A PH makes a split-second decision that will mean life or death for him and his client.

The game trail was a narrow corridor of hard-packed soil beneath a canopy of thorn. It was hard to imagine that three big bull elephants had recently come down this path, but professional hunter Karl Stumpfe stood over their fresh spoor pressed deep into the dirt of the game trail. He strained to see through the interwoven green branches of combretum, but the wall of vegetation was so thick that the elephant bulls less than a dozen yards ahead of the men appeared only as sandy-gray patches moving slowly through the dense cover.

Karl leaned to his left, trying to make out the left tusk of the closest bull, and finally caught sight of the long, smooth curve of the tusk as the bull stepped forward to feed. The brown-and-yellow ivory was thick and long, arcing down from the great bull’s face and reaching halfway to the ground. This was the bull the men had walked so many dusty miles to look at. Now, with the dust of late afternoon glistening in the beams of light that cut through the combretum thicket, Karl decided that this was, in fact, the bull they wanted.

Karl turned and motioned his American client, John Phillip Thoreson, forward. But it was almost impossible to make out the elephant’s shoulder in the green morass, and Karl wanted to be absolutely certain they had the right bull and that his client placed his shot well. It was June of 2009 and Namibia’s rainy season, which had been over only a few months, had brought unusually high levels of precipitation that resulted in abundant vegetation and high levels of standing water here in the Balyerwa Conservancy in the Caprivi Strip.

The Kwando River, which begins in the mountains of Angola and flows south before bisecting the Caprivi and forming a portion of the border between Namibia and Botswana, had swollen over its banks and created a series of channels and islands along its course. The three bulls Karl and his client were pursuing had made their way onto a small island of trees and grass among these channels. When the hunters found the bulls feeding on the island, they forded the narrow channel and slipped within the bull’s inner circle. Now they were now only a few steps away from the towering elephants.

Suddenly the bull that the men were watching lifted his great head high above the canopy of green, spread his dusty gray ears, and turned in a half-circle away from the men. Karl watched as the bull turned back toward them and stopped broadside to the west of them. The bull had not smelled them since the wind was blowing from the south, but something had caught his attention and he stood with head and trunk high and ears flared, just thirty feet away. Perhaps the bull had heard Derek or Justus, the game scout and field officer who followed close behind Karl and his client. Regardless of what it was that had caught the old tusker’s attention, it was clear that he wasn’t going to hang around much longer.

Karl motioned his client to move left through the cover and off the game trail to a point where the elephant’s wrinkled gray shoulder was visible through the thorns.

“Shoot,” Karl said, and raising his own .450 Rigby Rimless, he waited.

The muzzle blast of John’s rifle made the leaves shudder and Karl, at his client’s request, fired his own rifle just after his client shot. Both slugs caught the elephant squarely in the shoulder. It turned and charged through the dense vegetation, clearing a swath of thorns from its path as it ran away from the men and, after ten yards, piled up dead in the center of the peninsula.

As the elephant crashed down in the thicket, the other two bulls, which had been standing just beyond the elephant John shot, began trumpeting and came crashing back down the footpath in the direction they had come. Karl pushed his client away from the path as the two bulls came, trumpeting and flattening the towering green growth like twin locomotives roaring down parallel rails. Karl lifted his rifle into the air and began shouting and waving in the hopes that they would continue on down the trail and that Derek and Justus would have the good sense to flee from the path of the charging elephants.

The bull nearest Karl and John suddenly veered off the game trail and charged toward the PH and his client. Karl tried to turn the bull once more, waving and shouting as loud as he could before he shouldered his rifle. The elephant was coming for them now, its ears and trunk tucked as it bore down on the hunters through the combretum with obvious deadly intentions. Karl steadied his .450 and, with the elephant’s head looming larger and larger over the iron sights, he centered the rifle between and just below the line of the eyes on the elephant’s head and pressed the trigger when the bull was almost over top of him.

The 500-grain bullet struck home and the huge gray bull collapsed immediately, crashing down into the thicket, splintering saplings and flattening the web of combretum branches with a force like a demolished building. As Karl backpedaled and worked the bolt, he watched the other elephant. The third bull turned and ran down the path. Karl tried to slip through the thorn cover to watch the bull’s retreat, but he tripped on a fallen log and crashed down into the sand. Beyond his line of sight he heard the thrashing vegetation and the trumpeting of the other bull, which continued back down the game trail and away from them. But now Derek and Justus were in the bull’s path as it rushed headlong down the narrow game trail. Derek dove headlong into the swollen waters of the Kwando River, while Justus turned and ran for his life through the dense thorns, losing his shirt in the process. They both escaped uninjured.

Karl rose and turned to check on his client who, despite his pallor, was unharmed. The second elephant had died within arm’s length of where Karl was standing when he delivered the final shot. Another two steps and the bull might have crushed Karl as it fell. Had he not shot the second bull either he or his client, or possibly both of them, would have been killed by the rushing elephant.

They examined John’s bull and found that he was exactly what they had hoped for—an old bull carrying long, heavy ivory. The other bull was very large as well but did not have the ivory that John’s elephant sported. Now, however, Karl had a problem. He had two elephants down, and only one permit.

PH Karl Stumpfe with the bull he shot in self-defense.

A PH does not have the jurisdiction to shoot any animal that he considers to be a problem. Karl was responsible, first and foremost, for protecting the life of his client, which he had done. But now he would have to write a report about the incident and submit it to the government officials who would decide whether or not Karl had acted in accordance with Namibian game laws.

Karl sent in the full details of the report, along with diagrams of the events and a list of witnesses. In light of the facts and based on the testimony of witnesses, it was decided that he had, in fact, acted in accordance with Namibian game laws in his effort to protect the life of his client. The second bull was declared a problem animal based on the fact that it had attempted to seriously injure or kill a human and could only be stopped with deadly force.

Professional hunters play many roles on safari. But the ability to handle pressure and make critical decisions at a moment’s notice are of the utmost importance while dealing with large, dangerous game at close range. When the moment of truth occurs, you’d better hope that you are hunting with a PH who has the ability and the nerve to save your life the way Karl Stumpfe saved himself and his client on that fateful day in Namibia when a split-second decision and good shooting meant the difference between life and death.

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This beautiful desert in southern Africa is home to huge gemsbok, springbok, and a variety of other game.

Quick. Name a famous desert.
If you said Sahara, join the crowd. Everyone knows the world’s largest desert. If you said Kalahari, though, you’re probably a hunter.

Northern Africa’s Sahara, 3.6 million square miles, grows world-record sand dunes. Southern Africa’s Kalahari, 350,000 square miles, grows world-record gemsbok. And more. A lot more. The Kalahari is a veritable Noah’s ark of wildlife, so many species that one can’t resist listing them to emphasize the point: In addition to gemsbok, this famous sand supports lions, leopards, cheetahs, caracals, African wild cats, wild dogs, brown and spotted hyenas, and jackals. There are ant-eating aardwolves and bat-eared foxes, Cape foxes, Chacma baboons, scrub hares, springhares, meerkats, polecats, genets, honey badgers, the weird pangolins and aardvarks, and three species of mongoose.

Feeding the predators, large and small, are migrating herds of springbok, blue wildebeest, eland, kudu, red hartebeest, steenbok, common duiker, warthogs, zebra, giraffe, and even elephant. Black wildebeest historically roamed the southeast edge of the Kalahari, but today they have been introduced on many large cattle ranches throughout the region, along with blesbok, impala, waterbuck, sable, and even a few rhinos. Birds and reptiles? Other than ostrich, we won’t even try to list them, but rest assured you can enjoy upland hunting for francolin, guinea fowl, doves, and sand grouse.

And they call the Kalahari a desert?

Technically it really isn’t; it’s a semi-desert. Although dry and extremely hot in summer, it greens up with the three to eight inches of rain that falls each summer from November to March, irrigating grass and thorn scrub amid its long, low, red sand ridges interspersed with valleys locally called streets. Umbrella-shaped camelthorn trees are a common sight in many districts. The Kalahari, “the great thirst” in the local Tswana tongue, is most desiccated in the southwest where it spills out of Botswana into South Africa and the eastern reaches of Namibia.

Its edges are not precisely defined. Rather, they blend into a wetter, 2,500,000 square mile Greater Kalahari Basin that includes the southeast corner of Angola, southern fringe of Zambia, most of Botswana and a sizeable swath of South Africa north of the Orange River, which was not named for its color nor any citrus fruit, but in honor of William of Orange. Some claim the Kalahari sand basin extends as far north as the Congo and as far south as the Cape, but we’ll confine our attentions to the classic, dry central core known famously as Bushman country.

Bushmen, the San people, evolved both culturally and physiologically to survive where no other people could. Archeological evidence places them in most of southern Africa 30,000 years ago. Tens of thousands of their rock art images adorn caves, cliffs and boulders, depicting them hunting eland, giraffe, and other animals with bows. Apparently the Kalahari has long been a hunter’s paradise, and formerly a much wetter one. After the sixteenth century, pressure from new immigrants, black and white, forced the San deeper and deeper into the central core of the Kalahari basin where only they could survive. Bushmen, when living their traditional lifestyle as hunter/gatherers, were widely regarded as the best game trackers in the world. They had to be, not only to find game, but to follow it while waiting for the slow poison on their arrows to take effect. Under the influence of modern cultures, few retain these skills, but many who do are hired by professional hunters to track leopard and other game for clients.

The Kalahari basin rests on a plateau 3,000 feet above sea level. Seasonal streams, omuramba, drain some of it, leaving shrinking pools where game drinks, but most sheet water ends up in isolated, shallow lakes. The most famous, Makgadikgadi Pans in northeast Botswana, is a remnant of ancient Lake Makgadikgadi that once covered 106,000 square miles. The Okavango River cuts across the Caprivi Strip of Namibia after draining central Angola, then disappears into the sands of the Kalahari in the famous wetlands of Okavango Delta on the northeast edge of the desert.

Smaller pans scattered across the region provide seasonal sustenance for grazing animals as well as humans. In 1849, the famous Dr. David Livingstone, with the aid of William Cotton Oswell, crossed the Kalahari from the southeast to “discover” Lake Ngami. He reported bird flocks darkening the sky, sitatunga by the thousands, and lions preying on them. In extremely wet years, overflow from Okavango still swells Lake Ngami, but it is a mere shadow of its former glory, often completely dry. The sitatunga and lion are long gone, but the remnant water makes this a bird mecca.

Before Livingstone reached Lake Ngami, rumors of it had inspired William Cornwallis Harris, whose 1836 hunt had taken him near the south end of the Kalahari, to propose an expedition to find the lake. The Royal Geographical Society declined to fund it. From 1943 to 1948, R. Gordon Cumming hunted the southeast corner of the Kalahari and wrote about it in A Hunter’s Life in South Africa, but he never pushed deep into the desert. His accounts of migrating springbok by the hundreds of thousands is classic African natural history.

The Kalahari still holds good populations of lions in some areas.

Pans played essential roles in more modern immigrations into the Kalahari. As recently as the 1950s, white settlers were pioneering into the area to establish sheep and cattle ranches, building homesteads near the shores of wet pans where they sank wells. The flows from these bore holes now sustain wildlife across the region. A first-generation descendent of one such pioneer, Hannes Steyn, recently guided a client to the new world’s record gemsbok, a cow with one horn reaching 50 inches and both adding up to 109 1/8 inches under the SCI scoring system. This was no fluke. Steyn regularly leads clients to huge gemsbok. In just three days he guided my wife and me to 41- and 40-inch bulls on his Namibian farm.

The Kalahari gemsbok, a subspecies of rapier-horned oryx, is a classic desert survivalist with specialized physiology that enables it withstand severe heat and go for days without water, extracting moisture from leaves, desert melons, and cucumbers. Special nasal blood vessels shunt air-cooled blood to the brain while body temperature soars as high as 113 degrees F. Some say the long horns are also used as heat radiators. They are certainly used as defense against lions.

Ranches have been both curse and blessing to Kalahari wildlife. Not surprisingly, the early cattlemen, Boers, contributed to the destruction of native wildlife to protect grazing lands and crops. Market hunters later devastated wild game populations, nearly wiping out the black wildebeest, or white-tailed gnu. In the 1960s, governments began erecting “veterinary” fences to prevent wild game, potential carriers of the dreaded foot-and-mouth disease, from migrating into cattle regions. Wildebeest, hartebeest, springbok, and others piled against fences and died by the thousands. As recently as the 1980s, some herds during drought years declined by 90 percent. On the upside, ranchers, to meet hunting demand, reintroduced many species formerly extirpated. Boreholes provide year-round water, negating the need for migrations.

Dozens of professional hunters and hundreds of farms and ranches offer mixed-bag plains game hunting across the Kalahari. Some enclose 50,000 acres or more behind high fences. Many form conservancies in which the free-roaming wildlife resource is shared rather than fenced. Such private lands are spared the upheavals and uncertainties of governments that open and close hunting on government concessions for purely political reasons.

Ranch hunts in the Kalahari are currently some of the easiest, safest, and most affordable in Africa. While not exactly wilderness, the land–vast, isolated, and undeveloped–feels as if it is. You can hunt for weeks and never hear traffic, never see a highway or powerline, never detect the glimmer of a city light. You will see a sky aglow with stars and hear the yapping of jackals, the barking of kudu, perhaps the cough of a leopard. The Kalahari remains quintessential Africa.

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It took him most of a lifetime to get to Africa… but it was worth the wait!

It was 4:00 a.m. when I pulled on my boots and walked out into the cool night air. Last evening’s campfire had been reduced to embers but I welcomed its lingering warmth as I settled into a dew-dampened canvas chair. The unfamiliar calls of unseen birds overhead caught my attention, and when I looked up, I saw that the Southern Cross was right where I had left it just a few short hours before.

“You’re not in Texas any more,” I said to myself. “And you’re not in Kansas, either.” I was in the Karoo of South Africa, and I was so stoked by the excitement of a grueling but successful kudu hunt and the taking of a monster steenbok, I could not sleep.

I have offered up my most fervent prayers in the hours before dawn while sitting quietly and alone in a deer stand or in the dark timber of elk country, and I could do no less with a new African day on its final approach. I had a long list of blessings to count, among them the opportunity to share Africa with my youngest son, Larry. Mauve-tinged fingers of light were tickling along the horizon’s rocky backbone before my thoughts turned to the events which had brought me to this place.

I smiled to think how many times I had found comfort in the English saying, “Good things come to those who wait.” Extolling the virtue of patience, it gives soothing assurance that in life, conditions change with the passing of time, and the future is made bright by the collisions of dreams and opportunities. Curiously, it was different somehow when I said it aloud with only the Karoo to hear. Then I realized with great satisfaction that the difference wasn’t in the sound of it at all. This familiar phrase had changed because it wasn’t a promise any longer, it was an affirmation.

The author and his son share in the excitement of taking this nice impala.

My mind went back to the incredible things Larry and I had seen and done since our arrival in South Africa just three days earlier. Less than five hours after stepping off the airplane in Port Elizabeth, I had posed for photographs beside my first trophy, a magnificent impala. The celebratory back-pounding that Larry gave me that day was the sweetest pain I have ever suffered.

“I have waited fifty years for this sunrise!” I said to myself. My dream of Africa took its first breath in 1959 when I was a seventh-grade student in San Antonio, Texas. I was in the school library on a Friday afternoon when I stumbled across a copy of John A. Hunter’s first book, appropriately titled Hunter. Mesmerized, I read it cover-to-cover that weekend, not knowing that my self-made promise to see Africa one day would simmer for most of a lifetime before coming to a boil. I filled the intervening years collecting books by or about legendary professionals like Hunter–men like Selous, Taylor, and Bell–and their modern contemporaries.

For a working man like me, patience is essentially the product of prioritization, not by design but by necessity. Not to say that there aren’t many good things to enjoy along the path of daily living, but the time to enjoy even simple pleasures and the resources to cover the high cost of turning dreams into realities are easily siphoned away by the more immediate needs of family and career. I could only wait as my dream of Africa ebbed and flowed with tidal monotony.

After thirty-four years of service, my retirement from the BNSF Railway in 2007 liberated me from nagging worries and ringing telephones. My first adjustment to retirement was the easiest–I committed myself to the enjoyment of sunrises, a simple pleasure which millions of people take for granted every day. There is something in a sunrise that illuminates the mind and warms the soul, and I felt that I was much in need of both. I was sixty years old when I retired, and I had missed most of 22,000 opportunities to see a sunrise. I have seen most of a thousand in the three years since.

I owe the gift of Africa to four amazing people. Anyone who knows me can tell you that the center of my universe is my wife, Bilita. The daughter of a tough Texas Ranger (a lawman, not a ballplayer), she has been in my heart and at my side for over thirty-three years. It was she who convinced me that my life’s story would be incomplete without Africa among its chapters. I met the other three for the first time on the same day at the Dallas Safari Club convention in January 2009. They are Dr. Kevin “Doctari” Robertson, fellow DSC member Dale Butcher, and professional hunter JP Kleinhans. I am privileged to call them friends.

I have been reading Sports Afield for as long as I can remember, and I particularly enjoy Dr. Robertson’s writings, especially his Q&A column entitled “Ask Doctari.” In early 2008, I sent a question to him via e-mail through this website and in just a matter of days I was surprised to receive a detailed reply from Kevin himself. He not only answered my question as though he had no other demands on his time, he wrote as though we had been friends for years. It was Kevin who invited me to attend the convention in Dallas and meet him in person.

I heard the roar of the crowd long before I found the entrance to the DSC hall that day. I asked someone for directions to the Sports Afield booth, where Doctari would be signing books and meeting his many fans. As usual, Kevin had drawn quite a crowd, and when I finally worked my way to the front and identified myself, he greeted me with genuine affection. We talked about the role of organizations like the DSC in the global fight to preserve both the game and the right to hunt them, and with his encouragement, I found my way over to the membership booth and joined up for life.

This huge steenbok fell to a solid from the author’s .308.

I spent the rest of that morning watching and listening enviously as people booked African safaris on the spot. I talked to a few outfitters and collected a handful of colorful brochures, and it was well past noon when I headed upstairs to the food court. When I turned away from the cashier with lunch in hand, I discovered with dismay that every table was occupied. As I hopefully scanned the room for an empty chair, I saw a man sitting alone at a table and waving me over to join him. This simple act of courtesy was the turning point in the fulfillment of my dream to hunt in Africa.

He introduced himself as Dale Butcher from Amarillo, Texas. Dale has hunted Africa several times, and when I revealed my hope to book a plains-game hunt, he told me that his PH and longtime friend, JP Kleinhans, would soon be joining us. I instantly recognized the name and knew JP to be a professional hunter who I had seen on television in the company of Craig Boddington and Dave Fulson. I took an instant liking to JP when he arrived, and we agreed to meet at this table the next day and talk before the noisy lunch crowd arrived.

We met as planned, and I quickly learned that JP Kleinhans had the plains-game hunt I wanted at a price I could afford. We covered the basics and set my hunt for April 2010. I was babbling when I called to tell Bilita that it was a done deal, and she actually cried with happiness for me. Over the next few weeks, I talked to the several references JP provided, and after hearing their rave reviews, I knew that I had chosen well.

I stayed in touch with Doctari, Dale, and JP for a year before reconnecting with them at DSC’s 2010 convention. My son Jeffrey and his eight-year-old son, Cameron, were with me, and we were thrilled to see the many outdoor television personalities whose programs give us so much viewing pleasure. Cameron, my only grandson, is my faithful companion whenever Tracks Across Africa appears on the television screen, and his eyes lit up when he saw Craig Boddington.

As we stood in the crowd, hoping to have a word with him, Craig suddenly rose from his chair and announced with regret that he was late for an appointment. He was walking by me when I caught his eye and asked if he had time to meet my grandson, who is one of his biggest fans. He stopped and said with a honest grin, “No, but I will make the time!” and with that he extended his hand to each of us, autographed Cameron’s DSC cap, and posed for a photo that Cameron will cherish forever.

Tha author’s grandson, Cameron, is a huge fan of Craig Boddington and his TV show, Tracks Across Africa.

Later that day, Doctari introduced me to Monty Kalogeras who operates a safari shooting school near Mason, Texas. I considered myself to be a fair hand with a rifle, but two days of intensive coaching and training with Monty revealed that I had a lot to learn about setup, breath control, and trigger squeeze. When I turned my pickup through Monty’s gate and headed for Fort Worth and home, I was confident in my ability to quickly assess a shooting situation and then deliver a bullet on target. I was as ready for Africa as I would ever be.

The South African Air flight from Washington, D.C. to Johannesburg via Dakar, Senegal, was long and grueling but it was made tolerable by my considerable excitement to finally be on my way. I had no problems getting my rifle and ammunition through inspections at the DFW and Dulles airports, and the inspections by the South African police in Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth were facilitated by my courteous conduct and some judicious tipping.

That magnificent impala was just the beginning for me. Thanks to the expertise and keen eyes of JP and his head tracker, Boettie, I followed it up with an exceptional blesbok, a good Cape kudu, the monstrous steenbok mentioned earlier, a very nice springbok, a good duiker, and a hard-won zebra stallion. The gemsbok I took in New Mexico over a decade ago will be shifted from its place of honor over the mantle in my den in favor of the kudu.

PH JP Kleinhans used his skills to unite the author with this Karoo springbok.

It is not uncommon for hunters and their PHs to become friends for life, and so it is with JP and me. An expert in both the field and the taxidermy shop, JP Kleinhans is affable, charming, and enormously witty. I enjoyed his colorful stories and the laughs we shared almost as much as I did the hunting. Every moment was an adventure, whether we were defying the laws of physics as we drove up and down impossibly steep trails or enjoying an easy evening with wine and dinner. My time there was made even more enjoyable by the occasional company of JP’s lovely wife, Natia, and their two children. If Bilita had been there to share in the fun, those days would have been the best of my life.

Africa was a 20,000-mile journey that required most of a lifetime for me to complete. It is magical and intoxicating, and it easily overwhelms all of the senses. Although my dream of Africa has been realized, it has been replaced by its fraternal twin. In my mind, I can still see the Southern Cross as it was during those pre-dawn hours in the Karoo, and it beckons me to return. Bilita and I will see it together in 2011, and most of our time there will be in the company of JP, his family and staff, God willing.

If you are dreaming of Africa but also feeling the restraints of duties at home, be patient because good things really do come to those who wait. Talk to people who have been there, and by all means, enjoy the excitement of gathering your gear. Use your time to prepare, because when your African dream turns to reality, as mine did, it may be as unexpected as the crisp break of a custom trigger. And if you can, share Africa with someone you love.

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Preparing for a safari is almost as much fun as the trip itself.

The anticipation has been building for months, and at last the day is almost here. I’m getting ready to leave for a safari in Namibia, via a flight to Washington, DC, where I’ll connect with South African Airways to Johannesburg, and then on to Windhoek. My duffel is stuffed with safari clothes and soft-soled leather boots and lots of additional stuff I probably won’t really need; my rifle is sighted in and ready to be locked in its case; three boxes of ammo are locked in a hard-sided pistol case inside the duffel; and my carry-on contains my passport and a sheaf of other paperwork as well as cameras, reading material, and a variety of sleep aids for that 16-hour ordeal in coach.

They’re big planes, but they seem awfully tiny when you’ve been wedged in a coach seat for hours and hours.

There’s a lot to think about when you’re getting ready for a hunt in Africa, but the preparation is almost as much fun as the trip! Robert Ruark said it best in The Old Man and the Boy: “The best part of hunting and fishing was the thinking about going and the talking about it after you got back.” OK, maybe it’s not the best part, but the anticipation and the remembering are always an integral part of the experience.

I’ll be hunting in northwestern Namibia with Omujeve Safaris in their Omatendeka Concession, which, by all accounts, is huge, wild, uninhabited, and unfenced. And crawling, so they say, with outsized examples of Namibia’s beautiful plains game—kudu, gemsbok, mountain zebra, springbok, and common eland.

The eland is my main goal. I want to hunt one of these huge spiral-horned antelope in the classic manner, by getting on a track in the morning and following it until we catch up or get busted by the wind. Eland will walk for miles and miles in a day, so they say, so it can be a real challenge. That said, though, I’ve been to Africa several times before, and I know that sometimes what the hunt gives you is not what you expect, so I’ve learned to be flexible and enjoy whatever happens.

One of the great things about Africa is you don’t need much in the way of fancy clothing. Two or three safari shirts, dark green or dark khaki, and the equivalent in lightweight pants will do it for your basic gear. I also have a cool safari vest I got from Boyt Harness company. Lightweight boots with very quiet soles for stalking (I got mine from Russell Moccasin), a windproof fleece jacket for those cold rides in the Land Cruiser in the mornings and evenings, and a hat with a brim, round out the essentials. I’m taking a light, bright 10×32 Zeiss FL binocular, and of course a good camera.

The most important consideration, of course, is the rifle and ammo. For this trip, I’m taking a Ruger M77 in .300 Win Mag, topped with a Trijicon 3-9×42 scope. It will be loaded with Hornady’s Superformance ammo with 180-grain Interbond bullets. I have full confidence in this rig to do the job on any large plains game animal that crosses our path, as long as I’m able to put the bullet in the right place.

Shooting practice is one of the most important, and according to many PHs I’ve talked to, one of the most overlooked aspects of safari preparation. It’s not enough to just sight-in your rifle on the bench; it’s also crucial to practice shooting from a variety of positions, including sitting, offhand, and resting on shooting sticks. I’ve been to the range several times in the past couple of months, but I’ve also supplemented that with a regimen of daily dry-firing, which has helped me to gain even more familiarity with the rifle.

This will be my second trip to Namibia. My husband, Scott, and I chose Namibia for our very first safari in 2003 and had a wonderful time. It’s one of the safest countries in Africa (if not the safest), and has great infrastructure, excellent game management, and wonderfully friendly people. You don’t need any special shots or medications in most areas (although I always take malaria preventative whenever I go to Africa, just as a precaution.)

Sunsets in Namibia are beautiful, especially when you’re watching one after a successful day of hunting.

The only bad part about going to Africa is the long flight, but all you can do is prepare as well as possible with lots of reading material and whatever helps you sleep. My travel agent, Annelise Dubose, specializes in Africa, and she has been a tremendous help in finding me the best flights and helping me figure out the connections, get the gun permits, and plan a little sightseeing after my hunt. Between Annelise and my friends at Omujeve Safaris, I know I couldn’t be in better hands. Now all I need to do is concentrate on shooting straight and enjoying the experience. It doesn’t get any better than that!

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A successful hunt begins well before you take that first step out of a vehicle, lodge, tent, or your back door. It pays to plan ahead, and this goes double when you are heading out of the country.

Keith Atcheson with a Botswana elephant.

Staying well organized and knowing what to expect requires guidance by an experienced booking agent or professional hunter,” says Keith Atcheson, who is a representative with booking agency Jack Atcheson & Sons, based in Butte, Montana. Your PH or outfitter will provide you with the basics, but when it comes to making sure you have remembered everything and know what to expect, Atcheson says, “A good agent here in the States is usually more practical and effective.”

“Hunters should begin by having a chronological checklist of items that need to be taken care of in a timely matter. For example, some species require CITES permits for importation, and those permits need to be obtained at least two to three months prior to departing for the hunt.”

Hunters should also think about, and plan for, their personal safety.

“Rent a satellite phone!” urges Atcheson. “Buy accident, sickness, and evacuation insurance without fail. To not do so is completely foolish. We had it when my wife was gored and nearly killed by a Cape buffalo in 2004, so believe me, this is really important, and it’s cheap. Deposit cancellation insurance is also a great idea, but it does make the insurance package more expensive.” These policies will need to be purchased, and the forms completed, well before your departure date.

So what’s the best strategy to head off airline problems and other unplanned travel disasters?

“Consider spending an extra night along the route to your destination to make sure your baggage can catch up to you if it’s lost,” Atcheson suggests. “The benefits of the extra rest are also obvious when dealing with jet lag.”

He also strongly suggests carrying your optics, medications, and one change of clothing, plus hunting boots, if possible, in your carry-on bag in case your checked luggage is hopelessly lost. You will at least be prepared to hunt with some comfort.

So what’s the one thing that’s always useful when traveling to hunt?
“Knowing that you have done everything possible to be organized from beginning to end,” Atcheson says. “Peace of mind is priceless.”–Michael D. Faw

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