Africa 2010

Congrats on a great trip Ardent!
Please more pictures!

Do you mind sharing the costs of a trip like this?
I understand $50,000-$60,000.00 by the time everything is done?

My African account is growing slowly...If I would stop building rifles it would come a lot sooner.:redface:
 
Ardent said:
Just gotta make a plan, save up, and seize it. I'm sitting back likely only a couple kms from you right now in Whitecourt, it's doable. ;) Plains game can be done very cost effectively, buffalo's pricier, but if you find a management hunt on a conservancy like mine was, I got lucky poking around, it's not brutally expensive.
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Great pictures! looks like you had a blast. I'm a couple hours north of you and my wife and I are going next May. Your pictures make it seem like forever away.
 
X-fan said:
Congrats on a great trip Ardent!
Please more pictures!

Do you mind sharing the costs of a trip like this?
I understand $50,000-$60,000.00 by the time everything is done?

My African account is growing slowly...If I would stop building rifles it would come a lot sooner.:redface:
Click to expand...

I imagine Ardent's trip will run about the same as mine, maybe a hair less because I'm going with a well known outfit:

Day Rates - 10 days @ $950 per = $9500
Trophy Fee - Buffalo = $2750
Air Charter to/from camp = $2000 - $3000 (depending on the plane but divided by number of pax)
Trophy prep = $490 (up to 3 species) - $790 (3-10 species)
Medical Air Rescue Service (MARS) Insurance @ $10/day = $100
Rifle Rent - $20/day, $5/round = $300 (est)
Rough Total - $15,140 before gratuities, shipping, extra trophy fees and taxidermy. I booked on credit card points so the airfare only cost me $700 in outstanding balance and fees instead of $3000 - $4000 that it likely would have cost to pay cash (and I used my miles to pay for both myself and my brother so if it was just me traveling I could have likely used points to pay off even more of the outstanding $700). Not bad for paying $150 a year for a credit card that earns points (redeemable on any airline to boot).

Now, $20,000 is a significant amount of money, there's no disputign that. But if you're smart you can spread out the payments over 2-3 years. I paid my initial deposit in January 2009 at the SCI show in Reno (about $3500 IIRC). Paid for my airfare in October 2009 and just paid the balance of my air charter, fees and sundry expenses in April 2010. I'll settle up for any plains game I shoot when I get back (another perk of dealing with a big outfit) so I don't have to take a bunch of cash when I go on the trip, just enough for tipping and travel needs. I'm not sure how much or when I'll have to pay to the taxidermist (going with Orion out of Moose Jaw because, if you're spending that kind of money for the trip, you might as well pay extra for the best guy to do the work) but that won't have to be paid out until after I'm back in August (and likely not until either he gets the trophies and possibly not until they're done - easy 8 months to a year later).

I also can't stress the importance of seeking out free money. As I said above, my credit card annual fee is $150 for my wife and I to have the Aventura Infite from CIBS (and RBC Avion is comparable but run far, far away from any loyalty program tied to a single airline or group of airlines like Aeroplan). I put absolutely everything on the card, from a bag of chips and a pop at the store, my monthly satellite and phone bill to the renovations done to my house in Cape Breton. Every dollar you spend (and that you were going to spend anyways) gets you at least 1 point, sometimes 1.5 or 2. Pay the bill off at the end of the month and you pay no interest. But every month you'll accrue 2000 points (on a quiet month for me) to 12,000 points (if you happen into a Merkel double at TradeEx that you just have to have :p ). If you average 3 grand a month on the card and only get 1 point per dollar spent (and as I said, you get double for some stuff), you'll have 36,000 by the end of the year. That means that in a little over 8 years of normal spending you'll have enough points to get to Africa for less than it would cost to fly from Calgary to Halifax. And if you spend more and earn more points you get there even faster (I got my Aventura card in November 2004 and paid off the trip in October 2009 so it can be done much faster). Knock $3000 off the top of your safari and you're looking at a significant saving and going on the trip that much faster. And keep in mind that we're talking about a DG safari here. A PG safari in RSA or Namibia can be had for a great deal less - lots for under $7000 and some evwen under $5000. Damn near anyone can find $5K with a bit of judicious saving and the reward of taking that trip you've always dreamed of, be it a $20K hunt for brownies in AK or a $5K trip for PG in RSA will far outlast the memories of drinking coffee from home instead of TH or eating a brown-bag lunch instead of Burger King.

Unfortunately there isn't a credit card that allows me to redeem points for daily rates or trophy fees at Chifuti Safaris. Hmmm...CIBC Chifuti Visa - definately everywhere Iwant to be! :D
 
BUM couldn't have put it better, and I ran the same sacrifices at home. No more dinners out, exactly as BUM said home brewed coffee, little things make big differences. I also run the same CIBC Infinite Visa and the rewards are stellar, just treat it like a bank account, always paid and you're getting free rewards.

My trip, all in including airfare from here right down to the small regional flights, and gear I didn't already own (better camera, ammunition boxes, couple lightweight shirts, Pelican case, meds and vaccinations, etc etc), tips, shipping the skull home, is likely to total about $12,000 or so, give or take a chunk as this is a mental math. My wife said sure, I can go, but I have to match it to her furniture budget. I was frugal.

I was also management hunting, meaning I had to shoot a particular bull, one of likely about 3 actually that were over-mature, still dominant, but no longer the best breeders for the herds, and it was tough hunting as it had to be HIM so to speak. A lot like chasing a 45" bull in an odd way I'm sure. They got old for a reason, made for a very challenging hunt, even by my PH's standards, and I enjoyed it immensely, ending up with the brute posted who was very old by Cape Buff standards, as his bosses show. If I was out to take the first good bull I wanted I could have ended the hunt on day two, but had to turn down bulls til we found the right guy. For this, I paid less, and enjoyed it more I believe honestly in the end, literally wore the soles of my feet down. I put chap stick on some sole of the foot cracks just today that are still tender. I think that's what makes the memories though...
 
Damn, that's a helluva bull for a "management" hunt. Did you take any frontal pictures? Hard to judge a buff from the side but he looks like a damned fine specimen. What do they figure he is, about 9-10 years old?
 
Dogleg said:
When you add up all the costs of a plains game hunt, plus the whopping taxidermy bill, buffalo starts looking cheaper.

Ardent,
What do you do next? Leopard? More Buffalo? Ele?:evil:
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Pretty 'boring' actually for future hunt plans, want to get a good bull elk here at home perhaps this fall, and bison of course I keep entering the draw.
 
Here he is head on, big old, hard bosses on this guy. The amount of muscle in that neck is unreal.

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Ardent said:
Here he is head on, big old, hard bosses on this guy. The amount of muscle in that neck is unreal.

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Wow!
Very nice!

I guess I should start looking at different (more cost effective) outfits.
20K is another world in terms of affordability.

Is is cheaper to have the mounts completed in Africa?
 
Here ya go BUM, big as my photohost allows before they want bucks :)

The stuff behind me is what we belly crawled through getting up on him, and had to weave a shot through. We cleared the scrub for the pictures, this one is "as he lied" against the tree he fell against after my neck shot. Barnes TSXs, by the way, can actually break up, losing all four petals and keeping just the core, in a buffalo. Toughly constructed beasts! Just the same, my PH feels the Barnes TSX is THE bullet for Buffalo, he considers them to act like expanding solids.

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Awesome Thread.....thanks for sharing. That amount of money is a dream for me. I have a lot of other "needs" before a "want" like that is fulfilled.....come on 649!!!

More pics!!!!!!
 
Fabulous pic ! :cool:

Did you get photos of any recovered bullets? How was the TSX for penetration?

That's one knarly bull.

Amazing.

Ardent said:
Here ya go BUM, big as my photohost allows before they want bucks :)

The stuff behind me is what we belly crawled through getting up on him, and had to weave a shot through. We cleared the scrub for the pictures, this one is "as he lied" against the tree he fell against after my neck shot. Barnes TSXs, by the way, can actually break up, losing all four petals and keeping just the core, in a buffalo. Toughly constructed beasts! Just the same, my PH feels the Barnes TSX is THE bullet for Buffalo, he considers them to act like expanding solids.

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Those 71 days will fly, I remember when my hunt was 120 days away, and it came in a blink. I did recover a couple of the TSXs, performance was a bit less than I desired honestly, and I'm a big TSX fan. One marginally expanded and penetrated deeply, the other broke up more shallow with all the petals gone, not sure how much weight retained yet. The third, despite looking, we couldn't find though it doesn't appear to have exited. Somebody will find it in their meat. They killed him, for sure, but I found results a bit erratic from the two recovered buff bullets. Effects varied on Impala as well, some TSXs opened explosively, some hardly at all with pin punch in and out, Impala are light mind you and the explosive expansion occurred with a shoulder/bone hit, passing through the heart (note the more forward, and behind the bulk of the shoulder location of the heart, a common theme in Africa). More violent expansion than I expected, pictures below, but within the realm of reason. I actually went to a Federal factory loaded 270gr RN SP for Wildebeest, as I was a bit concerned about my TSXs. Velocity was 300grs at ~2,500fps, nothing too wild for the TSX even, but more than plenty to ensure good expansion with that bullet. The bullets are down south, will try and get pics in a couple weeks when back down. Still a TSX fan, will try and use the 270gr TSX on Elk this fall, but not as dead set in the TSX camp as I used to be. I'm all for lead free though, and they're the most available option. ALL my TSX opinions are based on the .375 TSXs though, haven't used them in small bores.

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We had 9 people and a giraffe in a Landcruiser, not that the giraffe bull was in his original proportions, for an interesting aside. His gut pile was bigger than most deer. 7 on the back, two of us up front, wish we could buy these new. I have an original FJ40 here at home, and a diesel Toyota Hilux. Converted the Hilux from electronic injection to fully mechanical, at the expense of a large input of my time, now it needs 12V only to two places; the fuel cut solenoid and the starter motor, no electrics. They can buy them like that BRAND NEW, will roll up windows, mechanical slider heater/vent selectors, non-power locks, awesome. My kinda trucks, and didn't even realize Toyota was still making fully mechanical diesels. I'd buy one in a heartbeat here... sadly we're not "rugged" enough out here, but these Landcruisers would absolute embarrass the lifted Ford/Dodge/Chev diesels we run around the bush in.

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Ardent,
I've lost most of my interest in TSX bullets in the .375. It's not that they are bad, but they are a great deal "harder" than they need to be. Having said that, I've killed a couple dozen or so animals rangeing from steinbuck to giraffe with them. A high percentage of them didn't even look like they were hit, unless major bone was hit.
I shot 3 water buffalo a couple weeks ago with the H&H and 270 Grain Swift A Frames. One was quartering away, one shot through the ribs and it went straight down. Another took one through both shoulders and managed to walk away a bit, but video showed him blowing blood pretty hard and the bloodtrail looked like it had been poured from a pail. The third took one on a frontal chest that staggered him, then when he turned another through the hip and spine that dropped him on his face. From this sorta limited "test" I'd say I got me a new buffalo bullet.:) I swear that the H&H turns into a different gun with the Swifts. And it makes a real cool Kerwhoomp sound when it slams into things.:D
 
The TSX is big medicine in Africa, and continues to be championed by many professionals. They aren't my favorite for big stuff, that goes to the South African 380 gr Rhino, but as a good do it all bullet, they work, but know I know why I chose to shoot my impala and warthog with a solid! I suspect that the Rhino bullets work much like the Swifts, as the A frames don't loose their forward section like a Partition, and I suppose I will have to follow, Dogleg's lead sometime and give them a go. Not enough cash tied up in components already I suppose.
 
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