Back to Africa
- Bob Hanna: Someday
- May 1, 2019
- 1086
Hi everybody. Well, no turkey yet. We’ve been busy getting ready for the wedding of our youngest daughter, Ariel. She works for Dave Ramsey Solutions in Franklin, Tennessee, of which I’m sure some of you have heard of and maybe have taken the Financial Peace University seminar. There she met a fine young man, Nicholas, who we are excited to add to our family. They will be married in mid-May.
Many of you have asked about upcoming hunts, and I guess the best answer is wait and see if we will be lucky enough to draw a tag in Kentucky for elk again or maybe a moose in Maine. Both of these drawings are scheduled for mid-May. We do have plans for a hog hunt in Texas, a mountain lion hunt in Idaho and maybe a grizzly bear in Alaska, and we still are accumulating points in Arizona for trophy class mule deer and elk.
But one that kept coming back to us was our trip to Africa. We now have all of our mounts back: my zebra, which is done in rug style but with the skull mannequin and takes up a whole wall; Taryn’s blesbok and impala, which are done together on a pedestal and are beautiful; my blue wildebeest, which measures 27 inches wide on a wall mount; my greater kudu, which has 51-inch curly horns and is pedestal mounted; and Taryn’s female and my male warthog, which look really cute (if you can call a warthog cute) on our wall together.
Along with waiting for my elk mount (pedestal) to come from Wyoming and Taryn’s black bear (rug) from Maine (taxidermist in Michigan), we will soon be out of living space.
Anyway, one trophy we had to give up on in Africa (2014) was Taryn’s gemsbok. Some here in the U.S. call them an Oryx. We were after a particular older, big male stallion and stalked and chased him for two days, but we could never get the shot. Every so often we would see a gemsbok hunt on TV, and Taryn would just sigh.
There also were some trophies over there I had a chance to get, like a huge waterbuck and a trophy Nyala, but I passed on them, due to time restraints and budget. I think our concession had about 47 different species we could take, but we brought home seven.
So last year at our SCI banquet, I talked with one of our friends from Kuvhima Safaris, and he made me an offer I couldn’t pass on to come back and hunt again.
If you are thinking of ever going to Africa to hunt, go to one of the hunter banquets and most of them have at least one safari donated to their auctions.
That’s how we got started back in 2012 at a banquet in Akron, where the auctioneer was having trouble getting bids on this plains game hunt. As the starting bid got lower and lower, I thought I’d help him out by starting the bidding at $500. Another bidder bid $1,000, so I stopped. The auctioneer asked me if I would give $1,250, so I agreed. Without hesitation he said sold. It was an eight-day hunt, all meals and lodging included with pick-up and drop-off at the airport, for one-tenth of the listed price. Taryn and I were stunned, but looking back, very grateful.
In our correspondences with our outfitter, they asked us when we might want this upcoming hunt to take place. I told them our last hunt was difficult, due to the fact that although we went in May, which typically is in their “winter” months and very dry, they had received rain later than usual and made everything still green. This made spotting our animals difficult through the brush from our hunting truck.
So we have set our sights on September 2020 to go back and get Taryn’s gemsbok along with several others we have on our wish list.
In the meantime keep us in your prayers as we prepare for our daughter’s wedding and continue to do the work of the Lord wherever and whenever we can.
God bless.