Three gentlemen from Fisher, Indiana

For the next two weeks I am hosting a small game hunt for three gentlemen from Fisher, Indiana. One of the three has extensive outdoor experience. The other two? Well, we’ll have to wait and see. By a small game hunt, I mean primarily plains game, such as antelope, zebra, warthog, birds, etc. Generally a hunt of three or four weeks is needed to pursue the big five: rhino, elephant, buffalo, lion, and leopard. Most of the “hunters” that we entertain on safari have hunted before. In my early years I did a fair amount of hunting with my father and my uncle. As with most of our clients, my big game hunting consisted mostly of waiting in a blind for a deer, turkey, or hog to wander into a clearing on an early morning or just before sunset. I had never hunted the larger, more dangerous mammals like Kodiak or grizzly bear. Most hunters have not experienced an environment where the animals can actually hunt the hunters. Even fewer have hunted in a terrain where you may have to crawl through brush populated with snakes whose venom can end your life in minutes, and you are literally days from any civilization. If you get sick or injured, you can’t just drop by the neighborhood emergency clinic or call your family physician. There are no pharmacies and no grocery stores. It is our job to remove as many of the “hardships” of the bush, while at the same time keeping the experience as real as possible. A lion walked through our camp one night during our last hunt. He was close enough to my tent that I could hear his sniffing and smell his musky odor. The next morning we found his tracks twenty feet from my tent. Let me tell you, that is plenty of reminder how real this can be for our clients and ourselves.