One Heck Of A Ride

189 I Discover Argentina’s Great Hunting Marcelo. The last day of my hunt, we went looking for a blackbuck we had seen on the ranch three days earlier. When we found him and confirmed he had great horns, I added him to my collection, making my fourth trophy on this hunt. All in all, I really enjoyed this interesting hunt. By the end of the hunt, I felt Marcelo would qualify for the SCI Professional Hunter of the Year Award. After returning to Lompoc, I spoke with a number of other hunters who also had hunted with Marcelo Sodiro and found they felt the same as I did about him. I nominated Marcelo for that prestigious honor and was delighted when the award’s nominating committee selected him from its list of nominees. Marcelo was presented the prestigious award at the club’s 2004 convention. A Hunt Just For Birds A couple of years after hunting with Marcelo, I returned to Argentina with my friend Ralph Walberg from Lompoc to hunt doves, ducks, partridges, pigeons and parrots. It was the first overseas hunt for Ralph, and he was excited about having no limit on how many birds he could shoot legally. However, the two Texans A hunt just for ducks. Author far right and Ralph and two hunters from Texas - All four hunters had limits in our camp and I had hunted all over the planet and we weren’t as interested as he was in running up incredible numbers of kills. After the four of us had killed more than 1,000 doves the first afternoon, everyone except Ralph had taken their fill of doves. Seeking a greater wingshooting challenge, we switched to fast-flying ducks. I never knew there were so many types of waterfowl in the Southern Hemisphere. We each shot at least six different species each of the two days we hunted them (I shot eighteen ducks the first day and two dozen the next day). Our days took on a routine: Up early for coffee and a quick breakfast, and then drive to a field somewhere that was known for whatever we wanted that day. The crew would station us at strategic places, along with a case of shotshells for each of us. At noon, while the crew collected our kills, we would return to the lodge for a lunch that included mounds of beef, pork and chicken prepared various ways, followed by naps before we returned to shooting in the afternoon. From ducks, we switched to pigeons and small parrots (they called them “Loris”) and immediately learned our group would have no problems in shooting a thousand noisy parrots a day if that is what we wanted to do. There were so many of them that Ralph and I simply stood under a leafless tree and shot them as they flew to Author & Ralph under the tree with hundreds of Monk Parakeets, “Loris”.