Wild stuff (hunting thread)

[Virtuous]

Does he still hunt at 96?

His last hunt was in 2017, bagged a bison. I think he was still eating it two years later

 

[Gunsmith]

I'm more of a meat hunter , mostly because we don't have many trophies where I hunt.
I've never been on a true "trophy hunt" but I had a 396 point 7x7 bull elk , a 162 Whitetail and huge Corsican Ram mounted (and a hand full of hogs) that were at my parents house and got washed away during hurricane Katrina.
Alot of people don't understand how much revenue and meat is provided by African trophy hunts , it's a huge part of there economy over there and often problem animals are harvested to help prevent damage to people , homes , crops and it makes more sense to have a client pay to cleanly kill that animal than have some goons with an AK try to mow it down

 

[01dragonslayer]

His last hunt was in 2017, bagged a bison. I think he was still eating it two years later

Mmmmm....bison is good. Well great for him. Tell him he has a great collection.

 

[buck]

Got a story (long) I will share about this when I get home about my time working on a game preserve in East Africa.

I never minded Kenya's shoot to kill order with poachers. But did make sure i was polite to those guarding the national parks when i was there with their fully auto weapons. Or the guard that traveled in my vehicle with his AK-47 between the 2 Tsavo's to protect me from the bandits. Every time he played with the mag release his magazine would eject up to the front and i would hand it back to him. I was happy when i got to my destination.

 

[qwerty_lifter]

Your Grandpa is a friggin' ROCKSTAR! I can't believe he's taken some of the Big 5, thats massively badass.
Is that a kudu? Very cool, I'd love to take some African plains game....
#jealous

 

[Virtuous]

Your Grandpa is a friggin' ROCKSTAR! I can't believe he's taken some of the Big 5, thats massively badass.
Is that a kudu? Very cool, I'd love to take some African plains game....
#jealous

He’s actually got all 5! Got the award from the SCI for it too.

And yep, a kudu.

The dude is awesome. I’m sad he’s likely to pass soon.

 

[alfresco]

According to my old passport, I arrived in Kenya on July 5, 1982 after being
recruited by The University of Toronto, Canada to partake in a wildlife
management research program to be conducted in the Athi River Plains,
a 100 sq. mile conservation area. The purpose of the study was to
determine the sustainability of the naturally occurring wildlife contained
within a predetermined, loosely contained area.

(I had previously been selected to a capture and study reptiles in Ecuador
and when that fell through I joined the study in Kenya, which was originally
intended to be a thermoregulation study of black rhinos but that fell through,
which I found out going through customs at the airport in Kenya so it was
then that I found myself relocated to another study on the Athi River Plains.)

Natural occurring wildlife were well suited to the landscape whereas cattle
for instance, brought in by the Europeans in colonial times were not well
suited, had to travel long distances for water, were susceptible to disease,
in short, not a long-term viable way to raise cattle as opposed to the
existing wildlife. This study was to determine the optimal levels / number
of various wildlife with frequent culling used to manage the sustainable level.

We were to live on the ‘rough’, camping, cooking, living within a camp within
the preserve. We were free to explore the area without any preconditions but
if you got into trouble, don’t expect help to arrive anytime soon.

Total wildlife counts were conducted once a month via aerial and land surveys.
Days were spent observing tracking animals, noting eating habits and identifying
flora. Culling was conducted every Thursday night, on jeeps, with a spotlight
and a high-powered rifle. (Professional hunters did the actual killing, I did not.)
We had a list of the various wildlife we were to cull, so many of this, so many of
that. It was not sexy, romantic, or challenging, or sporting in any sense of the
word(s). It was outright hard work, finding and hauling carcasses back to the
abattoir to be butchered, with selected parts sent to a lab for analyzing and
the game meat distributed, given to various small villages in the area in an
effort to prevent poaching.

At that time, we were the only people in all of Kenya that were allowed to legally
to hunt wildlife.

The ‘Big 5’ were rare to nonexistent in the preserve so it was up to us, as humans,
to maintain what we considered or were trying consider the ‘optimal’ levels of
the existing wildlife in the absence of naturally occurring predators.

I will not enter into a debate regarding the pros and cons of game hunting,
the politics or the ethics of big game hunting but will say in some instances,
due to the encroachment of so-called civilization, culling had or has become
necessary for a wide variety of reasons, good and bad. (I was once very
good friends with a man who was a professional hunter in Africa who would
regularly cull entire herds, hundreds of elephants at a time from a helicopter
with a .600 Nitro Express rifle.)

Fotos included; a captive rhino in boma for study, some fotos of the Athi River Plains
where I worked / volunteered, a few fotos of me on the preserve . . . one with a ‘wild’
cheetah called Duma, my camp was a hammock under a tarp, the abattoir floor after
a long night of hunting, sunset over the plains and some required reading.

 

[MR. BMJ]

This is a badass thread! Great reading, pictures, and stories of good ol' dad. Dude is a freakin' stud!

 

[USMuscle9403]

If it had any color it's actually call a "piebald" , piebaldism is a genetic mutation similar to albinoism and just as rare. I've seen some pictures of beautiful mounts of them.
I bow hunt more than anything anymore and a botched shot can be "messy" , I specifically shoot high poundage so I can shoot bigger cutting broadheads. Even a marginal "gut shot" ends pretty fast

I agree to an extent, but I would argue that 'true' tyrosinase negative albinism is far rarer. Tyrosinase negative is when the animal or human has really no hope of ever producing melanin, so the skin, coat and eyes are completely devoid of color. The eyes appear pink or red because of light reflecting off the blood vessels, they're actually completely colorless. Tyrosinase positive means that they can start producing some melanin, especially as they get older, but tend to always remain a bit hypomelanistic.

Not taking away from anything! A piebald deer is still once in several lifetimes! Not fun for the animal or human, they experience skin cancer and another anomalies at drastically disproportionate rates and are of course the first one picked out by a predator.

Oh and in the wild, I've seen albino squirrels, a blue Jay, a garter snake and a tadpole of a southern toad that was white with red eyes.

 

[Dieselboss]

About 10 years ago, I got an albino whitetail doe right near here in central PA. I really should have had her mounted. At about 1 in 25,000 you could hunt all your life and never even see an albino. It wasn't all white though. There were patches of brown with grey eyes but still, would have made a nice conversation piece.

Messy kill though. Wasn't broadside so hit the flank ended up chasing it down and cutting it's neck.

Not exactly one of my prouder moments, honestly.

Yeah buddy, that would have been nice to have something like that on display for sure! I have actually seen 2 of those in Avon Ohio outside of where I worked. One of them was almost all white, the other was half white. I just looked at it in disbelief lol, it amazed the shit out of me.

That was probably about 10 years ago, at least. I took a picture but it was from far away and the camera quality on the phones back then were nothing like today lol. So it's blurry as hell, but you can kind of see it.

 

[alfresco]

I never minded Kenya's shoot to kill order with poachers. But did make sure i was polite to those guarding the national parks when i was there with their fully auto weapons. Or the guard that traveled in my vehicle with his AK-47 between the 2 Tsavo's to protect me from the bandits. Every time he played with the mag release his magazine would eject up to the front and i would hand it back to him. I was happy when i got to my destination.

Bandits? That sucks. When did you go? Never had a problem in Kenya. Other countries yes, a game walk within a National Park or preserve yes.

Had a shit thing happen to me last year in in Selous, wound up on a small island surrounded by big ass crocks (will send fotos if interested). A gun would have come in handy

 

[buck]

Bandits? That sucks. When did you go? Never had a problem in Kenya. Other countries yes, a game walk within a National Park or preserve yes.

Had a shit thing happen to me last year in in Selous, wound up on a small island surrounded by big ass crocks (will send fotos if interested). A gun would have come in handy

I was there for Y2K. Figured if the world was going to crash that would be a great place to start an adventure from trying to get back home. 5 years before i was there 2 tour groups were stopped and robbed and the rule that you needed a guard was put in play. Not sure how well enforced the rule was but i went along with it. My Suzuki Sierra was the only vehicle in the convoy that day. And was mostly just giving the soldier a ride to town so he could go on leave. He had on his disco clothes with his AK-47 being his bling.

Crocks sound way cool. I love wildlife. A gun is always a comfort. I carry one in the US when i hit the wilderness or the streets too actually. Run into some grizzlies on occasion here but they were harmless. Having a gun would have been nice in Kenya when i would wake up at night to hear lions or hyenas a short way from the where i was camped. Or the time the elephants were shaking the Suzuki trying to get into it to get to the food.

 

[alfresco]

I was there for Y2K. Figured if the world was going to crash that would be a great place to start an adventure from trying to get back home. 5 years before i was there 2 tour groups were stopped and robbed and the rule that you needed a guard was put in play. Not sure how well enforced the rule was but i went along with it. My Suzuki Sierra was the only vehicle in the convoy that day. And was mostly just giving the soldier a ride to town so he could go on leave. He had on his disco clothes with his AK-47 being his bling.

Crocks sound way cool. I love wildlife. A gun is always a comfort. I carry one in the US when i hit the wilderness or the streets too actually. Run into some grizzlies on occasion here but they were harmless. Having a gun would have been nice in Kenya when i would wake up at night to hear lions or hyenas a short way from the where i was camped. Or the time the elephants were shaking the Suzuki trying to get into it to get to the food.

Cool story. Sounds exciting!

Will tell a story about my run in with an AK47 stuck to my forehead in Seychelles. Extra exiting. And will post fotos of some of the wildlife.

 

[alfresco]

I was there for Y2K. Figured if the world was going to crash that would be a great place to start an adventure from trying to get back home. 5 years before i was there 2 tour groups were stopped and robbed and the rule that you needed a guard was put in play. Not sure how well enforced the rule was but i went along with it. My Suzuki Sierra was the only vehicle in the convoy that day. And was mostly just giving the soldier a ride to town so he could go on leave. He had on his disco clothes with his AK-47 being his bling.

Crocks sound way cool. I love wildlife. A gun is always a comfort. I carry one in the US when i hit the wilderness or the streets too actually. Run into some grizzlies on occasion here but they were harmless. Having a gun would have been nice in Kenya when i would wake up at night to hear lions or hyenas a short way from the where i was camped. Or the time the elephants were shaking the Suzuki trying to get into it to get to the food.

We’re you close to the Somolian border?

 

[alfresco]

Cool story. Sounds exciting!

Will tell a story about my run in with an AK47 stuck to my forehead in Seychelles. Extra exiting. And will post fotos of some of the wildlife.

The AK-47 story will have to wait a but for now some fotos from
The Selous Game Reserve, Ruaha National Park, The Seringeti
and Lake Manyara. And Seychelles another time if anybody is
interested. the wild life fotos should need no explanation.

 

[alfresco]

More . . .

 

[alfresco]

More . . .

 

[alfresco]

More . . .

 

[Virtuous]

Gorgeous photos, man. Thank you for sharing.

 

[OuchThatHurts]

According to my old passport, I arrived in Kenya on July 5, 1982 after being
recruited by The University of Toronto, Canada to partake in a wildlife
management research program to be conducted in the Athi River Plains,
a 100 sq. mile conservation area. The purpose of the study was to
determine the sustainability of the naturally occurring wildlife contained
within a predetermined, loosely contained area.

(I had previously been selected to a capture and study reptiles in Ecuador
and when that fell through I joined the study in Kenya, which was originally
intended to be a thermoregulation study of black rhinos but that fell through,
which I found out going through customs at the airport in Kenya so it was
then that I found myself relocated to another study on the Athi River Plains.)

Natural occurring wildlife were well suited to the landscape whereas cattle
for instance, brought in by the Europeans in colonial times were not well
suited, had to travel long distances for water, were susceptible to disease,
in short, not a long-term viable way to raise cattle as opposed to the
existing wildlife. This study was to determine the optimal levels / number
of various wildlife with frequent culling used to manage the sustainable level.

We were to live on the ‘rough’, camping, cooking, living within a camp within
the preserve. We were free to explore the area without any preconditions but
if you got into trouble, don’t expect help to arrive anytime soon.

Total wildlife counts were conducted once a month via aerial and land surveys.
Days were spent observing tracking animals, noting eating habits and identifying
flora. Culling was conducted every Thursday night, on jeeps, with a spotlight
and a high-powered rifle. (Professional hunters did the actual killing, I did not.)
We had a list of the various wildlife we were to cull, so many of this, so many of
that. It was not sexy, romantic, or challenging, or sporting in any sense of the
word(s). It was outright hard work, finding and hauling carcasses back to the
abattoir to be butchered, with selected parts sent to a lab for analyzing and
the game meat distributed, given to various small villages in the area in an
effort to prevent poaching.

At that time, we were the only people in all of Kenya that were allowed to legally
to hunt wildlife.

The ‘Big 5’ were rare to nonexistent in the preserve so it was up to us, as humans,
to maintain what we considered or were trying consider the ‘optimal’ levels of
the existing wildlife in the absence of naturally occurring predators.

I will not enter into a debate regarding the pros and cons of game hunting,
the politics or the ethics of big game hunting but will say in some instances,
due to the encroachment of so-called civilization, culling had or has become
necessary for a wide variety of reasons, good and bad. (I was once very
good friends with a man who was a professional hunter in Africa who would
regularly cull entire herds, hundreds of elephants at a time from a helicopter
with a .600 Nitro Express rifle.)

Fotos included; a captive rhino in boma for study, some fotos of the Athi River Plains
where I worked / volunteered, a few fotos of me on the preserve . . . one with a ‘wild’
cheetah called Duma, my camp was a hammock under a tarp, the abattoir floor after
a long night of hunting, sunset over the plains and some required reading.

This is awesome! So glad other members are out in wilds getting it done. The sunset photo above with the acacia trees is spectacular. Pachyderms are so great. The extinction of so many of these species hits me like a gut punch.