South Africa

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Round The Fire Podcast, Episode 68

December 18, 2024 by 0 Comments

I was a guest on Jono McHugh’s Round the Fire with Kingsview Safaris podcast talking about my trip in June to the Eastern Cape of South Africa. I had been listening to Jono’s podcast for a few years and when I got serious about setting up a hunt in Africa I contacted him. Unbeknownst to me, he and his family had migrated to west Texas after winning a H1B visa lottery based upon his expertise in wildlife and rangeland management. He talks about this adventure in Episode 38.

To make a long story short, Jono introduced me to Juan and Lauren Stander of LJ Hunting Safaris. Jono and Juan had been partnered up in PH (professional hunter) school. It was a fortuitous introduction as my brother-in-law Larry and I had a great time and a great experience. As I say in the podcast, Juan and Lauren made us feel like family.

You can find the episode on Apple Podcasts here and on Spotify here.

If you are thinking about taking a trip to Africa to hunt or just want to learn more about it, I would urge you to listen to Jono’s podcast. He discusses how to find a good outfitter, working with a PH, and the aftermath of the hunt including taxidermy and shipping plus everything in between.

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While I Was Gone…

September 5, 2024 by 2 Comments

I left for South Africa on the afternoon of Friday, August 23rd and only got back home to North Carolina around noon yesterday. As the Complementary Spouse was home alone (though well armed), I was reluctant to go public that I was out of the country. I had won an auction at the SCI Convention in February for a 7-day hunt at a ridiculously low price to go with a Delta “buddy pass” which had to be used by early September. Thus, my brother-in-law Larry and his son Alex joined me for a trip to Thabazimbi in Limpopo Province. I will have more on that trip in subsequent post but suffice to say it was pretty successful.

However, while I was gone, a lot of stuff happened and it is hard to blog about things when using just an iPad. Lets go over some of the things that have happened while I was gone.

Number 1: I was put on the ballot for the 2025 NRA Board of Directors election by the Nominating Committee. I did quickly post about this on August 28th. As I have said, this was not expected. Some have suggested with some justification that this may have been an attempt to shut down my news and criticism of the cabal and the NRA. I promise that if elected I will not stop exposing issues within the NRA while still being observant of my fiduciary duties. I should also note that I am NOT stopping my campaign to be on the ballot by petition. While it may seem redundant now that I am officially on the ballot, being placed on the ballot by petition to me is the Holy Grail as it comes from the members and not the insiders. My goal in running for the Board is to serve the members, the grass roots, and the cause of advancing our Second Amendment rights.

Number 2: NRA In Danger blog was taken down temporarily. I literally had 3-4 emails within an hour of it going down telling me about it. I had multiple back and forth emails with “NRALifer” over the issue after I was alerted to it. While the conspiracy theorist in me and many others pointed towards that lawyer we all love to hate, in the end it was some WordPress.com anti-spam algorithm that targeted the blog for supposed spamming. I hate to say it but in the old days of bulletin boards, listservs, and Usenet groups it was harder to suppress news and opinion. As social media has grown up, censorship has grown with it. I am an advocate for having and using private hosting services that are less likely to be censored than the corporate ones. For the record, I do not know who runs and writes the NRA In Danger blog.

Number 3: A blistering 8-page “Dear Board Member” letter went out on August 30th from NRA VPs Bill Bachenberg and Mark Vaughan. It took aim at the Special Litigation Committee, the original committee assignments, Brewer, and the cabal. More on this letter in another post.

Number 4: The cabal waited a few days and then issued their response officially (supposedly?) written by cabal member Don Saba. It accused Bachenberg and Vaughan of being “divisive” and “harmful” to the NRA as well as trying to coerce and browbeat the cabal. . The letter was full of innuendo about the reform elements cooperating with the NYAG’s office and how they had help from a “competing second amendment organization” to promote “discord, distrust, and confusion” on the Board and with gunowners. Of course, it is nonsense. I do remember well that Dr. Saba was one of the Directors who vehemently disagreed with my 2020 resolution on succession planning at the Annual Meeting in Tucson.

Number 5: I met and became friends with a member of the 2016 South African Olympic Team. Lindsay Hanekom is a field and track athlete who runs the 400m hurdles and was going to Atlanta for training. He, like Larry and I, got bumped from our flight to Atlanta on Monday night. Thanks to Lindsay, we were able to get a ride to a hotel near the airport with his friend Driaan.

Number 6: Our hunt with Tsala Safaris was mostly a success. While I didn’t get my cull zebra, I did get my trophy impala and blue wildebeest. I also saw giraffes, roan, zebra, golden wildebeest, sable, mongoose, nyala, kudu, waterbuck, eland, red hartebeest, warthogs, springbuck, gemsbuck, Cape buffalo, and probably others than I have forgotten to name. I still marvel at the ability of our trackers Sharma and Filomon to see animals amidst the tangle of the bushveld as they saw animals that even with binoculars I couldn’t see.

The backstrap from my impala was made into lunch a few days later when we had impala stroganoff. It was exceptionally good. For those that are into these things, that ram was taken with one shot at about 175 yards and his horns measure right at 24 inches.

Now it is time for me to try and shake off the jet lag and get to work helping the other petition candidates for the NRA Board. There are a total of 26 reform candidates running for the Board of Directors and only 11 are on the ballot courtesy of the Nominating Committee. Despite Judge Cohen’s suggestion that we have an open election with anyone who wished to run on the ballot, we are not there yet.

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Planning Ahead Is Essential

June 17, 2024 by 3 Comments

When going overseas, it is essential to plan ahead and prepare for most contingencies. I did that when I recently went to South Africa. I used a travel agent to book my airfare, I reserved my room online for the night I arrived, and I used an expediting service to take care of my rifle permit from the South African Police Service.

An actual sign seen in a Caltex service station restroom near the town of Cradock in the Eastern Cape reminded me that even with all that preparation there were still some things I couldn’t foresee.

While I did not have an occasion to make that request, I do feel for those who saw the sign just a little bit too late. I’m guessing toilet paper is a more valued commodity in small town South Africa than I assumed and that management was tired of having it stolen.

The bottom line is to follow the Scout Motto: Be Prepared!

PS: I found that you can get individually wrapped baby wipes called “Stall Mates” from Amazon. (#commission earned)

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If You Haven’t Guessed Where I Went, Here’s A Hint

June 11, 2024 by 3 Comments

As I said in my last post, I was planning to be heading out of town. In case you haven’t figured out where I went, here is a hint.

While it isn’t the original by Toto, something about all those fresh faced Irish kids singing in Gaelige just warms my heart. And yes, as I can attest, it does rain in Africa. It also snows.

So yes, I went to Africa. Specifically, I went to the Eastern Cape province of South Africa to hunt with my brother-in-law Larry. I plan to have a number of posts about our experiences hunting, the people we met, our wonderful hosts Juan (pronouced Ju-On) and Lauren Stander of LJ Hunting Safaris, and the things we saw.

Lauren has put up a series of posts about our time in the Eastern Cape on their Facebook page. Here is a link to the first one.

Finally, in what I consider a closing of the circle, Jono McHugh of Round The Fire With Kingsview Safaris podcast relates how he happened to move to America and how he is now referring client inquiries to Juan and Lauren. I had reached out to Jono a year ago when I finally made up my mind to go on safari and he was the one who put me in touch with Juan. It was fitting that I listened to this podcast on my last leg of the journey home from Africa.

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2024 SCI Convention – The Auctions

March 1, 2024 by

The Safari Club International had another successful convention in Nashville. In addition, from what I’ve been told, they have signed a 10-year contract to continue holding the convention in Nashville. From a personal perspective, I love it as Nashville is an easy drive for me and the city is much nicer than Las Vegas or Reno in my humble opinion.

The convention is more than a celebration. It is the major event used to raise money to support SCI and the SCI Foundation’s mission of hunter advocacy and worldwide wildlife conservation.

According to SCI’s report on the convention:

 SCI held record-breaking dinners and live auctions that featured gourmet wild game meat meals, which sold out on Friday and Saturday nights, raising more than $20 million for SCI/F advocacy and conservation efforts.

As noted, one of the key components of the fund-raising effort are the auctions. In addition to the nightly auctions mentioned above, they also held both live day auctions and silent auctions. All told, there were 17 different auctions that raised by my estimate over $6.2 million. The amount raised by the auctions increased each day of the convention with approximately $2.3 million raised on Saturday.

The big ticket items were reserved for the night auctions. These included a 5-day hunt for two hunters seeking walrus in the Canadian territory of Nunavut which went for $150,000, a 7-day Alaska coastal hunt for mountain goat and Sitka black tail deer which raised another $250,000, and a 14-day hunt in Tanzania for leopard, Cape buffalo, and plains game that went for $42,500.

The auction item that raised the most money was the one-of-a-kind highly engraved Beretta SL3 Tutankhamun 12-gauge shotgun which went for $435,000! Originally unveiled at last year’s convention, it had been purchased by Alex Roy of EuroOptic. After displaying it as his company’s headquarters for a year, he donated it to be auctioned off by SCI this year.

Lest you think it was all five and six figure items auctioned off to deep-pocketed millionaires and billionaires, the auctions had a number of lower priced items. For example, there were earrings that went for $60, packs for $150, and a pair of Italian leather handbags for $125.

You could also find bargains if you bid smartly. Whether it was it was $250 worth of Swift ammo for $175, $375 for a pair of Kenetrek Mountain Extreme boots that normally retail for $500, or a $1,500 Trijicon AccuPoint scope for only $500, bidders found bargains.

If you were looking for a plains game hunt, you could do very well especially in the day auctions. One 7-day South African plains game hunt for four hunters and four observers in Limpopo went for a mere $1,200. It included a $1,000 credit for trophy fees. Checking the outfitter’s website, the daily fees would have totaled over $11,000!

I have a R/T ticket to Johannesburg that needs to be used by mid-September, I had been talking with a number of outfitters at the convention about a short trip with limited number of animals in late August. I had a number of quotes that I obtained both here and at the earlier DSC convention. I finally decided to see if there was something that might fit the bill in the auctions and I did. After checking with Tsala Safaris about their openings in August, I bid on their donated hunt. I had met Brandon and Johanrie “Jo” van Zyl at an earlier convention and like the young couple. The auction I won was for two hunters and two observers for a 7-day hunt that is a mix of four trophy animals and 16 cull or herd reduction animals. I think because it had to be taken this year, it reduced the bidding. Nonetheless, it has worked out perfectly for me and I will be making two dream trips to South Africa this year. With luck, my brother-in-law will be joining me for both.

Tsala Safaris compound in Limpopo
The Tsala photo of their booth at SCI
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South Africa Is Not Happy

December 3, 2021 by 6 Comments

The countries in southern Africa are not especially pleased with the rest of the world. This is due to the travel bans being put in place restricting travel to and from a number of southern African nations as a result of the Omicron variant of COVID-19.

Probably no country is as pissed off as South Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa was especially angry calling the travel restrictions “unjustified and discriminatory.” He went on to add:

“The prohibition of travel is not informed by science, nor will it be effective in preventing the spread of this variant. The only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic,” Ramaphosa said on Sunday.

Travel and tourism were finally getting back on their feet in South Africa after being crushed by COVID-19 in 2020. This is especially true for the safari industry. For example, with the US ban on visitors from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique among others, outfitters and safari companies will not be able to send representatives to major conventions in January such as those of the Dallas Safari Club and Safari Club International.

Spike.T, who is a regular on the Africahunting.com forums and who lives in Zambia, posted this somewhat satirical account of the Omicron variant and the world’s reaction.

“In just 48hrs everything just went upside down, looking at all the updates and social media posts I could not help but write the below outlining the absurd response from the countries. Maybe some of them will realize what has actually transpired.”

South Africa: Hey guys, look what we discovered in our labs while researching Covid19 variants and mutations

World: What??

SA: It’s a new variant of Covid19, seems to be different than others, lets work together and study it further.

World: What? You have a new variant of Covid19?!?!

SA: No, we just found a way to ‘identify’ a new variant, it seems it has also already been detected in Hong Kong, Israel and Botswana.

UK: Hey guys, no offence but we already have 45,000 cases a day, don’t wear a mask everywhere, allow large gathering however we cannot risk getting a new variant.

SA: But we just identified it and showed you guys how to check for this variant, it did not originate here. We have advanced labs because we do research on AIDS, TB and other communicable diseases.

UK: Thank you for the research, however a complete travel ban to you and your 5 neighbors.

Netherlands: We heard UK banned flights to you because you have the new variant, we are also imposing a ban to you and your neighbors!

Namibia: WTF! What did we do? We have less than 20 new cases a day since a month now!

EU: Guys, we have a situation in our hands.

Namibia: The situation where Germany has had 76,000 cases a day and Other countries are breaking daily records for cases?

EU: No, not that situation.

Lesotho: Is it that UK still has 40,000+ cases a day and doesn’t seem to have it under control?

EU: No, UK isn’t a part of us anymore, not our concern.

Malawi: We hear Poland has some serious rise in cases and hospitalizations

EU: Really?! We have no idea, we must look into it. But not what we are talking about.

Eswatini: What situation then?

EU: We heard that South Africa has a new variant, their numbers are rising rapidly and since some of you are next to them, we need to close travel to the region with immediate effect!

SA: Dude, we just identified it! We only have a few cases in the region. Especially when compared to what you guys have. What’s with the knee-jerk reaction?

Namibia: Knee-jerk, that’s the word we were looking for.

UAE: We are closing flights to Southern Africa, we don’t want to risk it. Sorry guys.

USA: We are looking into this and studying the variant, we wont ban flights yet.

SA: Thank you USA, finally a voice of reason!

Mauritius: Sorry SA and the variant group, I saw some other countries refer to you as that, we are friends and all but we are concerned about our tourism and economy, so we will also ban you guys for now until we know further.

SA: We thought you were family. Goes to show how money is more important!

Belgium: We already have 1 new case of the new variant, thanks a lot SA.

SA: We literally just showed you how to identify it.

UK: Thanks a lot SA, now we also have 2 cases of it.

SA: What about our vaccinated people?

World: Nope, we need to run tests first and figure out what this virus can do and how effective the vaccination is against it.

WHO: Hey guys, a quick question. The next Greek alphabet is ‘Xi’. What do we do? China? Are you here?

China: Don’t you dare! Leave us and our president out of it. Call it something else. And we don’t allow anyone in anyway, so the variant is not our concern.

WHO: We got it boss. It’s now called Omicron.

WHO: Sorry we meant Sir. China isn’t our boss.

SA: It’s true what they say, no good deed goes unpunished. The next time we won’t tell you guys about the next mutations or variants we find.

World: Sorry can’t hear you, too busy dealing with the outbreak that you caused. How about we talk about this later?

Namibia: It’s the weekend, lets braai & go camping and let the world figure this one out themselves, we are still open to everyone. And if you wish to travel here, ask your leaders to start thinking before making decisions.

To be continued…..

Written by Nrupesh Soni.

I know there is great fear about COVID-19. While I am neither a scientist nor an epidemiologist, it seems that this strain may be more transmissible but on the ground reports indicate that the symptoms tend to be less severe. We shall see but I really hope that we don’t head into another round of lockdowns or even Australian-style concentration camps.

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South African R2 With Updated Furniture

June 5, 2019 by

Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons just released a video of the South African Defence Forces R2 rifle with its modified furniture. The R2 was originally a Portuguese made G-3 rifle purchased by the SADF for use by second-line troops and the South West Africa Territorial Force.

South West Africa is the former name for the modern country of Namibia. The country was a South African “protectorate” under a League of Nations mandate after World War One. This mandate was abolished in 1966 by the United Nations but the South Africans held on in whole or in part until 1990.

Getting back to the R2, there were problems with the handguards due to the climate of the region. Ian writes this about it.

The Portuguese hand guards and buttstocks were found to be unsatisfactory, however. In the heat and harsh ultraviolet radiation of South West Africa (now Namibia) in particular, the plastic would shrink and lose its fit, leading to the guns being called “rattlers” by the SADF troops. The fix this, the American firm of Choate Machine & Tool was contracted to make new hand guards based on the H&K export pattern – wider and longer and with fittings for a bipod. New stocks were also made, duplicating the shape of the R1/FAL stock.

Given the similarities of the G-3 and R2 with the currently produced PTR-91, it would be very interesting to see if you could find some of these Choate Machine handguards and stocks to use on a PTR-91. I like the looks of the Choate handguards and stocks better than the originals. While I don’t own a PTR-91, I do own a boatload of magazines for it because they were a dollar or less at the time. One of these days I’ll finally get around to obtaining a rifle to use with those magazines!

As always, Ian has produced an informative and interesting short video.