One Heck Of A Ride

186 I Discover Argentina’s Great Hunting us from about fifty yards off, Miguel pointed to the largest bull and I put it straight down with the .300 Weatherby. I had taken a free-ranging water buffalo in Australia that had wide, sweeping horns, but the horns on the buffalo introduced to Argentina’s ranches are far less spectacular. Most have relatively short, tightly curled stubs that remind me of bison horns, except the Argentine buffalo’s horns are triangular and wrinkled instead of round and smooth like a bison’s. Over the next few days of hunting with Hugo Wirsky’s guides, I also shot a feral goat, two red stags, and a wild boar with huge tusks. Unfortunately, I never saw the boar’s skull and teeth again. They were either lost or seized when being shipped to California. (I suspect they were seized. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has strict regulations for importing trophies from swine, and merely attempting to ship something from any type of swine in the same box with other trophies will result with seizure.) I’d had a good hunt and taken a total of twelve animals with Hugo Wirsky and his guides, but other hunters had been complaining to Safari Club International’s Ethics Committee about various aspects of their hunts, and the club eventually revoked Hugo’s membership. The last time I saw him was at the Santa Rosa airport when I boarded my flight to Buenos Aires and began the long trip home. Two Pigs And A Big Rat Things had changed during the eight years after I hunted with Wirsky in 1995. In April 2003, I was a member of Safari Club International’s Trophy Records Committee and seriously chasing the club’s World Hunting Awards Ring. (I needed just three animals to complete the TrophyAnimals of South America at the Diamond Level.) As chairman of the South American subcommittee, I had been resisting requests from South American hunters and outfitters to create a record-book category for the capybara because I couldn’t believe anything that resembled an overgrown guinea pig with long legs was a game animal. Jack Schwabland, author of the record book’s text and the committee’s most influential member, disagreed. He wanted to add the animal to the book and suggested I reserve my recommendation for the new category until we knew how sporting a capybara hunt might be. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I needed to return to Argentina and, after giving it some thought, I decided to hunt both collared and white-lipped peccaries as well as a capybara. “You’re going all that way just to hunt two pigs and a big rat?” was Marty’s response when I told her what I planned to do. “If you put it that way, yes,” I said while grinning like the Cheshire cat. As a subcommittee chairman, I had access to every South American record book entry and hunting report, and I talked with more than a few hunters about the outfitters they had hunted with on that continent before I decided to hunt with South American Adventures, a hunting company launched in 1988 by Jose Sodiro before he retired. His son Marcelo had expanded the company to include wingshooting for doves, pigeons and ducks as well as big game. I hired Tommy Morrison of Sporting International, Inc., in Channelview, Texas, to take care of booking the hunt and making my air and hotel arrangements. As I’d done in 1995, I flew fromSanta Barbara to Los Angeles, Miami and finally Buenos Aires, where I spent two nights and visited some of the city’s many tourist sites, including the spectacular dinner show at a nightclub called Senor Tango and the grand mausoleums of La Recoleta where Eva Peron and other notable Argentinians are interred. The third morning, I caught a domestic flight, this time to an airport in the north of the country where Marcelo was waiting for me. Before