One Heck Of A Ride

107 I t was in a history or geography class when I first heard of Liberia. We were taught that the West African country was created when nearly 20,000 freeborn and freed blacks from the United States and the Caribbean were resettled there during the early and middle parts of the nineteenth century, and that they had fashioned their country’s government, constitution and society, and even their flag, after America’s. Other than that, I don’t remember hearing much more about the country before I became interested in Safari Club International’s World Hunting Awards and learned that Liberia was THE place where SCI members went to hunt forest duikers. I was well into my quest for the club’s World Hunting and Conservation Awards ring, when I decided to go there. If you were to check the club’s Record Book of Trophy Animals you would find that an American animal trader named Harry Gilmore was responsible for most of the entries of animals taken in Liberia in the 1970s and 1980s. He died before I got around to hunting there and I never met the man, but he guided many of my friends and acquaintances. I was told that Gilmore was a true eccentric and ran around wrapped in a sarong, but if you wanted to hunt the species found in that country you had to go through him. With Gilmore no longer on the scene, my outfitter was a fellowCalifornian and entrepreneur named Thomas Banks who was operating a West African import/export company out of his office in El Cajon and offering hunts for Liberia’s unique species. Banks had the contacts and the know-how needed to run a hunting operation and keep his clients safe in a war-ravaged country. He also was interested in swapping a duiker hunt for floor covering for his girlfriend’s home. My only trip to Liberia was in December 1999, in the early part of the country’s second Chapter 11 Liberia And Its Duikers civil war (1997-2003). Reports claimed that random violence was diminishing, but rebels continued to loot, destroy bridges and buildings, and rob ordinary citizens in one of the Africa’s bloodiest wars. Investors were reluctant to put money in Liberia, and it showed. Its first civil war (1989-1996) had left the country in shambles, and many thousands of Liberians were homeless. The country had no power, water, sewer or postal systems and there was only limited telephone communication in 1999. I was able to hunt there safely thanks to Thomas Banks, who apparently had good contacts in President George Taylor’s government and was briefly allowed to guide foreign hunters in Liberia. (Banks introduced me to one of his contacts, a high-ranking member of the Republic of Liberian government’s Ministry of Finance before I left Monrovia.) He also had contacts in the Ivory Coast and was able to open it to hunting for a few months before his agreements blew up. To reach Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, I traveled via Dakar in Senegal and Abidjan in the Ivory Coast.After landing at Roberts International Airport, a single-runway airport about thirty-five miles from Monrovia, I caught a taxi to the only hotel in the capital city said to still have an in- house bar. At the hotel, we met up with Banks, outdoor writer Mel Toppence and Dr. Earl Holdsworth and his wife Sandy, who planned to photograph her husband’s hunt. At dinner, Banks said we should not be surprised if the electrical power was out most of the time we were there. It happened all the time, he said. I’d gone to Liberia to hunt a water chevrotain and black (bay), Gabon, Ogilby, zebra, and Maxwell duikers. I also wanted to hunt a pygmy hippopotamus, but I backed off when I learned the license would cost another U.S.$10,000.00 and I