I always had a love of the outdoors, and spent as much time as possible fishing, playing in the woods, looking for snakes, fossil hunting, etc. At the barber shop where I'd go for my monthly hair cut, I'd look at the magazines like True, Outdoor Life, Field & Stream (and if no one saw me, some of the other magazines that were out of bounds for a young lad). My father never hunted, but I had an uncle who did. When I used to visit Uncle Vince, I would sit for hours just looking at his mounted deer head on the wall of the stairway landing. I knew that someday I would be a hunter. When I was in the service, my first overseas tour was on the island of Taiwan, and there were a lot of wild pigs on the island, back in the mountains. One of the guys in my unit was from North Carolina, and one day he asked if I would like to go hunt hogs with him, as the cook in the chow hall told him that he'd bar-b-que it if he brought one back. I jumped at the chance, and we checked out a couple of M14s from the armory, along with some ammo, and off we went. We ended up killing 5 pigs that day, and I was hooked on hunting. After my enlistment was up, and I returned to the states, one of my cousins sold me a custom built 30:06, and took me deer hunting with him. On opening day, he put me up a tree stand, and about 20 minutes after the season opened, I had what looked to me to be a huge 10 pointer pass my stand. I managed to get off a shot, in between shakes and shortness of breath, and the deer took off. My cousin heard the shot and a few minutes later showed up at my stand. I told him I shot a monster, but it ran off into the laurel. We quickly found the trail, and about 100 yards later found my "monster" forked horn buck. WOW! Talk about ground shrinkage! My cousin was laughing, I was jumping up and down, and must have walked a mile around the deer that was lying on the ground. I eventually was fortunate enough to hunt all over North America, taking deer, black bear, antelope, caribou, and sheep.

One day I walked into my gunsmiths shop, and he just asked if I'd like to go to Africa with him "next month". I said sure, but there was no way I could afford Africa. When my friend told me the price for this hunt in Namibia, I was stunned at how reasonable the price was. I say that, because I always wanted to hunt the big bears in Alaska, but they were just way to expensive, plus the success rate on Brown Bear was probably around 50% at best. I just wasn't willing to spend $12-$15,000 for a 50% chance. The plains game hunt for Kudu, Gemsbok, Springbok and Impala cost less than $6000.00, including air, my wife came along, we were treated royaly, ate great meals, had our laundry done every day (my wife couldn't believe they ironed my underwear), spent 3 days sight seeing in the cape region of South Africa, and just generally had the time of our lives. Since then, I've been hooked on Africa. I still hunt and fish here at home, but try to save enough so that I can still go back to Africa every 3 years or so for another plains game hunt. Next year I'm taking one of my nephews to Namibia for a plains game hunt, and it's a joy to see the excitement in his face. Last week I gave him a couple of safari shirts from Cabela's, and he was like a little kid on Christmas morning. I guess you can say that Africa is in my blood.