March, 2005.   

I’ve been thinking about this trip for years.  My inspiration was Robert Ruark’s “The Old Man and the Boy”, but my hunting days go back even farther than that.  My earliest memory involving hunting deals with a time when I was just a lad.  I couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve years old. 

My grandfather, my dad, and I were crowded into the cab of the old man’s truck and were on the way back from the little country store that was just a few miles down the road from my grandfather’s cabin on Badin Lake.  We’d gone to pick up some groceries, or maybe it was some bait, and as we headed for home my grandfather suggested that we take a quick detour down a dirt road to take a look at a long abandoned gold mine.  

As we drove along with dust from the road flowing out behind us like a smoke screen, a massive whitetail buck jumped out in front of us.  I was astonished, having just seen my first deer in the wild.  My memories after this are fuzzy up until the time we got back to the cabin.  I burst through the door and ran to tell my mom about the deer that we had seen.  I can clearly remember saying “one day I’m going to hunt deer like that.”

A prophetic statement. 

Hunting became the focus of my life.  My parents gave me a little single barrel 20 gauge shotgun at an age that today’s politically correct crowd would be appalled at.  They turned me loose with it the day that a friend called and asked me if I wanted to go hunting squirrels on the little 7 acre piece of property that his parents owned, and my hunting days were born in earnest.   Even as I think back on that brief hunt, I think forward, to now, and I see where the lives of myself and of that friend have gone.  My friend is the owner of one of the finest treestand companies in the country.  And as I write this, I look around my office walls and see the antlers of the deer that I have taken over these long years.  Behind me on the bookshelf are a pair of wood ducks.  To the left, the snarling head of a Russian boar.  That one moment of time when my friend called to ask me to go hunting will forever be marked in my memory as the time when my life's compass chose its heading.

Some years after that first hunt, my dad asked me if I had ever read Ruark’s book.  I had not, and he immediately went down to the bookstore and got me a copy.  If I had loved hunting before, I was soon even more immersed in it.  Ruark showed me a world that I had never even dreamed of, and at his first mention of Africa I knew that someday I would go.  As he looked over the body of his first deer, Ruark said that he didn't know that he'd go on to hunt lions and elephants and such, but that the feelings he had over that first deer were matched only by those of his first Cape Buffalo, many years later.  At that young age, having never even hunted deer, my thoughts turned for the first time to Africa.

As I got older I continued to hunt.  My college apartment was just 45 minutes away from my grandfather’s cabin, and at about that time my father told me that he had done some checking and had found that the lands all around the cabin were game lands.  That is to say, they were open for free public hunting to anyone with the proper license.  I arranged my fall semester class schedule in such a way that I was able to stay at the cabin every other night.  From there, I would be able to spend my Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays hunting deer. 

For the next seven or eight years, I used that cabin as a base of operations for my hunting.  In those days, it seems that there was a steady progression of friends who hunted with me.  For the most part, it was me alone in the first years, but later there was almost always a partner. 

Andy, a friend from my high school years, was first.  I'm was never really sure that he enjoyed the hunting.  More than anything, it seems that he was just interested in spending time with a friend.  The last time we hunted together was one bitter cold Thanksgiving morning.  We weren't in the woods for more than ten minutes when I heard him shoot.  Shortly after the woods had quit ringing with the echoes of his shots, I ran over to him and asked if he had gotten a deer.  He told me he was sure he had missed.  I wanted to go look for blood, but he insisted that it was a miss.  I realized then that he had taken the shots as a way to end the hunt and get back in the warm truck.  Although I wasn't mad, I knew this would be the last time that we hunted together.  His heart wasn't in it.

Earl, another high school buddy, was next.  His first trip was also his last.  I didn't know it until after the hunt was over, but he had brought along a little something that I was not expecting.  Mushrooms.  The illegal, hallucinogenic kind.  I was not happy when the game wardens chose us for a random vehicle search as we were leaving the woods.  They didn't find the mushrooms, and I only found out about them after the search was over and Earl was sighing in relief.  That was the last time I ever spoke to Earl.  I don't have any tolerance for illegal drugs.

Dave, a friend from college, soon followed.  He'd been a bird hunter for many years, but never had gotten the opportunity to hunt big game.  He was excited about the chance to go deer hunting, and I was glad to have found someone who appeared to be seriously interested in the hunt.  Unfortunately, he was loud in the woods, loud in the truck, and loud in the cabin.  A man wants peace when he's off on a hunting trip.  Besides, he had a bad habit of getting drunk and eating all of the food in the camp during the night.  All of it.  Dave didn't last long either. 

There were others, some good, some bad, but, for the first five years, none who were interested enough to make a go of it.  In 1990, I took a temporary job at Winn-Dixie's regional headquarters.  I was a simple mailroom clerk, and the job was only supposed to last a few weeks.  On the first day, however, my supervisor, a fellow named Ted Leonhardt, and I struck up a conversation about archery.  Ted had recently bought his first bow, and, although he had never been deer hunting, was wanting to start.  I suggested that he come with me up to the cabin the following weekend and I'd get him going.  Our weekend trip became a weekly routine, and our friendship began.  We hunted in the Uwharries for the next half dozen years, until my grandfather died and the cabin was sold.  Even now, fifteen years after we met, we still hunt together regularly.

Through all of this hunting, I managed to get several shots (all misses) at deer with my bow and arrow, but was never able to get one.  And so, shortly after Ted and I hunted together for the first time, my dad told me that a friend of his was a serious hunter and had bought some land, and that this friend would take me hunting there to help me get my first deer.  It wasn't supposed to be anything long term; just a friendly offer to get that first one out of the way.  And so, one day in the fall of 1991, I called Arnold Kirk and made the arrangements to go hunting with him.  Another turning point.

My first deer hunt on private land was exciting, but fruitless.  I was disheartened, having gotten my one real chance to get a deer and coming up blank.  Arnold invited me back the next week.  I gratefully accepted, and the following week my first deer was in the bag.  Arnold extended the invitation to continue hunting with him, his brother, and a friend of theirs for the next several weeks.  When the season was over and it was time to start doing the hard work of getting the land in shape, I made sure to let Arnold know that I was available to help.  And so another great friendship was born.

I began to alternate my weekends, hunting sometimes with Ted on the game lines, sometimes with Arnold on his property.  When Ted got married, he backed off of his hunting activities for a few years, and all of my hunts shifted to private lands.  Arnold was an inspiration to my hunting.  His house is full of trophies:  elk, deer, antelope, sheep.  Admiring his animal heads, I wanted some of my own.   

And through all of this, Africa always remained somewhere in the back of my mind.  When I left Winn-Dixie and got a good paying job, I set up a bank account that I would use to fund my hunting trips.  In 1996, with a half dozen deer under my belt, I realized that it was time to actually take that first trip.  Although I wanted Africa more than anything, I knew I needed to get some experience other ways before taking that great safari, so I decided that I would go on a mule deer hunt in Montana.  I would go it alone.  This was my trip, and I wanted the whole thing for myself. 

I got my mule deer, and in the following years killed a great many whitetails, some turkeys, and even a trophy wild boar.  And as I began to approach 40, I realized that it was time to start thinking seriously about Africa.  My first thoughts about this came in the weeks before I turned 38.  Initially, I decided that I would ask my wife, Micki, how she felt about us going to Africa in two years; a grand celebration of my 40^th birthday.  The more I thought about it, I decided that two years wasn’t enough time to properly plan and anticipate the trip.  I would do it before I turned 45.  A wait of seven years at most. 

Micki and I had been down to Texas the year before, and we had driven down to Mountain Home to take a look at the Y.O. Ranch.  We got there too late in the afternoon to get a tour of the ranch itself, but driving along the area roads I was thrilled to see several black buck antelope.  I told Micki that I wanted one. 

And so, when it came time to broach the subject of my safari with Micki, we sat down on the couch and I told her that I had something that I wanted to talk about.  I told her that I had been thinking about my safari, and that it was time to set some dates.  She seemed receptive, so I pressed on.

“I want to hunt the Y.O. Ranch when I turn 40,” I said.  “I want to take a black buck and an Axis deer.” 

“Why not next year instead,” she asked. 

Although her reply had surprised me, I didn’t want to push this thing, so I talked about 40 being a special year for a man, and that this would give us more time to set aside the money for the trip.  She agreed that we could do it.

So I continued.  “And there’s Africa,” I said.  “I want to set a date for it.  I want to say that we’ll go no later than the year I turn 45.  We can go sooner, but not later.  Africa,” I continued, “is something that I’ve always wanted to experience.  This is a must-do goal for my life.  And I would really hope that you’ll want to come along with me, even if you don’t hunt.”

She agreed, and in that moment Africa became real to me.  My thinking changed; it was no longer something that I would do “some day”.  It was something that I would do within the next seven years. 

And so, even though there are seven long years ahead of us, my planning has begun.  I joined the Safari Club so that I could start reading up on what to expect.  In the coming year, I’ll start researching outfitters and will begin thinking about exactly which animals I want to collect.  A kudu for sure, and probably a zebra.  An impala, and maybe even a warthog.  We’ll probably limit it to five big animals and maybe 3 smaller ones.  And it will be a ten day hunt. 

And it was at this time that I decided to create this journal to help provide me with memories not only of the safari itself, but also of all of the planning that went into it.  Any time I do anything related to the trip, I’ll make a note of it here.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.