One Heck Of A Ride

197 The South Pacific them as Moluccan rusa deer. I spent the next four days fishing with Sam for barramundi, catfish, tarpon and a hard- fighting but inedible long, bony and large-scaled Six young people who had come to Papua New Guinea to help the native people enjoying dinner with author fish that looked like something from prehistoric times. (Brian called them “saratogas.”) I also shot more ducks before a group of six young men and women arrived at the lodge. They were from Canada, Australia, Japan, the U.S. and England, and were members of a volunteer organization that helped people in developing nations, much like our Peace Corps does. (One was an officer in the British military.) Brian asked if I wanted to invite the group to dinner, which I did. Before the meal was over, we decided to draw straws to see whom Sam and I would take fishing, and a young man from Japan and a nurse from Canada won. Neither had fished before, and it was a thrill for me to see them catch their first fish. I had a great day and learned a lot from them. Before I left for Port Moresby and my flight to Australia, Brian gave me a letter he said would help me travel with the skins and antlers of my deer and the tusks from my boar. Sam helped me split the skullcaps of five of the deer and duct tape their antlers and the native bows and arrows I’d bought for souvenirs into a bundle, which I checked with my baggage at the airline counter. The man sitting next to me on the flight to Brisbane was a doctor, and we passed the time talking about the country. There were more than 800 different local languages in Papua New Guinea, so the tribes communicated in pidgin, he said. Many of the natives were ferocious and dangerous, and some still headhunted in retaliation of feuds that began centuries earlier. He said the reason I’d seen so many brown teeth while I was in Papua New Guinea was because most of the natives were addicted to chewing betel nuts while sucking on twigs dipped in wine. I still was in a booking agency partnersip we called “Lionhead Safaris” with Norm Epley and Bud Dyer, and one of the reasons I wanted to visit Papua New Guinea was to explore the possibility of opening it to other hunters. I walked away, when Bud wanted us to book hunts for an outfitter in Zambia. None of us had visited his camps or hunted his concession, and we knew very little about the guy. Bud and Norm had booked a hunt in South Africa for a father, wife and son under similar circumstances and their hunt turned out to be a disaster. I felt that booking agents should do everything in their power to avoid such things, and I severed my ties to the partnership. I didn’t want the headaches it could bring. Buffalo In Australia’s Northern Territory I had no trouble getting my bundle of deer A good Australian termite mound as Author looks on