The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 077: African Hunting

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

Steven Rinella talks with author Thomas McIntyre, along with Michelle Jorgensen and Janis Putelis of the MeatEater crew.Subjects Discussed: Writing for television; Tom McIntyre, Hemingway, and the nuns; stepping on a butterfly while hunting dinosaurs; the nuances between outdoor writers and writer writers; the changing parameters of African hunting; Cecil the lion; great writers and suicide; African wilderness-how much is there?; old school vs new school African hunting; Colonialism in Africa; keeping the mzungu (or crazy white guy) alive; how to identify age on a large critter; Tanzania as a purer hunting location; shooting a hippo?; the Selous wilderness hunting grounds; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwear-less. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Okay, um, uh, is the machine on? It is now.

Thomas... McIntyre. Sorry. I've been looking at your name. I've been looking at your name in magazines. Don't tell me how long. Well, my entire life, I've been looking at your name in magazines. Don't tell me how long. Well, my entire life I've been looking at your name in magazines.

You were very precocious. How many, I don't know, it feels like my entire life, how many magazine articles have you written? Thousands. No, no. Not thousands? No, hundreds maybe.

I've written in the last few years I've probably written more television shows. I'm not a very fast writer. I'm a half fast writer. You ever hear that quote from, I think it was R.W. Apple? Had that quote that, I can write faster than anyone who can write better than me. And I can write better than anyone who can write faster than me. Yeah. I don't know i mean i probably am good for 20 articles a year feature articles a

year what do you mean writing television shows i write uh i write for right for trev Gowdy for Sasquatch Mountain Man and his Monster Fish show. Write what? I write the script. Like, enter animal. Enter. No, it's like, and now as the deer comes towards Jim. Oh, you write the narration. Yeah, the voiceover.

So you're coming in after the cut's been put together. Yeah. And I have one of those charming little golden mices in my house too. What's that mean? The golden moose. Oh. Like an award. Yeah.

It's like you got on your shelf over here. Yeah. For what? For narration? For writing. For his fishing show. They decided. So they'll make the show, and then they'll send it to you,

and you'll be like, and there'll be some some scratch VO, and you're going and redo. You'll write what's going to be the actual narration. Do you do the read on it? No, no, no, no. They have professional talent for that. No, I get, well, scratch VO, yeah. Well, no, not necessarily. There's no scratch VO in there.

No, it could be like right here. That's it. Yeah. It's, you know, give us 15 seconds here. About what? Well, whatever you, you know. Do you like doing it? Okay, aside from the fact that it's easy money.

Yeah. Which I don't want anybody to know. Well, there's going to be two or three now. You know, yeah, it's a different muscle. It's a different deal. Some are better than others. I mean, some are better to work on than others. Yeah. Not the shows per se, but just individual episodes.

You know, you can, I can tell when they're scrambling. Yeah. I'm sure you guys know what that's like. Oh yeah. You know. It's got a certain smell to it. Yeah. What is it?

Yeah. For Dane talks about smells like stinky feet. Yeah. So, you know. So, you grew up reading Hemingway? Because you talk a lot about hemingway in your book yeah yeah you know and it's and it's um i think that was more like i had a high school teacher who was like just a hemingway guy in the 60s and i started reading it and um but i also like had i mean my influences are also personal well because you don't right here's the thing yeah you don't write like an

outdoor writer what does that mean well you write like a writer well okay okay there's outdoor writers yeah right now there's some aspects of outdoor writing in your writing that a writer would never think to do. Right. Courtesies where you'd be like, instead of I lifted old Bessie. Right. You might be like, I lifted X caliber make and model firearm. Dawn was a primrose promises.

Which is a outdoor writer thing to do that a writer wouldn't do unless like cormac mccarthy would do it but it wouldn't be the same it just would be different well no i should say because cormac mccarthy in no crunch for old men does even say like someone had a nine millimeter parabellum or whatever right right right so yeah so some writer writers do clarify calibers and grain bullets and whatnot but generally you don't write like you don't write like an outdoor writer because there's people here's the way i'm putting it there's people that were gonna be writers i was gonna be a writer okay they're gonna be writers like i'm gonna be a writer i don't know what exactly I'm going to write about. That'll come out in time. But this is what I'm doing.

And then you got people who were, I'm going to do something in the outdoor industry. Not sure what it is. It'll emerge over time. And those two people have very different world views when they each wind up being an outdoor writer. And I guess in my case, there was a mesh of the two, an intersection where I was influenced as a young child into hunting, which was unusual because I grew up in like LA. Because your old man didn't hunt. No. But the guy i learned from was his friend and i talk about in the book i mean what why am i why am i writing about africa

at you know at this late date um what do you mean late date it is a late date i mean you know like in your life no i think i can't remove get removed from... I think that the whole... The parameters around African writing have changed a lot. There was a time when it was, as I think I say somewhere in the book, the greatest adventure money could buy. Okay, pause for a minute. Pause.

Because you've recently published a book august in africa right yeah so just i just want people to be aware like like so and this book just came out or not within a year or so or what yeah within six months okay yeah and it's and it's so uh so but the p some of these pieces you wrote long ago. They're 40 years old, some of them. So you're saying after writing has changed between when you began...

Africa's changed from when I began. To when you're now putting this out in book form. Yeah. African hunting has changed. Because of Ceccil the lion no no i don't think so i i think cecil is the least of the worries is that right yeah um i don't i don't i don't know that there's any way of putting that particular genie back in the bottle that's that's been going on since born free you know yeah you know back in the six it's been going on

for ages can we hold up can we hold off on this for a second sure um so your old man did hunt you were born in la yeah he had a buddy that hunted and went to Africa in the 50s on very little money. Was your dad a writer? No, my dad was a machinist. And actually, he and his brother owned a company. So who was the first writer you knew? What made you aware that there's a thing called writers and that you could be one? You know, it was, again, these are wonderfully probing questions.

You know, I don't know. I mean, that's a good question. I had a certain facility for words, you know, which is, as I get is is is fleeting away but really thank you um oh no i know what you're saying i know what you're saying because i feel like it's happened to me and then comes back again though but in some ways it's it's the uh you know it's it's it's it's like it's like i i my fastball's not, but I'm learning. I've got a lot more sliders and fork balls and stuff. My technique has gotten better. Really? I think so.

I like to think so anyway. Those are terms for tricky baseball pitches. Yeah, I know. I'm educated enough in sports and stuff like that. When someone says, like, fastball, I'm like, I'm tracking. You're tracking sport? Yeah. Well, maybe all our listeners aren't a huge baseball fan.

Right. Well, anyway, so, I mean, if I'm going to be totally autobiographical, it was the nuns. It was the nuns in grammar school that they singled me out and they said, you can write. They're right. Yeah. And, and that was like,

and like, I think like anything else, it was like, this was a wonderful way to get attention, you know? Yeah. I'm with you. And it's funny when you go,

when someone, when you need to express the thing, like what caused something yeah because there's all there's it's like a game you can play like you know like like i'll often say like yeah i kind of wish i hadn't done my first book the way i did it my wife said well we wouldn't have met because i'm like okay but that's like that old story where the guy goes back in time to hunt a dinosaur and steps on a butterfly. They find a dinosaur that's about ready to die anyway and they're really careful.

While he's shooting the dinosaur, he steps on a butterfly and comes back and the Nazis won World War II. And Trump is president. Yeah. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, sorry. So you do get into what made it become that you became a writer. Right. And it's a hard thing i've kind of like

i look and i'm like it's kind of because of my 10th grade english teacher robert heaton sure kind of like if i had to go like well that right right and and as far as the the hemingway thing i'll get put a plug in for my sophomore English teacher with the Jesuits, was Tom McCambridge, who's still around, still taught. But I knew about hunting before I knew about Hemingway. Except, well, that's not really true because I think this is very weird. I mean, and I don't know how these things happen. I was seven or eight years old and I was riding with my father in his, I think it was a Buick Wildcat, 1961. And we were turning down this street called Cherokee in Downey, California.

And the radio news came on and said, author Ernest Hemingway is dead. And this was in the summer of that year. And I really had no idea who he was. I was seven years old. And then fast forward into high school and this other, you know, this strange serendipity of, you know, forces coming together, whatever. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think that was part of it. I think there was that allure of being, what kind of writer is this guy, Hemingway? You know, I mean, he can write about, you know, he can write about stuff,

he can do stuff, he knows about stuff. I mean, I think there's a great line that ultimately, writers have to know something. Yeah. And he knew. I mean, he knew how to dig worms and go fishing in the big two-hearted river, which doesn't exist, I don't think. Or does it?

A little too hard. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, didn't he like fumble with the directions or on purpose to kind of like, you know. You ever fished that river? No. I haven't either. You mean like the Nick Adams stories? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, he, he, he fudged the directions. So if you, if you follow them, you'd never find the place. You'd never find it. Yeah. I mean, he, he wasn't going to tell you where his particular horn. Yeah, he grew up in Illinois. Now when he shot himself, catch him Idaho. Catch him Idaho.

With a shotgun, I believe, was purchased from Abercrombie & Fitch. It was a Boss 10-gauge with dual triggers. But didn't it wind up being, there's a thing they have not long ago. His family took the shotgun down to have a mechanic destroy it. Well, he took a cutting torch and cut the hole. This is in Sylvia Calabri's. That's the guy's Hemingway's guns. Yep.

And they did this. And he went and buried it and they never found it. But he took a couple pieces like the trigger. Right. And put it in a matchbox. A little piece of the sidewalk. Yeah, put it in a matchbox. And they were able to go back and piece it all together.

It had always been thought that he had shot himself with some different shotgun. It turned out that the pieces in that matchbox was from a different shotgun than whatever he thought he killed himself with. Now, you know you're something special when people will later argue about what gun it was that you killed yourself with. Yeah. it was you killed yourself with yeah but but more than hemingway like i feel like when you write uh i don't think you you don't write like hemingway i don't think you like try to write like hemingway but the stuff he wrote in the 70s sounds it reminded me a lot of like other guys that write in the 70s even where like early jim harrison early tom muane. God. And it kind of reminded me, like, the structure of the stuff. Well, yeah.

A disjointed structure that also reminded me of the other guy that shot himself in Big Sur, California, Richard Brodigan. Yeah. Did you read all those guys? Or was it just something in the air? No, I read all those guys. Yeah. You know, I mean, mean you know that was the

the the idea that you could actually be a i think one of mcguane's favorite words a sportsman yeah you know and and actually write about it i i i had no interest in well i didn't i didn't live in that milieu anyway i was i was never going to write about Manhattan. I was never going to write the Jay McInerney kind of stuff. I wasn't going to write novels anyway, as it turned out. Though I do have one novella. But anyway, they... The Snow Leopard. The Snow Leopard's Tale, yeah.

And Alan Jones... Not the Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard's Tale. Snow Leopard's Tale, which was... Not T-A-I-L. No, T-A-L-E. It was what we finally came up with. Alan Jones over at Bangtail Press right here in town.

And he says hello. That's what we came up with. So anyway, yeah, you know, I mean, it was, yeah, that stuff was out there. And that was where you'd looked, you know. It was, you know, it was was that was the way it was i somehow i had this notion that you could actually make it as a writer not have to get sucked into academia or someplace else one of my uh this apropos uh you know what people say like speaking of which or like let's say you're talking about frogs you

know and you're like yeah frogs are generally a lot of frogs are green and then someone will say speaking of frogs um and then i'll tell you something about frogs yeah i find myself a lot of times in conversation like wanting to raise a point that i can't even say speaking of which but like it's not even related to what we're talking but a favorite thing of mine about tom mcguine speaking of no speaking yeah speaking of mcguine he writes great short stories still to this day michelle's favorite writer oh that's right yeah you ever said anything yet oh yeah hi hi hi i like tom mcguine yeah so mcguine still writes i, he writes phenomenal short stories.

Oh, yeah. There's two short story writers I like right now. I like Tom McGuane, and I like a girl named Curtis Sittenfeld. Don't know her. Yeah. Yeah. Peace is in New York. Dude.

Yeah. Yeah. She is good. So McGuane, he's got an essay he wrote about about hunting and it's like a 70s style essay well it wasn't the same everybody's essays in the 70s all were kind of the same just good versions of bad versions of it like like pasta right like spaghetti with meat sauce you look at it as a you know spaghetti meat sauce there's something that's good to something not essays in the 70s looked a certain way his were the good version well it was and he and he's got this piece he wrote

where in it he's imagining a conversation i talk about this all the time he's imagining a conversation between a hunter and an anti-hunter and the anti-hunter is taking the hunter to task right and like why do you have to kill deer what did deer deer do to you? And the hunter's like, I can't talk about it this way. And they're like, no. Why do deer have to die for you? Would you die for a deer? And he says, if it came to that, yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And that is, I mean, in circles and a spiral and a wheel within a wheel. No, it's the, like his editor for that piece was Terry McDonald, who coincidentally later became my editor at Sports Afield. Got you. I know that.

Yeah, that's the. And then he, and, you know, and then his, I took Terry out on an ant well i went back to new york and i was saying like you're editing an outdoor magazine i said yeah he ever hunted anything he goes no does that matter yeah i said yeah it matters and i said come come out to Wyoming and we'll hunt antelope with a black powder rifles. And he said, okay. So, you know, we came out and, um, you know, he was out in this blind, I guess, and this antelope walked by and he killed it very, you know, serviceably. And then I was walking out to them and I got up to him and he was like looking at me

and he said, you know, Tom, I saw you cross in the field. I said, yeah. And I suddenly had this urge to shoot and kill you. And I said, really, Terry? He said, yes, yes, I did. Anyway, that evening went on for quite a little while. And the next morning he had to catch a plane and I had to come in and wake him up and ask him what he wanted for breakfast. And he said, I'll have the surfer breakfast. And I go, the surfer breakfast? And he goes, yeah, Twinkie and a Pepsi. Yeah.

Anyway, but he actually commissioned that piece by McGuane. The McGuane piece. Yeah. And it was actually McWane went to him. Well, he said, I want you to, he was starting outside. And he said, I want you to write a piece for outside. And McWane said, I don't suppose you'd want something about hunting. And he goes, well, it's not really kind of where we're at, but sure.

Yeah. I've wedged a number of hunting stories into outside over the years there you go you got to cram them in there but if you try hard enough you can stick it in there now uh there's a thing you say in your book that really surprised me i want to make sure that you think this is correct that africa has a lower percentage of what one would call wilderness than does the world in general. Supposedly. Those are the statistics.

I guess it kind of makes sense if you think about... And it's semantics. The circumpolar boreal, like the Antarctic, you know? But the other figure that's more interesting, I think, is that there is more wilderness in North America than there is in Africa. I just... Well, but you have to realize that the Africans are essentially pastoralists and agrarians. So they are, you know, they are, and there's a billion of them.

You know, there's a billion Africans. Yeah. And they tend to be spread out. You know, it's, if you took off here and went up in the mountains someplace and were walking around, you would be surprised to run into somebody. You know? You could, but I mean... In places, yes.

In places. There is almost no place in Africa where you will not run into somebody. They'll be on foot. They may be carrying a spear. They may be driving a cow. They may be doing whatever. You know? But that tempers the definition of wilderness.

You know, so it is more, I mean, it is a rural society more than a wilderness society. Is that a product possibly of maybe the landscape or the people requiring a larger piece of the landscape? They have to live. They have to live they have to live yeah um i don't know if you know val geist up in bc we talk about that guy every day yeah i love him he's a great guy um yeah val's val anyway so val would like you know val is like

well i was asking him i said what will produce more biomass and And he goes, well, you got to remember African is, as he says, thin soils. They don't, they didn't have the advantages of glaciers pushing all this topsoil down like we have here. And so we have a much more fertile base, as it were, that you can, you can grow a lot less in africa than you can here and because of that the people tend to be more spread out yeah and so they're they're it's like how cows are spread out yeah if you go look at like like grazing ratios in florida yeah cows per acre yeah i mean look at cows per acre in west texas it takes a hell of a lot more ground i mean if you want to if you want to raise cattle you go to iowa and you feed them silage you know that's that's the sensible way of doing it yeah um you ever see a

map of where you could raise cattle without supplemental feed no but i'm sure it's fascinating it's not a big chunk of ground no no no i mean it's and it's like you know it's how much how much corn is raised for cattle yeah so so uh yeah that really threw me for a loop and and i should clarify like i've never uh i've never stepped foot on africa i've always been kind of interested in going there. And I've come kind of close sometimes to going there hunting. But I have so many things about it give me pause. And I'll ask you about a lot of those things.

I'm coming at you in discussing this not from an educated perspective. I don't know what I'm talking about. Oftentimes I have the luxury of talking to people that I already know about. That doesn't stop a lot of people from talking about this. No, but I feel like what doesn't happen is a lot of people don't lay that out. Right, right.

Well, that's an admirable position. You talk in your uh you talk in your book and this might be a good way to kind of lay out like when you started going there how many times you've been there you talk in your book at a point where you say there's old school african hunting yeah and there's new school african hunting right what are they and when did and when did uh the the when did it tip well i i think i think I can't deny that there are probably aspects of what I kind of think of as old school. Let's put it this way. When I first started going to Africa 40 plus years ago.

When you were in your 20s? Yeah. When I first started going there, it was, we would go to the game department and we would get licenses and permits. It wasn't just complete, you know, laissez-faire. And the permits were expensive or inexpensive? Relatively speaking, it depends on where you were. You know, I mean, I guess they were expensive at the time but i i had i had it wasn't like buying like elk tags as a resident or like buying a deer tag as a resident in florida yeah yeah well i don't yeah i mean it was let's

put it this way i mean it was it it has certainly become exponentially more expensive from what it was like it's ahead of inflation yeah what it was in those days was probably not considered cheap. I had the benefit. I had some money that I had gotten. And I had enough money to either, let's say, go put a down payment on a house or go to Africa. This is the first time you went? Yeah. You didn't go as a writer?

No. I wasn't published. Oh, I got you. So I just went. And it was like, what are you going to do when you get back? This was my question more than anything else. And I didn't have an answer. Well, I guess I'll come back and try to write about something.

Okay. You know, but I, for some reason, because of my experience of friend of my father's, his influence on me, you know, too many books read at too young an age. I wanted to go. I wanted to see it. That's a quote in your book. I guess. Where Hemingway, what Hemingway book was that? Where Hemingway, where one of the characters says, hey, we should Africa yeah and go hunting the other characters like never had any desire he goes that's

just because you haven't read a book about it that's yeah that's from uh uh uh the sun also rises okay but anyway they uh um yeah no I mean it's it's the you know what was I going to say? When I went there, you were mobile. You moved, you know? If we would go into an area and we would find a spot and we'd go under the fever trees and we would put the tents up and then we would hunt. And not hunt. These aren't fenced areas. Oh, God, no.

No. No, no, no, no, no. When you say we, who say we who is we well me and the i'd have a professional hunter you know they'll just be the two of us two of you on the track that's another thing i mentioned in the book i mean because basically you have you know there's there's it's a it's a polite fiction that the professional hunter is is there for you know but the guys who are really doing the work are the trackers because they are so good at what they do. They are. But in those early days, it was still you, professional hunter, and multiple trackers? Yeah.

The professional hunter is like a liaison. He's a legal requirement, but he's also, he's more than that. But it's not a legal requirement that he be white. No. And I've hunted with black professional hunters okay you know who've been are great guys i mean you know like native born yeah absolutely well i mean i guess most of the white professional hunters well no you mentioned a lot were born in england and elsewhere not necessarily no i mean some of them you know the first guy hunted with

john fletcher he was actually born in india okay um but he was he was a colonialist i guess is a you know without any pejorative attachment to that word yeah um but he was with kerr downey and selby you know and that was that was you know this was a this is kind of the way it was in those days is i found a night i knew the name kerr and downey um is what, an outfitter? Yeah. It was like Robert Rourke, you know, and those guys hunted with Curran Downey. And then Harry Selby is the guy who was Rourke's professional hunter. Yanni likes that guy, Rourke.

And he put in with these two guys and they became Curran Downey and Selby Safaris. Yeah. And I actually knew the name. I had no other information on them. And a friend of mine had gone to Nairobi and he'd come back with the phone book. He'd stolen the phone book because

he thought it was pretty cool to have the Nairobi phone book. And so I looked it up. I got their name and address out of the thing and I wrote them a letter and I said, I want to go out with you guys. And this letter came back with all these blue lions on the outside of the letter going we'd love to have come home and so that's how i got over there you know now of course today you're going to go to like the conventions and you're going to go to a booking agent you're going to you know you're going to it's all it's all going to be brokered for you it's all going to be negotiating anyway that's and that's the way it is and i and

i don't i'm not one of those kind of guys who like says well that's you know that makes it all bad it's just the way it makes it the way it is yeah but um so when no when i first went there and it was and it was that was a still this this this holdover of the kind of some of the worst aspects of colonialism i mean i'm not going to deny that when i the way i hunted in kenya in at that time i mean this is the way that people have been hunting for 70 80 years you know and it was the way i mean what was the way like what's the structure the structure that it was the structure the the the organization you know the the fact that you were going into an area and you were hunting you know we were the but what was colonial because it was it was exploitative of the well it was it was well a skin color was was you know a factor factor um in. You mean in compensation?

In hierarchy? No, it was just the way it was. It was a factor in what? It was the way the safari system had been structured and evolved from Roosevelt on. You had a professional hunter with a licensed hunter and then it was, you know, he would set up the camps and he had responsibility and it was, you know, what they

wanted to make sure was that when the Mzungu, the crazy white guy who's going over here to hunt, he's not going to get killed. We don't want him to be killed. That's going to look bad. It's not going to be good for our tourist industry okay you know i mean the second time the first time hemingway went to tanzania or tanganyika in those days

that was on his own dime or at least his wife's uncle's dime you know and it was a pretty expensive deal in those days he figured out figure it out, it's not cheap. When he went back the second time to Kenya for, I don't know how long, months, he was there as the guest of the Kenyan game department. Okay. Because they wanted, we would love to have some promotion to get people here to, you know, we're kind of on the cusp of the Mau Mau uprisings and we're getting some bad press and we want to, you know we're we're kind of on the cusp of the mao mao uprisings and we're getting some bad press and we want to you know we would love to have you come in here and and you know

hang around and so that's what he was i thought i i gotta say because i feel like i'm missing something sure the first time you went yeah you go there and you there's a feller the ph right he's a white guy right and there's some element of he's a colonial being that european countries carved up africa right and they had colonies yeah and there was a offset power structure right that favored those white individuals or the indigenous individuals that live there. And also hunting with you are trackers. The trackers are there as, you know, they're, they're working for,

they are hired by the professional hunter. And you say they do the heavy lifting of the hunting. They're the guy, they're the guy you put them on a track, and they're going to figure out where that track ends up. To a degree where you're like, holy shit, this guy's good at tracking. Oh, man. Oh, man.

Like you wouldn't be able to do. You know, that's the scary part. If you follow those guys around, even for a few weeks, you can begin to like actually, you know, kind of deceive yourself into figuring out, oh. What it is they're doing. Yeah. And you'll get to the point where you'll start, you can like look, oh, here's a buffalo track. Look how the edge is shiny. It's fresh.

You know, it's not blown over. You know, so it was probably this shiny. It's fresh. You know, it's not blown over. You know, so it was probably this morning. Let's go. Let's get on this track and go. And you also mentioned how the coarseness of the vegetation in the buffalo shit. Yeah. Giving you an indication of tooth wear. Especially elephants.

Elephants, you can look at, you can get the, you know, the elephant dung is like this basketball laying on the ground. And you can look at how coarse the grass stems are in it. That will tell you that it's an older bull because his teeth are worn down and he's not, he's not chewing it as much as he could. Yeah. As a younger one would. So that's, that's an indication of something. It doesn't, you know, none of that tells you if you're elephant hunting.

And I've never hunted, I've never taken an elephant, although I would have maybe, but I never have. And I add that the fact is that that doesn't tell you how big the ivory is. You know, the size of the track doesn't tell you anything. If it's got a big tusk or not. No. All right.

So old school. Yeah. New school. New school is now. Okay. Old school is. Explain more about old school. Okay.

Well, old school is essentially you were hunting as close to wilderness in africa as you could find okay you know as we were talking about before it was it was when by the definition of wilderness in this country probably wouldn't qualify you know there were motor vehicles allowed you could you know but you were out in the middle of nowhere you know and it was and you would find you'd run across you know masai who were still, I mean, guys with spears. Guys were still, these guys were still spearing lions in those days. Okay.

You know, and it was all essentially, it was government land, open land, wild land. It wasn't controlled by anybody. You're just roaming around. You were essentially, yeah, you had essentially, you had arranged for the right to hunt it for a certain amount of time. And a certain perimeter.

They broke it up on what they called hunting blocks. And you would actually get block 60. And you would hunt block 60, which might be 250,000 acres, I don't don't know i mean it was just go on forever yeah and the ph arranged that with the government yeah yeah i mean he was he was you know that's what they did they'd go to the game department now fast forward 30 40 years to. To the new school. New school. And you kind of get to the South African model.

In the South African model, the land is owned by the hunter or by a landowner, and then the professional hunter will sort of lease that out. Yep. And he'll bring in his clients, quote-unquote clients, and they will... clients quote-unquote clients and they will um and it's why quote-unquote sorry oh i just there's there you know you get that you get into that that weird

area like it's am i a hunter am i a client am i not you know you go back and forth on that i don't understand what you're saying well you know it's it's it's how much how much hand-holding are you getting? Okay. Meaning a client gets more than a hunter. Client is the term, I think, to avoid confusion with professional hunter. The client is a hunter. The professional hunter is the licensed guide on the hunt. So I think the term of art is client client you are the client of the professional hunter yeah but that would seem like a really literal perfect word client yeah yeah you're giving the guy money to take you hunting you're his client yep yep same thing in this

country when you go you know do you That's the word Giannis guided. He talks about clients. Yeah. Do you think guys go over there and then disliked being called clients because they wanted to be called? Well, you know, I mean, there's, you know, everybody wants to be jungle gym. Everyone wants to come back wearing, you know, as soon as they go, they want to run out and buy the safari jacket and the, you know, the bullet holes or the pouches in the shirt. So they aspire to be taken more seriously than they are. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, and there's a great line I got, and I think I quote Jim Harrison in the book where he talks about that, you know, that there's a certain amount of African hunting that is really a polite fiction or a little comedy that wealthy sportsmen play on their less well-heeled brethren back home. It's like they're always getting charged by a lion. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. Attacked by a Cape Buffalo or something. But anyway, the... And there is a point to this.

That, so now it's like, you know, and God bless him. I mean, if you want to go to Africa, go to Africa. And if... God bless who? Any hunter who wants to go to Africa. Really? If he wants to go to South Africa and he wants to shoot a kudu and an oryx and a whatever. I don't feel bad about that because the meat is going to be used.

Every scrap of it. But in the new school model, what's the main, I still don't understand the main difference. Time. I think more than anything else, it's schedule and time. If you go there, you... Like they run it like a hunt factory?

In some instances. In some cases. That doesn't mean you cannot find places in Africa that are not that. The more you, for lack of a better term, mature in your African hunting,

the less interesting that kind of hunting becomes. So sketch out that kind of hunting. Because can I tell you what I think, my impression? Yeah. Let's start with my impression based on nothing. Sure. And you tell me where I'm wrong. Sure.

My impression of going to South Africa to hunt is you're hunting on fenced land yeah and you go and you have a budget yeah and they're like you can shoot that and that's five thousand dollars you can shoot that and that's eight thousand dollars and guys walk drive around in a truck and they're like no shit, that's what one of those looks like. Bam! And the guy's like, that's six. And he's like, well, I can only spend 20.

Yeah. So let's go shoot some more shit until I get up to 14, and then I'm heading home. Keep the tally going. Is that wrong? No. Oh, well, I mean, in the cosmic sense, yeah, it's really wrong. But I mean, in the sense of what you're going to, what the way things can be, can be, and I want to make sure I make that clear, can be, that can be the experience many people go to Africa and come back and describe as their African hunt. And that plays out over how many days? How fast do you want to shoot them?

They're that abundant. Depends. Depends on what the guy's got. You know, I mean, he's got, you know, he may have a run on springbok this week. What do you mean by that? Well, he may go, I've got 1,000 acres of productive spring buck habitat. Okay. And I've got, that will support 50 spring buck or 100 spring buck.

And he puts them in there or they're there? He's put them in there before they have bred. Okay. They are usually self-sustaining and breeding on their own. But they are cutting animals loose into there for people to go get no the animal is there you're just going inside to get it so it's not like uh it's not like the kind of canned hunt or fence hunt where they cut the animal loose in the morning no no no no and you go shoot it that day no no they don't do that they don't do that in there no well i i can't say that. It's a big place.

There may be places where that happens. I don't know that. I mean, I've hunted behind fences, and it was okay. But I very quickly learned the difference. You did. Because you had started out in the wild roaming, roaming in the wild. Yeah. And so whenever I could go back, you know, I haven't gone to, I haven't hunted in South

Africa in 20 years. Is South Africa kind of, uh, the, the, the center of the new school? Yeah. What remains the center of the old school? What remains the center of the old school? Well, Tanzania. Tanzania is still roaming around in the woods. Yeah, and it's

fabulously expensive. It's more expensive to roam around in the woods dealing with uncertainty than it is to not roam around and have certainty. Absolutely. So guys know the difference. Because people pay for that experience, is what you're saying.

Yeah, that's the whole point. They're not paying for the animal. They're paying for the experience. When they go to someplace like Tanzania, the animal becomes a matter of indifference. Okay, that's not correct either, but I'm just saying it isn't like – the first things too many guys can do is go up to an animal and go, where does this go in the book? And they expect their professional hunter to tell them, that'll be in the top 10%. And they'll go, okay, great. And then I am at a loss for why that exists.

But at the same time, I can also realize that it does support game lands in South Africa that would otherwise have absolutely no economic value. Yeah. So it's a... That's the part of it that starts to get really complicated. It's a bargain with the devil. You know?

It's, do I want to go there and hunt? Probably not. Because why? I just don't have a good feeling afterwards. How many times have you hunted in Africa? 13 or 14 times over the last 40 years. No, I mean, there's guys who've hunted lots. These guys have gone more.

Much, much more. The guy who wrote the introduction to my book, Craig Boddington, has hunted 100 times. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes

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Now, why in your whole book do you never mention someone shooting a hippopotamus? They do. And I've actually, I would, that's kind of one of my dark secrets that I would love to do someday, but I don't want to shoot him in the water.

I want to shoot him on the land. The reason I asked that. Yeah. The reason I asked that is I think that growing up where, growing up in the United States, well, the other day I had a conversation with a friend of mine who just gone to new zealand yeah and we're talking about wildlife management in new zealand

right okay where while we're generally the wildlife of general interest the hunters is all non-native oftentimes deleterious exotic wildlife sure we're talking about that world. I was saying to him that growing up in the United States and understanding our systems in the United States leaves you completely ill-prepared to understand wildlife

and wildlife management in a place like New Zealand. Or Europe. Almost the rest of you know most world there's an added layer to it in africa where i think that we don't know those animals we only know the fictionalized version of the animals in africa we don't know we don't know hippos we know hippos as the way they've been presented to us in this elaborate fiction fantasia the dancing the dancing hippos and this elaborate fantasia yeah of animation yeah of like

kids american kids learn what a zebra is before they learn what an elk is yeah it's like animals those animals are somehow some of those animals are so charismatic and so yeah otherworldly that it winds up being that your average kid would be like giraffe elephant zebra lion and he would not be able to go jaguar, mountain lion, bobcat, elk, white tail black tail, bighorn sheep. It just is like we live with these animals in a way that forms an impression of them as being somehow other than animals. So I think that a lot of the complications around africa would be like a lot of people look and i was reading your book waiting for a hippo to come into it because when i look at a dude with a dead hippo i just do not see a game animal i don't know what i see but i'm like how in the world why how well well you know i mean that's do you get that feeling no sure i noticed you like

to hunt animals that seem. You hunt animals that seem like. Yeah, you had a great line. You talk about a giraffe. You jumped up and it looked like a radio tower. Yeah. Decided to run away. And I've had people extol the virtues of what a wonderful thing it was when they killed a giraffe.

But you don't want to do it. I have absolutely no interest in doing absolutely no why don't you want to shoot why in your book does no one really shoot at the animals that all little kids know about well i don't know if that's true or not i mean uh you know giraffes and stuff i mean not giraffes but zebras sure i like hunted zebras oh yeah i like zebras you know i mean they're they're tough and they're smart. And they seem, and in your time in Africa, the zebra became like a game animal. It has been. And not like a thing from a child's mobile.

It's always been. It's always been a game animal. Yeah. No, but your perception of it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, you know, and there's, the other aspect of it is one thing you begin to realize that you become something of a surrogate for the Africans you are hunting with.

Okay. The people you are with who are the trackers. You become the surrogate hunter for them because of the gross unfairness, frankly, of the game laws, you know. Oh, that you're able to hunt and they're not. They can't afford it. They can't have firearms. They can't have, you know? Oh, that you're able to hunt and they're not. They can't afford it. They can't have firearms. They can't have, you know. You had a line where you talked about poaching

is a word for people doing what they used to do, but now it's illegal for them to do it. Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's, you know. It's like one day you went from a guy out getting food and the next day you're a poacher. Well, it's pretty much it. I mean, you know, the of the of the colonial park system where they would take all these

people and run them off of the you read i mean i was talking about uh about ionides the uh yep i read that piece you know and this guy created one of the the monumental game reserves in human history. In what country is that? In Tanzania, in the Sulu. But he did it in a... 21,000 square miles of wilderness. And he did it in the most bloodthirsty way imaginable. He didn't kill anybody,

but he made sure that they had to leave the pastoralists yeah the pastoralists and he had he got them out of there you know and now that is yeah you were mentioned that he got on this idea yeah of establishing a wilderness salute yeah that when people would move in they would provide no assistance to those people right if a lion was getting them if an elephant was getting was like tough shit this is wilderness and and he wanted to create literally a sanctuary for elephants where they were safe from poachers um you know that they they could basically in that 21 000 square miles they never had to go outside the boundaries of that area and they they were protected you know and it was part of the problem

you get into and it's it's always a it's always a tough one is is where where on the scale does the value of the animal begin to outweigh the value of the human you know yeah they're norm dude that's a humongous question in this country well norm strung who used to live here in bozeman he used to write for field and stream and he would go down to mexico every winter he would like shut the house down he and his wife still and they'd jump in the in the bass boat and they'd go down to Lake Obregon or someplace down there. And they'd lived there all winter fishing. And he said the first day he came back, he got to this village and everybody comes out. They go, how'd you do?

He goes, oh man, we must've had 150 fish, you know, all, all large mouth bass. They go, really? Where are they? And they go, we threw them back. And he goes, you threw them back? And then he started him back and he goes you threw him back you know he goes and then he started looking around and he started seeing all these little kids with pellagra and and you know swollen bellies and stuff and these you know this was a long time ago down in mexico but these villages these villages were poor and they were protein hungry yeah and he said he said after that to hell with it i never

threw anything back i brought it in and i gave it away so i mean you kind of get into that bind when you're there it's like it's like what you mean like you mean literally human life because we could look and be like like we have a conflict in this country with wilderness or wild lands. Where we'd be like, I'm not asking you, this wilderness isn't going to mean you die. This is going to mean you might make a little less money than you otherwise might have made. We have a tremendous luxury. Yeah. And we have just this

unsurpassed gift you know that that africans would look at and they would they wouldn't understand you if you tried to explain to them you know why why why aren't you why didn't you kill that lion they go well it's a beautiful animal i didn't want to kill it that's when we'll watch it you know go off into the sunset and they go that lion just killed two of my cows you know it chased my brother up a tree last week so you would never have a situation because in your book you get the sense it's a weird part of the of your trips where you're out and what would be like you're out crazy shit lions running around baboons crazy animals elephants and then like dudes come rolling through camp yeah and see

if they could get like a chunk of meat yeah and they got a cow with them yeah so did you would you ever encounter would you ever encounter people out in the in the wilderness who are like man it's not right that you're out here shooting our animals well i i i don't know if you ever read or or you know who joy adamson was adam she was she was the author who wrote born free okay and she was a she was actually an austrian i think and she was married to George Adamson, who was one of the, you know, the kind of the bodhisattva of game rangers in Kenya. I mean, he was such an early proponent of concert. Anyway, I mean, he was a, you know, and she was. He was an early proponent of not shooting all the animals. Well, he was...

In order to have something to shoot. Yeah, well, he was a proponent of like, you know, he was there on the ground working this stuff. You know, and then the whole story of Born Free is they found some lion... I know the song Born Free. Yeah, well, they found a lion cub. Their mother was killed or something or was dead. And then so they raised the lion cub and it was called Elsa. And they found a lion cub. Their mother was killed or something or was dead. And then so they raised the lion cub, and it was called Elsa. And they raised Elsa the lion.

And there was this, you know, then the song Born Free. And eventually she turned the lion back loose into the wild and let it go free again. And then it eventually started to hang. Where the movie ended, they didn't mention the fact that the lion kept kind of hanging around people's camps and houses and villages. And somebody finally killed it. Didn't get real wild. Yeah, no, it never, it was habituated. Yeah.

It's like, don't feed the bears. Yeah. But anyway, so I was in, with Fletcher in Kenya. We were in Amboseli Park. We were changing blocks and we stayed overnight in the lodge. And so we're in the restaurant and like, and like, I look up and I go, I see this blonde woman running around, you know, greeting and meeting everybody. And I go to Fletcher, I said, is that, he goes, he goes, yeah, yeah, it's Joy Adamson. And I said, really?

Oh, he goes, God's sakes adamson and i said really oh he goes god's sakes don't tell her we're hunting so even then and even there well even then even there and then you know and then she was eventually murdered by one of her servants because she was just not a nice lady well you could be pretty mean and still not deserve to get murdered i didn't say she deserved it but i'm just saying that that she certainly didn't go out of her way to be nice. You ever see the movie Bernie? Bernie? No, what's that one?

Just explores how bad do you got to be before it's okay for someone to kill you. Yeah, no, I'm not advocating. No, no, I don't think you are. No, no. A thing I've noticed in recent years, and let me interrupt that. You do a really good job of writing about drafts running away.

Right. The analogies. Right. Construction equipment taking off. Yeah. Or other things. But a thing i think about when i think about africa especially through the lens of just why like i'm interested in

the controversies of hunting right sure sure sure everybody is and and uh africa like like the behavior of americans in africa generates this never-ending amount of outrage. Well, the behavior of Americans almost anywhere. Sure. We have a chief executive who was saying to the First Lady of France yesterday, She's good looking and good physical shape. Yeah, you're in really great shape. Yeah, that really surprised me.

It was like not reading the room real well. No, no filter. Not reading the room real well. Well, it's basically, I figured it out, it's the billionaire seduction technique. You know, like, hey, baby, I got a billion dollars. He told her, he turned to her and says, you're in very good physical shape. And turns to the president of France and says, beautiful, very good physical shape. At which point she steps backwards.

Dude, it was like, yeah, it was really surprising because I would go and meet the president of France. And I would be thinking, I'll tell you one thing I'm not going to talk about is his wife. Yeah. How is she over? How is she over a muddy track so the thing i've noticed about africa is that african outrage okay so every day like if you follow social media every day there's a thing that everyone's supposed to be outraged over and we feign outrage and share our feigned outrage over social media and one of the things

one thing that people love to feign outrage over is someone having shot something in Africa that was cute, or that was a fantastical animal that we, that we feel is fantastical because of the way they're woven into the fabric of our culture, African megafauna. But it seemed to me that the thing that with Americans, they get more pissed the weirder it seems that the person that shot the thing would have been there shooting stuff.

So if there's a guy that made millions doing like heating and cooling from Florida. Dentists. If he shoots something, generally, generally, it's different. If a young gal, if a young gal, a high school gal, say, were to go and shoot something in Africa, that is more offensive to Americans

than if it was a guy from the heating and cooling industry. Yeah. Except for Cecil the Lion the dentist guy now if that had been a high school cheerleader that would have been like really bad

but it was as bad as could be now as a guy that's been going there 40 years what's your take on all that well who's to blame for how ridiculous that all seems? Well, the first thing is don't post your pictures on social media. That's a message.

If I am going to be your campaign advisor, do not post the pictures on social media. But that's why people do stuff today. And that is exactly the problem. That's why people get out of bed in the morning. That's exactly the problem. I mean, you know, it's, I remember talking to a PH one time and he was telling me about this guy had taken this just incredible looking animal.

I mean, it was, I think it was a, a Nile Leshwe. I don't know what the hell that is. Yeah, right. That was not my mobile as a child.

No, no, no, but it was a beautiful Nile. It was, you know, it was one of those kinds of things that you could just, even if you'd never seen a Nile Leshwe before,

if you saw this one, you would go, that is the Nile Leshwe of Niall Leshwe. I guess this is- Can you kind of sort of describe it? It's not a bird? Is it a monkey? No, no, no.

Okay. It's an antelope. It's an antelope. Oh, Michelle's pulling up a picture. Oh, yeah. It's good looking critter. Or Mrs. Gray's litter. Oh, yeah.

They're black and white with big S-shaped horns. Yeah. That's a bad mofo right there. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm tracking. Okay, so there you go. That looks like a game animal to me. Yeah. And they're good eating, and that's the other aspect.

But, you know, he had this guy who would like hunt with him, and he was showing me this picture. Oh, that's a great looking ant. He goes, what did he, you know, did he put it in the book? And he goes, no, he doesn't have, he has nothing. And he said, this guy has killed so many, hunted, I would rather say. This guy has hunted more trophy book animals in africa than almost anybody i know he's never put a single one in the book because he doesn't want to he doesn't

care about the recognition yeah that's not why he's doing it i like that guy well yeah i mean you're aware that i'm a turkey grand slam holder well Well, so am I. I'm a super slam holder. So, okay. So, is it annoying that I'm asking about the lion? Cecil the lion? No, no. What's your take on it? You know, I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I am guilty. Can I ask it in two parts? Sure. Part A. Yeah. What's your take on what happened?

Not how it was perceived. No, I know. Was that business as usual? Or was that like a fucked up thing that happened? I have serious reservations about the affair. The Macomber affair. This was the Cecil affair. Okay, please.

Lay it on me. No, I mean. That's part A, mind mind you part b is going to be what's your take on how it's a part it's a part it's a park lion that they sat on the edge of the park and waited for it to walk out you feel that they knew of course they knew of course and the other thing about it was because it's people people make a big deal like, this guy spent $50,000. That's cheap. That's cheap.

But that's, okay. I mean, no. That's the part that shouldn't matter. Is it better if it was free? That lion should have cost $75,000 to $100,000 because that's what the market is. If you're going to go the invisible hand of capitalism, he got that line for about half price. Okay. And the reason he got it for half price was the guy,

I have to be careful here because I'm not sure, you know, if we want to, don't want to get into like areas that may be, oh, I don't understand what you're saying right now. Well,

I'm just saying we don't want, we don't want to get into the areas where, because I may suggest that there was some illegal activity involved i got you but i don't i'm not saying it was that you don't know that that was yeah i don't know i appreciate i appreciate but but what i what i what i suspect okay and this is purely suspicion and has absolutely no basis in fact and as far as i know the guy who killed it's good to his mother and everything else. Loves his mother. And the guy he hunted with, the professional hunter, also loves his mother.

And the African guy whose property they shot it on, which abuts the park, he is the salt of the earth. That was private property. Yeah. That was a dude's land? Yeah, I believe. Well, it's up... Now you have me there, because I'm not really sure. There was some question about who had the permit and...

It's kind of immaterial. That part's kind of immaterial, so I don't want to bog us down. You get into the weeds on this one. But the reason I think, in my own opinion, without knowing if this guy did anything wrong is that if that lion was what appears to me to be rather cheap it was because they knew where that lion was and they didn't spend a lot of time hunting it got you you know

that that if they had to go if you had to go to tanzania tomorrow and hunt a a and now you got to remember in tanzania you have to your line the lion has to be you have to age the line on the on the hoof as it were so you know it's six years old or older you can't take anything younger than that anymore in tanzania okay, you know? And if you actually went to Tanzania looking for a lion like that and in the wild and everything else like that, you could be there hunting a month. You know, you could be there and you could spend 75 to a hundred thousand dollars. So because what?

Because of the rarity of it, not the, because of the, it's a hard hunt. It's a hard hunt. You know, it's like, it's like shooting a 400 point bull elk in the mountains. Yeah. If it was a month, cause it might take 10 years of a month, you know? I mean, it's, it's yeah. And, and from what I understand of this situation was the, the, they didn't hunt him that long okay and then and then a crossbow he shot it with a crossbow i i got nothing against crossbows but you feel there might

have been a noise factory no i don't know no i won't go that far i I think it was part of the, you know, the esprit of the whole thing. It was, I'm going to add my own little twist to this by hunting in with a crossbow. Okay. But I don't know. But I don't know that. I don't know anything. Can I add two things here? Because I didn't get your impression on that.

Yeah. I think about this almost, I think about this bi-weekly at least. Now, why moving into the perception of it, why do Americans get mad when they hear that someone paid a lot for something? And it's puzzling to me for this reason.

If we look at the history of colonialism, it generally is that you go into a country and you take valuable shit and don't pay anyone for it and take it back home. So here's a system where a feller, even though, as you're pointing out, may have underpaid, he goes in and he pays an outrageous sum for a thing that he would like to remove from the land. And that is more offensive to americans than had he just gone and stolen it well i would think that people would be like well at least the son of a bitch gave him fifty thousand dollars but people get pissed about the money they're like he paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars to kill a rhino, that's asshole-ish. A better guy

wouldn't have paid shit. Maybe. But that's kind of what you're saying. Well, no, that's... Listen, I... Why is that upsetting? Well, you know, why do we get pissed off when we see people

with Rolls Royces and blinks. Because you're jealous. Because you're jealous. Because you... I wish I'd been born rich instead of good looking. I had a friend of mine who always would complain about the fact he's from Mississippi

and he kind of worked his way up into the upper echelons. But there was a point in his life where he said, if I had as much money as that son of a bitch over there i'd make him look like ned's first primer i don't understand what that means oh ned's first primer that's that's that's the book you used to read in the little little schoolhouse that taught you abcs and it was a good looking guy or not no no no no that's not the whole point if i don't understand the point. Okay. Back up. His point was that he was jealous of all these other guys who had so much money they could hunt anything they wanted to in the world. Okay. Oh.

And his argument was, if I had that kind of money, I would make them look like Ned's first trimmer, which means that they— He'd drown them in dead shit. He would make them look like amateurs from the word go can i ask my second question yes this didn't occur to me till the other day yesterday a guy an outdoor photographer named john hafner yeah who shoots a lot of wildlife photography yeah showed me a picture of a lion a male lion yeah and he's got a big ass mane john says that line is actually a collared lion where's a radio collar you can't see the damn collar yeah he's got a thick ass mane yeah so with the cecil and this is the last thing i'm gonna say about cecil unless you got more you want

to add no but go ahead yeah a big part of the story people were pissed oh yeah they paid for it and people were also pissed that it had a collar but i don't know that that would have been known do you think that that would have been known or not known well yeah they had to cut it off because right now am i circumcised or not circumcised prior prior no well they i mean i mean it was like it was like i was listening to the radio coming up here and they're talking about some guy in kent Kentucky who was on the run because he cut off his ankle bracelet yesterday. Oh, yeah, they cut it off after.

I mean, it shows. They knew before they shot it. Not that that would have mattered. That lion was, it was Cecil, for God's sake. Yeah, but people told, I also read a lot about this, that that name didn't quite have the cachet in life in life that it did in death no no i understand no no that's that's correct but there's there's a lot in my mind at least there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that that this lion's fate had been sealed before the the hunter ever got to africa that like a guy's like you know what

a fella could probably lure that island you know lying out of there this there was a phone call to somebody at some point and said i've got this lion over here i'm pretty sure if we you know we put a dead eland or something, and this is not what I'm saying happened, but I'm just saying that we can, we can get this, we can pull this lion out of the park, you know, that's going to be the same thing when, you know, if we get to where we're, we

can hunt grizzlies down South of here or wherever we hunt them again. Yeah, man. There's going to be, there's going to be, where do you draw the line? Do you, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Well, I'll say where I would draw it.

At the park boundary. Maybe. Maybe. That's probably not where it's going to be drawn. No. But I mean, what difference does it make if you keep pushing it out? There's going to be a line somewhere. And I don't know what, that leaves me, I don't think I'm going to be shooting a grizzly. So that's fine. I don't intend to put in for a tag. No, I don't, I don't know what, you know, I, that leaves me, you know, I probably, I don't think I'm going to be shooting a grizzly, so that's fine.

I don't intend to put in for a tag. No, I don't either. You know, but I don't, I, I can see where it would be really interesting for some people and it could be done and it can be done right. Yeah. You know, but eventually it's going to come down to lines. You know, there's a line here, a line here. So I don't know.

I don't know. When that was playing out, this is honestly the last question. Sure, sure, sure, sure. When that was playing out, let me preface it by this. A friend of mine did many tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Navy. Now he comes home, gets out in the Navy. Okay. Now he comes home, gets out of the military.

And every time something is in the news about Iraq or Afghanistan, I would go to him being like, Hey, what do you, what's your take on? And he said, now at this point, I read the newspaper like anybody else. I don't have like

my time there doesn't give me the feeling of having like insight. It doesn't give me the feeling of like that I'm following that story more carefully. Okay. So if you're a guy who's written hundreds of pages about hunting in Africa, when a story like that happens and everyone fires up the outrage machine, do you see it as just a guy like, huh? Or do you see it as this is my realm, my world, my professional space, I must interject and give clarity to all the people who are out looking now, or is it just like, I don't know? The guy shot a line, I don't know.

I don't have, I don't know that I feel that I can offer an opinion in that sense. Okay. You know, um, I know how I feel about these things. I mean, I hate to say it, but I mean,

but hunting is, you know, what's the line about, uh, um, again, again, to quote Hemingway,

I guess it is, it's what we have instead of God. For me, there's something of, hunting is in a way at least one of my religions, if I want to consider myself polytheistic. I'm following you. You know? And the older I get, the more I get into it,

the less I hate seeing piss in the cathedral. That's how I feel. That's a good way of putting it. I'm glad you just said that. You know? I mean, don't go piss in the baptismal fountain. You know? But I don't know how you teach that.

I don't know how you instruct that. I don't know that how you, I mean, I don't know. I don't want to be one of these crabs who just, you know, oh, you horrible human being. You know, if you can sleep at night, that's fine. And, you know, if there are scientifically based, well-enforced laws that make sense, then go for it.

You know? I don't know that, I mean, I'm not sure where ethics, there are ethics, and we do as hunters, we do have an ethical structure that we believe in you know just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right sure you know or moral or ethical um but that was the aldo leopold yeah everybody likes the part of the quote where he says like ethics is what you do when no one's watching right Right. But he goes on to say, even when it's legal. Yeah.

You know? But that is, you know, as a society, we can only enforce the law. Yeah, yeah. Now, we can try to shape ethics, but that is more of a cultural definition we're putting on things. Well, ethics and law walk through life hand in hand in many ways. Maybe. I mean, I think there's, you know, it's, yeah, but I don't know who's the handmaiden and who is the not, you know. No, I understand.

You know who I think? I think that ethics is the mother holding the hand, the child's hand of law. Yeah, except. I'll have to think about that more to see if I really think that. Except the law in this case is. A derelict. No, he's like seven'3 and weighs 400 pounds and has a big mallet. You know?

I mean, we can talk about what the law is capable of doing to people's lives, which ethics are not you know ethics i mean you can you can you can i mean ethics ethics shouldn't be able to take away your liberty or your freedom laws can take away your liberty and your freedom you know yeah ethics can shame you law can execute you that's a funny thing because i find that when hunters get in trouble yeah when hunters get in trouble they like to and especially in the last couple years yeah hunters get in trouble, when hunters get in trouble, especially in the last couple years, hunters get in trouble and they like to go,

they like to go, but it was legal. And they're kind of like, people are thinking about one thing and they're talking about another thing. Because they don't do like, okay, I have a wife and kids, okay? So let's say it emerged that at night i

would sneak out and just go have sex with women in bars that i met in bars right later someone's like dude did you hear can you believe his wife at home taking care of those kids and he's out like is there room for me to go but it's legal yeah yeah it is no one no one doubted the look no one cares that it was legal and and and no one's like oh ha yeah my bad cool but that's but that again i mean there there isn't any way that I know of persuading a sociopath or a narcissist. Because what you're talking about is narcissism and sociopathology. It's not criminal, but it sure makes life hell for everybody around you. You know what I mean? Yeah. sure makes life hell for everybody around you know what i mean yeah yeah you know i mean it's like it's like it's like you know if a guy's cheating on his wife he's making it hell for

her he's not breaking the law though yeah that's where community comes in and so and social and culture well you know and it's and it's and it's but it's you know but even you you would think that it would be something internalized in a the being that it would come to him at some point going, you know, I am a dog. I am a two-dick dog who should be shot. Well, if we're taking it back to the example of hunting, I see that can be hyper hyper like local and like it's across the country imagine like there's different social norms in like alabama than there are in idaho right so i think it comes back to ethics and your community almost holding you accountable yeah and i'm a big proponent of that and i love thinking about the ethics of hunting because it's so interchangeable um it's

it's i mean what are the ethics of of hunting raccoons with hounds in california versus the ethics of hunting raccoons with hounds in tennessee you know all right uh you know i i blew this because earlier i used this i mentioned this quote that you I can't remember who's the Hemingway quote where someone's like he says we should go hunt in Africa and he's like I got no desire and he says just because you haven't read a book about it. Reading the book I've decided

I'm real interested in I've adopted your favorite animal as my favorite animal to hunt. Can you talk about the, like, Cape buffalo? Yeah. How it is that that in your mind is, like, that in your mind is, like, the animal. And earlier you were going to, I think you started to say something and got distracted. You were going to say that when you hunt, you're a surrogate.

Right. For the people you're with. And I thought that at that point, you were going to point out that you get excitement from what excites them. Well, yeah, that's exactly, well, okay, that's. So talk about cave buffalo, but weave that in. I mean, you can get a sense where certain animals, if you take an impala, if you hunt an impala, and you make a reputable shot, a good shot, it's a clean kill, and they have meat for camp,

they're going to come up and they're going to go, congratulations. The difference between that and if you have to, if you bring down a buffalo with one shot, the effusiveness of their response is going to be, for one thing, they're not going to have to follow a wounded buffalo into the bush, you know, which they do not want to do, which nobody in his right mind wants to do. There are some people in their wrong minds who do. So yeah, no, there is that. I mean, you know, they... I can look at an app.

Well, Africans never get bored hunting a buffalo. They never get blasé about hunting a buffalo because of the risk. Because of lots of reasons you know they they they have they have this sort of ultimate respect for a buffalo you know they there's again it it becomes very difficult to you know what is it i i'm not sure you know it's like it's like it's like it's like pornography i know it when i see it you know it's it's who was it that said that justice potter stewart um they uh um there is something about

you know when you're hunting a buffalo that this is an animal and i it's you know you have them you have the advantage what do they weigh about? About 1,500 pounds, 1,600 pounds. You know? And they can run 30 miles an hour, 35 miles an hour. Pretty good clip. The other part of it is I've gotten older, and I think more in terms of the fact that there's so much meat. That's why people get excited about them too.

That's part of it. You know? that's why people get excited about them too that's that's part of it you know it's it's it's there there is there is the reward of hunting buffalo well is in and of itself hunting buffalo well that that you know you didn't mess it up you didn't you didn't cause a a scene you didn't there was no you didn't cause a traffic accident in the middle of wherever you were yeah you know and then when meaning ruining one and meaning and then nothing and everything goes to and it's and it just worse comes to worse and it just gets worse but have you experienced that yeah sure you know it and never had anything where it was uh i was ever really threatened but i you know spent a lot of time trailing a wounded animal

that i really didn't feel very good about having caused yeah you know one of the things you say you like so much about it is that you have to follow them into the thick shit yeah and it's like a very it's you're not choosing to have it be close it just has to wind up being close yeah i mean you you you basically you want to be as close as you can get you know what's what's the there's the old there's the old saying the old adage you get absolutely as close as you can and get 100 yards closer you know and and you know and you you could be you know when you want you don't want to be. That's an adage for hunting Cape Buffalo.

Yeah. Any dangerous game. Well, I remember there was a point there where you had someone at 200 yards. You're like, uh-uh. No. Yeah, no, that's not. That's shooting and not hunting, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can kill a buffalo at 200 yards. You can kill a buffalo at 300 yards.

You know? And why? don't buffle at 200 yards you can buff up 300 yards you know and and and why but what what makes it then hunting at 100 that it's not at 200 it's just well i mean i mean it's like it's like yeah yeah well it's like anything else you're you're giving him you know you're not you're not throwing away your advantage but you're giving him more play for his senses. You're giving him more of a chance of, what do they English call it, twigging to you, discovering that you're there, smelling you. So you're not trailing them into the brush because that's how you got to find them. You're doing it because it's an act of respect to the animal?

No. You're going in. I mean, that's where they are. That's their turf. That's their beach, their wave, that's where they are. That's their turf. That's their beach, their wave. That's where they live. You can find herds out in the middle of big open plains. Passing through.

Passing through. But at some point, you'll end up having to go into the trees and look for them. And it's unnerving. You know, it starts out that way and then, I mean, this sounds… Then you use that up. You use that up and then it becomes like, I want to do this again. Yeah.

You know, I mean, when I first started hunting buffalo, they scared the crap out of me, you know, because we couldn't see them. They were just in this, you know, you're just crawling in after them. And then they would, all of a sudden you'd hear this, like, just this massive explosion of animals. And you'd hear the, you know, you'd hear their, they got those big bosses on their horns, that big horn cap. And you'd hear them smacking into the trees and coming through there, you know, and which way are they going? Are they coming at me?

Are they going away? Yeah, you mentioned that you could cause that explosion. Well, just they're just going. They drop their heads and they're going. But, I mean, just out of the blue, they're feeding one minute and going the next? No, they've caught your wind. Okay. Or they've caught your wind. Okay. Or they've heard you snap a twig.

And you've got like 20 or 30 of them all together. So you've got 20 or 30 sets of eyes and 20 or 30 sets of ears and 20 or 30 sets of noses. So it's like, you ever notice like on whitetail and turkeys are always together. Yeah. notice like on white tail and and uh and and turkeys are always together yeah and i figured that out was because turkeys can't smell and white tail can't see as well as turkeys can but they know how to trigger off of each other yeah anyway leave that there because you talk about that bird all the time that lifts up yeah yeah the tick bird you see that tick bird you know that there's some yeah and you also talk about you could creep in there and get 30 yards away and there's a 1500 pound animal on its feet looking at you and you might

not catch it yeah yeah you might not detect its presence the the guy i was telling you about the old guy who taught me how to who i got my inherited my love of africa from I guess. But I mean, the first elephant he ever took was in French Equatorial Africa in 1956 or something. And he and the tracker, because the professional hunter had gotten sick, got malaria. So they just went with the tracker, just he and the tracker, and they were hunting elephants. And he said he'd never seen an elephant in the wild at all. And they were crawling in through the forest. I mean, crawling, hands and knees. And the tracker grabbed him and he said, there, there. And he's looking and looking and looking. He can't see anything. And he's looking back and forth and the guys keep pointing. And suddenly he sees 30 feet in front of him, four legs. And they look like big tree trunks.

And then he keeps looking up and up and up. And there's this, there's this head, you know, kind of like just in there, you know, pulling stuff off the branches. And he said that was his first elephant he'd ever seen anywhere in the wild. But that's kind of what happens with buffalo. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Our northern brothers get irritated.

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Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the thing about, you know, that's, like I say, these trackers are, you know, like there. And you're going like, where? You know, and they go there. And they just, you know, they just know where it is. And that's inborn. That's innate.

I don't know. It's a wonderful mystery. How do you, I want to ask how you cope with something or how you perceive something when you when you hunt there a lot uh this could be true for anyone who does like a lot of guided hunting okay where like like i look at hunting as being a thing where you sort of um acquire like it's just it's this never-ending thing of, like, acquiring skills. Yeah. Okay?

Developing a skill set. Yeah. And no one knows the end of it. Right. There's no cap. There's no arrival moment. Right. Right?

In fact, the more you climb… There's no ceiling. The more you become aware of the lack of a ceiling. There's no ceiling. I think early on you could feel that it was there, but it's not there. And I find that if you're not brought up doing it, it creates a separate,

it creates a cap too. Like it's hard to come in late and climb very high. Yeah. Yeah. But in Africa, I feel that open, that unachievable ceiling probably doesn't really seem to be there because you have so much infrastructure around you that's invested in you getting it. And it would almost be that one would feel, if you were a hunter, you would feel like, I'm not bringing anything to this. In fact, I'm slowing this whole thing down. You are the impediment. They would get this done faster and more efficiently were it not for my presence.

Hand them the gun. Let them go. So how do you cope with that? Well, you know, it's an imperfect world. You know, I mean, in a different time, in a different age, you were born in Africa. You know, a lot of these professional hunters were born growing up in the bush,

you know, and they hunted for their families and for themselves. So they learned it that way. I guess, I guess I could look at it in that regard and say, well, I'm not bringing everything to the game. I am. But does that mean I don't want to do something that I have come to love? Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, it's, it's the, you know,

I mean, you, you know, the satisfaction of like hunting something on your own and, and, you know, I go in there, you guide,

you pat. I know, I know both satisfactions. I know that satisfaction and I know the satisfaction, you guide, you pat. I know both satisfactions. I know that satisfaction and I know the satisfaction of making a friend who does something really well and then your friend takes you out and lets you be along with them

and the thrill of learning. If you can get to that stage with Africans and that to me is, I don't know a better way of doing that. I've never found a better way. Maybe there is one that I don't know about. Yeah. Or at least that I've experienced.

I mean, when you get to the point where, you know, when you have done something that, that a bunch of African hunters, trackers look at you and go, you know, give you a thumbs up.

It's, you know, it's golden. Cause you, you know, give you a thumbs up, it's, you know, it's golden. Yeah. Because you know when it's genuine. Listen, I don't want you to think that I'm saying that I don't. No, no, no, no, no, no. I do go into those situations. No, but I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, and you know the difference when it's genuine

and when it's perfunctory or pro forma, you know? I'm the tracker. I'm supposed to tell this guy you know good job wanna yeah but when when they sincerely do it and honestly do it you know you've earned that from them that's what you know it's a great sensation it's a great feeling yeah and i think for sure i think that's i think some people would think that needing that, that I don't want to say needing. I think that some people would think that basking in that approval is childish, but I do not because I, I do like that.

Well, there are ways, there are ways like cat. There are ways to like calibrate one's performance and, and to have, and to do things and be in a atmosphere of other people and to get to a point where other people are like job well done, you know?

Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it's when you're, when you're, when you can move one 10th as quietly as an African and stay up with them, you know,

going through the bush. That comes back to you. There's a feedback loop in that where you get that energy and you feed on it. Did you feel like over the years that you learned a lot? Yeah. Was it like mostly having experiences or was it learning too? It's always learning. I mean, I, I, I always have learned, I've tried to learn no matter where I was, you know, I want to, I want to talk to the people. I want to know what they're doing.

I want to know, you know, whatever. I, I, I don't know where I, I don't think it's in the book, but I was just writing something the other day about, you know, going to places, going you go, why would I hunt in Africa instead of going on a photo safari? And there's nothing wrong with going on a photo safari. But I suddenly realized that the people I am dealing with in a photo lodge situation, these are people who are in the service industry. Now, you could argue that trackers are also in the service industry.

Yeah, but that's not a very good argument. But I'm just saying that it's a different relationship from where I am, you know, when a guy's hovering around me, I want to know if I can, you know, if he can pour me some more wine and get a bigger tip, you know. And whereas if I'm dealing with a tracker, you know, where he'll stop and he'll point to the tracker and we'll try to figure it out, you know. What are we, you know. What are we looking for here? And it's all... There is

a language barrier that just disappears. Yeah. And he doesn't speak English. I don't speak Swana or Kikuyu or something else. But we communicate. We understand each other.

And that's like just, yeah. I mean, just, I don't know. I'm starting to get, you know, it's hard not to get nostalgic about it. What about that nostalgia? Because I get a sense, like, even the name, I feel like the name of your book, like, Having the Autumns, right?

There's a... August in Africa, yeah. There's a... There's an endiness. Like, is it done? Like, I could rattle off some stuff. I mean, it's like,

I'm going back in January. Oh, you are? Yeah. I'm going to go to Burkina Faso. And the reason I'm going to Burkina Faso is there's a relatively small area, like 250,000 hectares or something. That's really wild country. There's elephants and lions there walking around. There's no fences.

And there's a different buffalo. There's the Savannah buffalo. So I'm, I want to go back. I want to hunt two animals. That's it. I want to hunt the Savannah buffalo and the Western Roan. And the Western Roan is like, I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of like, it's like a really mean whitetail. It's a disgruntled whitetail. Because they're very smart and they're just beautiful animals. Wonderful eating. Again, people don't really pay much attention to it, but the game meat's great.

Does anything in Africa have antlers? Actually, giraffes are pedicels, which are not, they're kind of proto antlers. And there are red deer in northern Africa. Is that right? Yeah, the Barbary red deer. Native. Native. You know what surprised me?

You talk about hunting Seuss Scroffa. Yep talk about hunting wild pigs in africa yeah i didn't know in the north and in northern africa they have yeah straight up wild hog yeah sounds like a shitload of them yeah lots in tunisia yeah it's the and they're they're all over the place but i point out to people about like autumns in africa like uh august in africa i'm sorry not autumns oh i said autumns earlier august august in africa uh but you go a lot of other months yeah but that but it's not... It's a figurative time. You know? It's... In fact, the first time I went to Dakar, the first time I went there was September. But there's an August feel to it. Yeah. Especially growing up in Southern California.

You know, you get that kind of late August weather and the climate. And that's kind of what you run into in Africa when you're there sometimes. It can feel like that. And it's more a metaphorical time than it is an actual calendar date. Yeah. Conjures a bit of romance and nostalgia, like you said. Well, there's a quote on the cover from Robert Rourke, which is that that's when they burn the grass in July

and the decent hunting starts in August, which in the one little part of Africa he hunted. That's something about Hemingway, too. I mean, Hemingway didn't really never... He never got out of East Africa. Rourke never got out of East Africa, pretty much. Never got out of. No.

So how much have... Like, okay, take it for granted that there's this gradual decline. Like, there's a gradual decline of wild places in the world. That's just like a way to explain world history okay the peopling of the world so taken outside of just that general gradual thing that happens right how much are how much are the good old days here or not here because i oftentimes find myself when i'm talking about hunting in america

i try to remind people that um depending on how like how you're how wide your net is that there's a pretty good argument to be made that we're in the good old days right now well sure yeah and you have a different you know again we we, we have the luxury or the benefit of, you know, the greatest conservation system, wild conservation system in the world. You know, if you look at other places, you're talking about New Zealand and Europe and, you know, South Africa. We're, you know, this is animal husbandry that's going on in those places. South Africa, New Zealand. Well, I mean, yeah, it's animal husbandry. Yeah.

You know, with wild animals. Whereas we actually still have, you know, truly wild population. And yeah, I mean, you know, there's more game here than there was. And that's a loaded word as well, game. You know what I mean? People probably give you a hard time about that word. Yeah, I don't care about those. Yeah.

Okay. Tell me what you really think. Anyway, but they, I don't know what you can say about africa except that it does continue to decline and that's i don't know what the solution is you don't feel that it's a factor of hunting no it's a factor of it's a it's a it's it's factors... Like wildlife is inconvenient. Yeah. And... And tastes good.

And let's put it this way. That you could ban all hunting in Africa tonight. Absolutely ban it all. Legal, licensed hunting. And the populations would probably decline even faster. Just because it would de-incentivize. Yeah, there'd be no reason to keep anything around. And it's hard to...

Because no one's making money off its existence. And you're asking Africans to support wildlife when they can't in many cases support themselves. We think you should let these elephants run through your whatever. And they're going to go, why? It's like if you woke up in the morning and there was a bison smashing your Subaru to shreds,

you would probably go, oh, shoot him. Yeah. And then somebody goes, no, you can't do that. Don't do that. You can't do that. Well, okay. You'd be like, man, someone's going to have to give me a lot of money. Yeah, well, but nobody's going to give you any money in Africa.

You know? If you come back and someone's destroyed to have to give me a lot of money. Yeah, well, but nobody's going to give you any money in Africa. You know, if you come back and someone's destroyed, you know, the elephants have destroyed your crops, trying to get them. Actually, I think one of the big things that's making a difference, the Maasai are using, they can use cell phones, and they can call each other and they can go, elephants are in the maze tonight, you know, and they'll run in there and try to chase them out.

But maybe that's an advantage. But of course, the cell phone also helps the poachers. So, you know. Why is it now, why does it cost $250,000 to kill a rhino why does it cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to get a governor's permit for a you know small for a sheep small pool yeah you know that there's there is and what are the ones that do get killed the ones that do get like what are the situations where they're what are the situations where like how many how many rhinos are hunted every year? A handful.

Are they cold? Like are they identified? Yes. Is that what you mean? Well, there's, you know, okay, there's two kinds. There's white rhino and the black rhino. Okay. Now the white rhino is actually the more popular, it is now, it didn't used to be,

but it's now the more populous species. Did not used to be. Oh, no, no, they were almost gone. Okay. And there's a long history of that, but you can go back to the South Africans back in the 50s or 60s. They wanted to kill them all off because they wanted more land for grazing and cattle.

Okay. And there was one little herd of white rhino on this park, 300 animals maybe, and they were getting all inbred, and it was just total disaster. And then a guy named Ian Player, who was the golfer Gary Player's brother, came in and just started capturing these things and spreading them out, spreading them to different areas. And in that amount of time, they went from like 300 to there's, I don't know, 25,000 or something in South Africa.

So what's up with black rhinos? Well, black rhino were the opposite. They were like, when the white rhino was down to like 300, there was probably 100,000 black rhino. Unfortunately, black rhino have horns and the horn is is mistakenly thought of as an aphrodisiac or a medicinal has a it it is a popular ingredient in asian medicine because here's this animal the big phallus growing out of his forehead well it's mad it's matted hair but it's also the same the other part of it is

also is you many sheiks wanted the horn for their you know their their decorative dagger handles because it's you know it's this beautiful material when it's worked and they would so that so so here's the thing if you want to shoot a black rhino to poach it almost like is that what it like is it the mechanical removal of black rhinos killing them for their horns yeah not habitat loss well it's it's there's probably so few it's there's a lot of habitat there's there's there's a lot of parks that could have rhinos That could have rhinos on it. Could have rhinos on it, but they get killed pretty fast.

Okay. And it's a continuing, it's a running firefight. Did you see someone went into a French zoo and shot a rhino? No, but I. Shot a rhino and stole the horn. Yeah.

Well, people. Really? People in. In a damn zoo. Oh my gosh. People in Africa who had mounted rhino heads in there have come home and their house has been broken into and someone's chopped off the horn off of it. Because from a pragmatic standpoint, okay, so I want to get a permit to hunt a black

rhino. Okay. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, if you can prove to me that, you can prove to us that by hunting this rhino, you're actually, which is an endangered species, if you can prove to us that by hunting this, you're actually going to improve the species,

improve the survival for the species by pumping a lot of money into conservation, then have at it. So, the way, so the a lot of money into conservation than have at it. So the governments in Namibia and places like that that have viable populations of black rhino, and also part of the problem is they want to get rid of the old bulls

because they are a drug on the market, as they say. They don't breed. They're done breeding. They take over territory, you know, they're done breeding. They just, they take over territory and they want to move them out. That if you kill one, you're going to actually end up with net more rhinos because you're pulling this one out of the herd.

So a guy comes over to Namibia. He pays the Namibian government $250,000, $350,000. That money then ostensibly is earmarked for various conservation projects related to the black rhino. He then can import, which is important to him, he can import that rhino head into the United States. Now, the alternative is a poacher comes out in the middle of the night, jacklights it, shoots it, sells the horn for $20,000. It's worth $20,000.

Yeah. It was. And these things are going up and down. I'm with you. The big deal right now is if you can believe that China is actually going to stop the trade. And they said they finally got around to saying, yeah, no more ivory, no more.

We're done. And if they do that, it's going to dry everything up and there's going to be no incentive to start poaching these things. So it might help. Well, it can't hurt. You know. Wow. Yanni?

Dude, I, like, yeah. Like, uh uh your book really made me think about a ton of shit i hadn't thought about before well could i uh could i uh read a small piece out of it please okay what's interesting to me is that not a single topic of the last hour and a half has been without controversy no but that was my approach to the book i didn't approach the book i didn't approach the book just wanting to hear cool hunting stories i approached the book because i'm like a guy uh who is like just in like okay like I have an inner struggle. Like do I want to go? Is it a thing that in my life needs to happen as a person who's pursuing hunting as a discipline and as a mechanism for exploration?

Like is that or thinking that I would like to go to a wilderness-type area and travel with people who grew up in that environment and travel with them and crawl through that thick-ass brush looking for a Cape Buffalo. Or the other possibility, I mean if you really want to get there's the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Brazzaville. And there you hunt the forest dwarf, and don't be mistaken by the fact they're called dwarf forest buffalo. Because they're actually more dangerous than the Cape

Buffalo because of the habitat they live in. And that is where you actually that that is, I haven't done it, but that is way wicked. I mean, that is, you are hunting, a lot of the times you're hunting with pygmies. And, you know, and you can imagine what that must be, like the trip that must be going into these. Yeah, we've talked with our buddy about doing that. Yeah.

Yeah, man, I don mean do you do you feel uh you know it's like yeah customer satisfaction surveys do you feel that in our conversation um that i've focused on shit that you wish i hadn't focused on no no i mean i i appreciate you know like one to, how likely would you be? To what? To recommend this to a friend. To recommend this to a friend. Well, I don't want to, I mean, you know, you haven't put this on the air yet, so it depends how politic I want to be.

The point being, this has been a refreshing, refreshingly intelligent conversation for me. Okay. Because, you know, you're not an African hand. Let's put it that way. What's that mean? Well,

you don't have any, you don't have any African, you don't, you don't have any on the ground experience in Africa. No, no, that's, that's a fair assumption,

but you're a hunter. Yep. And you can understand the motivations of why people would go some hundred percent crazy ass place like africa and why once they went there they kept going back when they really had no business financially or economically or you know trying to put a kid through college and a wife you know to keep her fed at least once a week. You know, she's already going like, you're not going back. Are you? And I go like, um, no, I might.

I go, God, no, no. So, um, yeah, I mean, I mean, I give it a solid nine and a half. How's that? Okay. I wasn't even worried about it until Giannis just said that. No, uh, I wasn't saying that. He always Giannis just said that. No. I wasn't saying that. He always struck me as a troublemaker. Well, we're not going to sit down and swap old hunting stories about Africa

because I haven't gone there, Giannis. No, no, no. But I just think that that's sort of. There is no way in this day and age that you cannot talk about Africa without creating controversy. And I think even with two completely like-minded people, two hardcore African hunters, they'd probably find some controversy.

It just seems like it's inherent. I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's, let's put it to hunting in Africa gives you the potential of, of being the worst person you ever were in your entire life or maybe not the best person but a pretty damn good person um okay you know yeah there's there's there's that there's that choice there is that you know there is that option available yeah you talk about some time you spent on a trip with a person who embarrassed you a great deal. Oh God.

Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was, uh, their views on the culture, their views on racial issues. Yeah.

He was, he was, he was a piece of work. Yeah. I mean, I was like, really, that's a good story because you really go

to have such a visceral hatred for that guy. You know, and it was because he was mutual. But it came to a point where you came to a point where the author, Tom here, said why did you come

to Africa? Except to shoot stuff. Except to shoot, except to shoot stuff, except to shoot stuff, you know? And it's like, when I was 20, I could understand that. Cause you know,

you're 20. You want to, you have that, you know, you know, you want to, you want to, you want to hunt everything.

Yeah. But now, I mean, you know, I'm happy to go back and like i mean i i i i envy somebody like craig boddington because he's like over in liberia hunting these like antelope they're the size of this water glass you know it's like and it was and it's you know the whole the whole fact that he is dealing with native trackers and they're calling them in and it's, you know, it's impenetrable jungle in this whole adventure, I guess.

I mean, you know, maybe it sounds cliched, but how many adventures are there left? I'm sure there's plenty of them, but I mean, also it kind of seems to me that more and more people are kind of like adventures becoming more and more kind of a stunt. You know what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean. And that, that when I went to, I came at the very, very, very, very end of when going to Africa was an adventure because it was Africa. And, and you didn't have to be, it wasn't a stunt to find adventure in Africa.

It was there. Just by the fact of being there. Yeah. And it's interesting, you mentioned that story about that guy, that hunter, we took a mutual disliking to. Meaning that you and me took a mutual dislike? No, he and I took a mutual dislike no he and i took a mutual dislike to each other got any final thoughts yes got a lot of final questions sure we don't have

to probably time for but um pick one pick one pick your best one take your best shot attention must be paid i'm not I'm going to sell the classic. I just want to start talking Calibers and bullet weights. Oh, that's what your problem is? Yeah, because that's like – Like 375. I mean, I like the bigger, grander ideas too. I'll break it down for you. But Tom and I can sit around –

425 Nitro Express is what I like. 470. 470 is awfully nice. Tom and I can probably sit around now after you guys left. Yanni's podcast. In which? I'm going to ask what his favorite

caliber was over 40 years and how that changed. You should have told me earlier. 375. You can't go wrong in Africa with a 375. I'll tell you the name i'll tell you just let you know that i'm adept the queens of the plains rifles isn't that something like that the queen of the plains right yeah yeah the queen yeah 375 is about all right so

yannis is bummed out that we didn't no i'm not at all i'm just saying that like you know um as we're discussing all these controversial ideas, I'm thinking, like, oh. Okay, when you're getting ready to go, you can text. I wonder if he hand-loaded most of his ammunition. Okay, when you're getting ready to go, when you're getting ready to go.

As a matter of fact, I did, but that's beside the point. When you're getting ready to go, text Tom and ask him what. Yeah, I will. And Woodley Solids, by the way, are good for you. Yeah, so I know these landscapes are, like, when I think of fence tons, all I know of is our recent discussion with, you know, talking about CWD, right? Yep. And I know the landscape is on such a greater scale over in Africa,

but in these fenced areas, is there any problem with disease transmission? That's a good question. And it's, you know, there's, I think in the afterward to the book, I kind of look into the fact of that, you know, you have this, you have one school of thought that says by getting value out of the wildlife,

we're actually helping to preserve it by these ranches down there. But at the same time they're also doing these bizarre uh breeding programs so they can come up with gold golden wildebeest or or you know or black impalas and which they have now found out that they're all sterile you know i mean it's it's it's like, so it's like, it's like a- The management paradox. Really?

Like dozens of species of big game isn't enough? Yeah. Well, that's exactly it. I mean, they want to be able to, you know, oh, well, you don't have one of these. You know, they want to be able to buttonhole a guy at a hunting convention. Make that money. You don't have one of these in your wall. Oh, yeah, I'll get one of them.

Yeah, no, no, it's it's it's crazy it's crazy i mean it's just and then you know there's a whole argument about that but as i point out in the that that essay i you know it's the same thing that happened in spain when spain went you know we went crazy with all this money everybody wanted to to have andalusian horses then they all all went broke. And then the horses, they just left to starve. They had no money to run the Hastancias anymore, and they just took off and left. So right now they're saying, well, look at all the money we can make out of these animals.

It's a bubble. It's a bubble, and it's going to... And then what happens? I don't know. Yeah. And disease may be one of those factors or well sounds like they shoot animals there like in this book you refer to and i don't want to open up a whole new thing but risks of wildlife well same thing with brucellosis and they don't want

like shooting animals to prevent disease transmission to livestock yeah they they've actually i mean that's what they've again found out is that they're you were talking about the map of how much non-supplemental feeding of cattle and how much land there is well it's even worse in south africa i mean there's most of the land is really pretty poor agricultural land so there is that argument that at least the there's most of the land is really pretty poor agricultural land. So there is that argument that at least the wildlife is adapted to the land and we can make some money off of that. And then we can, we don't have, I don't know what else you do with the land over there, but you know, you, you can, you know, it, it just becomes, you're chasing your own, your dog chasing its tail. I don't know. I mean, I, you know,

these public, I mean, you know, the fact that these guys are going to auctions and spending $2 million for a buffalo to put into their breeding stock. Oh, okay. Because I think the genes are going to, there's no guarantee the genes are going to do anything yeah you have a real concluding thought did you ever hunt any small game over there yeah a lot

Franklin Grouse that's like kind of the quintessential small game right where everybody goes almost everybody hunts Franklin right or Sand Grouse Sand Grouse are tough Sand Grouse are tough. Sand Grouse are tough.

Sand Grouse are tough. I mean, they are, they just, they usually wait until, like, about 10 minutes after sunset to come to the water hole, you know, and they're just streaking in there. And that's, you know, they're just harder than hell to kill.

Throw him another one, Yanni. That's why you get all this out of your system, so you feel like you weren't wasting your time here. Oh, I don't know. Handloaf, you're shooting handloaf. He likes 375. Solids. Hunts small game.

Do you hunt squirrels? Yeah, I hunt squirrels, but not in Africa. Well, he likes to talk about squirrels, too. I like it when they put the stick up in the tree and they twist it. Good old Kevin Murphy. Twisting the squale out of the tree. Yep. Yep.

A wounded one, yeah. Oh, those are the worst kind. You good? No, no, I can come up with plenty. So you never were in a dangerous position with a Cape buffalo. How about any other animal? Were you ever actually thinking? Seuss scrofa.

Yeah, wild boar. I had a wild, yeah. That was the only, I think, out-and-out charge I ever saw. And it kind of veered off for me and went towards this other guy was actually a wild boar, which is the least, you know, African. Yeah, all that crazy shit. It's a wild boar. Yeah, well, that you never know.

That's the one that, you know, you never hear the bullet that kills you, right? Well, you know, Capstick said, what was it? The dangerous thing he ever encountered was the woman on the malaria drugs, right? Petey? My friend Petey? Is that the name of the story? No, no, no. I can't remember.

No, no, Pete was a friend of mine. Oh. And God loved him. He was a friend of mine oh and and and and god love him he was a wonderful raconteur yeah you talk about malaria pills too yeah yeah but there's a well they'll know it's a larium i think is the uh it's it's a great psychedelic drug to take when you're sleeping because you get these like just full-blown dreams dude i disagree because i could see i could see when i'm on that. I can see waking up and realizing that you're sucking on the end of a pistol.

It's that bad for my brain. You've had larium problems? Yeah, I react like, yeah. Where I'm like, I'll take the malaria. If I have to choose between that drug and that disease, I'll take the disease. Yeah, it's, it's bad stuff for some people, really bad stuff for some people.

But yeah. All right, man. All right. Well, August in Africa. Thank you so much. You,

I'm, I'm guessing people can buy this book on Amazon. Yeah. The other book, my other nine novella is the, the snow leopard's tail. That's also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all your finer online outlets.

Yeah, if you're curious, if you hate African hunting, if you love it, if you might want to go, it'll inform your perspective in a non-manipulative way. Thanks for joining us, man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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