As I began to make plans for my safari, the first thing that occurred to me was that I was not even sure what questions I should ask.  There are so many things that you need to think about when you take your first safari... so many questions that you'll have.  What about your passport, and getting your guns overseas, getting the trophies home, getting the proper inoculations before the trip... it's overwhelming. 

I thought that the internet would be full of forums and websites that would talk about how to go about setting up a safari.  I figured that these message boards were the best place to start, but to my surprise, it was actually quite hard to find forums that are dedicated to African safari.  I'm about as competent as you can get when it comes to navigating the internet (it's my job), but try as I might, I only found one or two that looked promising.

I joined both and made the appropriate introductory posts, telling about myself and my plans for safari.  I asked a couple of simple questions; what time of year I should hunt, would my 7mm magnum be ok, and how early should I plan on booking my flight.  I got some answers, but more than anything I had broken the ice on the forums and was ready to settle in on them and start posting regularly.

One afternoon shortly after I joined, I got an interesting email in my inbox.  A guy calling himself "tatersalad" had sent me a short note introducing himself saying that he, like me, was a computer programmer living in Clover, South Carolina.   Mr. Salad was starting to think about a safari of his own, and wanted to talk to me in person.

Things on the internet being what they are, I was a bit cautious at first.  With a population of only about 3500, Clover is a very small town.  What, I asked myself, were the chances that someone else from the area was in a situation similar to my own.  I thought about it for a day or two, then decided to check to see when this guy had registered on the forum.  If it was before me, then I could be pretty sure that nothing out of the ordinary was going on.  Unfortunately, he had registered about two or three weeks after me, so that idea was shot down.

With people on the internet, you really do need to exercise the utmost amount of caution.  With that in mind, I went ahead and answered his note, being careful to not give out much information at first.  I mentioned the fact that I actually lived a bit outside of Clover, and that it really was a huge coincidence to meet another programmer and safari enthusiast from my little town on the internet.  I left it at that, feeling pretty comfortable that I had given nothing too personal away, but being sure to keep it friendly. 

Pete, as his name turned out to be, responded to my note by telling me a bit more about himself; what part of Clover he lived in, and even giving me his cell phone number.   At this point, I decided that things were probably ok here and there was nothing unusual going on.  I told Pete more about where I lived and I invited him to go over to shoot some trap and skeet with me up in Gastonia, NC sometime in the next week or so.  Pete was enthusiastic about doing some shooting, so we made plans to meet the following Thursday evening.

On the evening of our meeting, I pulled into the trap range a few minutes late and immediately recognized Pete's car based on the description he had given me.  We shook hands and made our introductions, and within moments were talking like old friends.  Coincidentally, as we were walking over to the clubhouse to sign in, I ran into two old buddies that I used to go to church with.  They invited us to join them for a round of trap.  As glad as I was to see these guys, I didn't want Pete to feel left out, but decided that we'd shoot one or two rounds with my friends and then take a break and get better acquainted.

After the first couple of rounds, the guys were anxious to shoot a third but I begged off, telling them that Pete and I had just met and wanted a bit of time to talk.  They were understanding and as we shook hands and parted ways we made plans to get together in the near future to do a bit more catching up.  Pete and I wandered then over to my truck and said down on the back to talk about Africa.

Pete's plans were much more preliminary than my own; he was looking at five or six years down the road whereas I wanted to go now.  Pete was talking about going after Cape Buffalo rather than a South African or Namibian plains game hunt.  Cape Buffalo.  M'bogo.  The one that Robert Ruark said looks at you like you own him money.  I grinned. 

"Man," I said.  "That's a serious animal for a first safari.  You sure that's what you're after?"

"Yep," Pete answered.  "Got nothing against the plains game, but the Cape Buffalo is the one I really want." 

I talked about how I would love to have a buff, but that I didn't even have a gun that could take one down.  More importantly, Micki was not crazy about the idea of my going after dangerous game.  I had to admit that if there was one animal that you could hang on your wall that would impress your friends, buff was it.  But antelope are what I want, and antelope will be the focus of my first safari.  Buffalo can come later. 

As dusk began to settle, the range manager came out and looked at his watch as if he wanted to close down before too long.  We asked if we could shoot one more round of skeet, which we did, then decided to wrap it up.  As we were leaving, I asked Pete if he wanted to go down to the rifle range in the Sumter National Forest in the next week or two and break out the rifles.  Having just bought a new .303 British, Pete was joyous at the thought of shooting it.

We made it happen, and after a great day of shooting I decided to go ahead and invite Pete along on a turkey hunt with me in the next couple of months when the season opened.  He accepted the invitation, and the next time we saw each other was at 4:00am on a rainy April Fool's Day.  I have to admit, when I woke up that morning and looked out my back door I doubted that Pete would show.  We didn't know each other well enough yet for him to understand that I'm going hunting regardless of the weather.  I went ahead and got ready, and when I opened up my garage door to leave, there Pete was standing in his rain gear waiting for me.  Good man.

I remember telling Pete that I was glad that he showed, and something he needed to know about me was that if we had made plans to go hunting, by gosh we were going hunting.  Don't bother calling at 4:00am to tell me it's raining.  Just come on over.  Pete was agreeable.

It was still raining when we got down to my deer and turkey lease an hour and a half later, but it was starting to taper off.  We drove on out to where I wanted to start hunting and we immediately pleased to see that the logging road that I had chosen for us to work was torn up with turkey tracks.  We were further pleased when my first owl hoot was rewarded with an answering gobble from a couple of hundred yards away.

We headed down the road occasionally owl hooting, but the turkey never answered again.  As it got a little bit lighter we tried some yelping and a fly-down call, but still no luck.  Giving up on the first logging road we headed a little farther into the lease and got onto the next trail.  My yelps here were rewarded with something that sounded like the first note of a gobble, but then it abruptly stopped.  A jake, I thought.  Nothing else made any noise as we hunted the area.

Next we decided to try our luck in one of our food plots, and as we turned down the road that leads to that particular field we spotted two turkeys about 100 yards off to our right.  We couldn't tell what sex they were, so we made a long stalk through the woods but when we got up to where they had been the turkeys were gone.  I'm pretty sure they were hens, so we gave up on them and went on over to the food plot.  No luck there, and I was quickly running out of ideas.

I decided to head us over to where Ted, my usual hunting partner, had killed his two jakes in one shot last year.  We set up about 40 yards apart, and I did a couple of yelps, a series of cutts, and then shut up completely.  We sat quietly, waiting for something to happen.  After about 15 minutes, I heard a sound in the woods to my left.  I jerked my head around and saw two red turkey heads starting to run away.  I couldn't see the beard on the first one, but on the second bird I saw a good sized one so I raised my 10 gauge and fired.  The turkey fell to the ground while his partner took to the air. 

I looked over toward Pete hoping he would get a shot, but the bird was gone before he got the chance.  We ran over to mine and put him down with a close range head shot.   Turned out to be a 19 pound gobbler with a ten inch beard and one inch spurs.  We took some pictures, then went over to the grill to get something to drink. 

I guess I've gotten off the subject of Africa here, but the turkey hunt with Pete sealed the deal.  We spent the rest of the season hunting together regularly, and though our contact dropped off a bit as summer started we kept in touch with the occasional email messages to each other.  As September approached, I knew we'd start doing things together again, and I was looking forward to us doing some deer hunting together.

Through a simple coincidence on an internet message board, I had made a new friend.