I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced straight down. The ground was some 30 feet below, and I was hanging in clear air by two knots at either end of my nylon hammock. My Mayan-descendant guide, Tigre (Jaguar), was the knot-tier. I trusted he knew what he was doing, but still, it was a long way down.

O.K. so I need the reader to keep in mind that I am trying to make a point here. That being, the Sabbatical year forced on Outfitters and Professional Hunters not only in Africa but in places like Canada, Europe and Australia resulted in larger-than-average trophies within those regions when they reopened.

“I’ve never seen this many shootable trophies, let’s hold off and see if we can find something even better.” My two Coutada 11 PHs, Julian Moller and Dylan Holmes, uttered a version of that statement multiple times during my two 2021 Safaris.

I sat in a semi-daze, not so much from the bourbon in my hand as from the day’s happenings. Hunters have dream animals, often these animals are trophies that seem out-of-reach whether because of finances or rarity.

I never dreamed that too many leopards could be a problem. Yet by my third day with Jamy Traut Safaris in Kaokoland, Namibia we’d had so much action at our bait sites that my Professional Hunter Kabous Grünschloss informed me we’d need to make a side trip to stock up on fresh meat.

Amazing, breath-taking, beyond beautiful; the animal before us deserved each of those descriptors, and more.

OK, so I’ll admit being a bit skeptical about Nyalas causing declines in Coutada 11’s Chobe Bushbuck populations.

The scrabbling of the Cheetah’s non-retractable claws on the floor of the transport crate and the thumping of the animal’s heavy body into the sides of the container made me wince.

Just the day before, we had visited the local clinic, a tidy, clean, white stucco building run by the clinician, Mr. Quisito.

Mark Haldane is an inveterate ‘birder’ – a birdwatcher who is likely to plant his binocular to eyes and run straight into a tree while trying to get the next glimpse of whatever he might have seen in the branches overhead.

We were again flying down the dirt road between stops on Mark Haldane’s magical mystery tour. I gazed out across the fields of green that rapidly slid past.

With a shake of his head and downcast eyes, Carlos Pacheco Faria’s voice dropped in volume and register. “The devastation to human lives, the country’s infrastructure, and the Zambeze Delta’s wildlife was total.

As Ivan Carter spelled out to me in an interview: “Hungry stomachs have no ears.” He meant that when people are hungry, they do not have the capacity to see the need to restore and conserve ecosystems.

As we wandered into and around the wooden cooking shelter, we skirted plates and bowls heaped with the cooked, unpolished rice.

The first of my two TEDx presentations is now available. The topic discussed is conservation-through-trophy hunting.

As we slowly made our way in the old, rattly Land Cruiser, I glanced at our guide for the morning.

The tiny fuzzball, looked at us with its mouse-like eyes, framed by its round, even more mouse-like ears.

Entering the forested area required shoving through a dense hedge of thorn-laden bushes. The further I went toward the din of howling hounds, whistling handlers, and roaring leopards, the denser it became.