shakari

I only have large bore centrefire rifles (the smallest being .404 Jeffery) but FWIW, I use a spray of CorrosionX up the bore, give it a few minutes, scrub it out, pull it through with a bit of 2x4 and then use a boresnake with the **** end sprayed with more Corrosion X. Then wipe over everything else with more Corrosion X and put it away in the safe....... Then when I take it out to shoot, I pull it through with more 2x4, wipe everything down and it's ready to go. Now I've emigrated from Africa to Portugal, I'll be buying a smaller calibre such as a 30.06 or similar for deer and wild boar but that also will get exactly the same treatment. Corrosion X isn't cheap but I reckon it's well worth the money.

The easy answer there could be to remove the price tags & packaging etc and bring them through as returning personal belongings or even better, have your brother buy them for you and give them to you as gifts because I don't think you pay duty on gifts and you can always give him a gift of cash back as a thank you. LOL!

There's a lot of stuff they're not allowed to send overseas because of their weird laws...... things like reloading components, radios, sat phones & a shed load of other things are a problem. Quality is usually tip top though.

The CITES website is an inefficient, unwieldy piece of rubbish and damn near impossible to navigate. You'll find full, up do date info a lot easier by looking here: http://www.shakarico...trophies.html and here: http://www.shakarico...pendices.html There are other issues for example where Oz doesn't allow import of elephant & spotted cat trophies despite CITES issuing quota and the USF&WS not issuing import permits for Mozambican elephant products despite CITES issuing quota and these issues are covered on the site as well but there are no similar issues for UK hunters that I can think of just now.

I wasn't having a pop at you just at him for telling you such a BS piece of disinformation. There are some species that can't be hunted/imported but elephant & lion aren't amongst them and FWIW, many hunters around the world take those species on a regular basis & in most cases, ship their trophies home perfectly legally.

Thunderbird That would be a canned lion shoot (almost certainly) in South Africa..... I hate those things and the swine that offer them and have had a long term attempt to hammer them at every opportunity. Lion management is an extremely complicated business and my opinions don't always agree with others but canned lions & canned lion shooting has burger all to do with hunting, hunters or conservation......... Articles 17 & 19 might be of interest here: http://www.shakarico...g-articles.html

Mate, whoever told you that told you a blatant lie. I can't remember where it is on the site just now but you'll find several pages that list what species can & can't be taken and trophies exported and elephant/lion can be exported/imported to/from many/most countries. It depends where you go but elephant hunting in some countries such as Zimbabwe is actually reasonably inexpensive...... other countries such as Tanzania price differently and the species is only available on long licences which ramps up the prices dramatically. Mudpattern I'm pretty cool on the dance floor huh! LOL! ..... man, if you saw how fugly I really am, you'd realise why I've had to work my **** of walking after big game for so many years instead of strutting my stuff in fancy night clubs!

On the subject of Mr Big Ears, articles 8 & 10 might be of interest here: http://www.shakariconnection.com/african-hunting-articles.html I have a lot of respect for Ron Thomson who wrote the latter article & he tells me that the figure of 5000 elephants in the KNP was pretty much an arbitary figure that was set very early on in the establishment of the KNP and his tree studies suggest that about half that would be more accurate.

About a quarter of the down the page here: http://www.shakariconnection.com/bookshelf-authors-c.html Going back to money etc. A better term might be high impact/lower income whereas hunting is low impact/high income. FWIW, some people can/will spend something in the region of US$250K on a 21 hunting safari whereas most photographic safaris cost a fraction of that amount.

The Big 5 aren't 'rare' at all & hunting & import quotas are strictly enforced so they can't be overshot and it's the hunting of these species that not only conserves their populations but also in turn conserves the other game and indeed their habitat. FWIW, I'm a very keen photographer & like especially to specialise in getting close to dangerous game (on foot) with a camera instead of a rifle and have guided a relatively large number of both photo & hunting safaris & although both are enjoyable, it's the hunting safaris that help & support game populations the most.......... Don't forget that properly conducted sport trophy hunting by it's very nature takes the old animals that are past their prime and allows the younger bulls to have their turn in the breeding cycles. Examples Here: http://www.shakariconnection.com/hunting-africa-free-of-charge.html especially 2nd pic down & also And yes, I did have the lens in the lion's mouth as he yawned! As usual, the images are my copyright & they are not to be reproduced without my permission

We got the tail end of the rains you guys had last week but that was the first significant rains we've had since about April. We're now back to clear blue skies and temperatures in the low 20s. Winter is on it's way though. :(

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Kes, There is indeed a lot of corruption in Africa & life is indeed cheap..... in fact, very cheap but the sport trophy hunting is generally very carefully controlled and it's the hunting that ensures the ongoing success of the game populations. Probably the best example of that in recent decades is the white rhino where the Kwa Zulu Game Dept saved the species by allowing a few old males that were past breeding age to be hunted and using the money gained to finance their breeeding & research programmes. Rhino are currently suffering a huge bout of ruthless poaching but prior to that, the KZN game dept had taken the species from being seriously at risk to relatively numerous. Whether you choose to hunt Africa in general and the Big 5 in particular is entirely up to you but don't for a moment think that by not doing so, you're contributing to conservation or saving the species because you ain't.

Thanks for the welcome. I guess I've been round the block a few times...... There's a fair few of my pictures & some articles etc on my website but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post links so won't for now and will hope someone can chime in on that for me please? I tend to be a bit charry about posting pics that sometimes make me money because of image thefts that have happened to me in the past so that's why I prefer to post links rather than images (that make me money) alone. In the meantime, here's an image that'll never make me a cent....... I bought the shotgun a couple of years ago from a friend who was about to hand it into the police for destruction and it was soooo pretty, I just couldn't allow that to happen. Tthe pic was taken on it's first time out with me. The gun is a 1926 John Dickson & Son SLE & the birds are guinea fowl. Copyright protected & not for commercial use.

Mate, I'll guarantee you it is utter tripe . Your man may well be a God in immunology but he knows **** all about cheetahs or Africa. However, if he'd care to contact me, I'll be delighted to put him in touch with the leading cat experts in Africa who will be happy to correct his misconceptions. It might be possible between cheetahs in the same home range (though I SERIOUSLY doubt it) but never in a million years would it be possible between any two cheetahs. I'd certainly be interested to see what scientific paper he got that from though. I don't actually see what it has to do with the viability & justification of African hunting but either way, If you can't post the link(s) to the papers, perhaps you could post the link(s) to the site(s) where you got that info please? In recent weeks, I've seen sites that say there are only 4 or 5 white rhino left alive, that they turn the colour of the soil they eat & that all rhino are grazers that weigh several thousand kilos & all live on the savannah............. but it doesn't mean that any or all of that is necessarily true. FWIW, King cheetahs are very inbred but I have my doubts that interchangeable skin grafts would work even with them.

Hi Chaps, I'm Steve & I'm a Brit that lived in South Africa for some years & have now moved to central Portugal.

OK. Here's some examples of what happens when an eco system suffers from too many elephants and a very short summary of what happens afterwards: Some of the trees in Africa take hundreds of years to grow and have been destroyed in seconds. Once the tree cover and the grass is destroyed, the rains come and wash the top soil away which then starts the desertification process and that means nothing can grow and therefore no animal survive in the area. If elephant numbers are not kept under control, as happened in Kenya in about the late 60s or 70s or so, we end up with this: Every little white speck you see is an elephant bone. These last two pics are from the book the end of the game by peter beard. - All the others are mine and I hold copyright on them and I do not give permission for them to be reproduced.

The figures quoted by IUCN, CITES. WWF, IFAW etc simply can't be relied on because the closest anyone has come to doing a proper survey was Ian Douglas Hamilton back in the 70s or so...... Some areas are indeed suffering population declines but overall, there are far too many elephants and some areas such as Botswana are now suffering a massive overpopulation that's resulting in overgrazing & habitat loss. I don't yet have full posting rights so have to wait for my posts to appear but once I do get full posting rights (assuming I do) I'll try to post a few pics to show what overpopulation does to the habitat.

Hello Gentlemen, I’ll introduce myself first and then (I hope without causing offence) correct a few misconceptions/misunderstandings. I’m Steve Robinson. An ex pat Brit and I’ve been working in the African hunting safari industry for 32 years or so. I’ve hunted professionally in 7 African countries, I've conducted a fairly large number of hunting & photo safaris in many of Africa's finest true wilderness areas & also conducted a fair number of game capture operations using a variety of methods from dart guns to helicopters & I've hunted the Big 5 many times over. I've also written a fair number of articles on various aspects of African hunting, co-written one book and written another (How To Become A Professional Hunter In Africa) and have the largest info website on African hunting on the net. – I’m going from memory but think it’s currently running at about 800 pages. I’m also quoted in a number of books & scientific papers & my photographs have been published in a number of books, magazine articles & scientific papers etc. I also lived in Africa for 11 years and have recently emigrated to Portugal as part of the retirement & not getting murdered process. J Please don’t think that statement is bragging. That isn’t my intention at all. My intention is simply to let you know that I do know what I’m talking about. Moving on: Elephant & leopard are NOT in decline at all. Populations of both species are very healthy indeed and elephants especially are (despite recent poaching issues) generally increasing in numbers. Some countries such as Botswana are actually suffering a massive overpopulation problem and this is actually causing massive habitat destruction problems that of course then causes declines in all animal populations that occur in those areas. The two biggest problems that elephants face is human encroachment that has resulted in creating ‘elephant islands’ and an overpopulation that is in some cases threatening total habitat destruction.. Leopards have never been accurately counted & probably never will because they're so secretive but there are absolutely no shortage of them. Lions are a more complicated issue. They breed easily and quickly but again, human encroachment combined with the local populations (esp the Masai in Tanzania & Kenya etc) has indeed resulted in a population decline but it’s nowhere near enough to threaten them as a species. If you look at the countries that do allow controlled sport trophy hunting, you will see those countries have the most successful game populations by far and those that don’t, have the least successful populations. The main reason for this is if the local populations see wild animals have a value to them by way of income & employment etc, they’ll protect them but if the animals don’t give them those things, they view & treat them as competitors for their crops & will kill them as quickly as possible and by any & all means possible. Prime examples of both are Tanzania that does allow trophy sport hunting and has extremely healthy game populations & Kenya that does not allow sport trophy hunting & has rapidly declining game populations. Sport hunting brings in large amounts of much needed hard currency into the countries concerned and is considered high income/low impact to the environment whereas photo safaris do the opposite. As for local marksmen...... quite honestly, they’re about as rare as rocking horse doo-doos. Regarding the comment: “cheetahs are so inbred that you can take a skin graft from one animal and place it into another without any adverse reaction” is utter tripe. I don’t know where that information came from but believe me there’s not a shred of truth in that statement. I don’t know the rules about posting links here but will post one and if it is against the rules, I hope the moderators will forgive me and remove the link. This might be of interest: http://www.shakarico...rt-hunting.html I'll be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.