Oh, there are outfits in Tanzania that can help you recreate it. No fences, true free-range. 'Wait on you hand-and-foot.

you can certainly find that.....in several different countries. Zambia has old school style wall tent hunts, but the cost per day is around $1200-$1500 and thats before you pull the trigger on anything.

That's my idea of hunting elephants; out of an easy chair armed with a cold beverage. My favorite "safari" was Death in the Long Grass, by Peter Capstick. He covers what it's like to hunt all of Africa's big game animals, plus a chapter on the black mamba.

Africa never excited me, but it did my father. My brother and I were going to take him for his 80th birthday, but he didn't make it that far. So those of you who are saying "in a few years" .....

'Miss it every day.

Namibia has that sort of thing and it is a whole lot cheaper there. I did an old school type hunt in Cameroon in 2003 but I don't know if they still do those.

We are trying to get one more trip to Botswana with my uncle before he hangs it up over there. A big tusker is high on the list of animals I'd be after. I cant imagine being within 15-20 yards of one of those monsters! Gets my blood pumping thinking about it.

Heckuva nice roan...well done!

Africa is an incredibly diverse continent, so I always get a chuckle when I hear discussions about "Africa". I always seem to want to ask, "Which one?". I was raised in Texas and yet I can name five or six distinct "Texases"...Africa is no different.

There is a lot of "real" hunting still to be had in the more remote areas of the African continent...and that's what draws me back.

Mark

There was nothing easy about my Namibian kudu hunt in 2016. It was everything I could hope to expect and more. Epic hunt in every way. That’s why I’m going back.

It looks like there is an opportunity to go after elephant on my trip to Namibia, so this discussion may not be entirely theoretical.

"Use enough gun."

I have a friend that goes every other year and killed everything available. I think it would be fun to go but I wouldn’t put myself through sitting on an airplane long enough to get there.

Ive been to africa twice. Elephant not my thing but to each their own. if im lucky ive got 2 or three more trips in me if my friends who haven't been need a hunting buddy. one trip left for sure for the lord derby before im 6' under.

If you go to Africa to hunt that will be the case with any animal you shoot. One meal and a mount. I’m not even sure you could legally bring any meat from Africa back to the US.

Your not legally allowed to bring meat back from any African country. Not sure about anywhere else.

OP doesent understand….You don’t hunt internationally for meat. You do it for the experience, the thrill…. the head/horns/hide is a momento of the hunt…a tangible reminder of far away lands.

Africa and all its mystic has never been about procuring meat for the hunter

I have never had the desire to hunt in Africa. Years ago when I guided hunters full time I had a hunter that had recently returned from Africa after shooting an elephant. He told me he had killed the elephant and a bunch of the locals came and were getting the meat from the kill. He said that a young woman had just cut off a large chunk of meat and an old man grabbed it from her. She took her knife and slashed it across his belly and part of his stomach and intestines fell out. She retrieved her elephant meat and walked off. The hunter told me he would not be going back to Africa again.

I will preface my answers here by stating that I love all areas of Africa, have many friends over there, and have been fortunate to have been over there 5 times. I have taken many animals from lowly little 10# klipspringers, up to elephant and Cape buffalo. I have been all over and hunted both game farms (high fence) , conservancies, Nature allotments, and true wilderness areas. I don't think any fenced ranches have been smaller than 10K hectares (25,000 acres) and my friends farm in Namibia is 250,000 acres. The conservancies in Namibia were 500K and one millionK. The area we hunted in Zimbabwe was approx 100 miles by 100 miles!!!

They are days full of experiences, nights full of friendship, fine meals, and plenty of camaraderie. Long hikes thru vegetation that challenges anything in Texas, watching for snakes in an area that rattlers wouldn't even make the top ten, and things that dreams (and nightmares) are made of. I would do it every day of my life if I could, and never hunt another animal in the USA if I needed to give it up. Biltong and finger steaks from my elephant, ox tail soup from my Cape buffalo, carrying my leopard out on my shoulders have all been experiences that can never be duplicated.

For folks that haven't seen it, it's hard to grasp the hard realities of living in a protein-starved land. Butchering my elephant in 2009 in Zim ultimately resulted in a free-for-all after the system for "fair allocation" broke down. Had someone gotten cut in the ensuing melee I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. My bull was a crop raider out of Hwange Park and he and his posse had made a wreck out of the subsistence farmers little patches of maize. They were relying on those fields to feed them in the coming year so anything that the elephants ate was literally food out of the mouths of their families. So yeah, when fourteen-odd thousand pounds of protein hit the ground nearby, things can get a bit rowdy. Sorry that your friend had a bad experience...Lady Africa is a marvelous place, but she's an acquired taste and certainly not for everybody.

I'll take it over feeders, food plots and game cams every day, though.

Great thread. Very educational.

You mean "Very expensive!"

Yeah, that too.

A friend and me hunted elephant on red river for years, guess we did too good a job, never see one any more

That is why and how the southern portion of Idaho got settled, many years ago. The hunters in charge of packing the decoys finally said the heck with it!!!!!

Although I’m sure it exists, I saw zero anti hunting crap there. We were picked up at the airport by the PH. When we stopped for gas, the attendants(you don’t pump your own there) enthusiastically welcomed us. Everywhere we went, we were welcomed and appreciated($$$$$).

Protein and groceries don’t come as easily there as they do here. The animals that we shot, after a meal for us, went to town for the people. After the hunting, we headed back to Johannesburg to go to Capetown. There was a huge traffic jam that stretched for miles on the rural highway. A fruit truck and flipped over. Hundreds of native people were there getting the fruit. Groceries don’t come all that easily there.

I was warned by several people here about the danger of Johannesburg. It, at that time, was listed as the most dangerous city in the world.

Went to Capetown for a week. Saw the great white sharks, some whales, etc. Like Joberg, a white boy best not walk around there at night by himself.

I enjoyed myself, glad I went, but won’t do it again. Kinda expensive for a retiree. However, I would recommend that everyone do it once just to understand how good we have it here.

i imagine that hunting in Africa, and actually taking an elephant is probably the apex of big game trophy hunting. I'm not going to say that it wouldn't be fun and one hell of an adventure. there's something undeniably fun about large caliber rifles and super wild places. All that said though its not really my thing and don't imagine that i'd ever really do it. I love to hunt and i've got some deer heads on the walls, but i'm not a trophy collector. i tend to not hunt for anything that i'm not going to take home and eat. that i understand in africa everything has to stay in the country except the "trophies". For the money and time it'd take me to do Africa there's A LOT of things that i'd just do more of in the US. If i had a lot of extra money and free time and i had already exhausted the things on my home ranch/places that already don't get done for lack of money and free time....i'm not sure what i'd do next.