A fly-in wilderness hunt in British Columbia with his father four decades ago still sparks wonderful memories.

Oh, how the years have slipped away. More than forty years have passed since that frosty morning in late September found us transferring our hunting gear and supplies from the back of Dad’s pickup to a small bush plane on a gravel landing strip in a remote area of northern British Columbia. This would be my dad’s first real wilderness hunt.

It had been a hard sell, convincing my dad to accompany me on a wilderness hunt, especially when planes were involved. He hated flying, even in big commercial jets, so when he looked at the little single-engine plane perched on its big “tundra tires,” I could see he was more than a little distressed. Thinking it was probably best not to give him too much more time to dwell on the situation, we quickly loaded our gear and stuffed him in the plane.

Our family tended to be a pretty tough crowd, where good-natured ribbing was the norm, and any chance to get a dig in was rarely squandered. Realizing that I had a rare opportunity before me, I pointed at the fabric skin of the fuselage, and poked it with my finger. My dad watched as the skin moved in and out with the pressure of my finger and I said, “Huh…it’s cloth!” At that moment the engine roared, and we were off.

About 45 minutes later we circled the drop-off point high in the Northern Rockies and the pilot set the plane down as pretty as you please on a gravel bar next to a crystal-clear mountain stream. We quickly unloaded the gear and minutes later the little plane departed. We were alone in God’s country, with nine days of hunting ahead of us.

You must remember that when this hunt took place and the plane left, you were on your own. There were no cell phones, no GPS, no satellite phones for the working class. If something went wrong you had to tough it out until the plane flew back to get you…weather permitting.

The main purpose of our hunt was to target a couple of the big bull moose that northern British Columbia is famous for, but I had also purchased sheep, mountain goat, and grizzly tags just in case an opportunity presented itself. In those days big-game draws were rare and most big-game licenses were available over the counter.

We quickly moved all our gear up into a small clearing about a dozen feet above the creek and set up camp so that we could do a bit of scouting and glass the area, and make a battle plan for the next day. Our hunt had been planned to hit the rut, and it was obvious we had timed things perfectly, as we soon located fresh rubs and several fresh rut pits within a few hundred yards of our camp.

I climbed up onto a small knoll a quarter-mile downstream and immediately noticed a small lake set back into the spruce trees a short distance away. It looked like an ideal place to hunt the next day, and my suspicions were quickly confirmed when I raised my binocular and a couple of dark spots on the lake’s shoreline turned into two cows and a decent-sized bull.

The scenery was absolutely breathtaking, and I could tell my father was suitably impressed as he took it all in. Our glassing didn’t turn up any more moose, but we did see a herd of about 30 mountain goats on slope a couple of miles upstream, and a bunch of stone sheep in a small basin directly above us. It was a heck of a good start for our first day in what appeared to be a hunter’s Shangri-La.

Back at camp we spent an hour gathering firewood to last a few days and as the light faded, we cooked a couple of steaks over the coals of the fire and got our gear ready for the next morning. Later we enjoyed a sundowner next to the fire and listened to a couple of wolves howl in the distance. Anticipating the next day could be a busy one, we hit the sack early.

The thermometer tied on my pack read 25 F the next morning, as I crawled out of the warmth of my sleeping bag. The little Coleman stove soon had the coffee perking, and we quickly downed a greasy breakfast of bacon and eggs, grabbed our rifles and day packs and headed off toward the little lake we had found the previous evening.

As we got closer to the lake, I marveled at the moose trails that were two feet deep in places, and all of the fresh sign indicated that the area had to be absolutely filthy with moose. So, not unexpectedly, when we were a few hundred yards from the lake I could see a couple of moose on the shoreline ahead, so we stopped and carefully glassed the area. A couple of moose soon turned into eight moose, including three bulls, a decent bull with a spread in the high 40s, and two young satellite bulls whose rutting enthusiasm made up for what they lacked in the antler department.

As it was our first morning and it was obvious there were a lot of moose In the area, we backed quietly out of the area and spent the rest of the day exploring and glassing. Toward the end of the day, we spotted a big bull about half a mile in the other direction from camp. It was too late in the afternoon to try and get closer, so we called it a day and headed back to camp.

The next morning, we decided to split up as my dad wanted to try and get a better look at the bull we had spotted the previous afternoon, and I would make my way back down to the little lake. We would meet back at camp after the morning hunt and make a plan, which would hopefully involve quartering a bull.

Now familiar with the route, it didn’t take long for me to sneak back to the lake. Once again, there were a few moose puddling around at the edge of the lake, including several cows and calves, and the two young bulls we had seen previously. I did not see the bigger bull, but I could hear the odd twig break and saw flashes of movement back in the spruce trees. I waited for a bit to see if the other moose would move out to where I could get a glimpse of them, but nothing happened, so I decided to call and see if that got any reaction. I let go with a couple of grunts and instantly had a bull reply and could hear it moving in my direction. I saw the flash of a palm and figured it was probably the bigger bull from the previous morning, but out came a different bull, a bigger bull.

This bull had nice wide palms, lots of points, and was definitely over 50 inches, so I wasted no time in sending a Partition on the way. The Nosler did its job, punching through both lungs and, in true moose fashion, the bull thought about things for a few moments and then did a slow-motion pirouette and toppled to the ground. 

After gutting the bull, I made my way back to camp and found my dad was already there and had made some lunch. He had seen the bull he was looking for and decided he would take it, given the opportunity, as it was an older bull with antlers that carried a lot of mass. Unfortunately, the bull was way up the side of the mountain and would be too difficult to pack out, so when he heard me shoot, he decided to head back to camp. 

We spent the rest of the day quartering my bull and getting the quarters out and hung in some trees near the creek. In the evening, we decided to try calling the bull my dad was after. Perhaps we could convince it to move closer to the creek, where packing the big ungulate out would be less onerous.  

The following morning was crisp and clear, and felt very moosey. As luck would have it, not two hundred yards from camp stood a nice big bull on the gravel bar the plane had landed on. It was a nice big bull with heavy antlers and my dad was pretty certain it was the same bull he had been focusing on. Moments later the big bull was down, and our moose hunting was officially over.

 We spent most of the next day cleaning up the quarters of our two bulls and bagging them with cheesecloth. In the late afternoon we did a bit of fishing and caught a couple of nice trout for dinner. After doing the dishes we made ourselves a drink and sat around glassing. I looked at the ridge right above camp and was just in time to count seven Stone rams as they walked over the top and into the basin behind. I knew exactly what I would be doing in the morning.

We left camp at first light, and after about three hours of steady climbing we made it to the ridge above camp. Using some big rocks as cover, I peeked into the basin and could see the rams were bedded down in the shale on the far side. With my spotting scope I could tell that two of the rams were legal full curls and decided to go for it.

My dad decided he was not up to any more climbing and said he would stay behind while I attempted the stalk. Not wanting him to overdo it, I said that was absolutely okay, as sheep were small, and I could easily handle the pack out with the horns and meat if I got lucky.

The stalk was pretty much textbook. I dropped down below the ridgeline and then circled around the backside of the basin, checking periodically to make sure the rams had not decided to move and to keep track of where I was. I pinpointed a specific bump on the ridge that appeared to be above where the rams were bedded and when I figured I was in the right spot I slowly inched up and peered over the edge.

The rams were still there, bedded down and looking off across the basin. I figured they were about 250 yards away, but I would have to wait until they stood up before shooting. The two legal rams were about the same size, but the one ram had the classic Stone sheep coloring with a light-colored head and upper neck, with dark shoulders. That was the ram I wanted, so I settled in with a good rest and waited for the ram to get up.

I only had to wait about fifteen minutes before the rams started to fidget and they began to get up. When my ram stood, I was ready, and when the .300 Weatherby barked he dropped and slid a few feet in the shale and stopped. His companions paused for a few seconds and then trotted off around the basin and disappeared over the far ridge.

I had my first sheep. Dad couldn’t complete the stalk with me, but when I got back to him with a pack full of meat and the lovely amber-colored horns, I found out that he had been able to watch the whole thing go down through his binocular.

I spent the next day skinning, fleshing, and salting the cape of my ram and that evening we had an extremely memorable meal of sheep ribs cooked over the coals of our fire. It was an outstanding meal and one that neither of us would ever forget.

As luck would have it, the pilot dropped in the next day to check on us and see how we were getting along. Sadly, the pilot said that there was a chance the weather was going to change, with rain and flurries a possibility. Since a couple of extra flights were needed to get us and all of the moose meat out, the prudent course of action would be to do the flying while the weather was still decent.

It was a fantastic hunt, but at the time I certainly had no way of knowing that some forty-plus years later I would be looking back and considering it to be my greatest hunt. Getting a Stone ram on my own certainly rates right up there as one of my best hunts, and my dad and I both taking a big bull moose on the hunt would have been a fantastic hunt in and of itself.

As the years have gone by and life’s unexpected challenges and curve balls have occurred for both of us, as they do for everyone, my perception of that hunt we shared together has changed. The experience also taught me that you should never put things off to do in the future, because you simply do not know what the future holds.

My father passed away two years ago. After that great hunt we shared, he never again went on another true wilderness hunt, and it was really the last time that we got to share that sort of experience together, just the two of us. Time restraints due to career paths, and later, health issues that both of my parents had to deal with, combined in such a way that they prevented any further opportunities for us to experience another hunt together, let alone another hunt of that magnitude.

I have been on lots of great hunts, and I hope I have a few more ahead of me. But for now, at least, I must rate that hunt with my father all those years ago as my greatest hunt.

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A challenging and rewarding hunt in one of the most remote places on Earth.

The headwaters of the Colville River begin along the northern edge of Alaska’s Brooks Range, and from there the river runs north and east for about 350 miles before it spills into the Arctic Ocean west of Prudhoe Bay. Along its course the Colville, located entirely above the Arctic Circle, doesn’t pass anything resembling a town. When the river flows (it’s covered in ice for more than half the year), it passes through hundreds of miles of empty, treeless tundra. Researchers have named the confluence of the Colville and its tributary, the Etivluk River, the most remote place in all of North America. 

After ten hours riding upstream in a Zodiac loaded with caribou-hunting gear, I had no trouble believing this was indeed the most far-flung destination on the continent. Neal Emery, who worked for Hornady at the time, rode in the bow of the boat while I was draped across guns and equipment amidships and our nineteen-year-old guide, Geordy, manned the steering column from the stern. The din of the outboard motors made talking impossible, so I spent long hours searching the hillsides for mammoth tusks, which sometimes become exposed on cliffs along the river. 

The Colville–a river where it’s more common to see a woolly mammoth’s tusk than another boat. The term “remote” doesn’t accurately describe the area, a place where hunters watch as columns of storm clouds build up fifty miles away, with nowhere to escape and without a single tree under which to shelter. The storms march across the barren moonscape and dump cascading sheets of water on the huddled visitor before continuing toward the Brooks Range and the Alaskan interior. In the Arctic there’s no place to hide from the elements.

What draws hunters this deep into the tundra is the annual caribou migration. Beginning in August the Western Arctic caribou herd, which has spent the long summer days farther north around Prudhoe Bay, begins a southward migration toward the Brooks Range. If you’re in the proper place at the proper time you may see thousands of caribou in a single twenty-four-hour stretch, and there are accounts of unbroken herds passing by camps around the clock for days on end. 

By the time we reached our camp thirteen hours upriver, though, we had not bumped any big herds. In fact, we’d only seen a few caribou and a single wolverine rooting along the riverbank. Eventually we reached a gravel bar where three tents shuddered against the north wind.

Striker Overly’s caribou camp is situated on a gravel bar that’s just long enough for him to land his Piper Cub, and despite its remoteness the camp was well-outfitted. We were exhausted after the long ride, but in late August the light hung around until after midnight. I fell asleep on my cot to the sound of water rushing over the rocks in the braided river outside.

I was sharing my tent with fellow outdoor writer Tom Beckstrand. By the time I awoke Tom was gone, and I could hear boots crunching on smooth river stones and voices from the mess tent. The long boat ride and uninterrupted daylight had disabled my internal clock and I wasn’t sure if I’d slept an hour or ten, so I was relieved to learn that it was morning. 

There are two ways to hunt this section of the Arctic. The first and less fruitful method is to set out on foot, using the tops of the high rolling hills to glass for game across the tundra, but the vastness of the region (it might be two miles between glassing points) makes this grueling and generally unproductive. The second method is to run the boats along the Colville and its tributaries, find a patch of high ground, and glass for game. By boating from one glassing location to the next, it’s easy to cover larger tracts of land, and over each hill there might be a herd of a thousand caribou.

We didn’t find a herd of a thousand animals, but I did spot a single bull topping a hill on the horizon. Shawn Skipper from Leupold centered his spotting scope on the caribou, which was standing halfway up a slope and grazing on low-growing mosses and lichens. 

“He looks pretty big, but he’s 1,800 yards away,” Shawn said. He tilted his head down, studied the caribou, then looked at me. 

I didn’t bother to ask Geordy what he thought. An Alaskan hunting guide in his late teens, Geordy could cover the distance so quickly the mosquitoes would struggle to keep pace. It was up to me. I looked through Shawn’s spotting scope, examining the velvet on the antlers crowing the bull’s head. The velvet looked strangely silver instead of the usual deep green, but the bull was big. He was relatively close by—at least by Arctic standards. The next caribou bull might still be hundreds of miles away toward Prudhoe Bay.

“Let’s try it,” I said to Geordy. Shawn nodded in approval. 

We used the raft to cross the tributary river and then began our stalk. The mosquitoes had no issue keeping pace with me, and a curtain of buzzing insects whined around my eyes and ears while I hiked. The first hundred yards after the river crossing were covered by smooth gravel with tufts of moss and lichens, so walking was easy. However, the next swale was a swampy series of tussocks—also commonly called muskeg–that continued for another quarter mile. 

If you’ve never crossed tussocks, I’ll pass along the first and only advice I was given on the subject: don’t step on top of them, and don’t step beside them. If you’ve reasoned that leaves nowhere else to place your booted foot, you’ve learned the first, last, and only lesson for getting across muskeg—there’s no stable or fast or efficient way to cross the stuff. It’s a slog, one foot ahead of another, tripping and sinking the entire time.

I tried to embrace the challenge. I moved as quickly as possible, which wasn’t very fast at all, and soon I’d sweated through my clothes. I removed the waterproof outer layer and cold air chilled my damp shirt and pants. Too late, I was soaked through. We kept on, first over one ridge and then through another wide tussock tundra and then to a second larger hill. By my calculations, when we crested that hill, the bull would be within rifle range. 

Carefully we edged up to the crest, but the bull was gone. That meant another plod across a tussock field. By the time we reached the top of the next hill, we’d finally caught up with the bull. He stood alone halfway up the next ridge, moving slowly from left to right. 

I laid down and rested my Savage .280 Ackley Improved on Geordy’s pack. The regiment of mosquitoes were still swarming my face, buzzing in and out of my ears and settling on my eyelids, but I managed to pull the rangefinder from my pocket and range the bull: 301 yards. Since the rifle was zeroed at 200, I held high on his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. When I settled out of recoil, the bull was down. 

We reached him ten minutes later. His antlers were tall, though they lacked a deep curl, and the velvet did indeed have a distinct silver color that may have been age-related or simply a genetic abnormality. We began the chore of skinning and butchering the bull with Geordy handling the bulk of the work. He cut away every piece of meat, including everything between the ribs, and we filled our packs for the hike out. 

We cut at an angle toward the river which reduced the length of the walk to about a mile, but it was the hardest mile I’ve covered. The tussocks were even more troublesome under the weight of the caribou meat, but we had dedicated ourselves to carrying the entire load out in a single trip. I tried to keep pace with Geordy, but eventually had to tell him to go on ahead. It seemed with every step the uneven ground shifted under my boots and I had to readjust, balancing the load on my back so I didn’t topple over. Mosquitoes had reached plague numbers by that stage. Neal and Shawn sat by the river, watching the whole sad spectacle unfold. 

When I got to the river and unloaded the last of the meat and antlers into the boat, I was soaked through once again. Some was sweat, some blood, but I knew I had to do my best to wash myself clean before we reached camp an hour away. We slipped into the raft and made our way into the main channel of the river and upstream. At some point I fell asleep on a warm game bag, and when we reached our camp on the gravel bar I smiled as the others congratulated me. They asked what had happened and I gave them the abridged version. I’d finish in the morning, I told them, after breakfast. 

I realize my greatest hunt was also one of my most difficult, and perhaps that’s not a coincidence. There were challenging times on the trip, but there was also time to fish, to graze on the seemingly endless blueberries, and to watch storms rush across the empty landscape, exceptional experiences that combined to make that adventure my favorite. 

I also had a great team. Despite the difficulties inherent to wilderness hunting Neal, Tom, and Shawn made the experience enjoyable. Had anyone decided to focus solely on the tough parts or complain, it could have been a miserable experience indeed. Instead, we tried to embrace the challenge, the work, and the isolation. We also appreciated—and often discussed—how fortunate we were to experience this place.  The Colville country is true wilderness that looks very much as it did when the last mammoth died here 4,000 years ago, and to spend time anywhere that makes you reflect on your own relative fragility and insignificance is worthwhile. It’s the element of hunting that those who condemn the sport can never fully respect or appreciate, but I believe it’s the quiet call that draws us to wild places, not strictly the desire to fill a tag.

In The Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway wrote, “It is pleasant to hunt something that you want very much over a long period of time, being outwitted, out-maneuvered and failing at the end of each day, but having the hunt and knowing every time you are out that, sooner or later, your luck will change . . .” You don’t hunt the Arctic because it’s comfortable, or convenient, or because the hunting is easy. You do it for the challenge, and the challenge is as essential to the experience as the trophy itself. 

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A combo hunt for birds and big game in central Argentina.

It was late morning, and the day was warming up fast. My outfitter, German, and I were walking quietly, quartering into the wind, when the bulky, reddish-brown forms of two red deer moved ahead of us in the thick brush. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a very large set of antlers disappearing behind the prickly branches of a calden tree. 

Momentarily stupefied by the sight of the enormous rack, I stood rooted to the spot. I glanced at German, who mouthed silently, “Wait.” I nodded almost imperceptibly.

The stags had probably been bedded in the brush before they heard us coming, but the thick vegetation obscured us as well as it had hidden them—I hoped. With that and the wind in our favor, they likely hadn’t seen or smelled us, so maybe they wouldn’t go far. 

After what seemed an eternity, but was probably only ten minutes, we had seen no other movement nor heard any sounds other than the incessant flutter of doves in the treetops. German made a downward gesture with his hand: Slowly. We moved ahead a step at a time, exercising as much stealth as possible in the thick undergrowth. My eyes flicked from the path ahead to my feet, trying not to step on even the smallest twig. We worked our way another fifty yards or so toward where we had seen the antlers disappear.

And then, there they were. Rising above the tangle like the thick branches of old oak trees were two of the most incredible racks I had ever seen. The two magnificent red stags were browsing calmly in the brush just over a hundred yards away, the sunlight gleaming on a veritable forest of tines. 

German set up the shooting sticks, and I rested the .300 Winchester Magnum on them and studied the stags through my scope. They both appeared massive, but German whispered, “The one in front is bigger.” I focused on that one, and at that moment, his head came up and he stared alertly in our direction. 

I reminded myself to ignore the rack and focus on the vitals, which were partially obscured by thick brush. As soon as I broke the shot, I was worried it might have landed a bit high. Moments later, the stag was down, but I worked the bolt quickly and put a second shot into him to be sure. As German and I approached the fallen monarch, we heard the sound of branches breaking, and I caught sight of the rocking-chair rack of the second stag as he vanished in the brush. 

As I knelt to pay my respects to the stag, the size of his antlers took my breath away. “That’s a gold-medal stag,” German affirmed. “Likely eleven or twelve years old.” I tried to count the myriad points, coming up with 10 on one side and 7 on the other.  

The stag was in great condition, with a large body and sleek reddish hide. It was March, and still early in the roar, or brama, as they call the red-deer rut in Argentina. 

Once we had finished our photos, two of German’s assistant guides set to work on my stag, quartering it in minutes using a couple of the most gigantic knives I had ever seen. German suggested we head back to the lodge for lunch, but I was in no hurry to leave, fascinated as I was by watching these experts wield their traditional gaucho knives, which, I later learned, they used just as handily to trim a tree branch or slice a piece of steak. 

Big red stags, among the world’s most magnificent antlered animals, are the first thing big-game hunters think of when they think of Argentina. Red deer were brought to Argentina’s La Pampa Province from Europe in 1906, and they found the brushy habitat to their liking. With good management, populations grew and thrived. 

As my hosts explained it to me, for a red stag in central Argentina, la vida es buena—life is good. They have all the advantage of ideal habitat, plenty to eat, and a far milder year-round climate than they had in their native environs. As a result, Southern Hemisphere stags grow antlers of eye-popping dimensions.

But, as stunning as they are, stags are not the real reason Argentina is the most popular hunting destination in the world, attracting more than 20,000 visiting hunters every year—more than every country in Africa combined. That reason is the ubiquitous eared dove. The resident flocks, numbering in the tens of millions, are considered agricultural pests, consuming as much as 30 percent of the crop yield, and the local farmers encourage hunters to come and shoot as many doves as their shoulders can stand. Avid wingshooters come from all over the world to do exactly that.

While Cordoba is the most common destination for dove shooting, and the foothills of the Andes are the most famous region for stags, La Pampa Province is the place for the hunter who wants to do it all. Its easily accessible location in central Argentina makes it ideally suited to a combo hunt for birds and big game. That’s why I had shepherded both a rifle and a shotgun through Argentina’s complex importation process: I was here to experience the best of both hunting worlds.

From the moment I arrived at the GBH Safaris lodge and game preserve in La Pampa, about 100 miles north of the capital city of Santa Rosa, the terrain in the region, and in fact, the whole hunting vibe, reminded me of Africa. The landscape, consisting of broad openings of tall grass surrounded by large areas of thick brush and dotted with thorny, mesquite-like trees known as calden, is reminiscent of the Dark Continent, as are the fiery orange-red sunsets that paint the horizon every evening. And of course, there’s the familiar thrill of seeing the Southern Cross hanging in the night sky over a crackling campfire—a thrill that never gets old. 

The Argentine culture, however, is rich and distinctive. Hunters enjoy a hearty midday asado, followed by a long afternoon siesta. Late-night dinners are accompanied by goblets of excellent local malbec. Seemingly every local is drinking mate out of a gourd with a straw. If you’re lucky, you’ll glimpse gauchos on horseback working cattle, many of them wearing traditional dress and riding effortlessly on sheepskin-lined saddles. And over it all soar seemingly endless flocks of the speedy and challenging game bird the locals call palomas.

I had awakened on my first morning in Argentina to a deafening cacophony of birds. As I would soon learn, the pampas are home to an astonishing array of feathered flying creatures, including noisy flocks of green parakeets, crested caracaras, eagles, flycatchers, and woodpeckers. The doves are in huge flocks nearly everywhere you look, lifting from the trees in shifting black clouds and rocketing over your head on whistling wings.

Because central Argentina’s balmy climate allows for year-round staggered planting and harvesting, doves breed prolifically and they rarely lack for a good meal. I had read about the incredible numbers of these birds, but it was still mind-boggling to stand in a field and watch them wing overhead by the thousands.

The way of life in Argentina involves late nights and a long afternoon siestas, so for me it took a bit of getting used to, but it works very well for hunting. On a typical day, we would have a morning dove shoot, a hearty lunch and a long break in the afternoon, then head back out for stags or blackbuck in the evening, followed by an after-dark sojourn for pigs or varmints. Dinner would be served as late as 11 p.m. or midnight, followed by a few hours of sleep and another enjoyable day in the field.

The lodge was surrounded by fields of standing corn and cut sunflowers, so we didn’t have to go far to find great dove shooting. Four or five shooters would typically spread out along a field edge or fence line and target birds as they flew across it. While we didn’t have individual “bird boys,” as many lodges do, German’s guides walked along the line periodically, keeping us well supplied with shells and drinks and anything else we needed.

The little palomas are blazing fast and wary. They say doves can fly 55 mph, and I don’t doubt it. I quickly learned not to bother with birds that had flown past me, as they would have already put on their afterburners. Instead I concentrated on incoming doves and crossing shots. As long as I was able to conceal myself behind a tall weed, I had the best luck on incomers, frequently dropping them on the toe of my own boot.

After we’d been in the field for a few hours, the guides would roll up in a truck to pick us up. They’d usually find me surrounded by a pile of doves and a much larger pile of empty shell casings, tired, slightly sunburned, and grinning.

In addition to red stags, our big-game list included blackbuck and wild boars. The boars are largely nocturnal, and although I ventured out a couple of nights after dark, I never saw one, although I was treated to sightings of Patagonian hares, a silver fox, and a black-and-white rodent called a vizcacha. 

I was, however, hoping to close the deal on a blackbuck, another introduced species (this one originally from India) that has thrived in central Argentina alongside the red deer. Significantly smaller than our pronghorn, these animals have tall, twisting horns and dark, beautifully marked coats from which they get their name. I spent several enjoyable hours spotting and stalking these lovely, elusive little antelope, but each time they gave me the slip in the thick bush.

Late one afternoon I was sitting in an elevated blind with a guide named Matteo, who had taken some time out of working his wizardry on the lodge’s outdoor clay oven and barbecue grill to help me look for a blackbuck, which he called antilope. I know very little Spanish, and good-natured Matteo didn’t speak a word of English, so we had plenty of laughs as we attempted, with varying degrees of success, to communicate. 

As evening approached, a bachelor group of blackbuck rams materialized out of the brush about 500 yards away. I studied them through my binocular, then turned to Matteo, who was doing the same. He looked at me with a grin and said, “Grande!”

That was good to know, but there were a dozen rams in the herd. They all looked grande to me, but I was certainly no expert. As the herd worked its way toward us, feeding slowly, I studied the rams but could tell little difference between them. 

As they began to move into range of our position, I searched every corner of my brain for my limited Spanish vocabulary. Finally I came up with, “Todos?” (All?)

Matteo nodded enthusiastically. “Si! Todos. Grande.”

Well, that made it easy. About 150 yards from the blind, the herd stopped and began milling nervously, and I figured it was now or never. A nice-looking ram was standing clear of the others, and I rested the rifle and carefully squeezed off a shot. Hit through both lungs, he bolted forty yards and dropped stone-dead as the other rams scattered into the trees. 

The blackbuck turned out to be a very fine, mature ram. We walked up to him as a stunning sunset bathed the pampas in an orange glow. With Matteo’s help, I photographed the beautiful animal in the evening light as a flock of doves fluttered into a waterhole nearby. For a hunter in Argentina, la vida es buena.

For more information on this hunt, contact German Brandazza, GBH Safaris: gbhsafaris.com.ar.

The Lupo and the Cordoba 

Argentina is not an easy place in which to import your own firearms, so if you’re going to go through the hassle of bringing your own guns for a bird-and-big-game combo hunt, they might as well be the best possible tools for the job.

I can’t imagine a more ideal rifle/shotgun combo than the one I used on this hunt: Benelli’s Lupo BE.S.T. in .300 Winchester Magnum and the Ethos Cordoba BE.S.T. shotgun in 20-gauge. 

The Lupo rifle comes in several configurations, and every one of these guns I’ve tested has been extremely accurate and consistent. The Lupo BE.S.T. rifles are particularly special, featuring premium AA-grade walnut stocks and Benelli Surface Treatment (BE.S.T.) finish, guaranteed against rust and corrosion for 25 years. Beautiful and bombproof is a pretty irresistible combination in a rifle. I fed the Lupo Hornady’s Precision Hunter ammo with 178-grain ELD-X bullets, which performed perfectly on both the stag and the blackbuck.

If you’re going to shoot boxes and boxes of shells at doves, you need a soft-shooting but extremely durable and dependable gun that fits you well. The sleek Ethos Cordoba BE.S.T. shotgun fits the bill. Ported barrels and the ComforTech recoil-reduction system helped my shoulder withstand the rigors of repeated shots, and the inertia-driven semiauto proved flawlessly reliable. I also liked the beveled loading port, large bolt handle, and enhanced trigger guard, which made it easy to load and shoot while wearing my lightweight shooting gloves. And since it also has the BE.S.T. finish, this shotgun boasts excellent rust and corrosion protection.—D.R.

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