Gun Gone!

Today Dee and I visited a neighborhood spa for our choice of treatments. The most attractive-sounding one was the age-defying facial (I need it everyday!!) to which we added pedis and manis. The kill of the day was Gene's gemsbuck. But the loss of the day was Duane's rifle. After looking at Gene's trophy gemsbuck, Duane got so frustrated that he threw his gun in the bush and broke it! Guess he's done hunting for the rest of the trip...truthfully, the stock on his gun had a hairline crack in it, but when he leaned it against the truck and it was run over, he really did have a gun in pieces! So now he'll have to borrow one in order to bag any more trophies. After all the time, paperwork and money getting that rifle here, it really is a sad, sad story!
Hunting here is not quite as I expected. It seems that most of the Province (and maybe several provinces) are divided into hunting farms which are surrounded by 8-foot tall fences. Of course the fences don't keep all the animals in--certainly not the cats, the warthogs and other small animals that can go between the rows of wire--but even the giraffe and kudo don't usually jump over. Each farm has its own animals and keeps track of the stock, buying and selling, breeding as needed. If the outfitter doesn't have the animals the hunter wants, they have arrangements with other farms to hunt their land (in return for fees for any animal shot, of course). Don't get me wrong, farms are huge, many with thousands and thousands of acres. However, driving down the main road, you pass gate after gate of different hunting farms. So this is almost a "hunting Disneyland." I might be naive, but I guess I expected a totally open range. Anyway, hunting seems to be the economic lifeblood here, at least in this part of South Africa. As one of our fellow airplane passengers said, "and S.Africans love Americans."