Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa The beginning of the end for Zimbabwe??

Understood on that perspective; still, it's like giving money and ammunition to your enemy, even if it's to a lesser degree.

Doc,

With whom are you hunting with in the Bubye?

Wonder when Delta will not allow anyone that's had an abortion to fly...

This. My taxidermist here in west Texas works with a broker (don't recall the name) used by many many US taxidermists... might be Coppersmith, I don't recall... anyways, they were saying that lately they're using container ships for much of their shipping. Slower than air freight, but cheap and climate-controllable.

John Sharp.

I may have heard of him...

I expect you might have.

Doc,

Sure hope your safari comes off as planned. I've had to cancel two Zim buffalo safaris, one because of severely unsettled conditions after one of Mugabe's "reelections," and one because my flight from Montana left on the morning of 9/11/2001.

good to hear its going through Doc....know you have been looking forward to it for a long while

United and American airlines just banned the shipment of "hunting trophies".

JB, that truly sucks! I had a rough night on Monday after reading some of the "news" about Zimbabwe, I can tell you! However, by Tuesday morning my inquiries had revealed comforting facts.. but I had to face some hard realities the night before.

The facts are: I booked this hunt in January of 2012, after years of wanting to go and months of research into where I wanted to hunt, and with whom. I contacted better than 20 PH's by email to narrow my search options, and I "interviewed" my top 5 candidates at the Dallas Safari Club convention that year before settling on John Sharp and the Bubye Conservancy in Zimbabwe. I paid John in full some time ago. I bought my airline tickets some months ago. I have spent more than a year going through rifles to find the one(s) I will use to hunt African game. I have researched game biology, equipment technical matters, and even the political/historical milieu of soiuthern Africa in detail; all in order to squeeze the greatest possible benefit out of my hunting trip. I have made plans for photography and other records of the trip so that I might write about it afterward, to enhance and prolong the experience in my own mind and life, and to share it with others.

To have done all this, and then to see the very real possibility that it could be wiped away in a heartbeat by a social media firestorm, was gut-wrenching to say the least. And I have no illusions: it may still be taken away, by the same means or by other unforeseen circumstance.

But I have reached a place where I can deal with that, in part thanks to the wisdom of The Redhead. As she pointed out, "You have done everything you can to do this right. If it's taken away by something out of your control, you can still say you've done it right, and let it go." A wise woman, that.

Which is, of course, true of anything I (or anyone else) does in life. So much of what will be or will not be is out of my hands. All I can do is be sure that I do my part as faithfully to the things that I believe in as I can.

So. I'm hopeful that it will all come to pass as I've planned. But like everyone else I'll have to wait and see how it all turns out, no?

Best of luck to you Doc. I remember meeting you at DSC when you had booked that hunt. I'm hopeful for you as well.

Doc,
Fingers crossed for you.

Good Luck Doc. I hope it come off without a hitch. I'd go too if I had already paid for it. 163bc

This incident alone illustrates the power of social media whether fact or fiction.
We all are being whip-sawed by the tweets and posts of a few morons with opposable thumbs and diminutive brains.