One Heck Of A Ride

17 cultures and lifestyles. I shared goat cheese and tea in Turkey, ate mealy meal (the cornmeal paste that sustains the indigenous people of Africa) in Zimbabwe and Zambia, and drank fermented mare’s milk in Mongolia and fresh coconut milk that my guide in Papua New Guinea climbed trees to get for me. The program that C.J. McElroy created has been controversial since its inception, when participants wore sashes with rows of pins depicting the various awards they had won and paraded across stages at the club’s annual conventions. Today, those days are part of the history of a program that has grown to include more Slams and Circles with attainable goals. Hunters can participate on a local or international level while helping to support SCI’s efforts to save hunting. (I firmly believe SCI has done more in the world’s political arena to protect our hunting heritage than all the other hunting organizations combined.) I eventually achieved the program’s highest level – the SCI World Hunting And Conservation Award – after completing eleven SCI Grand Slams (including the North American 29 and the Africa 29), seventeen SCI Inner Circles at the Diamond Level, as well as the Fourth Pinnacle of Achievement and the Crowning Achievement Award. For this, I was presented a gold Super Bowl-type ring at SCI’s annual convention in 2007. It has an onyx center with a large diamond in the middle and a double row of smaller diamonds around the rim, with one row on the inside and the other on the exterior. At the time, only about seventy other hunters across the planet had earned the right to wear the ring. My quest to achieve this honor took me around the world, but it was nowhere near the primary reason I devoted so much of my life to hunting. Many hunters have written essays that try to explain why they must hunt, but I’ve seen nothing that clearly explains the strong, deeply My Introduction Bill Paulin has asked me to talk about some of our hunting experiences during the late 1960s and 70s, which, by the way, were our best hunting experiences mainly because it was the beginning of unforgettable friendships and compatibility SIDEBAR FROM ABE LUNA Adventures With Unforgettable Friends between Bill Paulin, Bud Dyer, Herman Petker and me, Abe Luna. Unfortunately, Bud and Herman are deceased. I would like to start with Bill and me. Bill is a Santa Barbara, California, native who moved SCI founder C.J. McElroy signs charter for the club’s California Central Coast Chapter felt urge that is in some men (and women) and not in others. I won’t even try. I will say I’ve had one heck of a ride in the four decades since that happenstance meeting with a plumber from Tucson. Who would have dreamed that the son of a motorcycle cop and a nurse from a quiet California town would travel the world and hunt more than two hundred different types of big game animals in the remotest mountains, deserts, and rainforests of six continents and more than two dozen countries? I certainly didn’t.