Back in the mid 90’s, my brother and I contemplated some guided hunts after hunting pigs on a Texas ranch and I shot my first wild pig with his 375 H&H. At first we considered a traditional guided wilderness horseback pack-in elk hunt in the Bob Marshall Wilderness (we went later) then gravitated to a mixed bag British Columbia hunt (when it actually was reasonably priced compared to today’s standards). Then my brother discovered an interesting and exciting African mixed bag DG hunt in the newly reopened Mozambique that was shockingly very reasonably priced, after the recent end of their 17 year long civil war.
Like others mentioned, this was pre internet and we used a booking agent to book with Ray Millican Safaris. So from the time we contemplated this to actually flying a South African Airlines 747, departing from JFK on I believe a 13-14 hour flight, landing in the Cape Verde Islands to refuel before arriving in Johannesburg, it was about one year later. I think we were the 2nd group to actually hunt Mozambique after the end of their civil war and let us say we had a very exciting adventure, fraught with lots of drama, near catastrophes, and various calamities.
a story for another time.
So after hunting Mozambique and then South Africa, many years passed before I contemplated hunting Africa again, almost 28 years later to be exact! I did visit AH a few times, when it first launched as a website, but never joined until years later and hadn’t really contemplated hunting Africa again until recently, I focused on my career, family and North American hunting instead.
But now I’ve got the African hunting bug again, I’m retired, and my desire is to hunt Africa every other year! Perhaps just focusing on buffalo, elephant, hippo on land and if I’m ever lucky enough, free range lion. I like how there are quite a few younger AH members following their dreams and making their African hunt a reality.
go figure.
