I've been reading a lot of safari lately, Ruark's "Horn of the Hunter" with my daughter, and Capstick for myself. (By the way, Capstick goes on quite a tirade about celebrity bowhunters in one of his books--Long Grass, I believe--accusing them, among other things, of having their guides cripple elephants with rifles so the bow hunter can finish it off with the cameras running. He doesn't name names, but I wonder whom he is referring to, and how accurate his accusations are.)
Anyway, all this reading has led me into some other, more current research. Even though I will never, ever be able to afford a bowhunting safari, it makes me happy to find that there are still quite huntable populations of most of the big five out there, even elephant. Lions seem hard to come by, and of course rhinos are a big no-no these days, but buff, elephant, and even leopard are there to be hunted. Most of the plains game species seem plentiful and available, too.
However, today's "safaris" seem to bear little resemblance to the glory days of yore, when manly men (and a few womanly women) pitted themselves against toothy, horned, and otherwise pointy game on more-or-less even terms. This is especially true of organizations that offer bow hunting, where nearly all of the hunting is either out of a permanent blind over an artificial water hole, or in a fenced (though very large) "preserve." The safari companies don't shout about sending hunters into enclosures; one has to read between the lines, but I believe that's what's happening. There is no mention of hyenas, lions, or charging hippos...which leads me to believe there simply aren't any in these hunting areas. They've either been killed out of fenced out.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not snobbish about hunting from a blind. I'm not even one to judge "game ranches" too harshly. As long as it's legal, if that's someone's cup of tea, I have no problem with that. But somehow, it seems more like hunting in Europe--tightly controlled, uptight, over-civilized and contrived--than the free-ranging safaris I read about and dream about. I don't mean the right to blast everything that moves; even in the glory days that wasn't how the game was played. But I long to hunt (or at least to know that others are hunting) Africa the old way: Long days of wandering after game, a trusty pro at my side to back me up, a local tracker out front, never knowing when some potentially day-ruining critter was going to burst from the bush. Courage verses adversity. The element of mystery. The element of uncertainty. Maybe even danger.
Instead, I see chest-thumping videos of trophies shot off a concrete water hole, out of a brick blind that very well might be air-conditioned, or of animals obviously taken in an enclosure, commonly on trampled, over-grazed land that looks more like a zoo than the wild. I guess people who put up thousands of dollars for each trophy want a sure thing. It makes me sad.
If you're still with me at this point, you must be really bored.
But I guess the point of all this rambling is this: Somebody please tell me it ain't so. Tell me that there is still fair-chase, spot-and-stalk, close-range, old-style hunting in Africa. Tell me that, if I suddenly found myself with unlimited cash, I could hunt kudu or oryx in Africa the same way I hunt elk in Wyoming. It would lend a certain credence to my daydreams to know that wild Africa is still out there.
