Joshua Hamman, PH Craigh Hamman, and I with a reedbuck taken with .375 H&H.

I had come a long way in my lifetime, longer and farther than a lot of folks might have expected. As kids, we used to save our money so we could buy a handful of cartridges for the opening of the Texas deer season. We camped out, slept on the ground, and ate jerky, just so we could go deer hunting. And, here I was, all these years later, hunting in Africa.

But I have been blessed to get to hunt in a number of foreign countries and I really enjoy seeing the hunting techniques and customs in these foreign lands. Our Mozambique camp was run by South Africans, working for Zambeze Delta Safaris. And if there is a better class of people than the South Africans, I’d sure like to meet them. It’s kinda sad the way our country treated South Africa during all that apartheid crap. I mean, we’re such experts on civil rights, you know.

I noticed right away that, if you made a good clean kill, the trackers all jumped in to shake hands and offer congratulations. If you messed the shot, especially on dangerous game, not so much. I suppose I’d feel the same way if I had to go follow up a wounded dangerous animal and was the only one in the crowd that didn’t get to carry a gun.

But, thinking about sleeping on the cold ground during an early Texas deer hunt made me especially appreciate it when the camp staff would bring a tray of coffee to my Africa tent and softly call to wake us up. Entirely too civilized, what?

And, in the evenings we would come in and throw our dirty clothes into a basket. The next afternoon, the stuff would reappear, as if by magic, all folded up nicely on the foot of the bed. And it was ironed! Even my underwear! Yep, there we were, thousands of miles from just about anywhere, looking spiffy as hell. Move over Stewart Granger!

Actually, it turns out that there is some sort of little bug in the water that will get into your clothes unless they kill it with heat. So they iron everything. I drank several toasts to that little bug. Bless his heart!