includes Legendary Adventures, Tanzania Game Trackers Safaris, Wengert Windrose Safaris, Legendary Expeditions, and Ker & Downey (Tanzania), have long been associated with some of the best hunting areas in Tanzania: Maswa, Lake Natron, Moyowosi, Ugalla, and Malagarasi to name a few. Since 1987 the Friedkins have invested nearly $300 million into habitat protection, community development, infrastructure, camps, and facilities. Perhaps most importantly, much of that investment has funded, through the Friedkin Conservation Fund, an extensive anti-poaching program that has become a model for others in Tanzania and elsewhere.

The company’s efforts have yielded remarkable success, as witnessed by my own experiences in Maswa over the years. Careful management of wildlife and habitat, combined with a famously passionate commitment to pushing the standard for luxury safaris to new heights, has secured the company’s reputation among the continent’s best safari outfitters.

But with success has come enormous risk. East African politics are rough and tumble, and those wildlife areas that still remain are a valued commodity. Turnover happens, often involuntarily, often for reasons that have little to do with game management. Since 2010, in particular, the Tanzanian safari industry has suffered considerable upheaval.

After losing several key areas in one round of reallocations and barely holding on to another through two years of litigation, the Friedkins found themselves forced to reevaluate the viability of their investment. Profitability was never the goal—the Friedkins make their money through other businesses and their safari companies have long been managed primarily as philanthropic endeavors, with hunting and photographic revenues being ploughed back into conservation programs. But investing millions into areas only to see them turned over to others with a different agenda was simply too much. If the company was to continue its investment in Tanzanian conservation, it needed longer-term stability.

So, in early 2015, the Friedkins approached the Tanzanian government with a proposal. In return for their commitment to continue their conservation and community development initiatives in their safari areas, and specifically to invest an additional $100 million in those areas over the next ten years, they asked to be granted Strategic Investor Status under Tanzanian law, which would assure them a thirty-year renewable franchise in each area. The proposal included detailed plans for boosting tourism and broadening resource utilization in a manner consistent with sound conservation, constructing new camps in certain areas, and creating new infrastructure and employment opportunities for local communities. After extensive discussions, on August 17, 2015, the Tanzanian government agreed to the plan and granted three of the Friedkin companies Strategic Investor Status with associated guarantees and protection.

The Friedkins emphasize that while the long-term security the company’s new status provides is critical to their ability to offer first-quality safaris, the more important news is how inextricably hunting has become linked to conservation policies and to non-hunting uses of hunting areas. As the company’s public statement notes, “Conservation practices were relatively easy twenty-eight years ago. Today they are complex. We must balance the demands for land and water between a burgeoning rural population and wildlife.”

While hunting safaris once contributed far more revenues to conservation than photographic or other uses, demand for photographic safaris in the Friedkins’ areas is now increasing much more quickly than hunting demand. It is becoming increasingly difficult for safari operators to reserve vast areas exclusively for hunting use. Mixed use seems increasingly the norm.

In consequence, it’s difficult to say exactly what the Friedkin’s success signals for the future of safari hunting. African politics are simply too volatile, too uncertain, and controversies regarding African hunting will doubtless continue for some time. But there is something unmistakably cheering about Tanzania’s tangible recognition of the Friedkins’ contribution to the future of African wildlife. Committing private capital and private effort to wildlife just because it’s the right thing to do, a quintessentially though not uniquely American value, is exactly the policy Teddy Roosevelt advocated a century ago: “Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land an even better land for our descendants than it is for us.”

President Roosevelt’s message is as relevant to Tanzania in 2015 as it was to America in 1909. The Friedkins have demonstrated beyond question that American hunters can play a crucial role in preventing the poaching and habitat destruction that threatens African wildlife, and the Tanzanian government has demonstrated that it is willing to make substantial commitments to encourage and reward such efforts. For other investors with similar interests who step forward, the path seems a little less daunting, the future of African wildlife a little brighter.

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