Ep. 446: When an African Cape Buffalo Beats Your Butt

Hey guys, it's Brody Henderson. You probably know me from kicking Stey's butt on Meet Eater's trivia show. When I'm not doing that, I'm part of the Mediatter publishing team and stoke to announce that our new book, Catch a Crayfish, Count the Stars, Fun, Project Skills and Adventures for Outdoor

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You can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. For every hunt, First Light, Go farther, stay longer. All right, Borry, the Tanzanians are here when you guys, That's what I was telling my kids, and you guys came off for dinner.

I said, the Tanzanians are coming to night. They didn't know what that meant.

And then but you're Australian when you were born in Tanzania, I was really misleading by kids a little.

Bit nearer than Morgan.

He's a little closer than me.

Okay, Morgan, So walk me through how you became to be came to be a Tanzanian.

Yeah in Montana. Yeah, yeah, Well it's kind of a long story. And I guess if Roger's the sort of the pedigree, the kind of thoroughbred, I'm like the mongrel, so I, you know, African hunting was something that I grew up with. My grandfather was an African hunter, not a professional, you know, as a client. He'd go over there in the sixties and seventies. He did a number of Safaris and I always I was passionate about hunting

So I got a few friends that from here that have gone there to do that.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Oh yeah, No, I just have have always had a high fascination with.

Those moldern water buffalo.

Yeah. And maybe it's the like crocodile dundee, which is probably like a horrible reference for you.

But it's it's a tough one.

They don't put those in Crocodile Dundee.

I forgot about that. Yeah, that that ball that was in that movie is super famous. It's like mounted in a bar down there. It's actually it was like a eunuch, like I don't know what the right term is like that that specific animal unit. He'd be a yeah, yeah, I guess, or a bullock. Is that? The other time it was no, no, no, it was castrated and that's why it has those massive horns like oh no.

No, no, castrated, No castrated ox is there you go it's an Yeah, it's strated.

An adult castrated ball. Yeah, is an ox. Yeah it was an ox. Hence the enormous kind of spread on those on those horns. But yeah, they're a fascinating species in there. They're they're pretty different from African buffalo. But really, I mean it's an incredible area of wilderness where you go hunt them. It's They're impressive for sure. So I

Ah?

I think it did? Okay, it was It's well, I was called buffalo hunters, but it was It was a German production, and I think the Germans have a different, different vibe around there. There was a lot of like recreates and I'm a terrible actor. Let me just give you that, like it just heads up right now, hold that against you, oh man, And so like, I had a tough one with the recreates. They sort of always have that look where like, if someone films you hunting,

I think, yeah, I'll give people a little heads up for people at home if you're watching hunting shows and you're looking for the recreates. Uh, if someone goes to shoot something and you realize you're getting three or four camera angles on.

It, it's not happening, like, oh, there's a camera game in front of him, to the side of him. There was there was a lot of There was a lot of that, but it was cool. But the guy that made the movie was a phenomenal hunter called Ryana yosh and his day job was a professional hunter in Tanzania. So after we got done with the movie, I followed him back to Africa and was this what he taught me? But was this what Roger? Was this one of you guys say he used.

With us from time war time with you.

Yeah, people are gonna get people are gonna get Well, this will all start making more sense to you people at home.

Yeah, it'll we'll we'll fill in the narrative here. But I uh, and so I sort of came to I came to Robin Hurt Safari's a little later on in my career.

Uh.

Well, I guess I was thirty thirty three, thirty four or something like that. And I've been doing this for thirteen years now.

So did they have you just carrying water at first?

Whatnot? Did you get to jump right in? You know, it was a lot of following and kind of you know, Rhyana is one of these guys. I mean, I'm kind of interested in your take on this because he was one of the guys that I take. Yeah, well your take on like what a genius hunter, like, if there's like a genius hunter, if there's a level there? I think so too, And like the way, well the way

And it's the best way to learn.

Yeah, it is. And I'm sure there's some former clients of mine out there who might disagree with that, But yeah, I like to think I came out of it, you know, better, better at what I do. But it was it was tough, It was interesting.

So how did how did you guys come to be colleagues in.

Well, interestingly enough, Roger's older brother and I were kind of I always I sort of. I mean, the name Robin Hurt. If you're interested in African hunting, and particularly the East African tradition, you're going to know that name because Roger's dad is probably the most famous living African professional hunter now, a guy who's literally had a license for sixty years and came up in the Golden Age.

You could hemingway it was the second Golden Age.

Yeah, you could kind of argue that, like the guys that kind of really explored Africa and the kind of black Powder era were sort of I mean what they.

Saw even Livingstone.

Yeah, those guys exactly that whole vibe, so that those guys really explored a totally untamed continent. But and Roger and I always have this kind of back and forward dialogue about if we could go back in time, like when what era? And I always say that era in Roger's like, oh, you would have died a malaria about it, like you would have died of some tropical disease things into your trip.

I think my dad basically started in the prime of African hunting basically where it wasn't dangerous, but it was still well dangerous from a medical point of view. You weren't going to die of yellow fever or you know all the other diseases. But the hunting was just phenomenal. The wilderness was pristine. I mean, it was what you're doing that was sixty years back.

So yeah, I'd say the fifties sixties or Hammingway Second Golden Age? Did it anywhere ever? Hunt with your dad's outfit?

No, he didn't.

He had one guy. He had Philip Percival, who was actually on the Roosevelt safari as a young man wow, and was on Hemingway's guided Hemingway as an old man, which is fascinating. So like guys like Perceval kind of bridged. The two took took some time out to go fight the First World War, you know, maybe some of them some of them were involved in the Second World War two, and then kind of like came back into.

The song the same dude. There's there's a dude that guided Teddy Roosevelt on his big yeah, like it has a big crazy museum collection. And then turned around and also with Hemingway, Yep, Philip. If we liked better like tr better man.

I think tr probably, I think Ta. Both of them were marcho men right in my I like I guess in my reading of them both they were kind of like sort of tough guys.

But to have been part of that Roosevelt's sorry just would have been an experience for lifetime and the people involved, they had like a hundred porters.

I mean it was oh yeah, it was not a small imprint.

Yeah. No. And the places they went, I mean they went all over East Africa. I mean it's just incredible.

He would have had stories for a lifetime off that one.

Farry, Oh yeah, a small tangent. Have you ever read West with the Night?

Yeah, Beryl maas.

Beryl holy Cats. That's a great one.

Yeah, a good one. Beryl hard Call. Yeah.

And the female right female, Yeah, pilot and spotting big tusked elephants out there. And I just don't hear that book reference very often.

We had Roger.

I used to work with our company, used to be our sort of main marketing man.

That awesome.

Beryl Markham's great grandsons.

Okay, a lot of it's all connected.

And ken or everyone's sort of connected it their day.

Krin I were talking about when I was telling her originally about you, after we met, after you guys came for dinner, I'll tell Krin about you, and we got the I use the word convalescing, yes, And we're talking about how no one uses the word convalescing. I said, he's like convalescing. He's convalescing in the US. The snot kicked out of him by Kate Buffalo. Yeah, I guess that's have you been you're convalescing.

No, I've not used that exactly.

So we got to touch on a couple of things, and then we're gonna come back and I want to we're gonna talk about I want you to tell the story getting by a Kate Buffalo.

Yeah, the impact to that who's still alive, he still lies, still out that you didn't go try to find him. Oh, I'm definitely gonna go.

Well, we'll get into that story because it's a good story and and you'll you can explain how when you see him, you'll know, Yeah, you'll recognize someone.

He's ingrained in my in my head.

He's got his head pretty much. Oh you know.

So here's here's the thing that happened that we covered. We covered a guy he's something of a repeat offender I believe, who was up in Jackson Hole, down in Jackson Hole, wyhoelming shed hunting prior to shed season and he got busted by a whelming fishing game. He had been going out and uh like pre hunting.

Wasn't that right out of out of season?

He was pre hunting, making little stash piles and then he'd make a little cash and then when season opened, you just go in and pick up your cash. But he was also in the field hacking chew toys, so he was cutting his He was cutting elk antlers into chew toys out in the field, probably for easier transport, because you imagine, you imagine you take a big ass backpack. I mean, once you whack him up, dude, you'd have well just think.

This is like an old guide joke, but it is repeated in many circles. You know, if you want me to make that load easier on here, we just cut those antlers off. You just lop off a couple of these points and I'll pack a lot easier.

So this is someone rode in. They're like, hey, I wanted to let you know about what happened with the antlers that were confiscated Woming fishing game went out and just put it, went out and strewed them. Is that a word strewed? I know you can strew something something strewn around.

Yeah, I think that's a past He's let's say I'm gonna go out and strew around.

You didn't say that. Yeah, yesterday I went out and strewed around some.

They littered the mountain broadcasts, so like the mountain, the hillside was strewn with ye.

But yeah, I'm just gonna go. Strewed sounds like a soup, a kind of soup you might make. I made some strewed last night.

They went out and strewed around all the antlers back out into the woods.

They redistributed them in the mountains so that people could have the joy of finding them. But a guy sends a picture in and they were out on opening day picking them up, and they were and he in his little gripping grin of him and all the stuff he picked up that day, he has the chunks. They just flicked the chunks around toys as well, so when opening day came, you could wander around and you could.

Find It's like an Easter egg, like an Easter egg hunt with antlers.

It's a great idea, but it's like, uh, here's part of the problem. It's the same way that I wouldn't want to shoot a deer with a collar on it, because it would be that it had been touched, it had been soiled by man. So people don't hold that perspective as every time we talk about this, We talk about how that perspective is not extended ducks, because getting a banded duck is sweet, Getting a banded duck is great. Getting a deer with a collar on it is not great.

To give you one intending to make a chew toy with your shed. Ultimately you'd feel a little bit well, a bit jipped.

Yeah, it'd be that it got picked up, it got caught up, it got confiscated, it got put back out. It would just feel like it wasn't like like, for instance, if you are out hunting morels, it's it's sixty percent it's forty percent that morels is good to eat and sixty percent this fun to find morels.

Yeah, right, So if you went.

Out and found like morels that were just cut and set out in a little box, different, it'd be like it just be different.

Yeah, hallout of victory fish.

Yeah, some guys like.

I found these, but I put them back out in a box. And then you find them, you wouldn't feel like you found them ll.

Yeah, no, I can see that it'd be that you. I don't know, it just be different.

Could you conceive of it as like a separate thing, Like there's the sheds that you might find, and then there's oh, I got some free chew toys for my dog that I don't have to buy the pet star And if.

You're taking commercially, If you're taking commercially, there's still just that. I'm just like, I don't I I would pick them up.

I'm all for it. I think it was a great idea.

It was better than putting them in a It was better than putting them in a in a fishing game, auction garage somewhere like whatever, like better than all that just just struck me as peculiar.

Oh you know what's uh, let me point this out.

So did you guys cover the fine and then the failure to pay the first fine? No, this guy's deep into it. Yeah, I mean he tell me his first round. He's a Bosangelus cap too, that's where his OAP business is based. But so he was ordered to pay a ten thousand dollars fine the first time around and never paid it, so that's why they tacked on. I think ninety days a house arrest plus an additional fifteen K and fines I think is what it came down to.

He'd have to say, I could pay my fine if I can go get my antlers. Right, what do you guys want the money?

Because that's that's where all my assets are tied.

Up right now.

I'm not exactly liquid.

I got the liquidity issue. I'm still wrapping my head around the shed hunting thing, to be honest.

Oh yeah, I'm crazy.

Just how into it people are.

Well, you know why you don't understand it because in Africa, you guys don't have any servants.

Nothing sheds, nothing sheds, nothing sheds. It's a good point.

It's fun when you find a dead skull. There's a name for that too, is.

What skull shirt.

Yeah, you find a whole skull.

Like an old skull. Way of putting it.

I mean occasionally, like when you find a sixty five inch koodoo that's been killed by a lion and it's just such an impressive.

Head, And do you keep that kind of stuff.

Well, we put them in the camp. We're not allowed to take them home or whatever, but we keep them within the area. You definitely pick it up, so.

You just you redistribute him over to your camp. Yeah, I think that should be our next T shirt.

Steve is dead head, but you know, obviously a play on the Grateful Dead. You know they're a little dancing bears.

On how did we never think of that? I am going to talk to anything's not going to Instagram.

The last genius idea we had. We made the stupid mistake of checking and if fame wouldn't had it. But everyone's had everything. Yeah, yeah, you really all your idea has already been taking.

I brought up the shed head idea with those bears when Denimanti was on the shed crazy guy, did you did? No one remembers a thing that happens in this realm Izuro servant.

Yeah that's yeah.

The Sahara there's one, there's not what is it, Bobbery, No Barbary. They have a red stag where North Africa from there. Yeah, I'm gonna say that there was, you know, some kind of land bridge with Europe at some point. I believe that for a second. Let's yeah, let's look into it.

Barbary Stag.

On a recent episode, I went on, I was real fired up about Gordon Lightfoot's death. Goy sent us this great picture taken in July nineteen sixty one.

Native to North Africa.

Steve, there we go. I meant the other part.

Algeria to Tunisia and Morocco.

That's where my that's where my ancestors are from two percent of them.

That's where you have that big flag and tattoo and stuff.

So I went on a big rip about Gordon Lightfoot and the wreck of the Edvan Fitzgerald. And this dude sent this great picture in taken in July nineteen sixty one. His grandpa was on a car ferry in Duluth, Minnesota, and he's got like his station wagon on a car ferry and in the background, uh, there's the Edmond Fitzgerald floating by. And he later wrote, and this guy carries this the guy that wrote in carries his photo in

Yeah, another you know.

Also the guys from uh, the guys from Old Town wrote in, and I didn't know this Gordon tune. Gorge's got a tune called the Yellow Canoe. If you're dead, do you have a tune or did.

You have a tune? That's another we should have a staff linguist.

I don't know.

I feel like that's an in perpetuity thing. You have.

Gorge got his PhD in English, so we should probably.

Oh yeah, r do you know that you're not the only PhD around here?

Yeah.

I'm thrilled by that.

I'm thrilled by that.

Do you guys know doctor Randall?

Doctor rand not really?

So?

Uh the hell's that? Talking about God? Lightfoot? The Yellow Canoe?

So Gord had a canoe. He wrote a song called the Yellow Canoe must not be that great. I never heard it either way. This yellow Canoe winds up in a museum in Canada, and I had a serial number on it. And Old Town was like, Hey, what's the serial number on Gorde's canoe, because Gorde's canoe was an old town canoe. And they were to pull up like I don't know what the hell date it was made, and they and and uh they used to keep me.

It's like an English gun maker English could they have the same thing, big huge ledger books with everyone, every order, every yeah.

All stored in these cute little boxes. So when they found out Gord's canoe, now where they could go down to these cute little boxes, pull up the.

The see the original specs. When interesting that that shipwreck song. I think everyone I know from the Midwest kind of gets a little misty eyed when that one comes on. Oh yeah, it's a big deal for you guys.

You got in Australia, you guys in tear up about that.

No, I didn't have the same uh the same same pull to it. I mean it's a good song. I think we could appreciate it objectively.

But we had everyone in Kenya that.

Was here's a here's another not interesting. Say it again, witka Oh No, I didn't catch what you said.

Was saying in Africa he was. He was the one that made you miss the eye and whose songs were He was a singer.

But what was his did he have like a shipwreck?

I dreamed of Africa and things like that was a little Africa.

Yeah, but he didn't document shipwrecks night like, he didn't document a tragedy or something.

Just he was sort of like he was if you lived in Africa, you know, all the songs had to the meaning and I.

Was literally like a wreck on uh like like Victoria.

Yeah or something like that exactly.

Yeah, yeah, which I'm sure there have been.

You should throw in a chunk say the gentleman's name again, Roger.

What language did you work in?

English?

Throwing a chunk? Phil?

Yeah, Well you want a hole more feedback fill.

Give it to me.

When you put in that chunk of the d fits, I didn't think it sounded the sound call.

It didn't sound great to me.

That's because I was playing it over my cell phone into a microphone in the room. Because you just told me to play the I didn't have my picture.

You're coming back in later on and really getting her in there. I'll do that next time. I apologize.

So with this fella, let's get him in nice and clean, Phil.

We'll do yeah, done, blow it with this one, you.

Know, ma ighty sing.

So warm and wild and free you always.

We've been covering the kangaroo leather debacle heavily.

Oh you'll appreciate this. Oh, I'm sure from Australia, I haven't.

I'm not across this one.

Well, people in America are getting real riled up about They don't want to no one to be using no kangaroo leather for nothing.

You could say they're hopping mad.

All fired up.

Even a sposh Picee was there.

So close Victoria Beckham, Yes, even.

She is like the person. Yeah yeah, well you know what else she is. She also is a famous soccer player's better half.

My buddy Will used to make super fancy denim jeans and his claim to fame was David Beckham wore his jeans.

He should have made them out of kangaroo leather.

Yeah.

Well, bubbly Doug was pointing out that I think it was Dougie pointing out that Sucker must have had forty fifty pairs of kangaroo leather soccer shoes because of the real common leather for soccer shoes. But I'm gonna tell you something else. Gonna curl your hair, guy says. He writes in and says, I've been listening to the recent podcasts covering discussion about companies moving away from kangaroo leather. I was a firefighter for the City of Houston, the third largest department in the US.

All of our bunker gloves.

Were kangaroo leather. The gloves were amazing, had great dexterity. Houston Fire Department normally has over four thousand firefighters on their payroll. Everyone had a set of these gloves. No telling how many were on Standbio's replacements. If any kind of damage was done to the gloves, we would have to get them replaced, so you could go through many

There we go have you been to Australia. Nope, never, because I did my gap year set of after university before I became a professional hunter, and Kangary's and Wallaby's are like rabbits. They are everywhere. I mean, I ended up taking out five with my ute as I came around the corner and the farmer next door was doing a hell and about five hundred round across the road in front of me, and before I could slam on the brakes, I'd already hit five of them.

I mean, they have to look like five hundred king.

It was insane. There was like this hedge and they all came diving over the hedge and me and my friend literally didn't have any time to react and in the worst I had to keep reversing over to finish the job.

Iron or something.

No, you know, it was a farm truck and it just didn't have anything in it. It's not like an American truck. It's like a pretty small truck in comparison.

Well, No, that we talked about, I don't want to retalk about it. But the fact that they're calling kangaroos no matter what. Yeah, whether someone's whether someone's using it or not. Yeah, yeah, either do they either go and do a ditch or they get used as usable product. Yeah, like you you not buying the leather isn't.

Doing any impact.

And everybody I talked, he says the pro team, the meat is inexpensive and quite tasty.

It's good, it's good. It's a hard sell for people in Australia. It's like very seldom eat in there. They mostly export it. Either it goes into pet meat or it's exported, like you'll occasionally see it in some like some sort of high end restaurant or something. But people in general, yeah, people in general there have a real issue with eating.

Like do they think of it like eating a dog in America or eating a rat in America?

It's hard to better better than I get it in a restaurant.

I think it's not quite a rat level of revulsion or dog level of revulsion. But it's like, well, no, I would just say it's a dog.

I would, Okay, from a US sensibility, these are two very different reasons not to eat something.

To eat a dog children, right, and a rat is because it's discussing. I think it's neither. I think it's because people just don't think it's going to be good, and they're kind of like, you know, they hop around whatever. I'm not entirely sure because I never had this issue with it, and I don't think I've ever really tried to unpack it with someone. But I know that, like, it's hugely unpopular and not commercially successful the meat at all in Australia itself, Russia. For a while it was

We covered a guy, remember that, Remember that heart lunch guy. There was a guy that had a heart launch program and he got fired.

I remember that, Yes, yes, his job back in the end, I don't remember.

Yeah, they let him go.

They found out you've been buying a kangaroo berger for the heart launch program.

But I think you might have got his job back, man, I figured that. Or was he buying it and selling it as beef or was he just sort of not coming hamburger, Yeah, burger, like whatever, it's burger, burgers, burger. I mean, they're good to eat, there's no doubt about it.

Is there a stigma around it, like like that's a guy who eats kangaroo meat?

No, I wouldn't say it's that that extreme. I think people just sort of like you walk into the butcher's shop, the meat counters. There there's beef, there's lamb, there's pork, there's kangaroo. I want to be like, I'm not getting kikta.

If it's at restaurants though, is it at like high end restaurants, it will be.

See that's also kind of tourist contraction. Oh, I see, And I think people are more there's more of a push towards it from a like sustainability standpoint, in the sense that you know, these things, as you said at the point you made, they're getting culled whether you like it or not. We may as well try and incorporate, incorporate some of this protein into our you know, into

Crews just need a rebrand.

They need a rebrand. I agree. I think it's gonna be a tough road to hug. Yeah, gets a business with them.

Steve, Australian.

I only had kangaroo a couple of times. Someone sent me a bunch of kangaroo chops.

One time we ate them up. Oh interesting. I wonder if they're from like a farm in Texas or something Australia.

Really, I can't remember how I got them. It was a long time ago I got those. And then and then the same person sent me some yak meat yack meat.

Wow.

I think you do a side by side profile picture of would you eat me? And one side just the kangaroo and the other side of the kangaroo with like a big set of rabbit ears on it. Oh yeah, everybody likes eating rabbit.

Also, I have to say, like a wallaby looks a lot more appetizing than a big red kangary.

Really.

Yeah. They just look a bit juic here and.

Just smaller and little. They got a juicy look to it, not as sort of wiry and spring loaded as.

The male red kangary is a pretty pretty mean looking They are mean looking.

Yeah, they're very stern.

I didn't find anything about the cook getting his job back because it got so bad that the superintendent of the school district even resigned.

What Yeah, as I said, people are funny about it, like they are.

These people wouldn't know kangaroo if it kicked them here, you know what they look like. One last thing, so we uh man, maybe a year ago, maybe a year ago, we had a bunch of a bunch of our colleagues from the first from First Light on and they had been on this show, and we would announced that our waiters, First Light Waiters would be coming out this summer. So there was a long, you know, two year test process.

We've had people.

Running around hunting ducks and I've been trapping beavers in the waiters. I don't know, ten to fourteen states or something. We've been testing the waiters and just the heads up that they they gotta be perfect. We're we're not ready yet. Two years, ten states, they're not ready yet. So I know a lot of people keep reaching out about getting

Which I think is exactly what you want to hear from a company.

Yeah, because we could be saying they're not ready, but order now and by the way, ready yeah.

Yeah. Anybody who's had a rough go with an expensive pair of waiters is just you can't even look at them the same way. So yeah, we're aiming for the top of the heap here, the best of the best, and and we're putting the screws to them. So stay tuned, it'll happen.

Stay tuned, all right, Uh, tell about the story about getting beat up by by Kate Buffalo.

Well, it can be a long story or a short story the media. The long version. We were in our Leganza Game Reserve concession, which just to put things in perspective, it's over a million and a half acres of pure wilderness no other people bar our little camp and.

How many acres over a.

Million and a half acres.

It's looks like, yeah, that's like like what yellstones two million?

Yeah, it's about the size of the road Island.

Basically, Rhode Island's great state to have in the country. It's always good for making things comparisons. Yeah, you know what I mean. It's a great little tool, Yeah, to have Rhode Island.

So anyway, it's a two hour flight in from Arusha, which we're our bases, and it was a big family safari so my brother and another professional hunter were on the trip as well.

Now I'm going to drive you crazy because I need to have certain things clarified as we go along. Yeah, that's fine, do you mind right now?

Telling? Like, what is a concession?

So how it works in Tanzaniera is you lease the areas from the government. Gives you the right the tourism and hunting rights for that area of land. There's no private ownership in Tanzania and Southern Africa is very different and the landowner owns the wildlife and everything. We just leased the right to take people there.

So it's undeveloped.

Yeah, it's set aside for wildlife and you know, the habitats protected, but there's huge pressures on it. So it involves a huge amount of anti poaching and community sort of liaison work to get them on site.

This one million acre chunk. How many residents are in that one million acres.

No one just hunting camp. But all around the edge there are villages where they're farming and they have their land.

And those those villagers around the edge, they utilize that.

They're technically not allowed. They're not allowed to do anything. They shouldn't be cutting trees, farming, grazing their cattle. It's it's just set aside. It's a gamers.

Assuming that that does go on.

So this is the problem in Africa that you know, people are desperate to survive and the population is growing so rapidly there's not enough space for everyone. So you know, they see this huge piece of land and if they're not benefiting from it in some way, then of course, you know, if they can catch an animal and feed their family, then they're going to try. And so a big part of our job is trying to make the

Oh okay, so that's concession. Yeah, in their concession.

So we're in the in the Laganza Game Reserve, and because it's a big family group, some people are arriving earlier or later. And I'd been hunting with the mother and the daughter was just arriving halfway through the trip. And she's twenty three, her first African hunting experience, and the mother's like, well, why don't you just go out with her on one on one today and let her just you know, enjoy the experience and I'll have a

Luck following a single track following it was a group of four or five bucks.

Yeah, And anyway, the wind just kept swirling and working in their favor and it wasn't going to happen, so we don't want to push it anyway. So we head back to the car and we have our picnic lunch and a bit of a break and I'm like, well, why don't we just go along the edge of the lake shore this evening, and you know, if we happened

Pictures.

Yeah, and so the water back carries on and it goes around a few more of these ant hills, and we're stalking along the other side.

So you just use these ant hills as yeah, and like using round round hay bales exactly just like that.

And next minute, as we're coming around, we've literally only gone probably five hundred meters from the car, and I come around this one bush and this buffalo burst out of the front of the bush towards us. And normally, like when you're hunting them, ninety nine percent of the time, if they sense you, they burst out of the back of the bush and you don't even see them, you

They disappear and.

Smart insecond, and normally that actually helps you in the case that they'll it'll draw the animal's attention, but in this case, it didn't. It it just fixated on my client and everything sort of slowed down, and I could tell, you know, she was going to get annihilated because she was just standing up right in the open. And she'd later told me she didn't actually know it was a buffalo. She thought it was the water buck that we were hunting, so she was just confused in the moment, and I

Hooks, just a battering ram.

Yeah, So in my head in that split second, I kind of thought, well, I can throw my shooting sticks at it and attention. I didn't even slow it down. I just thought it would draw it towards me. And then I thought I could be like a bullfighter and dive out of the way. And at the last second, and I got that bit a bit wrong. I threw my sticks and hid it straight in the face.

How close was it when you when you huck your sticks at it?

So it burst out of the bush literally about fifteen yards in front of us, And it was about eight yards when I checked myself in the weigh a buffalo about fifteen hundred pounds, you know, maybe seventeen hundred for.

A big old How high are they at the shoulder?

The shoulder probably five five and a half.

Considerably bigger than I mean, well, like a big Yukon moves bigger.

Body is bigger, but I mean.

Pound yeah, carry, yeah, for sure.

It's it's more of a bull terrier shape than dobaman, if you know what I mean. It's solid, yeah.

Yeah, and the mask goes all the way to.

The hips, yeah, all the way to the ankles.

Ye.

So yeah, it comes at me and I literally just bend my knees to start the dark I've and I realized, there's no way I'm even going to project.

You couldn't get on.

You couldn't even get a jump going.

No, I didn't even start jumping. And I used to play a lot of rugby, so my instinct was I kind of knew it was going to get me in the ribs, so I.

Dipped my When you hooked your sticks at it was it was it still standing.

Or was it already it was running? It was almost Yeah, so he was already.

He was already, he'd homed in and he was.

And how far apart are you and your client?

She's about a meter to one side.

So he comes out, he's coming hard, and you throw as he's running at you, You fling your stuff at him.

Yeah, he's already got his velocity.

And really make a great shot too.

It was pretty surprised when I hit it in the face.

Imagine what he.

Yeah, it worked, and he came straight at me and and I dipped my shoulder, thinking I'll just take the impact on my shoulder, and I didn't realize it was going to be like being hit by a freight train basically, And the impact threw me about twenty yards, no joke, and I took most of it on my shoulder, but then the secondary impact hit my head and I sort of blacked out. So I woke up on the ground and everything was sort of blurry and spinning around, and I was trying to stand up, but I couldn't use

Ground while you were blacked out.

Yeah and yeah, so my butt was completely black, but I.

Don't remember this hook. Were still just doing with the boss.

They always use their head for everything. Yeah, and when when it did this, my client, the young girl, basically realized this was a buffalo, not a water buck. And we'd had the discussion earlier that morning what to do if you know, if we came across a buffalo in a bad situation, and I sort of said, you know, either get behind a bush if there's one nearby, or

He didn't claim that, He said, well, I used to play rugby. I gave him a pretty good shot.

But it did explain slightly why it behaved the way it did and why it was in a place you normally wouldn't expect to find a buffalo. So caught us off guard.

Oh so he was also in terrain, Yeah, he was.

He was right in a very open area and normally the buffalo will go to water and then they'll head way off back into the hills and thickets and and sort of disappear in the heat of the day. And he'd stayed very close to the to the water's edge, and I think probably because his leg was giving him problems.

So what was the the damage in total?

So that's kind of a funny story.

So I.

Thought I'd dislocated my shoulder, like the track has stripped me naked well down to my underwear, and because you know, you sort of think, you don't know with all that adrenine, I'm not sure what injuries you've sustained. And they realized that basically I looked fine on the surface, apart from I had this rhino horn sticking out of my out of my shoulder and I couldn't really figure it. I could still use my arm a little bit, but it was painful, and.

Rhino horn sticking out of your shoulder was what it was.

My collarbane, okay, but I thought it was just dislocated, and I thought I might be able to pop it all back into place. So by now, it's about six or fifteen in the evening, and as I was explaining earlier, like it's basically two hours flying back to Arusha, and we were about two hours from the air strip, so the whole process was going to take four hours, and

Do you think you would have gotten the shot off if you'd heard it?

Yeah, definitely. I mean I had enough time to hit it in the head with a stick, so I think I could have shot it. But anyway, hindsight, it's a lovely thing. But so anyway, we get back and they feed me some painkillers and I have a shower, and it's not beginning to stiffen up a little bit. So we decided to try on YouTube how to relocate your your shoulder. So I'm now lying on the dining room table lifting my arm above my head.

No doubt, watch those ads. Everyone knows.

Right, and I'm hoping it's going to just pop back in and nothing happens. So eventually the father's like, well, actually we should call my brother in law, who's an orthopedic surgeon's law.

Yeah, he's like, is he on YouTube?

Luckily we've got Wi Fi and camp so yeah, we have this sort of satellite Wi Fi. So we we FaceTime him and it's it's like four in the morning in the States, and amazingly he answers and he realizes straight away it must be quite serious, and so like, yeah, there's been a bit of an incident, but we really want you just to diagnose this problem. So I like showing my injury and I said that when I bend down like this, it sticks up like a ride a

So did you switch up rifles at that point so you could operate something with one arm? No, because you just out the lecture.

Yeah, well so I could with pain, I could use my rifle. I just couldn't lift it above my head. I mean my my arm basically couldn't lift my arm above my head. So I did try. I actually went looking for the buff.

So you already tried to find him.

I did try and find him, but it was I realized I was actually not being very clever, so we didn't look for it for very long.

No, I haven't these guys that set out what do they want to kill?

Tiger kills And.

It's a whole movie about him trying to find this this exact Jaguars shark and kill it.

It's a comedy. But yeah, that's like you.

Like father Bounty on the buffalo, the father of the girl that was with me, really and he was like, yeah, any any of your other clients coming through after we leave, I'll pay the game fee. Just you know, we need to to exact a little bit of revenge.

I followed the tracks for a little bit a month or so later, couldn't couldn't get on him. So he was still alive. Oh he was out there. Yeah, did he have a bad loop?

Uh?

The trackers said they could see from the tracks that there was something going on with one of his legs. Yeah, and they were certain it was him. I mean they knew that was that buffalo for sure.

Huh.

So we went we went for it for a little while, but it just kind of it wasn't viable.

Getting out of like his his his convalescent zone.

He was within he was within a mile of where he hit Roger, and he was sort of doing the same thing. He was hanging out by those sort of vegetation islands. But he did once when we followed him, he had gone kind of into the woodland and headed towards some thickets and some kind of higher country with swirling wind, and yeah, we just couldn't get on him. So I think I think he you know, I think he's sort of reverting back. Maybe he was doing a

Yeah, so we always come over in January anyway, and you know, for the hunting conventions, and I kind of figured it would be a good time to do something different and have a bit of time out from Africa and brought my family over and have been living in the Montana Dream which has been incredible.

And when do you got to go back? In about five days, you'll go back to Tanzania. Yeah, and do your summer hunting season.

Yeah, so it's all about to kick off.

I want I want you guys to talk about trackers. You talk about trackers a lot. And what I thought was interesting when you when you when you guys came for dinner, is uh, you discuss trackers, is like you acquiesced to their judgment.

Definitely, Definitely in my view, the trackers sometimes aren't spoken about with the kind of reverence that they deserve. And I would say, for me, as someone that wasn't born into a professional hunting family or born on the African continent, the greatest privilege of doing what I do and being

What allows them wow, why phenomenal?

So a great tracker is both born and made. In my opinion, they have exceptional eyesight, I mean just phenomenal ability to see things up close and in the distance. It's their eyesight is it's borderline superhuman. And they have a great tracker has a feel for what the animals are going to do and also for the terrain that they inhabit and how the animals will use that terrain.

Yeah, so, I mean my childhood was spent basically my dad used to hunt ten months of the year.

But the trackers are better than you still.

Yeah, but the only time I would see him would be to go on safari. So all my holidays were spent on safari. And my favorite part of the day was when the hunters would come back and it was siesta time, and the trackers were like some of my best friends and sort of nannies, and we'd go off adventuring in the middle of the day and set traps for guinea fowl and climb beare bab trees looking for honey and just learning how to make poison arrows. I mean,

You mentioned that to me when we heard dinner.

Yeah, Well, what people didn't realize is there's there's different forms of poaching in Africa. There's the ivory poachers, who are obviously very heavily armed, totally commercial and nasty and you know, zero tolerance and of course you call in

But so an individual might have grew up, yeah, hunting these areas, and at some point someone said that's not how it goes down anymore.

Yeah. So, I mean, we used to have a hunting area on the edge of a traditional hunter gatherer tribe's sort of boundary, and they were always coming in to try and hunt something with their bow and arrow, and you'd sort of feel sorry for them and drive them around, threaten that they were potentially going to go to jail. And then my dad would often be like, or you could come and work for me and make a living

Do they enjoy it or is it just that desk or just the situation they were.

Dealt, they love it. And the main thing is in Africa, like meat is literally a very rare commodity and placed very high on a sort of pedestal. So for these guys, they weren't actually interested in the money, but when they realized how much meat they were going to get, and you know, to in Africa, most people have meat in their diet maybe once in a week, you know, one meal in a whole week will have meat in it.

When you talk about that they dry a lot of meat. How does that go down?

Do?

I mean? Are there? Because that's not a small task.

It's everything. Basically, when when you hunt something successfully, they they skin off you know, the skin and the head and any trophies that the client wants.

And the trackers do that work.

Yeah, they'll they'll do the easier bits and then it goes back to camp and the skinner will split the lit in the ears and around the all the sort of more complicated bits back in camp. But they'll do the field preparation as such, and then you know a lot of the animals are too big to load into the back of a car, so you'll chop it up

And our camps sort of have like a behind the scenes operation that's processing. Obviously, you know, when you're on Safari as a client, you're eating one hundred percent game. You know, the kitchen in camp is turning out incredible food made from you know, the animals that you hunt.

What is the sort of like your trackers are from what cultural group?

Only know the rate lingo.

So they come from all sorts of different tribes. I mean generally what happens is initially you get people from the area. So in mars Island, most of the trackers of Marsailles because they understand the animals that you get there. That's the amazing thing with Tanzania is the variety of species that we hunt. And different parts of the country

It's yeah, those guys are ancestral hunter gatherers. So it's sort of it's it's deep deep in them to be able to sort of go anywhere and hunt anything. But you know, one could be forgiven for thinking that, well, what is what is it exactly that the professional hunter does?

Thing when you go straight off. How many trackers are with you?

Two with usually two in reserve, so it'll be you'll have a seen your tracking team that'll usually take the lead if things go long. I mean it is exhausting work, right, It gets very very tedious if things go long, or there's sort of a scenario where, for example, like we were talking about before an animal joins another herd, or an animal's gone through an area and another herd's crossed over and it's kind of confusing. They'll sort of fan out and everyone will sort of work together to kind

What's the impact of like how is poaching felt? Meaning like you could be an American and.

You're aware of poaching here, right, but you don't hear about poaching here nearly as much as you hear about poaching and how for.

Yeah, and like anti poaching squads and the black market around poaching and documentaries about poaching in Africa, is it?

I guess.

I guess probably the biggest difference is like a poacher in America is more or less a hunter who just hasn't got the right license, whereas in Tanzania, you know, there's commercial poaches who are out there, you know, trying to hunt elephants, you know, for the ivory, not not even necessarily for meat or for you know, the art of hunting that they're doing it to make a living and.

They're part of like but but it's like a criminal syndicate.

It is. It is those three tiers that that Roger mentioned. You know, there's the ivory poaches that they're heavily armed and they're they're very aggressive and really there's not a lot that we as Safari operators can do about them. That and and I think that something the Tanzanian government's very cognizant of, and you know they've they've come down

Homemade. I mean a lot of these guns that we're confiscated they've.

Made out of a bit of pipe shooting, chunks of rebar that have been swed, yeah, or I've seen I've seen double A back loaded into them as the slug. And so those guys, you know, grab the old muzzle loader, grab the old bow and arrow and head out into the game reserve and try and try and get something

I do want it. We have enough law enforcement friends where I do have to say that in the US, poaching is prolific and you have a broad spectrum of people who participate, and ranging from like the honest mistake crowd to the people who fit the psychological profile of like a serial killer and they're they're they're poaching so consistently to like scratch that exact same itch, and kind of everything in between two like very well organized groups

Wall type of Yeah, it's a good way of putting it.

Like, you have some real organized poaching stuff, but it's not feeding a commercial market as much as it's feeding and that ego and social.

Scale and the commercial stuff that we read about would be, you know, is very like mom and pop the random butcher shop that is like, yeah, if you bring me a bunch of white tailed deer, I'll turn it into.

And we don't mean to downplay the you know, poaching as a as an issue in North America. I think, as you say, it's just got very it's rooted in very different. It's driven very differently. I'm sure even the guy that's out commercial elephant poaching in Tanzania, if you could offer him a steady job that didn't involve that, he'd be more than happy to quit. You know, it's not it's not coming from ego.

It's all.

It's all from poverty and unfortunately a demand for those you know, those products like an ivory rhino horn on the you know, and the guy lion bones and things like that too.

And the guys out in the field are making a fraction of the big kingpins that are selling the ivory on I mean, they'll they'll make a thousand dollars maybe on a pair of ivory horns ivory tusks, and the next guy will sell them for anything from twenty to fifty thousand dollars.

You know, let me uh, you might already know this, but just as a way to compare the two.

So in the you have.

Speaking generally generally, the state's own wildlife. Okay, the states have a state fishing game aide. The state owns a wildlife, whether the wildlife is on private land, state land, federal land. The state has jurisdiction over the wildlife. The state will have a state agency that employs biologists and law enforcement individuals. That state agency, those biologists will make an assessment of population trends, models of how many animals are out there.

To the population.

So these aren't real numbers, but like we have a thousand deer, we can safely kill two hundred a year. Those two hundred will now be democratically allocated to the best of our ability, to those people who would like to go get one, and then we will govern how, when, why not why? We will govern how and when they go get the surplus we've identified.

And Korean It's important to note that the bulk of these state agency funding comes from participation, license and tag sales.

Very very important detail.

It's quite circular because then them selling them selling the two hundred deer, them selling access to the two hundred deer through buying licenses is how they fund.

The research to set the quasis. Yeah, it's it's very similar in Africa that it is. Different countries are very different in it In Tanzania, for example, the land, the wildlife, everything is owned by the government. The quotas are set by the government. We have a government official who comes out hunting with us to make sure we are sticking to all the regulations.

Whereas all the time, all the time.

Every every hunting party has a game scout government employee.

Are you serious, commercial fishing vessels.

Yeah here, yeah, yeah, really yeah, at all times and change. Do you imagine if every hunting party in the US. Yeah, there is really it's always present.

Regulated, yeah, and you know they're they're there to make sure we abide by all the regulations.

What a huge commitment from the agency or whatever the appropriate term.

Well, for sure, and they're there and they're they're a great help to you know, when we run into those poachers, we don't have to do a citizen's arrest, you know, or they can are authority. They're they're an agent of the Department of Natural Resources and Tourism.

It's the same way with our anti poaching.

Are they generally good hunters?

Do some of them are? Yeah?

A lot of them get passionate about it and you know, enjoy being out in the wilderness light.

But you also kind of had a look that said, some of them may be bureaucratically placed there, and are they stick out a little bit?

Some some start in the towns and then might get placed out in the field against their wishes. Same and you know, in any.

But in your camp. To make sure that you guys aren't doing like what would be the most common bad thing that would happen.

Well, I mean we don't. We don't break any of these really, but there are laws like you're not allowed to hunt from a vehicle. You have to be twenty five meters or fifty meters away from a vehicle anytime. You can't.

I can't add over water holes, yeah, for example.

Also that's I guess that's what I was curious about there.

Is we're not allowed to hunt at night.

You know, there is interested in methodology as they are, and that you're not killing too much of whatever.

I would say a combination of both. Yeah, they're they're making sure that essentially the act of government that you know, that governs what we do. They're there to make sure that we adhere to that. But as much of that as they do, they're also there to support us in our efforts, you know, to combat poaching. Yeah, they're there to be. Yeah, they're essentially the law enforcement arm of the Department of Natural Resources and Tourism that they are able to you know, if we run into a poacher,

So it's very much a combined effort. Our antipaching teams are half our employees of Robin Hurtsparaz and half from the townsan Near Wildlife Department, and they all go out on patrol together and help each other.

And you guys are operating out of the same camp.

Yeah, they they'll they'll have the hunting.

And hunting poachers all kind of at the same time.

Yeah, the two go together every time we're out in the field where we're on patrol. You know, we have our actual anti poaching units as well, but but when we're in the field, we're naturally doing anti poaching.

So all of Tanzania, you are not allowed to hunt the water horse.

No one can apart.

From a few animals crocodile, wait a tunga water. But there's there's a few very specific animals that so other than aquatic semi aquatic species that you're just not I mean, like, you know, crocodiles in the water all the time.

You know, there's an exception for that. But we can't sit over water and wait for a buffalo to come and drink.

It seems so nitpicky for Africa someone has never been there and has no idea what I'm talking about.

It was a little more, but it makes it a challenge, which to me, half of what hunting about.

And these rules weren't weren't set twenty years ago, thirty years ago. These rules have been around, you know, since the early days. I would say probably Roosevelt Safari era. It was probably a little looser, but for sure there would have been a concept of, oh, you know, we don't shoot stuff over water. You know, we don't shoot big we don't shoot big tuskers, big elephants over water. We track them from the water hole, and that that

Would you say that they're complex or I mean, like how hard would it be for someone to step in and understand the regulatory regime.

That's why we do like to become a professional hunter, you do a two year apprenticeship and then you have to sit an exam on the law. I mean, because every species there's there's different rules. Like to hunter a male leopard, first of all, it's got to be male, but it's got to be over a certain length or you know, it can be confiscated. And same with a lion has to be aged in Tanzanier and if it's under seven there's a fine and it can be confiscated if it's under another age.

So so when people like to point out that Cecil the lion was thirteen, he couldn't have been under seven in Tanzaniera.

You have to hunt a seven year old, a seven year old or older. And I mean the cecil thing is is something that sort of hits a bone.

Finally enough, we've been laboring. It's been an albatross around our neck for like, however many years it's been now and I mean it had a real impact for us. It Okay, go on, I mean Roger can go into

Paper records are there. There was before cecil, there was one hundred and sixty hunting concessions in Tanzania, and within three or four years of that, the government basically I mean that the hunting outfitters had returned a lot of these least because they didn't have the business for them, and it dropped to one hundred and twenty and those forty areas, the sort of fringe areas, they then had

So you believe I mean you're saying this, That's why I clarify you the we call him Cecil.

Yeah, the Cecil Lion debarcle everyone had the right actually led to land, actually led to abandonment of hunting lands which were then developed.

I mean we're talking that's probably forty million acres of wilderness that was lost because of the Cecil incident.

Really, I have no trouble.

It didn't even happen in Tanzania, but it's it's a.

Fact happening Zimbabwe.

There's a there's a high roller here in town. He's kind of not he's operating here and he didn't grow up unting. And I heard how he's going to Africa go hunting, but his wife has forbade him shooting a lane.

Yeah, yeah, and that's that's what it did is a lot of people.

She doesn't want their holiday home burned down. But it made people.

It didn't just affect lion hunting. It affected hunting in Africa full stop. Your avid hunters would still come, but a lot of the middle ground for a few years. Well, I work with will feel about this.

We have Tanzania has forty percent of Africa's wild lions in Tanzania within the borders of forty percent of Africa's wild lions. So we were hit hardest because that for a lot of these areas, that was our big ticket item, you know, that was our draw card. We could offer a really well done lion hunt that we could back

You we actually funded our own population studies of both lion and leopard in our hunting areas because again most of the research was done in the national parks where it was comfortable and easy for the scientists. So we paid for some researchers from Kingsville actually to come come out and study the lines for two years and the leopard and make population to check that our quotas were actually within the right regions.

So do you have line do you have.

In your areas? Do you have.

Lion lions that you could hunt? But there's no clients that want to buy that lion to egg.

Yeah, definitely.

And the other thing that the reality of it all is is in the wild, very few lions make it over the seven year you know, age restriction for hunting because it's not like living in the Serengetti where there's just plentiful wildlife everywhere. It's a tough life. And these younger, stronger lions come in and they push those older males out into these fringe areas. They get injured, they can't feed themselves, they die a pretty nasty death. So for one to find a lion over the seven year ages

What are you looking at when you look at it.

There's a whole range of things from.

Those coloration, main development, color of their shape, color of their teeth, they have these glandular patches sort of on their back, how they've developed. I mean, it's it's an inexact science. Trail cameras are a real help because we can get helpful on that kind of stuff. Yeah, a little bit.

It comes down to you a judgment.

They're gonna say it's a huge lion no matter what, and it might be a three year old. They're gonna be liket some on stut and it's like people here with mountain lions. Yeah, big old tomta Yeah yeah, totally black bear.

So we were coming down the road looking for turkeys last weekend and there's a black bear about the size of my dog, a little white patch on his chest. Yeah, and he's sitting like my dog, one leg kind of kicked out on his back like this wait, literally waiting for cars to get down the road, you know. And I turned my buddy Kyler after he passed, and I was like, knowing the area, I was like, you know, let's swing around, show that little little guy off the

Yeah. It's one of those things where in an area where there's a thriving lion population, it won't be just one male with a pride. It'll be often a coalition, and those males will frequently be related. They'll be sort of littermates, so like cousins, brothers, sometimes a father and sons that will sort of, you know, sort of run

There was a brutal video from the Serengetti the other day of like literally the king of the Serengetti being wiped out by three younger males.

I mean just getting told.

It's a nasty ending.

But the ones that survive go will then go into that nomad phase again. But he's never coming back to Pride dominance.

He's he's not building up.

He's on the downswing.

He's done his job.

Yeah, he's on the downd. That's the only one we're going to find. We can't shoot. We can't shoot a Pride male ethically because if you upset the balance of that coalition, what will happen is it'll it'll just be inherently weaker having lost one of its members, which can precipitate that Pride takeover from another group of males. And what that'll do is once those males take over, if there's any cubs from the previous males, they'll kill them.

Real similar to ours here though, right so number one killer of mountain lions as mountain lions, but is that predatory or it can be bought, but typically males or killing males, but also the exact same like males are killing kittens because that female will come back into that then, like right.

Away, yeah, when they do, uh with coastal brown bears, when you do, like what are they eating? If you were to list like what a mature male coastal brown bears diet is high on the list is brown bears.

I told a woman that at a potty one time, and she was just incredulous. She nearly clowed my eyes. It's regarded as like a primary food source. Yeah, I mean, I have no trouble a primary.

Food source fishermen.

Isn't it so funny though? It's like, well, what is your agenda with that? And you're like, well, no, it's just what that's what happens.

They got you guys have largely Maybe I'm getting this wrong. But you guys have been for different reasons moved out of the elephant hunting business.

Well, we as a company made a choice about twenty years ago that we couldn't ethically hunt elephants in our hunting areas in Tanzania. The poaching got so bad about fifteen years ago that you know, for a mature elephant with big ivory, it takes fifty sixty years to get to that level, and I.

Think they're all so really to get to the point that we would feel comfortable hunting one again would take another twenty thirty years from now just to build up those populations to an ethical level for us.

But there's still ethical you know, government limits. But we just personally decided if you want to, well, we'll suggest people go to Botswana or parts of Namibia where they've got too many elephants and they actually physically have to cull on top of the you know, the foreign hunting clients. You know, Botswan or one point was have into cul forty or fifty thousand elephant every year.

What yeah, yeah, no way, yeah, I mean the crop damage that they can do and the and again, you know, elephants are extremely migratory by nature. You know, they'll follow grass, they'll follow the rains, they'll follow ancient ancestral paths to get to different food resources at different times of the year. And of course all that now has been like interdicted

Well, actually dropping offspring every single year.

No, they're not dropping four to seven year carving interval, twenty two month gestation. Elephants breed well when they're left to their own devices and when they have habitat, but it's a slow process. It's generational. So if you lose a whole bunch like we did, it takes a long time to get to recover.

But what Morgan was saying a minute ago is something that it touches a bone with me. For some reason, hunting in Africa is labeled as trophy hunting, and okay, trophies do come into it, like hunters always. There are people who want the bigger animal, but it should really be called sustainable hunting. What we do, that's what our company is all about. It's making sure that our off take does not affect the population. And it's my dad always says, it's we're basically no different from a beef

Well, it's very confusing. And I'll tell you, like the argument that I hear all the time, and I have no answer too because I have no experience. Right, It's like, well, where does that money go from that elephant hunt?

Yeah?

Right, And it's like, well.

It generally all goes straight back into that area, you know, because the game fee goes gets paid to the government, which funds their game scouts who are back in the area patrolling. And that's what I was saying with these with these areas that disappeared after Cecil. It was because there was there was no longer any funding, and they put the funding back into the core places that are bringing them money.

And that's what I'm confused about too, because so you pay like a lease to the state for that concession, but then at that point it sounds as if it then becomes your responsibility to fully manage that concession.

In conjunction with the wildlife department.

But that Wildlife department will not operate there unless there's an active concession.

Well, they just have limited funding and they're going to put the funding at their core resources. So like the Serengetti for instance, that has millions of tourists coming through paying fees. They have all the funding they need for that area and they're going to protect it because that's bringing in the big bucks. And the more peripheral the areas are, the less funding reaches those places, and that's

So your your business affords your business or the government to be able to do monitoring in that area one hundred percent.

So Tanzania has got I think it's forty percent of their total land mass is set aside for some sort of conservation effort, some sort of wildlife conservation, and sort of various tiers of wilderness. So before when you were talking about like no one lives in our in our Leganzo concession because it's a game reserve, well that's kind of our top tier of protection. Below that, there's other tiers where you'll have areas where there are you know,

A what is it less than two percent?

No, well, yeah, but no the thirty by thirty is that what it is?

Oh?

Yeah, but that's a way different definition. Yeah, right, by two thousand, by two thousand.

And thirty having is that right?

Yeah, by two thousand and thirty, having thirty percent of the US and some kind of it's a.

It incorporates things like CRP and yeah.

Well under some kind of conservation model.

Yeah, And the lines here are a lot blurry between wildlife habitat and agriculture. Right, Like, you can go on a ranch that's being fairly intensively, you know, farmed or ranched, and there'll be white taileda, there'll be analope, they'll be coming down onto the alfalfa. They'll be predators, you know,

A and anything that steps in there is going to get posts going to.

And because it's detrimental to their agriculture.

This is the biggest thing that you have to understand about Africa is that for wildlife to survive, it has to have a value because it's either going to be eaten or it's destructive to that that crops, or it's killing that cattle. You know, their lifestyle.

In the US, we're on we're like on edge, very guarded about the pay to play model. Certain certain forces are not right, but like you know, you're kind of like meat and potatoes. Non aristocratic hunters are worried about the pay to play model because it violates an understanding of how we manage wildlife. When I was talking about that that at its ideal, wildlife is allocated democratically.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

And and pay to play comes into there's one hundred versions of pay to play emerging pay to play.

It would be.

Things like governor's tags, auction tags, where you're pulling it out of democratically. It's you're taking animals, bighorn sheep, elk, whatever, and the tag the opportunity would have been allocated democratically, but it goes to the highest bidder. So that would be an affront to pay to play. Another huge pay to play aspect in the US is the rapidly i mean, the increased, still increasing numbers of acreage that are where

It's always been that way, even you know, going back again to the Roosevelt Safari, you know that you couldn't I mean, the early guys would go to Cape Town or something like that and buy a bunch of cattle and hire a bunch of guys and load up these wagon trains and head out, you know, into the wilderness. But but it very quickly became if if someone wanted

Like is that really Like if you you're a resident of Tanzania, you can resident there is no possible way for you to go legally get.

We used to have resident hunting for all intents and purposes and no.

But what I would say is that a lot of people, probably I don't know if a lot of people have thought about this, but I've thought about it quite a lot recently, having spent a lot of time in North America. Is I think the North American model is underpinned by something else other than sort of just the democratization of wildlife, and that is the sort of like presupposition that there's a large number of this people in this country that

Well, you know what actually up on that?

No it didn't right, No, no, no, we weren't through that, absolutely absolutely, and they wipe the place clean, wipe the place clean, right and and and Africa and I speak, you know through the lens of Tanzania specifically, is still on that development trajectory where you know, there's a growing population, there's all this pressure, there's a huge.

Number of people that are living on a really really hand to mouth existence, and you know, democratizing wildlife in with those under those circumstances would lead to I think like it's like the tragedy of the commons right where it's just like there's all this pressure of consumption on very limited resources. And also I would think if you I think if you spoke to the average Tanzania and like sport hunting isn't a high priority for them, just

So the wildlife isn't allocated, but some of the funding is.

Some of the funding is allocated, definitely, And we couldn't do what we do without partnership with those communities. Right, Like if our model was role in their run rough shot over them, put up fences, keep them out, you know, have our anti poaching guy is you know, essentially you know, intimidating them to stay out of our area. It wouldn't work because they have more of them than there are

I mean, America has a great system. I mean the tag system.

It's the best in the world.

I mean, I didn't ever understand.

Un ironically it is, but there's some preconditions. I think that it's a great point. Randall and I are working on a project.

We're working on a project about it'll be a it will be an audiobook, like an audio like a yeah, an audiobook.

I imagine his title would be doctor Williams On that.

We're working on. The first one we're doing is.

A history of the of the deer, well what we call.

The long hunters. If you've heard of a fella named Daniel Boone, oh yeah, he made his name for himself as a long hunter, but focused heavily on the deer trade in colonial America, interesting because they were in bad shape for a while.

Oh and what you're talking about when you talk about like what about when everyone is in poverty? Right, how

Yeah, and like.

Trying to which no one paid attention to that, but like them trying to go like okay, how would you do something like this? And I couldn't believe on one of the first prohibitions on deer hunting was in the seventeen hundreds. Wh Yeah, there's going like what if we had a time a year? What if we had a time a year? And you can't hunt. And basically the response.

Is yeah, I hope everybody else.

But it was it was like like like sort of watching this young country to be going like, well, let's say you did want to save some of it, Like where do you begin, you know, with a bunch of ideas.

It didn't hold. So what defines a long hunter? They went on some long ass hunter? Got it? Got it okay?

They would only turn if they had enough meat to bring back.

Wow, okay, And that's hide hunters. They were generally like deer. They were deer. They were hunting. Generally, they sold a lot of bush meat. Got it okay, They sold a lot of bush meat.

But they were.

Generally hunting hides, primarily white tail deer hides that would get exported to europe interests.

And there's also the parallel of like global demand for commodities feeling excessive harvest, right like when you're talking about ivory trade, right like, in the commercial demand for those resources, there's like a bottomless demand for or an endless demand whatever you want to call it, for white tail deer skins to turn into leather for leather products.

And it's just like from people that didn't really care how you got them, right, Yeah, as long as like you said you talked about earlier, like if you can get them to the port, that's good enough for me.

Goo.

The fascinating thing with North America to me is like the obviously those animal populations just just took a dive. I mean, I've heard about the in relation to turkeys and whitetailed deer in particular. But obviously the habitat was still there to enable that. Once once they had figured out through whatever like political or social means to put this structure to conserve these animals, set seasons, you limit harvest. Once that was in place, the animals were able to

Want to. It's it's a fifteen to five year process to recreate something that's destroyed in six months.

Well, and politically you go evict those people, which is a nightmare.

There's one exception to my rule is my friend Matt Cook has a farm and there was a house on air and he the fire department came in and burned the house down like to do practice, and then he scraped up the foundation and they just planted over the.

Top of the house.

And every time you go through that area there is something hanging out sitting on the house.

Yeah, I do. It's not really it's not really a scalable model. No.

One time we go so one time you go buy it as a groundhog stand in their last time two times ago I went by it, there's a fox squirrel.

Stand in there. And I'm not kidding you.

We were just doing a fundraiser hunt there and the turkey that my like my fundraiser guy that I was guy helping the turkey that he killed. When I spotted that turkey, it was standing on.

That place nice. So just that place to that guy. I often kind of have fantasies like driving the Paradise Valley, like maybe you could just scrape all this back.

Like, let me choose my words very carefully. Had someone in eighteen hundred thought that they would just put a giant trailhead right alongside what would become High ninety and that was the trailhead for that for everything to the south of there, they would be they would be applauded today.

You know that ain't gonna happen.

I had some other point I was gonna make about what the hell are we talking about before I start talking about my buddy's place. Well, that habitat when it goes well, we've been we've mentioned Roosevelt a lot. Yeah, so we've been mentioning his safari sort of. You mentioned like the habitat was still there.

Yeah.

His his kind of genius at the time was it was just focused on basically preservation of preservation of habitat, right it was stopped, well, stop the slaughter, yeah, like stop unregulated slaughter and then save ground. Right, knowing that just the fecundity the biology of the animals, if you stop killing every last one of them and you save

Yeah yeah. South Africa went through a like a reintroduction phase. Well, yeah, because they privatized. They went a different direction to us. They privatized the kind of resource and so I think they went from something like four million head of game in the entire country to like twenty million in a couple of decades because essentially, you know, they became a market for you know, people to go over there and hunt or you know, do photo safaris or whatever it was.

Model's got a question, Oh sorry, go ahead.

So I was going to say, going back to the Roosevelt protecting the habitat thing. I think that's our biggest issue in Africa right now is like the population in Africa is already one point three billion people and it's set to basically double in the next twenty five years. So the pressure on land is just like it's never been before.

You're not terily optimistic, are you.

No, it's I mean everyone's so in the great world is anti hunting, especially African hunting. But we're preserving these huge wilderness areas that have so much pressure. And I would be totally forwadive. There were other forms of land use that could protect it, and the photo tourism has their areas, but none of those people want to go to the places we hunt. It needs something to protect

Yeah, there's that huge temptation to like say, well, just swap the gun for the camera, right, and then there's no killing, there's no you know, it's then it's all

Oh I that was a beautiful statement. Linger a little bit.

Yeah.

Absolutely, habitat, man, it's all habitat it is. And one of the greatest things about hunting is the fact that a lot of people go to New York State, but they don't go to the parts of New York State that I go to, right, or swap that out for Montana or Maryland or wherever. It just takes you off of the tourist map, and it's it's a ultimately, in my mind, a much more real experience, right.

Oh big time. I mean the thing that I say to people that it's like kind of become a little bit of something I repeat again and again. But safari, the word safari doesn't mean hunting trip. There's a word for hunting in Swahili. It's quinda, which I also think kind of rolls off the tongue to be honest, but that wasn't selected as the word to describe what we do.

It's the escape as well. It's like a lot of our clients say there's there's nowhere else in the world that they truly just switch off from everything apart from being out tracking buffalo.

In big wild spaces. That's it's hard to get that elsewhere. I do have to ask you this one thing. It's not nearly as romantic and fun of as of the things we've been talking about, but what you have to go through to be a professional hunter as it is a profession, right, And then what is your response to people in North America who casually respond to themselves or refer to themselves rather as professional hunters.

It's a subtle dig at Steve Vanilla, this guy I talk a lot.

It is recorded. I want you to find where I've ever said.

That, No, I think other people have said it about you. I'm being very facetious. It's it's it's a brotherhood. So I'm not in the business of of kind of dunking on other people talking, yeah, ship talking people that make their living, you know, guiding, you know whatever, doing whatever it is that they do that kind of allows them to refer to themselves that way.

I had a professional shan Antler hunter around the podcast recently.

Really, that is that I'm gonna have to think about it. I'm going to think it was as I'm gonna have to think about that one for a while because I'm still I'm still a little bit professional mushroom hunter.

I guess, yeah, you do enough of anything, you become a professional for sure.

And I mean ours is our our industry has got a little bit more of a sort of formal thing to it. But there are guys that will look at the kind of apprenticeship I've done, which some of it has been like a little bit self taught. Others have been really just following around you know these again incredible hunters. And going back to you know, Roger's comment that his

Exams accreditation, Yeah.

There was a formal component to it that's against the Bible. I mean, and I'm not necessarily anchoring it to that there's a formal component to it for us, but yeah, I mean, I think.

And then there's something where somebody adorns you with a break action rifle, a double rifle of some sort, but.

You got to you got to carry it over your shoulder.

I was in the camp one time when a guy was eyeballing me. I was guiding, and he said, uh, when are you going to get rid of that bolt trash and get yourself a real rifle, meaning a double rifle.

Yeah, it's definitely a very split camp in the professional hunting world on bolt versus.

We're double men firmly in that you guys do the little bit tradition, the big doubles. Yeah we do. We both do, Yeah, Rogers.

But it's a question of is two shots better than potentially three shots? Is what it comes down to. We can get two shots so faster a bolt action guy can maybe get the third.

You can miss twice real fast.

Yeah. One of my again, one of my mental might have been. It might have been. Derek also said to me, you know, when you're shooting that double rifle, if something comes you know, by all means, when you first see it, fire that first barrel, but hold on to that second barrel until you can't miss till till the end of there you're touching.

It's you know, I'm assuming both of you guys have had to shoot charge and.

Stuff yep a few times.

Like every year, thing, every decade, it varies. I will say this, A lot is made of the danger element of what we do. And it's there, you know Roger's situation as a classic example that had to gone differently. You know, two little boys are growing up without a dad. You know the dangers there, and we'll we'll put our lives on on the line for our clients, like Roger demonstrated.

Well, that one game made a whole video series about getting charged by everything in Africa over and over and over again.

Yeah, we we don't, we don't operate that way, and I'll just leave it at that. But but I think the bottom line for me is a charge is a highly undesirable situation. The buffalo hunt or the lion hunt or the leopard hunt that you will remember and that will make you smile every time you think about it. Is exactly like the deer hunt, the bear hunt, the

And the biggest part of the biggest part of our apprenticeship is really teaching you how to not get yourself. It's about teaching your caution and not just going, you know, guns blazing into a situation.

Sure, I mean, I tell you, I you know, I've always kind of wanted to I've always kind of wanted to go to Africa, and we've even looked at it when we were filming a lot of shows we've even at times kicked it around.

But after having you guys doing, man, I want to go so bad and hunt keep buffalo, make it happen. Let's make it happen. It's I just want nothing like it. It's just really different. It's really different to love to check it out. Yeah, it's I think there's a reason why, you know, Africas sort of held this place in people's imaginations for a long time. And you know, obviously you know there's that danger element and so on and so forth.

Species, how many species on the the.

Oh, well between between all different hunting areas. There's a there's about thirty three different species of animals you can game animal.

Yeah, out of one camp, how what's the variety of.

Probably twenty in any given Yeah.

But I'm not looking, man, I'm very I want to be very targeted being I'm not looking to be like, oh, that's what one of them is.

But there's no.

Want to be like, well, what's that? What's that?

Well there is, but they kind of sold me on Yeah, they I don't know to put words your mouth, these guys really like tracking those Kate buffalo and they kind of sold me on that as being sort of like the.

And when you're on that, there's just less uh sight seeing opportunity.

It consumes. But there you'll you'll bump into stuff that you know, it'll be a particularly nice specimen or whatever. While you're tracking buffalo or when you're heading back to camp or whatever, you'll pins of stuff. And there's definitely species.

There's a list of species that are what we call real hunts. So you're not just going to see one driving around.

You know, I grew up guiding in eastern Montana for antelope, and people got so distracted by all the other stuff that you could do that, it became very challenging to kill an antelope, which at the time was not hard to do, but it was like, well, I want to chase those birds or chase those rabbits or you know, and all the distraction things. So I know that in order to be successful, it's something you really have to.

They said you will see lions and tracking the track in the Buffalo.

Quite often there, we'll say tracking the belt, you will.

See lions, you'll see elephants, you'll see war hogs, all this kind of junk.

Man.

Yeah, you'll see it. You'll just see it around. I mean, when you're driving around in the area, you'll see it. And man, some of those animals are good to eat. Yeah, but it's a really it also sounds like a track, and it sounds like a real grind. You put some big miles.

On it, the track sounds phenomenal, Like you guys do.

Some ten miles.

You guys do some ten mile sessions easily.

Yeah, easily, and it will be seven to ten miles.

And that ulfalo, you know, snorting at you, I can't even see it.

You consistently have the clientele that is willing to show up and walk seven to ten miles a day.

Yeah, we tell them.

I mean you have to judge the client and sometimes, you know, I've had a eighty three year old on safari and it reaches a stage where you've just got to cool it.

Just different, itinerary.

But yeah, you always bring the bag of em and M's right, yeah exactly.

I always have.

Already. Yeah, I could have bought those at home.

The cliff bars, there are.

Some source of energy. Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, you know, every buffalo hunt's different. But I think Roger and I feel the same way as like as probably you guys do. The you're driving down the track and there's one standing off to the side of the road, even if it's a real big one, it's like, you got to track them. You've got to track them. It's got to be proper, it's got to be done right. There's no and there is hardly ever an easy buffon.

And that's what's so beautiful about them is it's it's always an adventure, and I don't know. I always people say, how could you liken it to hunting in North America? And I think from what I hear, I think elk hunting is probably the nearest thing. But they're not in a huge danger element of adrenaline and excitement on top of it being a huge challenge in a beautiful wilderness.

And what's what's tipped horn tip? The horn tip size on those things, well, it varies.

It can vary from as wide as its head like the one that hit me to forty five inches.

Wow.

For us, the trophy is an old one. Your trophies a nali one, the gnaria the better. Like if I if I could only shoot one buffalo in my life and it was like that one that got rodged with, I'd be psyched. I'd be happy to have that on my wall. I'd be absolutely thrilled.

Little chunk of Rogers collar bone.

Stuff, that's an added bonus. But yeah, that you know, a trophy is in the kind of the eye of the beholder, you know, as long as it's old. I mean, I've shot some buffalo that's horns are barely as white as there is. But I was yeah, or or just he was small. He's just a small buffalo, just like you get a small elk, Like you're just a small buffalo, never going to get any bigger. That's just how it was how he was made.

Rick By started this award they called the Dugger Boy Award, which in my opinion is probably the best hunting award that I've ever heard of. And the criteria of how they judge it is not based on the size of the animal. It's it's all about the age and how hard a hunt. It was like four or five factors, but it's nothing to do with the the inches. It is just to do with age and how physical or difficult it was to achieve. So what made it so memorable?

Guy should get a high score. I'm hoping it's his only chance. His dad's a judge, so the only way for him to win is getting that one. I think I think you can go with.

Case with that one.

Yeah, I think if I was Africa, how would hire you guys to go around?

Like?

Given the spiel? Well, Americans, I mean, we will talk to anyone who listen about what we do because we I would say, a from the privilege of getting to do what I do and be with those trackers, be with those like minded people, your clients, some phenomenal clients over the years that I would say my mission if I had to like define it, and I know, like it's a sort of it's very American thing to like talk about your mission, but I'm going I'm gonna get

Yeah, And it's a passion like for us, it's it's really none of us are in it as. You don't sign up to be a professional hunter to make a lot of money. You do it because you care about these wilderness areas. I mean, we've got areas that we've taken care of for forty five years and you know, you have a bond with these places that is second to nothing, and a lot of it. You know, you

You guys do a good job of it.

I'm gonna start to go fund me be called Steve Goes Hunt in Africa. Then, you know, I wish we were playing trivia because I bet we beat you guys bad, because you wouldn't know all the.

Americas North America thrash US if a.

Trivia show right now and a lot of them like what river.

You guys, so we get we get.

I mean if there was a question of like name these five antelope species and I'd be like, oh boy.

We might have to go.

It makes me realize how American our trivia game is very American bad.

That makes sense.

But we're gonna you know what, we're launching our trivia, our trivia, We're launching a trivia board game.

Nice and see.

Here's the long Let me give you a little insight into the into board the board game world. What you do is you launch board game and then you and then every year you have actual expansion pack. So like we can't decide if our first expansion expansion pack would be like the White Tail expansion pack, the Waterfoul expansion pack.

And then we'll come back on and do trivia and it'll be will be a little more even.

If we drop from that deck. Another expansion pack we talked about was like mountain Men and Frontiersman expansion pack. But I don't know, if you come up with enough questions.

We can throw in some cool stuff about like some of those early Africa guys like this guy F. C. Salou for example, just to just a wild man, just to have that no Americans give. Yeah, but some American I mean again, if they've read, if they've read about the Roosevelt Safari, they'll know who F. C. Salu is. Really Yeah, they'll know that guy's name, and they should. Everyone should.

I got one last question, pith helmets mandatory.

Anymore? Definitely not.

I have had one client get off a carelem plane with his socks pulled up, his hunting jacket and that he was a writer, to be fair, so he was trying to recreate this feel he wanted to feel it from the beginning.

To hes a method writer. I dig it, I honestly I did. I've got a lot of admiration for that guy that that takes balls.

Launch instead of like a regular trucker cap We should have a.

Some of the Zimbarbiean professional hunters laugh at me for wearing boots. So I think a pith helmet is going to be like a non starter. Well, I'll look it up later.

Still, I'm not quite clear of why they wore them. Was that sun protection?

Shade?

Sun protection? I don't think it's gonna stop a bullet?

No, No, all right, Robin Hurt Safaris, that's the place. Don't call down there until I get my situation squared away.

Have a thing on the web to just shut the website down. Yeah, just a few days until I get my situations will and we will hold something for you. We'll hold something for you, dude, I want to go so bad. Man. All right, what are you thinking? Phil?

You in?

Is this my official invite? Well, let's even get that editing pulled together. Turn it around on the Edits all depends on how the next couple of weeks go. It sounds. Yeah, all right, guys, thanks so much for coming on. Man, this is great, Thanks.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, go on.

On the seal Brey, shine like silver in the sun.

Ride, Ride, Ride on along, sweetheart. We're done.

Beat this damn horse to death. Taking a new one. Ride away. We're done beat this damn

Horse today, so take your new one and ride on.