Fond memories of trampling through the backwoods of Uncle's farms, .22 in hand, the sweet smell of rotting leaves, remains of forgotten rusted fences growing through knurled trees, scary old cabins, long since abandoned, broken glass containing untold horrors to an adolescent imagination, muddy, slippery trails and clear streams and darting fish, patches of purple flowers and moss nestled in the shade of ancient oaks, and fields of tan cornstalks drying in the sun, with absolutely nothing beckoning, distracting, spawning guilt for time better spent. More often than not, some cousin by my side, shooting bottles and cans, hunting squirrels and crows, driving deer towards my Uncles, carrying the BIG rifles and looking for old males, multipointed racks and meat for the freezer.
The earliest fossils of the hominin lineage date some seven million years ago, and Homo sapiens, us, have roamed this big blue ball for two hundred thousand years, with sedentary agriculture only starting to appear roughly ten thousand years ago. Like it or not, our species has been hunting for their survival for hundreds of thousands of years. Stalking game courses though our blood, and to put meat on one's table with one's own hand satisfies like only a hunter can appreciate. I have little time for the self righteous hordes touting their superior morals, Bambi indoctrinated anti-hunting prophets, who think nothing of purchasing steak or hamburger or pork or chicken at their friendly neighborhood grocery, presentably packaged on that sterile white rectangular Styrofoam and hygienically wrapped in clear cellophane, not for a moment considering that the meat actually came from something once alive, that had to have it's life taken by someone, someone far removed from your conscience, for you to feed yourself and your family, someone who has taken responsibility for the act of killing something living, someone to shelter your misguided morals, your denial, the same disillusioned folk who are quick to condemn hunting as redneck bloodlust. Jose Ortega y Gasset phrased it well, "One does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, one kills in order to have hunted." Spare me your bullshit. I'm going hunting. I get the impression that the anti-hunting community feels that hunting is simply satisfying some abhorrent desire to kill. It is not. It is coming to grips with one's place in the world, touching upon deeply engrained instincts. Satisfying beyond the understanding of the city born. Spare me your rhetoric. I'll hunt with complete disregard for your distaste, your silly logic. I'm going on safari.
From a youth of watching the old black and white Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan TV series, to hours of letting my mind run wild while reading Hemingway's "Green Hills of Africa" or Frederick Courteney Selous or Karamojo Bell, Wilbur Smith or Peter Capstick, the Africa I dreamt of was not the friendly village of Mtwara or the beaches of Dar es Salaam nor the nightclubs of Mombasa, but the uninhabited Africa....the wild Africa, nonchalant lions and angry cape buffalo, sulking leopards and irate elephants and ivory tipped spiral horned kudu. I yearn to walk the savannah and brushland, rifle in hand, tracking game, watching the wind and the sun and the rain, and finally realizing the rewards after hours upon hour of honing one's skill with a rifle, studying one's prey, it's habitat, it's patterns, it's behaviour, to make that perfect shot, to humanely and respectfully take that kudu or wildebeest or impala, to make it part and parcel of one's collection of memories, of experiences. I may take nothing, but that is hunting, and I'm going hunting in Africa. A dream not yet realized, but not far off the horizon. Three weeks to go and I should find myself in the Limpopo region of South Africa, nestled between Botswana and Mozambique, not far from where I am now, 30-06 in hand, hunting the green hills of Africa.
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