Author: Thom

Africa 2017, preparations continue!

According to my Buffalo Clock, I have 166 days until my hunt begins! Since this basically marks the half way point in my year of preparations, I thought I’d do a post to mark my progress so far.

Last night leagues ended at my local archery shop. While I enjoy my Friday night traditional leagues, it means I’m blocked out of the range the other nights I normally shoot. This means next week I can start back on my 3-5 times a week shooting schedule, and as a bonus I will have unlimited access to paper tuning and broadhead tuning/testing lanes!

Even during this winter slowdown, I’ve done very well with my plan of doing at least one thing per day to get ready for this hunt. Inch by inch is a cinch! Some days it’s just studying anatomy pictures or rereading sections of books about the African Buffalo. Other days I’ve crossed off bigger things like purchasing tickets, arranging travel logistics, researching cameras and camcorders.

One of the first things I wanted to do was get a pair of light but flat bottomed boots for the trip. I researched every brand and spent countless hours on forums weighing the pros and cons of different makes, models, and purchase methods. In the end I found that a local company made a boot that met all of my requirements for a very reasonable price. I do not believe these will outlast a pair of Courtney’s, but I think these will be great for my first trip over. The only thing I really didn’t like about them was the original cotton laces you can see on the boot on the right. I got some similar looking mil-spec 550 cord and swapped them out. I’ve got a little over 100 miles on them at this point, I love them!

Most of the rest of the gear required is all decided. For binoculars I’m taking my 10x42s. I have my point and shoot camera, and I’ve picked out my camcorder which I will order today. Some of these things are probably worthy of their own post down the road, and I will probably do one post about my final packing strategy.

My new heavy longbow should arrive in a few weeks. Many arrow components are piled up and ready to begin tuning. The business end I want to tune out with is a Tuffhead 300 grain broadhead and a Traditional Archery Solutions 250 grain adapter. The exact adapter I’m using with all of my Black Eagle arrows is not on the website, but Jon has been happy to supply these extra heavy/extra long adapters for me and a few other Simply Traditional customers.

I found out that a fellow Michigander is going to Africa this month to do a Buffalo hunt with his recurve. I will look forward to picking his brain when he gets back. There aren’t a whole lot of fellows to talk to about this sort of endeavor, but so far everyone has been very helpful and responsive.

For the next 165 days it’s all about fine tuning and practice, practice, and more practice!!!

What is a “trophy” Cape Buffalo?

It seems that in recent years hunting has gone in a direction I don’t like. There is a vocal group with a perverse fascination with whitetail deer and some magical number of inches of horn. This group must also have an inordinate number of dollars-per-hunter in order to capture so much media and marketing attention. Even on the rare occasion when I’ve harvested mathematically impressive animal, it’s had nothing to do with a “trophy value” in my heart.

If ever an animal should challenge a hunter to question their thinking on what constitutes a “trophy” animal, Cape Buffalo should be that species!

Let’s consider first an animal that should score very well by Rowland Ward standards:

From http://africanwildlifedefenceforce.com/African_Buffalo.html

Like many of the top trophies in the book, this is a cow. My first problem with using “inches” to define what is a “trophy” is this: why should a healthy mature cow be removed from a heard just to satisfy some fabricated measurement system requirement? I don’t intend any disrespect to anyone who decided to anyone who has killed cows with wide horns, but I have to point out that raw inches is a bad way to evaluate a trophy.

Let’s consider another animal’s horns:

https://www.africahunting.com/threads/cape-buffalo-is-the-sci-trophy-scoring-system-wrong.14867/

Unlike Rowland Ward, Safari Club International only considers bulls for the books. The bull above has a good number of inches and I would think would easily make the book. Here is the rub with this: Many animals grow bigger antlers or horns every year making a high number of inches desirable.  Cape Buffalo are born without horns, and they grow them outwards until they start fighting when they reach sexual maturity. It’s possible a bull might have its highest “score” the day before he hits sexual maturity. A handful of the bulls currently in the SCI top 20 were bulls that were not mature. In whitetail terms it would be like adding a spike to the P&Y book. It just shouldn’t happen.

From the same site, here is another picture to look at:

https://www.africahunting.com/threads/cape-buffalo-is-the-sci-trophy-scoring-system-wrong.14867/

What a fantastic animal! Here is a mature bull with flattened out horns and a hard boss. This animal would probably score lower than the first two, but this is the type of animal ideal to hunt. His removal from the herd would not hurt the herd in any way, and he is possibly in that wise/wary but non-breeding/on-the-way-out end of the spectrum.

That website is quite interesting, as well as a few chapters in Africa’s Most Dangerous.

Finally let us consider the “scrum cap” bull:

http://www.peterflack.co.za/hunting-conservation-first-buffalo/

A bull like this would score very low on the SCI scale, but just look at this old battle worn veteran! Everything about this bull is exactly what should constitute a trophy pursuit. Everything except the measurement and inches that would have him be a “trophy” officially.

Not many folks are interested in buffalo hunting, if you made it this far into the post my hat is off to you. I personally find it very interesting how the idea of “inches” that works so well for deer and elk, does so poorly for buffalo.

While a nice symmetrical set of horns looks nice, and it could put a hunter in the record books, a true trophy to me has nothing to do with what anyone else can see or measure. It’s all found within one’s self and what they see when they look out into the world.

Buffalo longbow

I bought a longbow to hunt Cape Buffalo in 2013. It is a Northern Mist Whisper longbow 85@30 at 68″. It’s a dandy bow and I got a hog with it in 2014. As I was getting ready for this hunt, the logistics involved with a one piece bow kept coming up. Finally, I realized that I really did need a takedown bow for this adventure.

It’s been over two years since I seriously hunted with a ASL, I’ve been hooked on my Black Widow PL longbow because I shoot it better than any other bow I’ve owned. I love ASL bows, especially the last three I am down to, but this is a dead serious endeavor and I think the best thing I can do is mimic the bow I shoot best in every possible way.

Black Widow Bows is building me a 2 piece longbow that matches my current bow in every aspect except draw weight. It will be a few weeks before it gets here, but I trust it will be exactly what I need for hunting Cape Buffalo.

Taxidermy

One year ago I was in hog camp with a retired PH from Africa. He had been giving me some pointers and guidance as we worked around the property for a few days. I don’t know why I asked, but I said “if we get some animals in the skinning shed, would you coach me through caping out a skull?” It was a missing skill in my personal checklist. He said he would be happy to, and a few days later a hunter gifted me with his hogs head.

I ended up caping out three heads that week, and a few months later I got a nice meat pig for myself and got a little more practice. First thing I learned, Havalon is a God send. Second thing, keep those things out of water. I had one cooler get a little too warm and unfrozen skulls have got to be one of the dangerous things I can think of from a bacteria perspective. Freeze them hard or boil them right away.

After some time I started practicing the boiling step. I found a GREAT youtube video on the subject. My mistakes were boiling the first two a little too hot, by the third skull I got it right.

Next step was the peroxide step, I ended up using V40 in the cream style from the local beauty supply. The stuff did OK on the first two, but the third one came out really good. The picture at the top was the results of that step.

What I learned about peroxide from a local professional taxidermist was two things:

  1. That stuff is much more dangerous than I thought. Handle and store that stuff VERY carefully.
  2. I should have immediately wrapped the skulls in saran wrap and set them in the sun. Instead I just coated them and let it stand for 3 days.

Since the first two boiled too hot I had all the teeth fall out. I need to fill the tusks with epoxy and glue all the teeth back in. Because they didn’t turn out nearly as white, I have an additional step to do with that using a different whitening compound.

In short I have 3 skulls that cost probably less than $20 each in materials. While that sounds like a bargain, it really isn’t when you factor all the hours and frustration involved. I think my next skull I will just send to a beetle tank and see how that turns out. If I do all the preliminary work, and the final sealing and mounting, it might be a nice way to optimize time and find a nice balance to expense.

Early writings

I am working on some website cleanup this week and changing up some menus. I realized that this should be just one post and not it’s own page. Below you can find a few links to hunting and archery related submissions from years gone by.

Gratitude and Respect is an article I wrote for Simply Traditional’s Blog recently. It’s everything that I think is good about bowhunting, and it doesn’t shy away from everything I think is wrong about modern hunting media.

I also have a guest blog post on Simply Traditional about the Magnus Single Bevel and the first animal I harvested with one. I also did a little video on how I make a “tanto tip” with these heads, you can see it here.

I’ve been writing articles for Sticktalk, the Michigan Longbow Association’s publication, for a number of years. Here you can find the majority of those as published.

HR 622: the financial timebomb

Last week Chaffetz withdrew HR621, and there was much rejoicing from outdoors people from all walks of life. It seems in the following celebration of “victory” everyone forgot about HR622. For many folks who haven’t lived out West it might be difficult to understand exactly how important this is. I will use an example from a place I’ve spent some time to illustrate.

Granite County Montana is a beautiful, and I feel in my heart, a magical place. It’s total land mass is 1,730 square miles and it’s population fluctuates around 3,000 residents. Just take the summary description from their published Growth Policy Plan:

“The County is largely mountainous and contains portions of Beaverhead-Deer Lodge and Lolo National Forests. The Continental Divide crosses the southeastern boundary and the Sapphire Mountains define the western boundary. A section of the Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness area lies along the southeastern boundary.”

Yeah, that’s an amazing place to get into the backcountry!!! Did you know I’ve seen a wolverine in the wild? That happened in Granite County. Biggest herd of elk I’ve ever been in the middle of during hunting season, Granite County. I’ve got some go-to spots for fly fishing on the dog days of summer, a few of the best are in Granite County.

Why do I have so many great memories in this small place? Because it’s wild. 65% of the entire county is public land! Interestingly only 2% is state land. That means 63% of that county is comprised of those national forests and BLM land. River access is available on the Clark Fork River, Rock Creek, and Flint Creek. There are hiking trails, horse trails, and camping spots all over the place. All of this is a short drive from the airport in Missoula.

Now that you have an idea of what the landscape makeup is, let’s talk about those people. About 3,000 people living on a relatively small part of the land. There is one full time sheriff, and 3 other people on the payroll. The day I was a victim of a hit and run the sheriff was out of town on business and nobody else was authorized for overtime. We were left to sort it out and with a handshake I was told by the good, slightly drunk, doctor that he would pay my auto body bill for the damages to my truck. He never paid, answered his phone, or responded to any letters sent leaving me with a $3,000 bill and no police report to start legal proceedings. From my experience I would say the cash poor county can’t even afford to maintain an appropriate payroll for what they already should be enforcing. If you read into the Growth Policy Plan, they actually site “poor and untimely law enforcement” as a major object of concern as well as their inability to fund appropriately via existing revenue.

If HR622 passes it will mean no federal funding for law enforcement on 63% of that land. It’s not clear from public documents how many of the 41 tax paying Federal employees in Granite County are serving in a capacity that would be eliminated by HR622 if it passes.  The 4 law enforcement people working for the County already would then be given the duty of patrolling the extra hundreds of square miles that wouldn’t be under the jurisdiction of federally funded officers. Also those square miles are the hardest to get too, which also makes them the most expensive to patrol. If you read about the state of the County’s patrol vehicles, I’m sure they couldn’t get to many of the places that the well equipped high clearance 4×4 trucks with Federal plates can go.

Although spread out over many miles, Granite County is a small place. Only a few thousand people live in the entirety of it, and I consider some of them friends. I am amazed by how far they can stretch a budget and how many services they can provide given their budget limitations. I hope that nobody takes any of this as a slam. I present this as information for people who have no context to how important federal funding is for the places that are made up by federally controlled lands. The tax payers of Granite County can barely break even with maintaining what they have, to double or triple the burden of law enforcement would bankrupt the county.

It would just be nice if our elected officials would stop introducing stupid bills that would create far more problems than they would fix.

HR621 and HR622

HR621 was introduced last week with the goal to eliminate 3.3 million acres of public land. People of all different walks of life with all different political views have mobilized to try to stop this bill. While one person might want to hunt on the land, an anti-hunter might want that land protected to aid in the stabilization of an endangered species. You know a bill is bad when ranchers and mining companies don’t like it (remember they already get access to some of these lands for pennies on the dollar.)

If you don’t have any previous knowledge of what this is all about, please take three minutes to watch this video:

If you use public lands for any sort of recreation please contact your representatives and tell them to vote this down! If you fish or hunt, please consider joining Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. If you do not, please consider an organization like the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.

Funding your dream hunt

I have been very fortunate in my life and I’ve had the opportunity to have a few “once in a lifetime” trips already. The picture above from Wyoming Pronghorn 2016 stands out as one of those for sure!

People sometimes can’t believe some of the trips I’ve done, or what I have planned for the next few years. I’m going to do one post explaining how I pull off all of the hunting and trips that I do.

Rule #1, you do not talk about fight club. (Couldn’t resist.)

Rule #2, there are two sides to every coin. I will cover all the ways I accumulate cash later, but the other side of saving is spending. Spending wisely! Big trips might take years to plan, you have plenty of time to figure out how to make it cheaper. Easy things to shop are travel expenses, taxidermy fees, and buying any special but required equipment either used or on sale. Every dollar you can avoid spending makes saving so much easier!

Big tip here: If you know a particular outfitter you want to go with, find out if they donate hunts to non-profit organizations. It’s often possible to bid on donated hunt packages and win at less than face value. In a few weeks I will be at a banquet that has an all-inclusive hunt donated that I would really like to do. I will probably lose it, but I will be ready to bid up to 80% of face value when I go. If I win, I will have saved at least 20% on another “once in a lifetime” adventure.

Rule #3, put savings on the monthly budget. I have a small amount for entertainment on my budget for movies or meals out, but then I have a larger amount for “future fun.” I have to put up the money towards my next trip as soon as I’m paid or I will find something else to waste the money on.

Rule #4, put it on autopilot! Twice a month money goes from my bank to my long term hunting account. I started a Wealthfront account and I dribble in my future hunting dreams without ever having to do anything about it.

Rule #5, gather the Acorns before winter. Aside from the budgeted amount I save every month for my future hunts, I have turned on a “round up” savings mechanism. Acorns monitors all of my credit cards and my checking acount, every transaction that goes through, it rounds up and withdraws from my checking account. While it does cost $1 per month, which is incredibly high from a percentage perspective, it does encourage me to stash about $40-$50 extra per month. So while it might cost me $12 per year that I really don’t need to spend, it does bank up $500-$600 that I wouldn’t otherwise save. That money goes a LONG way towards out-of-state camping hunts!!!

Rule #6, Be the CHANGE you want to see in the world. I would like to see my freezer full instead of empty, so when I pay cash for something I always pay with a bill. All coin change I get in a year goes in a jar. It always comes out to a few hundred dollars each year. I always have my guide’s tip plus emergency cash ready to go before any trip. Boy Scout motto, be prepared!

So there you go, there’s nothing magical in the plan. Just a little bit every two weeks, a little bit every time the card swipes, and a little bit every time I get coin change.

Those links for Wealthfront and Acorns are referral links. If you plan to use either of those services anyway, please consider clicking them to help me fund my next hunt!

I wish you the very best in your planning of your dream hunt!

A few thoughts about lions.

Right off the bat, I want to say that I have no interest in hunting big cats. I’ve never done it, and I assume I never will. What I am interested in is the conservation of habitat and animals, and the management techniques that protect both of them.

We had that whole Cecil debacle in July of 2015. Vocal and psychotic anti-hunters caused such a stir they actually accomplished their goal; a bunch of hunters decided not to hunt cats in Zimbabwe.  I’m sure many folks were very pleased with their results. And with their “victory” they created a new problem.

What happpens if a habitat can carry 300 lions and all the animals they need to kill, but you have 500 lions living there? If you don’t let trophy hunters pay to hunt them, you have to pay professional hunters to kill them. That’s right, for Zimbabwe they lost somewhere near ten million dollars of revenue and then they have to start paying people to go kill the same lions that were “saved” by the anti-hunters.

Just in case you think I’m too much of a pro-hunter to be objective, why not read up on the subject over on Nat Geo? There is plenty more information if you would like to conduct your own searches. I particularity enjoyed a piece from PETA suggesting that if we just stop hunting it will sort itself out. Look at all the countries in Africa that stopped hunting and they are the poorest of the lot with rampant poaching. Those are the countries leading the way towards extinction of species and destruction of habitat.

I very much look forward to seeing the management practices of South African land owners next summer and learning about how they establish their quotas when mixed herds live in a habitat with a certain potential to grow food.

Pumping up the draw weight

I was going to wait until January 1st, but I couldn’t help myself. I took an arrow and put a loop of tape around it at 29.5″ (my true draw with ASL longbows.) I strung up my 75# JET Wolverine and took a few practice draws tonight. Man, that bow felt great! The weight was fine, and holding it at anchor brought a nice muscle burn after a few seconds on each draw.

Every bit of burn felt like I was just a little bit closer to hunting buffalo next August.

I’ll be drawing this bow every morning between now and May 1st before I get my first cup of coffee. After that I’ll be on my 85# longbow until the hunt.

Every day, I am one day closer.