Off-Topic: Safari/Hunting in Africa
 

I'm starting to plan a trip to go on safari in the next few years. Any recommendations, experiences, suggestions from this group of people would be highly regarded.

I'd really love to get some solids pics and possibly hunt a leopard(if under the 14k each price range I've regularly seen)

My brother just got back from a picture taking safari from over there and seemed to enjoy it. I think Raiman has been there as well.

I would love to go on a safari some day. As long as the safari vehicle is enclosed with chain, barbed wire, and shards of glass. Oh... and electrified.

No doubt, my fat ass goes out to Africa and I would inevitably wind up as hippo droppings.

Excellent. Where did he go?

**** that. I would never go some place where I am on the menu. Never.

The Masai Mara area. He ended up with some killer shots.

Hunting for sport is ****ing gay..

I assume by gay you mean....awesome, happy fun.

That is a GREAT way to put it. I'm stealing this line and probably using it at work tomorrow. That said, I want to do it some day.

Sounds like an awesome adventure.
My dream hunt ( & it was just a dream till recently) is a big North American Wolf or two.
I have read to many Jack London stories :-)

hunting a leopard is pussy shit. its like hunting a giant house cat. u track it down with dogs and run it up a tree and then shoot it or u bait it and shoot it at night time while its eating some meat hung from a tree. hunt something that takes some effort to track or just go there to enjoy yourself

Uh it takes an insane amount of patience and a lot of times, you don't even see a cat...let alone get a shot at one.

It isn't as cut and dry as you make it.

Also it's ridiculously dangerous as you HAVE to kill it with the initial shot or take the chance of tracking it...good luck with that.

man ive watched "Dangerous Game" on the outdoor channel I know what im talking about!!!

LMAO

Yowza...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VljY7r6EzY0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Take your picture with some cute rhinos.

"When hunting goes wrong"...best youtube videos ever

lol.. Nope.

Partially for reasons like this:

My back yard safari


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In the middle of Omaha no less

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot..._1565065_n.jpg

Also, I should clarify: hunting for sport with a gun is gay. Head out to the savannah in a loin cloth and a spear or knife that you fashioned yourself and kill something; then you'll be pretty damned awesome.

that is one nice back yard safari haul u got there. How u gonna cook em up? fry? stew? Personal squirrel favorite, pressure cooker. the meat falls off the bone.

I shoot the squirrels with a 22 cal pellet rifle & that old Red tail hawk comes in just before dark & eats them.
The green head & his female companion just showed up one day,& she decided to build her nest & lay her eggs in the lilypad. I think the raccoon"s harassed her at night. After a couple weeks she abandoned the eggs & nest. I was very disappointed. all the kids in the hood were excited about baby ducks coming.
Watching those two ducks circle the block then lock up their wings & come burning in. In between the houses was quite amazing. Their was no room for error,& a couple times I thought she was going to hit the shed,but she put the brakes on,did an about face & went straight to the nest.

OK, first off: a Sorter, hunting in the savannah without a gun. Sorters don't like not being able to defend themselves from ****ing cats with large claws with no firearm. If you placed a firearm in a Sorter's hands or some sort of cat-killing weapon, that makes sense. But you find yourself in Africa, 100 degree heat, I'm assuming in South Africa, coming up against a full grown 210 pound leopard with his 20 or 30 sneaky leopard friends, you lose that battle, you lose that battle 9 times out of 10. And guess what, now I've wandered into the school of leopards and they now have a taste of Sorter. They've talked to themselves. They've communicated and said 'You know what, Sorter tastes good, let's go get some more Sorter'. They've developed a system to establish a beach-head and aggressively hunt Sorter and his family back in the states and they will corner my pride, my children, my offspring.

Be sure to check out the hippo poop helicopters.

Their is a great story about the African Cross Continental railroad & man eating lions that would drag members of the track gang out of their tents at night & devour them just yards away from camp.

http://news.ucsc.edu/2009/11/images/...terson.320.jpg
Lt. Col. John Patterson beside one of the man-eating lions he shot in 1898. Photo courtesy The Field Museum
http://suite101.com/article/the-tsav...n-1898-a395422

I went to a private lodge in Zululand called Zulu Nyala: http://www.zulunyalaheritagesafarilodge.com/. It was a great place to take photos and see animals, but you're not shooting anything there.

I didn't quite understand the model, but I think the market is something like this. You have the big national parks and you can go there. You also have smaller private lodges, where they may own 500 acres and buy or breed animals that have smaller ranges. The animals run wild, so other than an occasional fence you don't really see any difference. And then some animals with big ranges will hop the fences and wander throughout all of the places.

The place I was at had basically every animal on it other than the big cats. The lions never came onto the private lodge, but leopards would come in and out. Monkeys and birds paid no attention to fences, and occasionally wildebeest or zebras or things would jump fences and wander around. I don't think they worried about the more common animals, but if a rhino got through a fence they'd go fetch it somehow.

I think these places are near the bigger national parks as part of making a big rangeland, so we took an excursion to a national park to look for lions one day.

If you're wanting to hunt a leopard, I'd think that you're either going to spend a long, long time waiting for one, or you're going to do the sleazy thing of shooting one in a cage. They're not easy to find, and I don't know if you'd be looking on the private lodges where they're moving from place to place, or the national parks. It doesn't seem like a good use of time and resources when it'd be more entertaining to spend time observing animals. But then again, I'm not a hunter type.

I should note that South Africa did not feel like a third world country at all. It felt more like wandering around in Europe somewhere.

I went to Madagascar while I was in the neighborhood. Most commonly, people would combine a safari with a trip to Victoria Falls or a trip to Cape Town, but I thought Madagascar was quite interesting. I'd love to go back to both countries and explore more.

This is what I'm realistically thinking. I'd be more than thrilled to go and just take pictures. The leopard thing is more fantasy than anything.

Man is natures most dangerous game. Don't forget it

That's ****ing beautiful. Not what I picture when I think of Africa.

The weird thing was that we never saw lions, which was quite disappointing. We had one day in a national park and our guide, who was good and legit based on several previous days, knew where they tended to hang out. But everywhere we went, there were no lions. We'll have to go back some day to find them. My advice, though, is that if you stay at a private lodge, go on a lion excursion early in the trip so you can try again if you can't find them.

However, we did see a mondo large leopard, and apparently that's more rare since they're solitary and tend to hang out in less visible places. According to our guide, it's not common to see them, much less a big one.

:LOL:

Where do you live?

At least the "animals" want you for survival.

this. Unless its deer or something drastically overpopulated.

Remember, these animals are getting wise and know when the season opens.

It was a luxury place, most definitely. It looks like they've expanded or something, but they had three places to stay when I went. We had our meals in the main building, which is the picture at the top of my original link, and it was gorgeous.

We thought we were going to rough it by staying in the "tented lodge" area, but it was ridiculously luxurious. The first three pictures at this link show the tent we stayed in: http://www.zulunyalaheritagesafarilo...ommodation.asp. Our tent had a leather couch and a jacuzzi, and at night you could hear zebra and nyala grazing right outside your tent.

Never mind. **** that.

LMAO

PS your camera sucks lol

I have a tradition of breaking my camera on vacation, and I'm also the worst photographer ever. I don't know why I can't take good pictures. It doesn't seem that hard, but on every vacation I end up with about three usable photos.

I think my best picture of the trip was this one of some giraffes. It was sheer luck, though.

Per chance, can you purchase a miniature one like this?

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lusdzbiSZo1qesz9w.gif

They really should breed those. A mini-giraffe would be a great pet.

[QUOTE=Rain Man;9346122]I have a tradition of breaking my camera on vacation, and I'm also the worst photographer ever. I don't know why I can't take good pictures. It doesn't seem that hard, but on every vacation I end up with about three usable photos.

I think my best picture of the trip was this one of some giraffes. It was sheer luck, though.[/QUOTE

I'm no photographer either and i used to take pics for work with our point and shoot and I realized my damn i-phone takes better pics. It's unbelievable really. You should just get a good phone and use it next time.

By the way off topic have you read "the retreat" The forgotten soldier was the best book I've ever read and you recommended it. I think you would like this one as well.

Can you just imagine all of the fun things you could do with it?

Holy ****, you'd be getting pussy left and right if you took your mini-giraffe on a walk. I bet you could get Kate Beckinsale to date you for an evening.

Leopard hunting is done over bait. You'll sit 100 yards downwind in a blind at dusk waiting for some hungry cat to come eat some zebra ass. Not too much of a challenge for 10k+

That sounds like the exact opposite of what I envisioned. Meh.

I haven't read it. Who wrote it? Is it this one? http://www.amazon.com/The-Retreat-eb...the+retreat%22

I'm glad you liked The Forgotten Soldier. It's my favorite WWII book by far.

Are you building frequent flyer miles?

I can check with a couple consultants if you'd like, but I'm pretty sure the two I know have all but quit recommending leopard hunts. I do know there were a few really good deals on lion hunts last year for people willing to take a female.

My uncle did one 4 years ago paid for about every grazing animal available, told the locals he was out of money. They said thats okay we got people thAt are hungry. Long story short they turned him loose for a day and he shot 2 waterbuffAlo and and 2 kudu free of charge. Might consider playing that card lol

Cape Buffalo

They are waaaay dangerous

Craziest thing I saw someone hunt in Africa was cape buffalo with a compound bow

There are a few vids on YouTube but I didn't find the exact one. Seemed intense

If you want to fill up your wall with exotics go to a ranch in Texas.

Id go there shooting deers and things I will eat. But I don't think people now go to kill things they wouldn't eat.


Do thorough research. Lots of scams happen there.
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That is not even hunting in my book. No way I could take an animal in that manner.

Not even swimming in the ocean?