One Heck Of A Ride

91 Zimbabwe 1981 tusks of my trophies to be sent to a taxidermist in Victoria Falls for processing and shipping to Jack Jonas at Jonas Brothers Taxidermy in Denver (they arrived there three months later) and we caught the next flight from Buffalo Range Airport to Salisbury. My first African adventure wasn’t over, however. Instead of boarding my flight out of Salisbury, everyone on the flight was herded into a big room and isolated in a lockdown. When we finally were released we were told to rush straight to the plane without stopping for anything or anyone. The engines already were running, and even before the last passenger was seated and the door was closed, the plane was heading for the runway. (I later was told there had been a bomb threat at the American embassy that day.) My first safari had been “over the top,” as they say in Africa. I’d taken three of the Big Five and nearly every major type of antelope found in Zimbabwe, and I’d seen the best of that country before its economy collapsed. I’ll never forget that trip or the people I met along the way. Endnotes: - Salisbury was renamed Harare on 18 April 1982 to celebrate Zimbabwe’s second anniversary of independence. — Eaglemont Ranch and Antoniette were among the many white-owned properties seized in a land redistribution program that began in 2000. Hundreds of owners and members of their families who resisted the loss of their farms, homes, and possessions without compensation were killed over the next decade. — In July 2015, Antoniette was in the news globallyafter aMinnesotadentist useda compound bow to kill a 13-year-old lion a Zimbabwe animal rights advocate had named “Cecil.” Anti-hunting groups around the world used the death of that lion as an icon in their campaigns to end trophy hunting, resulting in the dentist and his family receiving death threats and becoming the focus of global controversy. Antoniette’s black landholder was charged with not having a permit to allow a lion hunt on his property and paid a U.S.$250.00 fine. The Zimbabwe government released a statement saying the dentist had broken no laws and would not be charged with anything. Sixteen months later, charges were dropped against his professional hunter when a court ruled the charges “were too vague to enable him to mount a proper defense.”