As a passionate hunter, I try to attend sportsman’s conventions whenever I can. Sometimes it’s to find a hunt I haven’t been on before, and sometimes it’s to gawk. But the Safari Club International Convention in Las Vegas is the Mac daddy of them all. It has the absolute finest of both worlds, and then some . . .
Whether your tastes run to awkward taxidermy…
Or getting to look at the serious side of gun collecting.
Yup, that price tag reads $275,000.00. Wonder if they’ll take 270?
Sometimes you run into one of your favorite hunters who have their own TV shows.This is Razor Dobbs of “Razor Dobbs Alive.” I ran into him chilling at the CZ booth. On his show, he hunts with a 10mm handgun among other things that fling.
I got to chat with him while we were both looking for our next favorite booth. For what it’s worth, he is a down to earth, really nice guy.
While he was chatting up some of the other pros at the booth, I got distracted by some shiny objects.
While my day job sometimes involves handling really high end engraved objects, the engraving on this .416 Rigby, was off the charts. The rifle attached to this butt plate is going on the auction block during the convention.
Aside from gawking, my other goal while here is finding a hunt. I’ve got a safari to South Africa penciled in. All I have to do is show up. Thanks to the really nice owner at Authentic African Safaris, they will pick me up and provide me with seven days of pampered hunting back in the Limpopo region of South Africa. I just have to pay for any animals I harvest. Hmmm, Kudu is high on my list. As is Gemsbok.
My goal for this trip, though, is to get a brown bear hunt in Alaska. I’m holding a Big Horn Armory lever gun in .500 S&W that’s untested on the big game it is designed to harvest. That needs to be remedied.
Whether your taste runs to Marco Polo sheep at 14,000 feet in Kyrgyzstan, or magnificent stag in New Zealand. Montana moose, to Kansas whitetail. They are all here.
Stay tuned, more from SCI to follow.
Some nice wood on that Rigby, too! What was the caliber on that pricey Purdey?
20, 28, and .410 ga.
And it was used…
Well, Hell, you didn’t mention it was 3 guns in one! I mean, even used that has to be worth … uh, oh, my!
Tom you are my hero!
I gotta get me one of those alligator coffee tables.
You might be a redneck if you shot your own furniture.
It’ll blend so well with your velvet Elvis and the Leg lamp from “A Christmas Story”.
You know how to tell when a guy is single…. 🙂
Hey don’t diss my leg lamp. It was a major award. 🙂
That’s like an instant man cave purchase. I’ll put it right next to my dog butler statue.
I am a big 2nd ammendment supporter, and own quite a few “toys”. Growing up we raised pigs to fill the family freezer. When I was old enough my father would take me Elk hunting. Again to fill the freezer with meat, so I am not anti hunting if it is meat needed to feed the family. What I don’t understand is hunting just to kill something. What make people want to kill an animal who is trying to get through their day just staying alive like the rest of us. What drives people to just want to kill for the sake of killing? You want to kill just to say you killed a certain of animal? What does that say about you? Please enlighten me because I may be missing something. A cushy Safari? That’s really getting back to how your ancestors did it. Lol
The locals don’t let the meat go to waste and many species are being protected for the money that they bring in from hunters. Example elephants, local villagers earn enough money from 1 hunt that they employ staff to protect the herds from poachers, this includes former poachers that previously earned a living from the ivory. I personally hunt for my own meat but I also hunt animals like coyotes to keep the balance in my area.
Freedom. If you can afford a cushy safari and it’s legal, why not? I eat what I kill. But I don’t judge trophy hunters.
Hey, Mike, do you ever get a nosebleed when you’re up on your high horse?
High horse because I don’t kill just to kill? That’s the best you can come up with? How about an intelligent response like the other posted. I understand the conservation part, but I have also read articals on how corrupt officials take big chunks of the money spent on these hunts. Come back with a response that actually adds to the conversation.
Come back with a response that actually adds to the conversation.
I would, but the admins would take it down. So how about this — I know who Tom in Oregon is, but I never heard of you before. So go tr0ll somewhere eles, ‘kay? Because nobody needs a “conversation” with the likes of you.
Thanks, Ralph, reading down the line it was pretty clear he never hunted a thing in his life, the word “troll” was bouncing in front of my eyes before I got halfway through. Before *I* claim BS, I am not a hunter myself, though I am a volunteer to massacree piggies when needed.
Mike,
I hunt. I’m more of a meat hunter myself and don’t care to much about antlers. That said, I enjoy hunting for the act of hunting even if I didn’t need the food. I enjoy the hunt and the kill. I don’t feel bad about it. We are natural predators. I don’t really “get” trophy hunting as far as measuring antlers and such, but I certainly don’t have any problem if that is what gets people going.
I think your not likely to find a friendly audience on this site. I respect your opinion, but if you would deny anyone the right to hunt for whatever reason THEY chose, than you can go pound sand like any other statist pig who would deny one their rights.
I was brought up to respect the Constitution.
just because I disagree with something that is legal does not mean I want to take it away. I choose not to do it, and do not agree with trophy hunting, but will defend your right to do it to the death. Just like the punks that burn the flag. That flag is a symbol of their right to do it, and that should be enough, but I will defend their right to burn it no matter how much it bothers me because it is legal to do so.
I have no issue with trophy hunts, especially given that the proceeds benefit the protection of the game species and the local population. Those who burn Old Glory really irritate me.
In the past, I was a farmer. A hay farmer, to be exact.
I killed more animals in a week than most people kill in a lifetime. Squirrels, gophers, badgers, foxes, coyotes. Most of the squirrels and gophers I killed with poison. I could extirpate every squirrel or gopher in 40 acres in a day with a good poison program, and not have any secondary kills.
City slickers used to wax poetic about “what it must be like to farm.” Oh, they’d go on some poetic tangent about the wonder of life, and what it was like to be a steward of the land, yammer, yap, yowl.
I’d tell them that I didn’t have a damn thing to do with the “miracle of life and growth.” Mom Nature took care of that. My job was to kill. Every day I was farming, I was killing. Killing pests, killing weeds, killing squirrels, gophers, voles, mice, you name it. I would tell anyone who asked that my job as a farmer was to wake up every morning and find something on our farm to kill. And I did it with ruthless efficiency. I was a good farmer. Unlike most people who aren’t born into farming, I didn’t go broke. I made money. Without subsidies or government gimme-dats.
For those curious about the tie-in with guns: A .17 HMR in a Savage rifle became my killing instrument of choice on squirrels and coyotes. Ground squirrels blow up very nicely with the .17 HMR, using the 17gr VMax pill. Out to 200 yards in a light to no wind situation, I owned anything in the hayfields. Coyotes poaching on our chickens and sheep would go down like a sack of hammers with a 17 HMR put behind their ear into the skull.
The two red foxes that bedeviled me for two years, digging out monster dens into which the tractor wheels would fall when I’d be baling in the middle of the night were finally dispatched one winter day when we had snow on the ground. I saw them both out sunning themselves on top of the snow in the afternoon. They were near the center of the pivot in the field – about 300 yards from the road. I was coming back from a deer hunt with my .338 in the pickup. Saw my opportunity, lined up the shot to punch through both of them with one shot, laid across the hood and drilled them. Front axle parts for even old 40-series Deere tractors costs pretty big bucks when you punch through the surface down a couple of feet into a fox den. The exit wounds were so large that the pelts were worthless.
Sounds like my uncle Dave could have used your skills on his dairy farm in Randolph, WI. We didn’t kill much off of that farm excerpt corn fed whitetail deer. Which are almost as tasty as the corn and alfalfa fed deer from Friesland, WI. Not sure if the farm cats were enough to keep the various rodents in check.
You sound like my cousin when I was hunting big game groundhogs in the exotic back forty farm location. Hey, I cut up the meat and fed it to our farm cats.
“I’m holding a Big Horn Armory lever gun in .500 S&W that’s untested on the big game it is designed to harvest. That needs to be remedied.”
Geeze, look at that thing. ‘Spike Driver’ is an apt name…
Nce write up, sir! A safari is on my bucket list.
Some of the Blasers (in their top lux categories starting at $20,000 or so) have incredible woods. The engraving by the old masters at Colt are awe inspiriing. There is no reason a firearm cannot be both a tool and a work of art.
The great grey-green, greasy Limpopo river? You must go! A little bird told me so.
Comments are closed.