00:00:09 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely bugg bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, Okay, um uh, the machine on is now, Thomas. I've been looking at your name. I've been looking at your name and don't don't tell me how long? Well my entire life. I've been looking at your name of magazine you were very personal, precocious, how like? How how many it feels like my entire life? How many? How many magazine articles have you written? Thousands and now now thousands, now hundreds? Maybe you know I've written, um, you know the last few years. I've probably written more television shows. I'm not a very fast writer. I'm a half fast writer. Do you ever hear that quote from I think it was our w Apple had that quote that I can write faster than anyone who can write better than me, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster. Yeah, I've I've I don't know. I mean I probably am good for twenty articles a year, feature articles a year. What do you mean writing television shows? I write? I write for Right, for Trev Goudy, for um Sasquatch Mountain Man, and His Monster Fish show. Right, what I write this like enter animal enter, No, it's like it's like, and now as the deer comes towards Jim, Oh, you write the narration the voice over, so you're coming in after the cut's been put together. And I have one of those charming little golden mices in my house too, that mean the golden moose. Oh like an award. Yeah, it's like you got on yourself over here? Yea? And for what for narration? For writing for his Fish and show. They decided that they will make they'll make the show and then they'll send it to you and you'll be like, and they'll be some scratch video and you're going and redo. You'll write like, what's gonna be the actual narration? Did you either read on it? No? No, no, no, they've got they've got they have a professional talent for that. No, I I get well scratch vo yeah, well no, not necessarily. Now it could be like right here, yeah, that's it. You know, it's um um, you know, give us give us fifteen seconds here about well whatever, you you know, what are you doing it? Okay, let let's let's let's aside from the fact that it's easy money, which I don't want anybody to know. Um, well, there's gonna be two or three now, you know. Well, um, you know, yeah, it's a different muscle, it's a different it's a different deal, you know. Um, some are better than others. I mean, some are better too to work on the others not not not the shows per se, but just individual episodes. You know, you can I I can tell when they're scrambling. I'm sure you guys understand what that's like. You know, you's got a certain smell to it. Yeah, what is it? Uh? Yeah, for Dame talks about smells like stinky feet. So you know, so you grew up reading Heavingway because you talk a lot about Heavingway in your book. Yeah, yeah, you know, and it's and it's Um, I think that was more like I had a high school teacher who was like just Hemingway guy in the sixties, and I started reading it. Um, But I also like had I mean, my influences are also personal because you don't write. Here's the thing. You don't write like an outdoor writer. What does that mean? Well, you write like a writer. Well, okay, there's outdoor writers right now. There's some aspects of outdoor writing in your writing that a writer would never think to do, right courtesies where you'd be like, instead of I lifted Old Bessie, you might be like I lifted X caliber Magan model firearm. Dawn was a Primrose promises, which is a outdoor writer thing to do that a writer wouldn't do unless like kar Ck McCarthy would do it. But it wouldn't be the same, It just would be different. Well, no, I should say, because Karl McCarthy and No Country for Old Men doesn't even say like someone had a nine millimeter parabellum or whatever. Right, So yeah, so some writer writers do clarify calibers and grain bullets and whatnot, but generally you don't write like you don't write like an outdoor writer because there's people here's here's why I'm putting it. There's people that were gonna be writers. I was gonna be a writer. Okay, they're gonna be writers Like I gotta be a writer. I don't know what exactly gonna write about that will come out in time, but this is what I'm doing. And then you've got people who were, uh, I'm gonna do something in the outdoor industry, not sure what it is. It'll emerge over time. And those two people have very different world views when they each wind up being an outdoor writer and and and I guess in my case, I would there was a mesh of the two of an intersection um where I was influenced as a young child in the hunting, which was unusual because I grew up in like l a because you're old man didn't hunt. But the guy I learned from was his friend and I talked about in the book. I mean, why why am I? Why am I writing about Africa? You know at this late date, UM would be a late date. It is a late date. I mean you know that in your life. No, I think, I think, I think, I think. I think that the whole for the parameters around African writing have changed a lot. You know, there was a time when it was, as I think, I say somewhere in the book, I mean, the greatest adventure money could buy. Okay, let let let's pause from it. Pause because you've recently published the book August in Africa. So just I just want people to be aware, like like so in this book just came out or not within a year, so or what Yeah, within six months. Yeah, and it's and so uh so. But the some of these pieces you wrote long ago, they're forty years old. Some of them I started to collect it. So you're saying, like after writing has changed between when you began, Africa has changed from when I began to when you're now putting this out in book. African Hunting has changed. Um because of Cecil the Lion. No, No, I don't think so. I I think Cecil is the least of the worries. Um, I don't, I don't. I don't know that there's any way of putting that particular genie back in the bottle. That's that's been going on since Born Free, you know, you know, back in the six it's been going on for a Can we hold up, we hold off on this for a second. Um, So you're old man and hunt. You were born in l A. He had a buddy that hunted was and went to Africa in the fifties on on on very little money. Was your dad a writer? No, my dad was a machinist and actually he and his brother owned a company. So who was the first writer you knew? You mean, like, what made you aware that there's a thing called writers, and that you could be one. You know, it was that again. These are these are these are wonderfully probing questions. Uh, you know, I don't know. I mean, that's a good question. I had a certain facility for words, you know, which which is as I get older, is is fleeting away. But really, thank you? Um oh no, I just I know what you're saying, know what you're saying, because I feel like it's happened to me and then it comes back again. Though, but in some ways it's it's the you know, it's it's it's it's like it's like I I my fastball is not there anymore, but I'm learning. I've got a lot more, uh you know, sliders and and and fork balls and stuff I can. My technique has gotten better, I think, so I like to think. So anyway, those are terms for tricky baseball pitches. Yeah, un educated enough in sports like that. When someone says like fastball, I'm like, I'm like trap tracking track. Yeah. Well maybe all our listeners, you know, are huge baseball fans. Right well. Anyway, um, so, I mean, if if if I'm gonna be a totally autobiographical it was the nuns. It was the nuns and grammar school that they singled me out and they said you can write, yeah, and and that was like and like I think, like anything else, it was like this was a wonderful way to get attention. You know, Yeah, I'm with you. And it's funny when you go when someone when you need to express the thing like what caused something? Yeah, because there's all there's it's like a game you can play, like you know, like like I'll often say like, yeah, I kind of wish I hadn't done my first book the way I did it. My wife said, well, we wouldn't have met because I'm like, okay, but that's like that old story where the guy goes back in time to hunt a dinosaur and steps on a They find a dinosaur. It's about ready to die anyway, and I really careful, rob he's shooting a dinosaur. He stepped on a butterfly and comes back in the Nazis in World War two and and Trump is president. So you do get into like what made it become that you became a writer, and it's it's a hard thing. I've kind of like I look at him like it's kind of because of my tenth grade English teacher, Robert Keaton, sure kind of like if I had to go, like, oh that right, right, And and as far as the Hemmingway thing, I'll get put a plug in for my sophomore UM English teacher at the you know, with the Jesuits, was Tom McCambridge, who's still around him, still talking um. But I knew about hunting before I knew about Hemingway, except well, that's not really true, because I think this is very weird. I mean, and I don't know how these things happen. I was seven or eight years old and I was riding with my father in his um I think it was a Buick Wildcat six one, and we were turning down this street called Cherokee and Owny, California, and the radio news came on and said, author Ernest Hemingway is dead. And this was in the summer of that year, and I really had no idea who he was. I was seven years old. And then fast forward into high school and this other you know, this strange serendipity of you know, forces coming together whatever. Um. So yeah, I mean, you know, I think that was part of it. I think there was that a lure of being What kind of writer is this guy? Hemingway, you know, I mean he can write about you know, he can he can write about stuff, he can do stuff. He knows about stuff. I mean, I think there's a great line that that ultimately, you know what, writers have to know something, and he knew. I mean, you know, he knew how to dig worms and go and go fishing in the big two hearted river, you know, which doesn't exist. They don't think or doesn't you're little too hard? Yeah, So I mean it's it's I mean he also he he didn't he like fumbled with the directions or I'm on purpose to kind of like you know, um then you mean like the Nick Adams stories. Yeah, I mean he fudged the directions so if you if you follow them, you'd never find the place. Yeah, I mean he didn't. He wasn't going to tell you where he is particular horn. I grew up in Illinois. Now when he shot himself, yeah, catch them idahole, catch your mind with a shotgun. I believe was purchased from Abercrombie and Fitch. It was a boss ten gage with with dual triggers, but didn't wind up being there's the thing to have. Not long ago, his family took the shotgun down to have a mechanic destroy it. Well, it took He took a he took a cutting torch and cut the hole. This is in Sylvia, callabe that the heavy ways guns, and they and they and they did that. He went and buried it and they never found it. But he took a couple of pieces, like the trigger, right, put in a match a little piece of the sideline. Yeah, and put it in in a match. And they were able to go back and and piece it all together. Because it had always been thought that he had shot himself with some different shotgun. It turned out that the pieces in that matchbox was from a different shotgun or whatever he thought he killed himself with. Now you know you're something special when people will later argue about what gun it was you killed yourself with. Yeah, but but more than a heavyweight, Like I feel like when you write, uh, I don't think you you don't write like Hevyway. I don't think you like try it right like Hevingway. But the stuff he wrote the seventies sounds it reminded me a lot of like other guys that are right in the seventies even where like early Jim Harrison, early time mcgwaen um and it sounds it kind of reminded me like the structure of the stuff, well, a disjointed in structure that also reminds yea of the other guy that shot himself in Big Sarah, California, Richard Broad Again, did you read all those guys or was it just something in the air. No, I read all those guys, you know, I mean, you know that was the the the idea that you could actually be a I think one of mcgwyn's favorite words of sportsman, you know, and and actually right about it, I had no interest in well, I didn't. I didn't live in that milieu anyway. I was. I was never gonna write about Manhattan, you know. I was never gonna write the j McNerney kind of stuff. You know. I wasn't gonna write novels anyway, as it turned out, Um though I did have I have one Nolla. But anyway, they snow Leopard, the snow or Tail and Alan Jones, not the snow Leopard, silver tail, snow lips tail, which was not t a I t a y. It's it was what we finally came with Alan Jones over Bank Tell Pressidy here in town and he says, hello, uh we uh that's we came up with. So anyway, Um, yeah, you know, I mean it was it was. Yeah, that stuff was out there and that was that was where you looked. You know, it was you know, it was that was the way it was. I somehow I had this notion that you could actually make it as a writer and not have to get sucked into academia or someplace else. One of my uh this apricot and uh, you know what people say, like speaking of which, or like let's say you're talking about frogs, you know, and you're like, yeah, frogs are generally a lot of frogs are green. And then someone will say speaking of frogs, um, and then I'll tell you something about frogs. I found myself a lot of times in conversation like wanting to raise a point that I can't even say speaking of which, but like it's not even related to what we're talking. But a favorite thing of mine about Tom mcgwain speaking of no speaking yeah, speaking of mcgwain, he writes great short stories. Still to this favorite Yeah anything yet, Hi, Hi, I like Tom mcgwaen, So mcgway so writes, I mean he writes phenomenal short stories. There's two short story writers I like right now. I like Tom mcgwaen, and I like a girl named Curtis sit and Felt. I don't know her. Yes, yeah pieces in New York, dude, Yeah she is good. So mcgwaen. He's got an essay he wrote about hunting, and it's like a seventies style essay. Everybody's essays in the seventies all were kind of the same. It's just good versions and bad versions of it. Like like pasta, right, like spaghetti, meat sauce. You're looking at something it's good to something that essays in the seventies looked a certain way. His word, the good version, well it was. He he's got this piece he wrote where in it he's imagining a conversation I talked about this all the time. He's imagining a conversation between a hunt her in an anti hunter, and the anti hunter is taking the hunter to task and like, why do you have to kill deer? What did dear do to you? And the hunt was like I can't talk about it this way, and I know, why do deer have to die for you would you die for a deer? And he says, if it came to that, yes, yeah, yeah, and that is I mean in circles and a spiral and a wheel within a wheel. Now it's the like. His editor for that piece was Terry McDonald, who coincidentally later became my editor at Sports a Field. I know that, Yeah, that's the and and then he uh, and you know, and then his his I took Terry Terry out on an ant well. I went back to New York and I was saying, like, you're a doing an outdoor magazine. Xea, yeah here he ever hunted anything. He goes, no, does that matter? Yeah? I said, yeah it matters. And I said, come out to Wyoming and we'll hunt antelope with black powder rifles. And he said, okay. So you know, we came out and you know, he was out in this blind I guess, and this antelope walked by and he killed it very you know, serviceably. And then I was walking out to them and I got up to him and he was like looking at me and he said, you know, Tom, I saw you cross in the fields. I yeah, And I suddenly had this urge to shoot and kill you, and I said, really, Terry, yes, yes I did. Anyway, that that evening went on for quite a little while, and the next morning he had to catch a plane and I had to come in and wake him up and ask him what he wanted for breakfast, and he said, I'll have the surfer breakfast. And I got the surfer breakfast and he goes, he goes, yeah, uh, twinky and a pepsi. Anyway, but he actually commissioned that piece by mcgwayne mcgwayn piece, yeah, and it was actually mcgwain went to him, well, he said, I want you to I'm starting he was starting Outside, and so I want you to write a piece for Outside, and uh, mcgwayne said, I don't suppose you'd want something about hunting. And he goes, well, it's not really kind of where we're at. But sure, yeah, I've wedged I've wedged the number of house hunting stories into Outside over the years. There you go, you gotta cram them in there. If you try hard enough, you can stick it in there. Now, there's the thing you say in your book that really surprised me. I want to make sure that you think this is correct. The Africa has a lower percentage of what one would call wilderness than does the world in general. Supposedly, Uh, that are that those are the statistics that I guess it kind of makes sense if you think about and and it's like if you think about the boots and its semantics, the circumpolar boreal like they are the Antarctic. You know, there's but the other figure that's more interesting, I think is that there is more wilderness in North America than there is in Africa. I just well, but you have to realize that the African Africans are essentially pastoralists and agrarians. So they are, you know they are, and there's some there's a billion of them, you know, there's a billion Africans, and and they tend to be spread out. You know. It's it's if you took off here and went up in the mountains someplace, and we're walking around, you would be surprised to run into somebody. You know you could, but I mean in places if you know, there is almost no place in Africa where you will not run into somebody. They'll be on foot, they may be carrying a spear, they may be driving a cow, they may be doing whatever. You know, but that tempers the definition of wilderness, you know, So it's it's it is more. I mean it is a it is a rural society more than a wilderness society. Is that a probably probably possibly of um, maybe the landscape or the people requiring a larger piece of the landscape they have they have to elude Um. I don't know if you don't Val guy stuff in BC. But we talked about that guy every day. Yeah, I love him. He's a great guy. Um Vale's anyway, so Val would like, you know, Val is like what I was asking him. I said, what will produce more biomass? And he goes, well, you gotta remember African is, as he says, thin soils. They don't. They didn't have the advantages of glaciers pushing all this top soil down like we have here, and so we have a much more fertile base as it were, that you can you can grow a lot less in Africa than you can here. And because of that, the people tend to be more spread out, and so they're there. It's like how cows are spread out. Yeah, if you go look at like like grazing ratios in Florida, cows per acre. Yeah, let me look at cows per acre in West Texas. It takes a hell of a lot more ground. I mean, if you want to if you want to raise cattle, you go to Iowa and you feed him silage. You know, that's that's the sensible way of doing it. Um. You ever see a map of where you could raise cattle that'll supplemental feed. No, but I'm sure it's fascinating. It's not a big chunk of ground. No, no, no, it's I mean it's and it's like, you know, it's how much how much corn is raised for cattle? So uh yeah, that really threw me for a loop. And and and as you like, I've never I've never stepped foot on Africa. I've always been kind of interested in going there. Um And I've come kind of close sometimes to go in there hunting. But I have so many, so many things about it. Give me pause, and I'll ask you about a lot of those things. But it's I'm coming at you in discussing this, um not not from an educated perspective. Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about. Oftentimes I have the luxury of talking. That doesn't stop a lot of people from feel like what what doesn't happen is a lot of people don't lay that out right. Well, that's that's that's an admirable position. You're talking your you're talking to your book, and this might be a good way to kind of lay out like when you started going there, how many times you've been there? You're talking to your book at a point where you say, there's old school African hunting and there's new school African hunting. Ryan, what are they? And when did and when did uh that that? When did it tip? Well? I think I can't deny that there are probably aspects of what I kind of think of as old school. Let's put it this way. When I first started going to Africa forty plus years ago, you when you're in the twenties, it was it. Yeah, when I first started going there, it was we would go out, we we would go to the game department and we would get licenses and permits. It wasn't just complete you know, las a fair but in the permits were expensive or inexpensive all relatively speaking, It depends on where you were, you know. I mean, I guess they were expensive at the time, but I had I It wasn't like buying like elk tags as a resident or like buying a deer tag as a resident in Florida. Yeah, yeah, well I don't Yeah, yeah, I mean it was. Let's put it this way. I mean it was. It has certainly become exponentially more expensive for what it was, like it's a head of inflation. Yeah, what it was in those days was probably not considered cheap. I had the benefit. I had some money that I had gotten, and I had enough money to either, let's say, go put a down payment on a house or go to Africa. This is the first time you went. You didn't go as a writer? No, I wasn't. I wasn't published. You know, I got you. So I just went, you know, and it was like it was like it was like, what are you gonna do when you get back? You know, this is my question more than anything else. And I didn't have an answer. I mean I didn't. Well, I guess I'll come back and try to write about something, you know. But I, for some reason, because of my experience of a friend of my father's, his influence on me, you know, too many books read at two young an age. Um, I wanted to go. I wanted to see it. That's a quote in your book were Hemingway what what Hemingway books that we're Havingway were one of the characters says, hey, we should go to Africa and go hunting. Their characters never had any desire. He goes, that's just because you haven't read a book about it. That's yeah, that's from uh the sun also right, but anyway they Yeah, No, I mean, it's it's the you know what was I gonna say? Are the the that I when I went there? You you had, you were, you were mobile, you moved, you know you if if we will go, we will we would go into an area and we would find a spot and would go, you know, under the fever trees and we would put the tents up and then we would hunt them and then and not hunting. These aren't fenced areas. Just just no, no, no, no no. When you say we, who is we, Well, me and I'd have a professional hunter, you know, they would just be the two of us, two of you got on the track. That's another thing I mentioned in the book. I mean, because basically you have you know, there's there's it's it's a it's a polite fiction that the professional hunter is there for you know, but the guys who are really doing the work are the trackers because they are so good at what they do. But in those so it was still you professional hunter and multiple trackers. The professional hunter is like a liaison. He's he's a legal requirement, but he's also he's more than that. But it's not a legal requirement that he be white. No, And I've hunted with black professional hunters you know who've been are great guys, I mean like native born well, I mean, I guess most of white professional hunters, well know you mentioned a lot were born in England and elsewhere. Not necessarily no, I mean some of them. You know, the first guy hunter with John Fletcher, he was actually born in India, um, but he was he was a colonialist, I guess, is a you know, without any pejorative attachment to that word. Um. But he was with Kurt, Donnie and Selby, you know, and that was that was you know, this wasn't this is kind of the way it was in those days. Is I found a night I knew the name Kurran Downey, um, which is what an outfitter. Yeah, it was like Robert Rourke, you know, and those guys hunted with with Kurran Downey. And then Harry Selby is the guy who was Rourke's professional hunter and and and he he put in with these two guys and they became Kurve Downey and Selby Safari's and I actually knew the name. I had no other information on them. And I a friend of mine had gone to Nairobe and he'd come back with the phone book. He'd stolen the phone book because he thought it was pretty cool to have U, you know, the night robe phone book, And so I looked it up. I got their name and address out of the thing, and I wrote him a letter and I said I want to go home with you guys. And this letter came back with all these blue lions on the outside of the letter going, we'd love to have come pretty cool and um, so that's how I got over there. You know, now, of course, today you're gonna go to like the conventions, and you're gonna go to a booking age and you're gonna you know, you're gonna it's all it's all gonna be brokered for you. It's all going to be negotiation anyway. That's and that's the way it is, And I don't I'm not one of those kind of guys who like says, well that's you know, that makes it all bad. It's just the way it makes it the way it is. But um so we note when I first went there and and it was and it was that was still this this this hold over of the kind of some of the worst aspects of colonialism. I'm not gonna deny that. When I the way I hunted in Kenya and at that time, I mean, this is the way that people have been hunting for seventy eight years, you know, and it was the way. What was the way? Like what's that that? It was the structure, the the organization, you know, the fact that you were going into an area and you were hunting. You know, we were the But what was colonial because it was exploitative of the well it was it was a skin color. Was was you know, a factor a factor uh in I mean in compensation in hierarchy. No, it was just the way it was. But it was a factor. And what it was the way that was the way the Safari system had been structured and and it evolved from you know, like Roosevelt on is you had you had a professional hunter with a licensed hunter, and then it was you know, he would set up the camps and he he had responsibility, and it was, you know, what they wanted to make sure. It was that when the Mazoongu, the crazy white guy who's going over here to hunt, he's not gonna get killed because we don't want him to be killed. That's gonna look bad. It's not gonna be good for our our tourist industry, you know. I mean the second time. The first time Hemmingway went to Tanzania in Gnyka in those days, that was on his own dime, or at least his wife's uncle's dime, you know, and it was a pretty expensive deal in those days. You figured out it's not you when he went back the second time to Kenya for I don't know how long months he was there um as the guest of the Kenyan Game Department, because they wanted we would love to have some promotion to get people here too. You know, we're we're kind of on the cusp of the Mau Mau uprisings and we're getting some bad press and we want to you know, we would love to have you come in here and and you know, hang around, and so that's what he was. I feel I got that because I feel like I'm missing something. Sure, the first time you went, you go there and you there, there's a feller, the pH he's a white guy, right, and there's some element of he's a loonial being that European countries carved up Africa and they had colonies and there was a offset power structure that favored those white individuals or the indigenous individuals that lived there. Yeah, and also hunting with you are trackers. The trackers are there as you know, they're they're working for They are hired by the professional hunter, and you say they do the heavy lifting of the hunting. They're the guy who they're the guy. You put them on a track and they're gonna they're gonna figure out where that track ends up to a degree where you're like, holy sh it, this guy is good at tracking. Oh man, oh man, like you wouldn't be able to do. You know, that's the scary part. If you follow those guys around, even for a few weeks, you can begin to like actually, you know, kind of deceive yourself into figuring out, oh, what it is they're doing. And you get to the point where you're start. You can like, look, oh, here's a buffalo track. Look how look how it look? How the edge is shiny, it's fresh, you know, it's not blown over. You know, so it was probably this morning. Let's go, let's get on this track and and go. And you also mentioned how the coarseness of the vegetation in the buffalo ship, yeah, giving you an indication of tooth ways, especially elephants. Elephants you can look at you can get the you know, the elephant dounge is like this basketball laying on the ground, and you can look at how coarse the grass stems are in it. That will tell you that it's an older bull because his teeth are worn down and he's not he's not chewing it as much as he could as a younger one. So that's that's an indication of something. It doesn't, you know, none of that tells you if your elephant hunting. None the tell And I've never hunted. I've never taken an elephant with who I would have, but I never have um and I add the that the the fact is that that doesn't tell how big the ivory is. You know, the size of the track doesn't tell you anything if it's got a big tusk or not. Right, So old school new school, new school is now okay, old school is explained more about old school. Okay, well old schools. Essentially, you were hunting as close to wilderness in Africa as you could find, you know, as we're talking about before it was it was when by the definition of oldness in this country probably wouldn't qualify. You know, there were motor vehicles allowed, you could, you know, but you were out in the middle of nowhere, you know, and it was and you would find you would run across you know, massi who were still I mean guys with spears. Guys were still these guys were still spearing lions in those days, you know. And and it was all essentially it was it was government land, open land, wild land. It was. It wasn't controlled by anybody just roaming around you were you were. Essentially you would, yeah, you would essentially you had you had you had arranged for the right to hunt it for a certain amount of time and and a certain perimeter. You know. They they broke it up on what they called hunting blocks, and you would actually get blocked sixty and you would hunt blocked sixty which might be fifty thousand makers. I don't know. I mean it was just go on forever and the pH arrange that with the government. Yeah yeah, I mean he was, he was, you know, that's what they did. They'd go to the game department. Now fast forward thirty years to the new school New school and you kind of get to the South African model and the South African model. The land is owned by the hunter or by a landowner, and then the hunter professional hunter will like sort of lease that out, you know, and you'll bring in his clients quote unquote clients and they will um and unquote Oh, I just there's there. You know, you get that, you get into that that weird area like as am I a hunter? Am I a client? Am I not? You know, you go back and forth on that. I don't understand what you're saying. Well, you know, it's it's it's how much how much handholding are you getting? Well and and meaning a client gets more than a hunter. Client is the term I think to avoid confusion with professional hunter. You know that that that you are the client is a hunter. The professional hunter is the licensed guide on the hunt. So I think for the term of art is client. You are the client of the professional hunter. But that would seem like a really literal perfect word client. Yeah, given the guy money to take you hunting, you're his client. Yep, yep. The same thing in this country when you go, you know, that's the word guided. He he does talk about He talks about clients. Do you think guys go over there and then disliked being called clients because they wanted to be called well, you know, I mean, there's there's there's you know, everybody wants to be jungle Jim. You know, everyone wants to come back where you know, as soon as they go, they want to run out and buy the Safari jacket and the you know with the bullet holes or the pouches in the in the in the shirt, so that they aspire to be taken more seriously than they are. Yeah. Yeah, well you know, and and and there's a great one I got and I think I quote Jim Harrison in the book where he talks about that, you know that, um, there there's a there's a certain amount of African hunting that um is really a polite fiction or a little comedy that that that wealthy sportsmen play on their less well healed brethren back home. You know, it's like they're always getting charged by a lion, attacked by a cake buffalo or something. And and well, but anyway, the and and and there is a point to this that um so now it's like, you know, and God bless him. I mean, if you want to go to Africa, go to Africa. And if God who any any hunter who wants to go to Africa, if he wants to go to South Africa and he wants to shoot a kudu in a ORICX and a whatever, you know, I don't. I don't feel bad about that because the meat is going to be used, every scrap of it. But in the new school model, what's the main I don't I still want to say, in the main difference time I think it's I think more than anything else, it's it's it's it's scheduled in time, and if you go there, they run it like a hunt factory in some instances. In some cases that doesn't mean you cannot find places in Africa that are not that you know, and I the more you, for lack of a better term, mature in your African hunting, it's less interesting that kind of hunting becomes so sketch out that kind of hunting because can I tell what I think my my impression. Let's start with my impression based on nothing sure, and you tell me where I'm wrong. My impression of going to South Africa to hunt is you're hunting on fenced land and you go and you have a budget. Yeah, and they're like, you can shoot that and that's five thou dollars. You can shoot that and that's eight thousand dollars. And guys walk drive around on the truck and they're like, oh, no, ship, that's what one of those looks like wam and the guys like that's six and he's like, well, I can only spend twenty, so let's go shoot some more it. So I get up to fourteen and I'm then I'm aheading on keep the tally going, Um, is that wrong? No? Oh well, I mean I mean I mean in the in the in the cosmic sense, yeah, it's really wrong. But I mean in the sense of of what you're gonna what the way things can be can be, and I want to make sure I make that clear can be that can be the experience. Many people go to Africa and come back and describe as their African hunt. And that plays out over how many days? How how fast do you want to shoot him? They're that abundant. Depends depends on what the guy's got, you know, I mean he's got you know, he's he may have a he may have a run on springbok this week. Well, he may have he may he may go I've got I've got I've got a thousand acres of productive springbuck habitat, and I've got that will support fifties springbok or you know, and he puts them in there or they're there. He's put them in there before they have bread. They are usually self sustaining and breeding on their own, you know. But they are cutting animals loose into there for people to go get. No, the animals there, you're just going inside to get it. So it's not like, uh, it's not like the kind of canned hunt or fence hunt where they cut the animal loose in the morning. No no, no no, and you go shoot it that down. No, they don't do that. They don't do that in that from now, well, I can't say that it's a big place that's there may be places where that happens. I don't know that, you know. I mean, I I've hunted in all I've hunted behind fences, and it's it was okay, But I very quickly learned the difference because you had started out in the wild, yea, And so whenever I could go back, you know, I haven't gone to I haven't hunted in South Africa in twenty years. It's South Africa kind of the center of the new school. What remains the center of the old school? Well, Tanzania. Tanzania is still rolling around in the woods, is yeah, and it's fabulously expensive. It's more expensive to roam around in the woods dealing with uncertainty is to not roam around. So guys know the difference because people paying for that experience there. Yeah, that's the whole point. They're not paying for the animal, They're paying for the experience when they go to someplace like Tanzania, the animal becomes a matter of indifference. And it's okay, that's not correct either, But I'm just saying, you know, it isn't like, you know, the first things too many guys can do is go up to an animal and go where does this go? In the book? You know, and they expect their their professional hunter to tell them that will be in the top the top camper cent you know, and they'll go, okay, great, And then I am at a loss fro why that exists. But but at the same time I can also realize that it does support game lands in South Africa but otherwise have absolutely no economic value. So it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a that's the part of it that starts to get really it's it's it's it's a bargain with the devil, you know. It's it's Do I want to go there and hunt? Probably not, because why I just don't have a good feeling afterwards. How many times do you hunted in Africa? Thirteen or fourteen times over the last forty years? No, mean, there's guys who have hunted lots. This guys have gone more, much much more. The guy, the guy who wrote here in Dutch my book, Craig Bodington, has hunted a hundred times. Now, why in your whole book do you never mention someone shooting a hippopotamus? If they do? And I've I've actually I would. That's kind of one of my dark secrets that I would love to do someday. But I don't want to shoot him in the water. I want to shoot him on the land. The reason I asked that, The reason I asked that is I think that growing up where growing up in the United States. Well there they had a conversation with a friend of mine who just gone to New Zealand. And we're talking about wildlife management in New Zealand, Okay, where while we're generally the wildlife of general interest the hunters is all non native, oftentimes delaterious, exotic wildlife. We're talking about like that world. And I was saying to him that growing up in the United States and understanding our systems in the the United States leaves you completely ill prepared to understand wildlife and wildlife management in a place like New Zealand, or or or Europe or almost the rest anywhere. Moral there's an added layer to it in Africa, where I think that we don't know those animals. We only know the fictionalized version of the animals in Africa, we don't know We don't know hippos. We know hippos as the way they've been presented to us, and this elaborate fiction fantasia and this elaborate fantasia of animation of like kids, American kids learn what a zebra is before they learn what an elk is. Yeah, it's like animals. Those animals are somehow Some of those animals are so charismatic and so otherworldly that it winds up being that your average kid would be like giraffe, elephant, zebra, lion, and he would not be able to go jaguar, mountain lion, bobcat, elk, psy a blacktail, whet. It just it's like we live with these animals in a way that that forms an impression him as being somehow other than animals. So I think that a lot of the complication around Africa would be like a lot of people look and I was reading your book waiting for a hippo to come into it, because when I look at it, dude with a dead hippo, I just do not see a game animal. I don't know what I see, But I'm like, how in the world, why how well you know? I mean, that's dude, get that feeling you like animals, seem you hunt animals that seem like, yeah, you an you talk about a giraffe, you jumped up and it looked like a radio tower decided to run away. And I've and i've I've had people extol the virtues of what a wonderful thing it was when they killed a giraffe. But you don't want to do it. I have absolutely no Why don't you want to shoot? Why in your book does no one really shoot at the animals that all little kids know about? Well, I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, you know, giraffes and stuff. I mean, not giraffes, but zebras. Sure like hunted zebras. Yeah, I like zebras, y know. I mean they're they're tough when they're smart, and they seem and you in your time in Africa, the zebra became like a game animal and not like a thing from a child's mobile. It's always been a game animal, you know. I mean, but your perception of it, yeah, yeah, no, I you know, you know. And there's the other aspect of it is one thing you begin to realize that you become something of a surrogate for the Africans. You are hunting with the people you are with who are the trackers. You become the surrogate hunter for them because of the gross and fair unfairness frankly of the game laws. You know, um oh, that you're able to hunt and they're not. They they can't afford it, they can't they can't have firearms, they can't have you know, they got a line. You had a line if you talked about coaching is a word for people doing what they used to do, but now it's illegal for them to do it. Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's it's it's you know, one day you went from a guy out getting food and the next day you're a poacher. Well, it's pretty much it. I mean, you know, the whole system of the colonial park system where they would take all these people to run them off of that you read. I mean I was talking about about ionades, the you know, and this guy created one of the v monumental game reserve in human history and what countries that in Tanzania in the Salu. But he did it in a thousand square miles of wilderness, and he did it in the most bloodthirsty way imaginable. He didn't kill anybody, but he made sure that they had to leave the past. Yeah, the pastoralists, and he had he got them out of there, you know. And now that is yeah, you were mentioned that he had spent a big part of his career killing problem elephants. Yeah, but then once he got on this idea of establishing a wilderness salute that when people would move in, they would provide no assistance to those people that the lion was getting them if an elephant was getting was like tough ship, this is wilderness. And and and he wanted to create literally a sanctuary for elephants where they were safe from poachers. Um, you know that they could basically in that square miles. They never had to go outside the boundaries of that area and they were protected, you know. And it was part of the problem you get into. And it's it's always a it's always a tough one. Is is we're on the scale, does the value of the animal begin to outweigh the value of the human? You know there that's a humongous question in this country. Well, Norm Strung who used to live here in Bozeman. He ustry for field and stream and he would go down to Mexico every winner. He would like shut the house down. He and his wife still and they jump in the bass boat and they go down to like Obragone or someplace down and they've lived there all winter fishing. And he said, the first day he came back, he got to this village and everybody comes out, they go, how did you do? It? Goes, oh, man, we must they had a hundred and fifty fish, you know, all all large mouth bass. They where are they? They go, we threw him back, and he goes, you threw him back because and then he started looking around and he started seeing all these little kids with pelegra and you know, swollen bellies and stuff. And he's, you know, this was a long time ago down to Mexico, but these villages, these villages were poor and they were protein hungry. And he said, he said, after that, to hell with it. I never threw anything back. I brought it in and I gave it away. So I mean, you kind of get into that bind when you're there. It's like it's like because you mean, like you mean literally human life, because we could look at me like we have a conflict in this country with with wilderness or wild lands where we'll be like, I'm not asking you like this wilderness is it gonna mean you die? This is gonna mean you might make a little less money otherwise might have made. We have a tremendous luxury. Yeah, and and and we have just this unsurpassed gift. You know that that Africans would look at and they would they wouldn't understand you if you try to explain to them, you know what, why why why aren't you why didn't you kill that lion? Like, well, beautiful animal, I didn't want to kill them. When we'll watch it, you know, go off into the sunset and they go, that lion just killed two of my cows. You know, it chased my brother up a tree last week. So you would never have a situation because in your book you get the sense it's a weird part of the you're out and what would be like you're out crazy ship, lions running around, baboons, crazy animals, elephants and then like dudes come rolling through camp and see if they could get like a chunk of meat, and they got a cow with him. So did you would you ever encounter would you ever encounter people out in the in the wilderness who are like, man, it's not right that you're out here shooting our animals. Well, uh, I don't know if you ever read or you know who Joy Adamson was. Adam she was. She was the author who wrote Born Free, and she was a she was actually an Austrian, I think. And she was married to George Adamson, who was one of the you know, the kind of the body sock of of game rangers in Kenya. I mean he was he was such an early proponent of concert anyway, I mean he was a you know, and and she was he was an early proponent of not shooting the animals. Well he was, yeah, well he was a proponent of like like you know, he was. He was there on the ground working this stuff, you know. And then the whole story of Born Free is they found some lion they found there, Yeah, well they found a lion cub and mother was killed or something was dead. And then so they raised the lion cub and it was called Elsa. And they raised Elsa the lion, and there was this, you know, then the song Born Free. And eventually she turned the lion back loose into the wild and let it go free again, and and then it eventually started they where the movie ended. They didn't mention the fact that the lion kept kind of hanging around, you know, people's camps and houses and villages and somebody finally killed. It didn't get yeah, no, it never it was. It was habituated, you know, it's like it's like like, don't feed the bears. Um. But anyway, so I was in with Fletcher and Kenya. We were in and Ambassilli Park. We're changing blocks and we stayed overnight in the lodge and so we're in the restaurant and like and like I look up and I go, I see this blonde woman running around, you know, greeting and meeting everybody. And I go to fletch Rock, Is that think it's joy Adamson? And I said, really, God's sake, don't tell her we're hunting even then and even there, well even then even there and then you know, and then she was eventually murdered by one of her servants because she was just not a nice lady. Well, you could be pretty mean and still not deserved to get murder. I didn't say she deserved it, but I'm just saying that that she certainly didn't go out of her way to be nice. Do you ever see the movie Bernie Bernie? Know what's that? One just explores like how bad. You gotta be right before it's okay for someone to kill you. Yeah, I know, I'm not. I'm not advocating. No, no, I don't think you are. No. No, um, I think I've noticed in recent years, and let me interrupt that you do. You do a really good job of writing about drafts running away, right, the analogies right, construction equipment taking off or other things. But the thing I think about I want to think about Africa, especially through the lens of this way. Like I'm interested in the controversies of hunting, right, sure, everybody is, and and uh Africa, like, like the behavior of Americans in Africa generates this never ending amount of of outrage. Well, the behavior of Americans almost anywhere. You know, we we have we have a chief executive who was who was saying to the first Lady of France yesterdays, yeah, you're in really great shape. Something that's really surprised. Not that surprised me, but I was like, it's like not reading the room real well, no, it's no no filter reading the room. Well, it's it's it's basically the I figured it out. It's the billionaire subduction technique. You know, like, hey, baby, I gotta I got a billion dollars, he told her. He turned to her and says, you're in very good physical shape. It turns to the president in France, it says beautiful, very good physical shape, at which point she steps backwards. Dude, it was like, yeah, I was really surprising because um, I would go and meet the president of France and I would be thinking, I'll tell you, one thing I'm not gonna talk about is his wife. How is she over? How is she over? A muddy trap. So think I've noticed about Africa is that African outrage. Okay, So every day, like if you follow social media, every day, there's a thing that everyone's supposed to be outraged over, and we feign outrage and share our feigned outrage over social media. And one of the things one thing that people love to feinn outrage over is someone having shot something in Africa that was cute or that was a fantastical animal that we that we feel as fantastical because the way they're woven into the fabric of our culture. African megaphun But it's seemed to me that the thing that with Americans, they get more piste, the weirder, it seems that the person that shot the thing would have been their shooting stuff. So if there's a guy that made millions doing like heating and cooling from Florida, Guinniss, if he shoots something generally, generally it's different if a young gal, if a young gal, a high school gal say we're to go and shoot something in Africa, that is more offensive to Americans. And if there was a guy from the heating and cooling industry, except for seize the lion, the dentist guy, Now, if that had been a high school cheerleader, that would have been like really bad. But it was as bad as could be. Now as a guy has been going there forty years, what what's your take on all that? Well, like, who's the blame for how ridiculous that all seen? Well, the first thing is is don't post your pictures on social media as as if that's a message if I can give you, if I if I am going to be your you know, campaign advisor can not do not post the pictures on social media. But that's why people do stuff, and and that and that and that and that is exactly that's why people get out of bed. That's exactly the problem. I mean you know, it's it's I remember talking to a pH one time and he was telling me about this guy had taken this just incredible looking animal. I mean it was I think it was a Nile Leshi. Yeah right. That was not my mobile as a child, No, no, no, but it was a beautiful nile. You know. It's one of those kind of things that you could just even if you've never seen a Nile Leshwie before, if you saw this one, you would go, that is the nile Lesti of Nile lest Is it a monkey? No, ok, it's a it's an anti loop. It's a picture. Oh that's good or Mrs grayslist you're black and white but big s shaped forms. Yeah that's bad mofo. Right yeah yeah yeah, I'm tracking. Okay, So that's like a game animal to me. Yeah, And it's and you know, and that's that's the other aspect. But you know, he had this guy who would like who like hunt with him, and he was showing me his picture. Oh that's great. Look, he goes, what do you you know what he did? You put in the book? I think, goes, no, he doesn't have a he has nothing. And he said, this guy has killed so many hunted. I would rather say this guy is hunted more trophy book animals in Africa than almost anybody I know. Just never put a single one in the book because he doesn't want to. He doesn't care about the recognition. Yeah, that's not why he's doing it. Well, yeah, I mean you're aware of that. I'm a Turkey Grand Slam holder, so am I I'm a super slam I'm a super Slam holder. So okay. So so the guy. So is it annoying that I'm asking about the lions? He's a one? What's your take on it? You know, because you got you I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, I am guilty. Can I ask in two parts? Part what's your take on what happened, not how it was perceived? Was that business usual or was that like a funked up thing that happened. I have serious reservations about the affair, you know, the Macomber affair. This was the cecil affair. Yeah, no, I mean that's part B is gonna be what's your take on how it's part it's a park lion that they sat on the edge of the park and waited for it to walk out. You feel that they knew of course they knew of and the and the other thing about it was because it's people. People make a big deal like this guy spent fifty that's cheap. That that's cheap. But that's okay. I mean, that's a part that shouldnt met Is it better if it was free that lion? That lion should have cost seventy to a hundred thousand dollars because that's what the market is, if you're gonna go, you know, the the invisible hand of capitalism. He got that lion for about half price. And the reason he got it for half price was the guy. I have to be careful here because I'm not sure, you know, if we want we want to don't don't want to get into like areas that maybe oh un you're saying right now, Well like just saying we don't want we don't want to get into the areas where where? Because I may suggest that there was some illegal activity involved, but I don't. I'm not saying it was that. You don't know that that was I don't know that. I appreciate. I appreciate, but but what I what I what I what I suspect, and this is purely suspicious and has absolutely no basis in fact. And as far as I know, the guy who killed it's good to his mother and everything else, and the mother and the guy he hunted with the professional hunter was was also loves his mother. And the African guy who's property they shot it on, which was which abuts the park he is, he is, the salt of the earth. That was private property. So that was the dude's land. Yeah, I believe, Well, it's it's up now you have me there, because I'm not really sure there was there was some question about who had who had the permit, and it's kind of it's kind of that part you're getting. You're getting to the weeds on this one. But the reason I I think, in my own opinion and without knowing if this guy get anything wrong, is that if that lion was what appears to me to be rather cheap, it was because they knew where that lion was and they didn't have to spend a lot of time hunting it. You know that that if they had to go, if you had to go to Tanzania tomorrow and hunt a and now you gotta remember in Tanzania, you have to your line. The lion has to be you have to age the line on the on the hoof, as it were. So you know, what's six years old or older. You can't take anything younger than that and anymore in Tanzania by law, you know. And if you actually went to Tanzania looking for a lion like that and in the wild and everything else like that, you could be there hunting a month. You know, you could be there and you could spend thousand dollars. So because what because of the rarity of nothing, because of the hard hunt. It's a hard hunt. You know. It's like it's like shooting a four hundred point boil in the mountains if it was about a month, because it might take ten years of a month, you know, I mean, it's it's yeah. And and from what I understand of this situation was the they didn' hunt him that long and then and then a crossbow. He shot it with a crossbow. I got nothing against crossbows, but you feel that it might have an annoyance factor. No, I don't know, No, I don't I will go that far. I think I think it was. It was it was part of the you know, the spree of the whole thing it was. I'm gonna add my own little twist to this by hunting in with a crossbow. Um, but I don't know. But I don't know that. I don't know any Can I add two things here? Because I I think about this almost I think about this bi weekly at least. No. Why moving into the perception of it, why do Americans get mad when they hear that someone paid a lot for something? And it's puzzling to me for this reason. If we look at the history of colonialism, it generally is can you go into a country and you take valuable ship and don't pay anyone for it and take it back home. So here's a system where a feller, even though as your point out, may have underpaid, he goes in and he pays an outrages some for a thing that he would like to remove from the land, and that is more offensive to Americans than had he just gone and stolen it. Well, I would think that people would be like, well, at least the son of a bitch gave him fifty dollars. But people get pissed about the money. They're like, he paid two or fifty thou dollars to kill a rhino that it's asshole. Ish A real a better guy wouldn't have paid ship maybe, I mean, but that's kind of what you're saying. Well, no, that's why I like, why is that upsetting? Well? You know what, why do we why do we get piste off when we see people you know, with with with you know, rolls Racism't blink because you're jealous, because you're jealous because you I wish i'd been born I wish I'd been born rich instead of good looking, you know. I mean. I had a friend of mine who always complained about the factors of Mississippi, and he had, you know, kind of like worked his way up in the the upper echelons. But there was a point in his life he said, you know, if I had as much money as that son of a bitch over there, I'd make him look like Ned's first Primmer. Oh, Ned's first Primmer. That's that's that's the book he used to read in the little little schoolhouse that takes you a bc S. And it was a good looking guy or not. No, no, no, no, no, that's not the whole point, if I understand the point, If me, his point was that, um, he was jealous of all these other guys who had so much money they could hut anything they wanted to in the world, you know. And his argument was, if I had that kind of money, I would make them look like Ned's first primmer, which means that he drowned him in that he would he would make them look like amateurs from the word go. Can I ask my second question, Yes, this didn't occur to me till the other day. Yesterday a guy outdoor photographer named John Haffner, who shoots a lot of wildlife photography, showed me a picture of a lion, a male lion, and he's got a big ass main. John says that line is actually a Collard lion. Where's the radio collar? You can't see the damn collar. Yeah, he's got a thick ass main. So with the cecil. And this is the last thing I then say about season. Unless you got more you want to add a big part of the story. People were piste. Oh yeah, they paid for it. And people were also pissed that it had a collar. But I don't know that that would have been known. Do you think that that would have been known or not known? Well, yeah, they had to cut it off. Because right now and my circumcised or not circumcised, I don't know. Well they I mean, I mean it was like it was like I was listening to the radio coming up here and they're talking about some guy in Kentucky. He was on the run because he cut off his ankle bracelet, you know yesterday. Yeah, they cut it off after. But is it I mean, I mean, if if they knew before they shot it, not that that would have mattered. That lion was it was cecil for God's people told. I also read a lot about this that like that name didn't quite have the kid in death. No, no, I understand, No, that's that's correct. But there's there's a lot, in my mind, at least, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that that this lion, his fate had been sealed before that the hunter ever got to Africa, like a guy's like, you know what, a fella could probably lure that island. This this there was a phone call to somebody at some point and said, I've got this lion over here. I'm pretty sure if we you know, we put a dead eland or something. And this is not what I'm saying happened. But I'm just saying that we can we can get this, we can pull this line out of the park. You know, that's gonna be the same thing when you know, if we get to where we're we can hunt grizzlies down south of here. Wherever we hunt again, there's there's gonna be, there's gonna be where do you draw the line? Do you? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I would drop that's a part boundary. Maybe maybe that's probably where it's gonna be drawn. But I mean, but but you know, what difference does it make if you keep pushing it out and you're there's gonna be a line somewhere, you know, and I don't. I don't know what you know? I that leaves me, you know, I probably I don't think I'm gonna be shooting a grizzly, So that's fine. I don't. I don't intend to put in for a tack. No, I don't either, you know, but I don't. I can see where it would be really interesting for some people, and it could be done, and it can be done right, you know, But eventually it's gonna come down the line. You know, there's a line here, a line here, where do you you know? So I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, when that was playing out, this this is the honestly the last question. When that was playing out, let me preface it by this. A friend of mine did many tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the navy. Okay, now he comes home, gets out of the military, and every time something is in the news about Iraq Afghanistan, I would go to him be like, hey, what do you what's your take on? And he said, Now at this point, I read the newspaper like anybody else. I don't have like my time there doesn't give me the feeling of having like insight, It doesn't give me the feeling of like that I'm following that story more carefully. Okay, So, if you're a guy who's written hundreds of pages about hunting in Africa, when a story like that happens and everyone fires up the outrage machine, do you see it as just a guy like huh or do you see it as this is my realm, my world, my professional space. I must interject and give clarity to all the people who are who are out looking now or is it just like I don't know the guy shot a line I don't know. I don't have, UM, I don't know that I feel that I can offer an opinion in that sense. You know, UM, I know how I feel about these things. I mean, I hate to say it, but I mean, but hunting is. You know, what's the line about? Um? Again? To quote himingly, I guess it is, it's what we have instead of God? You know, UM, And I you know, for me, there's there's something Hunting is in a way, at least one of my religions. If i'm if, I I want to consider myself polytheistic, you know. And the older I get, the more I get I get into it, the the less I hate seeing piss in the cathedral. That's how I feel. That's a good way. You just said that, you know. I mean, don't don't go piss in the baptismal fountain, you know, UM, all right, But I don't know how you teach that. I don't know how you instruct that. I don't know that how you I mean, I don't know. And I don't want to be one of these these these these crabs who just you know, oh, you horrible human being? What you know? You know, if you can sleep at night, that's fine. And and you know, and if you're if if if if if, if there are scientifically based, well enforced laws that make sense, then go for it. You know, I don't know that. I mean, I'm not sure where ethics there are ethics. And that's and then and we we do as suite, we do as hunters, we do bring our we we do have an ethical structure that we believe in. You know, just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right, you know, or moral or ethical. Um. But the elder Leopold, yeah, everyd like's the part of the quote where he says, like, ethics is what you do when no one's watching. But he goes on say even when it's legal. Yeah, you know, and and that's but but that is, you know, when it's what as a society, we can only enforce the law. Now we can we can try to we can try to shape ethics, but that is more of a a cultural definition we're putting on things. That's well, Ethics and law walk through life hand in hand in many ways, maybe, you know. I mean, I I think I think there's there's you know, it's yeah, but I don't know, I don't I don't know who's who's the handmaiden and who is the not you know, I don't understand. I might you know who I think. I think that ethics is the mother holding the hand the child's hand of law. Yeah, except except except except except the law in this case is now he's like he's like seven ft three in ways four hundred pounds and has a big mallet. You know, you know, I mean we we we can talk about what the law is capable of doing to people's lives if you you know, um which ethics are not you know, ethics, I mean you can you can, you can. I mean ethics, ethics shouldn't be able to take away your liberty or your freedom. Laws can take away your liberty and your freedom. You know, ethics can shame you. Law can execute you. But that's the funny thing because I find that when hunters get in trouble. Yeah, when hunters getting trouble, they like to and read. Especially in the last couple of years, hunters get in trouble and they like to go. Uh, they like to go. But it was legal, and they're kind of like people are thinking about one thing and they're talking about another thing because they don't do like, let's like, hey, I have a wife and kids, Okay, so let's say it. He merged that, uh, at night, I would sneak out and just go have sex with women in bars that I met in bars. Later, someone's like, dude, did you hear can you believe his wife at home taking care of those kids? And he's out like is there room for me to go? But it's legal? Yeah, yeah it is. No one no one doubted the no one cares that it was legal, and and and and no one's like, oh yeah, my bad. Cool. But that's but that again, I mean, there there isn't There isn't any way of that I know of, uh, you know, of persuading a sociopath that or a narcissist, because what you're talking about his narcissism and and and and you know, social sociopathology. It's not criminal, but it sure makes life hell for everybody around you know what I mean? You know, I mean it's like it's like it's like, you know, if if if a guy's cheating on his wife, he's making it hell for her. He's not breaking the law. Though. That's where community comes in, and so and social and culture. So it's and it's but it's you know, but even you would think that it would be something internalized in the human being that he would it would come to him at some point in going. You know, I am a dog. I am a two dick dog who should be shot. Well for taking it back to the example of like of hunting, I see like that can be like hyper like local and like it's across the country. Imagine like there's different social norms in like Alabama than there are in Idaho. Right, So I think it comes back to ethics and your community almost holding you accountable. And I'm a big proponent of that. And I love thinking about the ethics of hunting because it's so interchange. Um it's it's I mean, I mean, what are what are the ethics of hunting raccoons with hounds in California versus the ethics of hunting raccoons with hounds and Tennessee? You know, all right? Uh, you know, I I blew this because earlier I used this, I mentioned this quote, Uh that you quote. I can't remember who's the true No, Yeah, the Hemingway quote where someone's like where he says, you know, we should go hunting Africa, and he's like, I got no desires. It's just because you haven't read a book about it. Reading the book, I've decided I'm real interested in Uh. I've adopted your favorite animal as my favorite animal to hunt. Can you talk about the wet like Kate buffalo? How it is that that in your mind is like that in your mind is like the animal? And earlier you were gonna I think you started to say something and got distracted. You canna say that when you hunt, you're a surrogate right for the people you're with. And I thought that at that point you were going to point out that you you get excitement from what excites them. Well, yeah, that's in fact, Well okay, that's so talk about. I mean, I mean you can you can get a sense where you know certain animals, you know, if if if you take it i Paula, if you hunt it in Paula, and then and you make a you know, reputable, you know, good shot, it's clean kill, and they have meat for camp. You know they're gonna come up and they're gonna go congratulations. The difference between that and if you have to if you bring down a buffalo with one shot the the the effusiveness of their response is going to be for one thing, They're not gonna have to follow a wounded buffalo into the bush, you know, which they do not want to do, which nobody is right mind wants to do. There are some people in their wrong minds who do. But so, yeah, no, there is that. I mean, you know they I can look at an ant well, I Africans never get bored hunting a buffalo. They never get blase about hunting a buffalo because of the risk, because of lots of reasons, you know, they have. They have this sort of ultimate respect for a buffalo. You know. They there's again it it it becomes very difficult to you know, what is it. I'm not sure. You know. It's like it's like it's like it's like pornography. I know it when I see it. You know, it's it's who wasn't that said that Justice Potter Stewart um They that there is something about, you know, when you're hunting a buffalo, that this is an animal and I I it's you know, you have them, you have the advantage what they weigh about fifty hundred pounds six pounds, you know, and they can run pretty good clip. The other part of it is is I've gotten older, and you know, I think more in terms of the fact that there's so much meat. That's how people get excited about him too. That's that's part of it, you know, it's it's it's there, there is, there is the reward of hunting buffalo well is in and of itself hunting buffalo well that that you know, you didn't mess it up. You didn't you didn't cause a scene, you didn't there was there was no you didn't cause a traffic accident in the middle of wherever you were, you know. And then when meaning wooning one and meaning wounding and then nothing and everything goes to and it's and it just worse comes to worse and it just gets worse. But you experienced that, yeah, sure, you know, and never had anything where it was I was ever really threatened, but I, you know, spend a lot of time trailing a wounded animal that I really didn't feel very good about having caused. You know. One of the things you say you like so much about it is that you have to follow him into the thick ship. Yeah, And it's like a very it's you're not choosing to have it be close. It just has the wind up being closed. Yeah, I mean you you you you basically you want to be as close as you can get. You know, what's what's the what's the there's the old there's the old saying, the old adage. And you get absolutely as close as you can and get a hundred yards closer. Yeah, and and you know, and you you could be you know when you want you don't want to be. That's an adage for hunting, Kate buffalo, Yeah, any dangerous game. I remember it was its point there where you had someone at two d yards You're like, uh yeah, it's not that's that's that's shooting and nut hunting if you know what I mean. I mean you can you can kill a buffalo two hundred yards. You cat buffo three hundred yards, you know, and and and why but what what makes it then hunting at well, I mean it's like it's like yeah, yeah, well it's like anything else. You're you're giving him you know, you're not you're not throwing away your advantage, but you're giving him more play for his senses. You're getting him more of a chance of of of of what do They English call it twigging to you, you know, discovering that you're they're smelling you, so you're not trailed them into the brush because that's how you gotta find them. You're doing it because it's an act of respect to the animal. No, you're you're you're going in. I mean, that's where they are, that's where they that's that's their turf, you know, that's their beach, their wave, that's where they live. You know. The you can find herds out in the middle of a big open planes um, passing through, passing through, but you know you'll at some point you'll end up having to go into the into the trees and look for him. And that's unnerving, you know it. It starts out that way and then I mean, this sounds then you use that up, you use that up, and then it becomes like, I want to do this again, you know, I mean, I you know, I mean when I first started on Buffalo, they scared the crap out of me, you know, because we couldn't see them. They were just in this you know, You're just crawling in after him, and then they would all of a sudden you'd hear this, like just this massive explosion of animals, and you'd hear the you know, you hear there they got those big bosses on their horns at big horn cap and you hear them smacking into the trees and coming through there, you know, and which which way are they going? You know? Are they coming at me? Are they going away? And uh? But just they're they're they're, they're just they're they're just going. Yeah, they've dropped their heads and they're going. But I mean, just out of the blue. They're feeding one. They've they've they've caught your wind or they've heard they've heard you snap a twig, and you know you've got and you've got like twenty or thirty of them all together. So you've got twenty or thirty sets of eyes, and twenty or thirty sets of years, and twenty or thirty sets of noses. So it's like, you know, you ever watched you every nose like a white tail and and uh and and turkeys are always together. And I figured that out was because turkeys can't smell, and white tail can't see as well as turkeys can't, but they know how to trigger off with each other. Anyway, leave that there, because you talked about that bird all the time it lifts up. Yeah, yeah, the tick bird. You see that tick bird. You know that there's some and you also thought about that. You could creep in there and get thirty yards away and there's a pound animal on its feet looking at you, and you might not catch it. Yeah, yeah, you might not detect it. The guy I was telling you about, the old guy who taught me how to who I got my inherited my love of Africa from I guess, but I mean the first elephant he ever took was in French Equatorial Africa ninety six or something, and he and the tracker because the professional hunter gotten sick, got malaria, so he went with the tracker, just team the tracker and they're hunting elephants. And he said he'd never seen an elephant in the wild at all. And they were crawling in through the forest, I mean crawling hands and knees, and and the tracker like you know, grabbed him and he said there, you know there, And he's looking and looking and looking. He can't see anything, and he's looking back and forth and the guys keep keeps pointing, and suddenly he sees thirty feet in front of him four legs, you know, and they look like they look like big tree trunks. And he then he keeps looking up and up and up, and there's this there's his head, you know, kind of like just in there, you know, pulling stuff off the branches. And he said that was his first elephant he'd ever seen anywhere in the wild. But that's kind of what happens with buffalo. You can't find him like any untrained game. I yeah, well, I mean that's and that's the thing about you know, that's you know, that's like I say that you know, these trackers are you know, like there and you're going like where you know, when they go there, and and they just you know, they just know where it is they And that's that's inborn. That's innate. I don't know, it's it's it's it's a wonderful mystery. How do you how do you? I want to see how you cope with something or how you perceive something when you when you hunt. There a lot uh, this could be true for anyone who does like a lot of guided honey, Okay, where like like I look at hunting as being a thing where you sort of um quite like it's just it's just never ending thing of like the act with like acquiring skills, okay, developing a skill set, and no one knows the end of it. Right, There's no there's no cap there's no arrival moment. Right. In fact, the more you climb, the more you become aware of the lack of a ceiling. There's no ceiling. I think early on you could feel that it was there, but it's not there. And I find that if you're not brought up doing it um, it creates a separate it creates a cap to like it's hard to come in late and climb very high. Yeah, but in Africa, I feel that that open that that that unachievable ceiling probably doesn't really seem to be there because you have so much infrastructure around you that's invested in you getting it, and it would almost be that you would one would feel if if you were a hunter, you would feel like, I'm not bringing anything to this. In fact, I'm slowing this whole thing down like you are. You are the impediment. They would get this done faster and more efficiently were it not for my presence. Hand them the gun, let them. So how do you cope with that? Well, you know it's it's it's an imperfect world. Um, you know. I mean if if in a different time, at a different age, you were born in Africa. You know, a lot of these professional hunters were born growing up in the bush, you know, and they hunted for their families and for themselves, so they learned it that way. I guess, I guess I could look at it in that regard and say, well, I'm not bringing everything to the game. I am, But does that mean I don't want to do something that I have come to love? So I don't know. I mean, it's it's the you know, I mean, you know, the satisfaction of like hutting something on your own and you know, I go in there, you've got you. I know both statisfacts. I know that statisfaction, and I know the satisfaction of making a friend who does something really well and then your friend takes you out and lets you be along with him and the thrill of that's, you know, if you can get to that stage with Africans, And that to me is I don't know a better way of doing that. I've I've never found a better way. Maybe there is one that I don't know about at least that I've experienced. I mean, when you get to the point where when you know, when you have done something that a bunch of African hunters trackers look at you and go, you know, give your thumbs up, it's you know, it's golden because you know when it's Jameson. I don't want you to think that I'm saying that I don't know. No, I don't go. I do go into those situations. No, but I'm just I'm just saying. I'm just saying it's and you know the difference when it's genuine when it's perfunctory or performed performer. You know, I'm the tractor, I'm supposed to tell this guy, you know, good job, wanna But when when they sincerely do it and honestly do it, you know you've earned that from them. That's like, you know, it's a great sensation, it's a great feeling. And I think I think that's I think some people would think that needing that that that not I don't want to say needing. I think that some people would think that basking in that approval it's childish, but I do not because I do like that. Well, there are ways there are always like there are always there like calibrate one's performance and and to have and to do things and be in a atmosphere of other people and to get to a point where other people are like, job well done. You know. Yeah, No, I mean it's it's when you're when you're when you move one tenth as quietly as an African and stay up with them, you know, going through the bush, that that comes back to you. You You get there's a there's a feedback loop in that where you you get that energy and your feed on it. Did you feel like over the years that did you feel like you learned a lot? Yeah? Or just it was it like mostly having experiences or was it learning too? It's always learning. I mean I always have learned. I've tried to learn no matter where I was. You know, I want to I want to talk to the people. I want to know what they're doing. I want to know you know whatever. I don't know where I if it's I don't think it's in the book. By was just writing something the other day about you know, going to places, going to how you go? Why would I hunt in Africa instead of going on a photos so far? Okay um and there's nothing wrong with going on the photos sopharsis. But but I suddenly realized that the people I am dealing with in a in a you know, a photo lodge situation, these are people who are in the service industry. Now, you could argue that trackers are not in the service and are are also in the service industry. That's not a very good argument. But I'm just saying, but I'm just saying, you know that there is that it's a different relationship from where I am. You know, when a guy's hovering around me one and off, if I can he can you know, if he can, if he can pour me some more wine and get a bigger tip. Yeah, And and whereas if I'm dealing with a tracker, you know where where he'll he'll stop and he'll point to the track of will and we'll we'll try to we'll try to figure it out. You know, what are we you know, what are we looking for here? You know? And and it's all there's a bad there's it's it, there's there is there is a language barrier that just disappears. Yeah, that doesn't you know, And he doesn't speak English, I don't speak Swanna or or or or cuckoo you or something else. But we communicate, we understand each other, and that's like just yeah, I mean just I don't know, I'm certain to get you know. It's it's it's hard not to get nostalgic about it. What about that nostalgy because I guess that like even the name I feel like the name of your book, like having the Autumn's right, there's a kind there's a a does a well do you feel like like is it done? You? Like if I like I could, I could rattle loss and stuff. No, I mean, it's it's it's like it's I'm going back in January. I'm gonna go to Burkina Fossa. And and the reason I'm going to Burkina Fossil is there's a there's a relatively small area like two hundred fifty hectars or something that's really wild country. There's elephants and lions there walking around, there's no fences, and there's a different buffalo, there's the savannah buffalo. So I'm I want to go back. I want to hunt two animals. That's it. I want to hunt the savannah buffalo in the western room and the western rhone is like, I mean, it's it's you know, it's it's it's kind of like it's like a really mean white tail. It's a really it's a disgruntled white tail because they're very smart and they love to and they're just beautiful animals, wonderful eating. I I don't know. Again, I'm gonna people don't really pay much attention to it. I mean, but the game meets great. Does anything in the Africa have antlers? Ah? You know, you know, actually the giraffes are pedicels, which are not they're kind of proto h antlers. And there are red deer in nor southern Africa. You know, the Barbary red deer is native native. You don't surprise me. You talk about hunting SEUs scraf yep, you talk about hunting wild pigs in Africa. I didn't know in the in the in northern Africa they have straight up wild hog. Yeah it sounds like a shipload up. Yeah blocks in Tunisia. Yeah, it's there, and they're they're all over the place. But I point out to people about like autumns in Africa, like August and Africa. Oh, I said, Autumn's earlier August Arica. Uh, but you go a lot of other months. Yeah, but that's it's it's not it's it's it's a it's a it's a figurative time, you know. It's it's when I first in fact, the first time went that guys went there, the first time I was it was a member. But there is a there's a you know, there's an August feel to it. You know, it's it's especially growing up in like southern California, you know, you get that kind of late August weather in the climate, and that's kind of what you're running into in in Africa when you're there sometimes, you know, it can feel like that, and uh, it's it's it's more a metaphorical time than it is an actual calendar date. Yea conjures a bit of romance and nostalgia. Like well, there's a quote on the cover by from Robert Rourke, which is you know that that that's when they burn the they burn the grass and July and the good hunt, the decent hunting starts in August, which in the one little part of Africa he hunted. You know, that's something about Hanyway to I mean, Hennyway didn't really never he never got to East Africa, Worke never got out of East Africa pretty much never got out of now. So how much have like, okay, take it for granted, that is it's a gradual decline like that, there's a gradual decline of wild places in the world. That's just like a way to explain world history, Okay, the peopling of the world. So taken outside of just that general gradual thing that happens, how much are how much are the good old days here or not here? Because I oftentimes find myself when I'm talking about hunting in America, I try to remind people that, um, depending on how like how your how wide your net is that there's a pretty good argument to be made that we're in the good old days right now. Well, sure, yeah, and you and you have a different you know again, we we have we have the luxury or the or the benefit of you know, the greatest conservation system wild conservation system in the world. You know, if you look at if you look at other places you're talking about New Zealand and Europe and and you know South Africa, we're we're you know, this is this is this is animal husbandry that's going on in those places South African New Zealand. Well, I mean, yeah, it's animal husbandry on a you know, on a on a with wild animals, whereas we actually still have you know, truly wild populations. And yeah, I mean you know, there's there's more game here than then there was and that and that's a loaded word as well, game, you know what I mean. That's people probably give you a hard time about that word. Yeah, I don't care about Okay, tell me what you really think anyway. Um, but they I don't know what you can say about Africa except that it does continue to decline. And that's I don't know what the solution is. You don't feel that it's a factor of hunting, No, it's a factor of it's a it's a it's it's factors inconvenient, like wildlife is inconvenient, inconvenient and and and taste good. And let's put it this way, that that that you could, you could, you could ban all hunting in Africa tonight, absolutely ban at all legal license hunting, and the populations would probably decline even faster just because it would de incentivize There'd be nothing, there'ld be no reason to keep anything around and and it's hard to because no one's making money off its existence. And it's and it's it's you're asking you're asking Africans to support wildlife when they can't in many cases support themselves. Yeah. We we think, we think you should let these las run through your whatever, and they're gonna go why you know, it's like it's like, I mean, if you woke up in the morning and there was and there was and there was a bison smashing your super route of shreds, you know, you would probably go, oh shooting, yeah, and then somebody, no, you can't do that, don't do that, you can't do that, Okay. You'd be like, then someone's gonna have to give you a lot of money. Yeah, wells, but nobody's gonna give you any money in Africa. You know, if you if you come back and you know someone's destroyed you know, the elephants have destroyed your crops trying to get them. Actually, I think one of the big things that's it's making a difference. I mean, the mass Shire are are using they can use cell phones and then call each other and they you know, then go elephants are in there in the in the maze tonight, you know, and they'll run in there and try to chase them out. But that's maybe that's an advantage. But of course the cell phone also helps the poachers. So you know, why is it now? Why does it cost two dollars to kill a rhino? Why does it cost two hundred and fifty dollars to get a governor's permit for a you know, small fur for a sheep small pool? Yeah, you know that there's there is And what are the ones that do get killed? The ones that do get like, what are the situations where there what are the situations where like how many how many rhinos are hunted every year? Are they? Are they identified? Well, there's there's there's you know, okay, there's two kinds. There's white rhino in the black rhino. Now the white rhino is actually the more popular it is now. It didn't used to be, but it's now the more populous species did not used to be. Oh no, no, they were almost gone, you know, the and there's a long history of that. But if you you can go back to um the South Africans back in the these are sixties, they wanted to kill them all off because they wanted more land for grazing and cattle. And there was like there was one little herd of white rhino on this park, three animals maybe, and they were getting all in bread and it was just total disaster. And then a guy named Ian Player, who was the golfer Gary Player's brother, came in and just started capturing these things and spreading them out, you know, spreading into different areas. And in that amount of time they went from like three hundreds, I don't know, twenty five thousand or something in South Africa. So what's well black rhino or the opposite they were like when they were when the white rhino was down to like like three d there was probably a hundred thousand black rhino. Unfortunately, black rhino have horns, and the horn is is mistakenly thought of as an afrodisiac or of of medicinal as it is a popular ingredient Asian medicine because and here's this animal, the big fallast growing out of his forehead. Well it's mad, it's madd at hair, but it's also the same. The other part of it is also is many Chics wanted the horn for there you know, they're they're decorative dagger handles because you know, it's just beautiful material when it's worked, and they would so that. So, so here's the thing. If you want to shoot a black rhino, to poach it almost that is that? What like? Is it the mechanical removal of black rhinos killing them for their horns, not habitat loss? Well, it's it's there's probably so few. There's a lot of habitat there's there's there's a lot of parks they could have rhinos on it, but they get they get killed pretty fast, and and it's it's a continuing it's a running it's a running firefight. You see, someone went to a French zoo and shot of rhino. But but h yeah, well people, people people in Africa had who had mounted rhino heads in there have come home and the house have been broken into and some horns chopped off, the horn off of Because from a pragmatic stand from a you know, pragmatic standpoint, Okay, so I want to get a permit to hunt a black rhino. Now, the US Fish and Wildlife Service says, if you can prove to me that you can prove to us that by hunting this rhino you're actually which is an endangered species. If you can prove to us that by hunting this you're actually going to improve the species the you know, improve the survival for the species by by pumping a lot of money into conservation, then have at it. So the way that so the government's and like Namibia in places like that that have viable populations of black rhino. And also part of the problem is is they want to get rid of the old bulls because they are a drug on the market. As they say, they they don't breed probably you know they've done breeding. They just they take over territory and they want to move them out. That that if you kill one, you're gonna actually end up with net more rhinos because you're pulling this one out of the out of the herd. So a guy comes over to Namibia, he pays the Nimbian government two hundred fifty dollars three fifty thousand dollars. That money then ostensibly is earmarked for various conservation projects related to the black rhino. He then can import, which is important to him. He can import that rhino head into the United States. Now the alternative, the alternative is a poacher comes out in the middle of the night, jack lights, it shoots, it sells the horn for twenty dollars. It was, you know, and these things are going up and down. The big deal right now is like if you can believe that China is actually gonna stop the trade. And they said they finally got around to saying, yeah, we're no more ivory, no more, We're done. And if they do that, it's gonna dry everything up and there's gonna be no incentive to start poaching these things things. So it might help. Well, it can't hurt, you know, Wow, Johnny Dude, I like, yeah, like, uh, your book really made me think about a ton of ship I hadn't thought about before. We could I could I read a small piece out of it? Please? Okay? It's interesting to me is that not a single topic of the last hour and a half has been without controversy. No, but that was my approach to the book. I didn't approach the book. I didn't approach the bo just wanting to hear cool hunting stories. I approached the book because I'm like a guy, uh who is like just interest, like, okay, a lot of like I have an inner struggle, like do I want to go. Is it a thing that in my life needs to happen as a person who's pursuing hunting as a discipline and as a mechanism for exploration, Like is that or is that not? I came out of that book thinking that that I would like to go to a wilderness type area and travel with people who were who grew up in that environment, and travel with him and crawl through that thick ass brush looking for kate buffalo? Are are there? You know? The other possible? I mean, if you really want to get um there you there's the um Democratic Republic of the Congo, and there you hunt the forest dwarf. And don't be mistaken by the fact I called dwarf forest buffalo, because they're actually more dangerous than the cape buffalo because of the habitat they live in. And that is where you actually that is I haven't done it, but that is way wicked. I mean that is you are hunting a lot of the times, you're hunting with pigmies and and you know, and and you can imagine what that must be like, the trip that must be going into these Yeah, we've talked with our body about doing that. Yeah, yeah, man, I don't mean, do you do you feel you know, it's like the customer satisfaction surveys. Do you feel that in our conversation, um, that I've focused on ship that you wish I hadn't focused on No? No, I mean I I appreciate you know, like one to ten. How likely would you be to recommend this to friend? To recommend this to a friend? Well, I don't want to. I mean, you know you haven't. You haven't put this on the area, So I depends how how politic I want to be. Uh, The point being that, yeah, this has been This has been a refreshing, refreshingly intelligent conversation for me. Because you know, you're not an African hand let's put it that way. What does that mean, Well, you don't have any you don't have any African you don't you don't have any on the ground experience in Africa. That's a fair assumption. But you're a hunter, and you can understand the motivations of why people would go some crazy ass places like Africa and why once they went there they kept going back when they really had no business financially or economically, or you know, trying to put a kid through college and a wife, you know, to keep her fed at least once a week. You know she's already going like, you're not going back, all right? And I'd go like, um, no I might, God no no, so um yeah, I mean, I mean I give it a solid night and a half. How is that? Okay? I wasn't even worried about it? So you just said that No, Uh, I was insane. He always he always struck me as a troublemaker. Well, we're not gonna sit down and swap old hunting stories about Africas. I haven't gone there. Yeah no, no, But I just say that that's sort of there is. There is there is no way in this day and age that you cannot talk about Africa without creating controversy. And I think even with two completely like minded people to hardcore African hunters, they'd probably find some controversies. And it's it just seems like it's inherent almost. I mean, there's there's, there's, there's there's let's put it. Hunting in Africa gives you the potential of being the worst person you ever were in your entire life, or maybe not the best person, but a pretty damn good person. Um. You know, there's there's there's that, there's that choice, there is that you know, there is that option available. Yeah, you talk about some time you spent on a trip with a person who embarrassed you a great deal. Yeah, yeah, he was. He was their views on the culture, their views on racial issues. He was, he was. He was a piece of work. I mean it was really that's a good story because you really go to have such a visceral hatred for that guy, you know, and it's and it was it was it was like it was because he it was mutual. But but but it came to a point where you like came to a point where the author Tom here Is said, why did you come to Africa except to shoot? Except to shoot stuff? Except to shoot stuff? You know? And it's like, when I was twenty, I could understand that because you know, you're twenty, you want to you have that you know, you know you want to you want to you want to hunt everything. But now, I mean, you know, I'm happy to go back and like I mean, I I think I envy somebody like Craig Boddington because he's like over in like barrier hunting, these like antelope there, the size of this water glass. You know, it's like and it was, and it's you know, the whole the whole fact that he is dealing with native trackers and they're calling them in and it's you know, it's impenetrable jungle in this and this whole adventure, I guess, I mean, you know, it's it's maybe it sounds cliche, but how many adventures are there left. I'm sure there there's plenty of them, but I but I mean, also, it kind of seems to be that more and more people are kind of like adventure is becoming more and more kind of a stunt, you know what I mean, And that that when I went to I came at the very very very very end of when going to Africa was an adventure because it was Africa and and you didn't have to be It wasn't a stunt to find adventure in Africa. You it was there, you know, just by the fact of being there. And it's interesting you mentioned the that story about that guy, that hunter. We took a mutual disliking to um so this meaning that you and me took a mutual this left no he and I took a mutual dislike to each other. You got any final thoughts, Yes, got a lot of final questions. Sure, we don't have to probably a time for it, but um, pick one, pick one, pick your best one, take your best shot. Attention must be paid. I'm not it's all the classic. I just want to be like, I just want to start talking calibersing bullet weights. That's that's yeah, because that's like like, I mean, I like the bigger ideas for you. But Tom and I five Nitro Express for seventies four seventies offully nice. Tom and I could probably sit around now after That's what you wanted. You guys left Yanni's podcast in which yeah, I'm meant to ask what his favorite caliber over forty years and now that changed. You should have told me earlier three seventy five. You can't go wrong. You can't go wrong in Africa with a three seventy five. I'll tell you the name, I'll tell you, just let you know that I'm adapt the Queens of the Planes Rifles. Is that something like that? Queen? You have the planes, right, the queen? Yeah? Three? Al right, So Yann is bummed out that we didn't, not at all. I'm just saying that, like you know, Um, as we're discussing all these controversial ideas, I'm thinking, Okay, when you're getting ready to wonder if he handladed most of his ready to go getting ready to a matter of fact, I did. But that's besides when you're getting ready to go, text Tom and ask him what Yeah, and and and the solids by the way, Yeah, So I know these landscapes are like when I think of fence tons. All I know of is our recent discussion with um you know, talking about CWD, right, um And I know the landscape is on such a greater scale over in Africa, But in these fenced areas, is there any problem with disease transmission? Well, that's a good question, um. And and it's you know that the there's I think in the afterward to the book, I kind of look into the fact of that. You know, you have this this you have one school of thought that says, by getting value out of the wildlife, we're actually helping to preserve it by these ranches down there. But at the same time, they're also doing these bizarre breeding programs so they can come up with gold golden willed beast or or or you know, or black impoos and which they have now found out that they're all sterile, you know, I mean it's it's it's like it's so it's like it's it's like a management paradox. Really, like dozens of species of big game isn't enough. Yeah, well that's exactly it. I mean, they want to they want to be able to you know, oh, well you don't have one of these, you know, they want to be able to to buttonhold a guy at a at a hunting convention that you don't have one of these in your wall. Yeah. No, no, it's it's it's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, it's just and then you know, there's a whole argument about that. But as I point out that that that essay, you know, it's the same thing that happened in Spain when Spain went you know, we went crazy with all this money. Everybody wanted to to have Andalusian horses. Then they all went broke and then the horses they just left to starve. You know, they had no money to to run the hostantias anymore, and they just took off and lift. So right right now they're saying, well, look at all the money we can make out of these animals, we can it's a bubble. It's a bubble, and it's gonna and then what happens I don't know. Yeah, and disease maybe one of those factors or animals there, like in this book you refer to and I don't know over the wholer thing, but risk of wild like well the same thing with Bruce Lowis. And and they don't want like shooting animals prevent disease transmission to livestock. Yeah, they they've actually, I mean that's what they've again found out, is that they're you were talking about the map of how much non supplemental feeding of cattle and how much land there is. Well it's even worse than South Africa. I mean there's most of the land is really pretty poor agricultural land. So there is that argument that at least the wildlife is adapted to the land and we can make some money off of that, and then we can we don't have I don't know what else should do with the land over there, but you know, you can you know it it just becomes you're chasing your own to your dog chasing its tail. I don't know, I mean, I I you know it these public I mean, you know the fact that these guys are going to auctions and spending two million dollars for a buffalo to to put into their breeding stock because I think the genes are gonna be there's no guarantee the genes are gonna do anything. Yeah, you have a real concluding thoughts every hunting small games over there for years. Yeah. Yeah, Franklin Franklin grouse. Um, that's like kind of like that's like the quintessential small game. Right, everybody goes like almost everybody's like hunting Franklin, right, or sand grouse, sand grouser, sand grouser. Tough. Band grounds are tough there, I mean they are. They just the Usually they usually wait until like about ten minutes after sunset to come to the water hole, you know, and they're just streaking in there. And that's you know, they're just harder hell to kill. Throwing another one, Yohnie. That's why as you get all this out of asistance, they feel like you weren't waste your time here. Oh I don't handle you're shooting handloads. He likes three squirrels. Yeah, I wounded squirrels, but not in Africa. He likes to about squirrels. I like I like it. I like it when you put the they put the they put the stick up in the tree and they twisted, twisting, twisting, the twisting the squail out of the tree. Yeah, a wounded one. Yeah, all those are the worst coum You're good. No, No, I can come up with plenty. So you never were in a dangerous position with a kate buffalo? How about any other animal? Did you ever? We ever? Were you ever actually thinking? Yeah, wild boar? While yeah, it was that was the the only I think out and out charge I ever saw it. It It kind of very it off for me and went towards this other guy was actually a wild boar, which is the least you know all that crazy ship that's a wild boar. Yeah, well that you never know. That's the one that you know. You never hear the bullet that kills you right well, you know, Capstick said, what was it? A dangerous thing he ever encountered? Was the woman on the malaria drugs? Right? Pet my friend Pete? Is that the name of the story. No, no, no, I can't. Pete was a friend of one and and and and God love him. He was a wonderful rock on tour. Yeah, you talk about malarious pills too. Yeah. Yeah, but there's a well, oh no, that's a hilarium I think is the It's a great psychedelic drug to take when you're sleeping because you get these like just full blown dreams. Dude, I just screak. I could see take I could see when I'm on that, I could see waking up and like realizing that you're sucking on the end of a pistol. It's that it's that bad for my brain. You've had you've had larium problems, yeah, yeah, Like yeah, well, I'm like, I'll take the malaria. Yeah, I know, I have to choose between that drug and that disease. I'll take the disease, you know. And yeah, I know it's it's it's it's bad stuff for some people, really bad stuff for some people. But yeah, all right, man, all right, August and Africa, thank you so much. I'm I'm guessing people can buy this book on Amazon. The other book, Mother my novella, is The snow Leopards Tail that's also available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all all your finer uh you know, online outlets. Yeah, if you're curious you hate African hunting, if you love it, if you might want to go, it'll it'll inform your perspectives in a non manipulative way. Um, thanks for joining us MAN. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity