My first safari was in 2004, a small self-catered affair with some friends in South Africa’s Free State, tacked onto the end of a vacation trip during which my wife and I had spent a month traveling through the country and seeing the beautiful sights. I had been to several northern African nations before on business or in the military, but that was my first exposure to the sub-Saharan part of the continent, where things were very different than in the parts I’d visited.
By 2004 I was a sufficiently skilled hunter to “have a go” in Africa. I brought along my Savage Model 110 in .30-06, a plain-vanilla, workaday rifle; but I’d taken numerous white-tailed deer with it, shot it well, and had confidence in it
