Mike Honeycutt’s World of Hunting and Fishing

By Mike Honeycutt

For author Mike Honeycutt, theres nothing more exciting than a remote trip with great scenery. In Mike Honeycutts World of Hunting and Fishing, he shares a travelogue that speaks to his passion for traveling the world to exotic locales to hunt and fish for unusual animal species.

Based on his extensive travel experiences, Honeycutt narrates stories from all over the world on all continents. From the savannas of northern Cameroon to the jungles of southern Cameroon, and from the mountains of the Rocky Mountains in the United States, to a Himalayan tahr hunt in the mountains of New Zealand, he describes an array of real-life experiences and excursions. He tells about bird hunting in Argentina, turkey hunting in Old Mexico, and looking for the Gobi Argali Sheep in Mongolia.

From airplanes to snowmobiles, to boats, horses, jeeps, four-wheelers, and pickups, Honeycutt has traversed the world experiencing an array of terrain, cultures, religions, food, and personalities. He offers insights into his travel in Mike Honeycutts World of Hunting and Fishing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781490788098

Mike Honeycutt

Mike Honeycutt enjoys traveling around the world looking for exotic trophies and spectacular scenery. He lives in remote South-Central Missouri near a national forest with his dog and a cat.

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Copyright 2018 Mike Honeycutt.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4907-8804-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-8805-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4907-8809-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938991

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Trafford rev. 08/16/2018

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1     Northern Cameroon, January 1997

Chapter 2     Southern Cameroon, March 1999

Chapter 3     Elk Hunting around the Rockies

Chapter 4     Northern BC for Moose, 1999

Chapter 5     Mongolian Elk or Siberian Elk Hunt

Chapter 6     New Zealand, 2001

Chapter 7     Córdoba, Argentina, 2001

Chapter 8     Old Mexico Turkey Hunting, 2001

Chapter 9     South Africa, 2002

Chapter 10   Tajikistan, November 2002, Marco Polo

Chapter 11   Mongolia, 2003, Gobi Desert

Chapter 12   Kamchatka, Russia, September 2004

Chapter 13   Zimbabwe, 2005, Dangerous Game Hunt

Chapter 14   Polar Bear Hunting on the Polar Ice Pack, 2006

Chapter 15   Second Dangerous Game Safari, Eighteen Days in Zambia, 2008

Chapter 16   Caribou, Wolf and Fishing, Manitoba September 2009

Chapter 17   North Island, New Zealand, 2010

Chapter 18   Australia, Hunting Buffalo, 2011

Chapter 19   Idaho Cow and Elk Hunting, August 2012

Chapter 20   Hunting and Working, New Zealand, April 23, 2013

Chapter 21   Elk Hunting, Quebec, Canada, 2013

Chapter 22   Botswana, September 2015, Elephant Hunt

Chapter 23   September 13-28, 2017

Chapter 24   Travel to Canada for a Fishing Trip in June 2004

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27   Another Trip South of the Border to the Amazon Region

Acknowledgment

CHAPTER 1

Northern Cameroon, January 1997

I have always had a passion to hunt and travel to other lands. Growing up in a small town, I always had access to land and rifles to hunt with. My family always had land to hunt on and started acquiring acreage early. I became more of an avid hunter for deer, turkey, and quail. After high school, I did a couple of years of college and began to think about hunting different species of animals and traveling to other land. I finally got a chance to travel and hunt for the elusive Lord Derby eland.

I arrived in Paris, France, for an overnight stay. I decided to go sightseeing from my airport hotel. I went downstairs to ride the airport train into Paris, but the security forces were guarding the train gates with machine guns. The train was headed in with suspicious luggage believed to be carrying a bomb, so I had to take a taxi to the subway where I traveled underground all over Paris.

In the evening, the bomb threat was over, and I was able to take the train back to the airport to my hotel. I had dinner and stayed overnight. I arrived at the airport the next day, watching the time as I was already confused with time changes. We took off and landed early morning in Lagos, Nigeria, where the oil workers got off the plane. Most had a month on and a month off, so they flew back and forth to Paris. As the flight attendants opened the door, they told us to sit on the plane while they served coffee and cookies to the military as they came to greet the plane. After loading and unloading freight and luggage, we took off again and headed for our final destination in Douala, Cameroon. Air France had great food and music from Radio Mecca, but their old love story movies were kind of boring. Nigeria and Cameroon were having problems and were fighting and shooting at each other’s oil wells out in the ocean. Arriving in Douala, I was booked at the Hotel Meridian. I spent the night having a relaxing evening and dinner and then went back to the airport the next morning to fly north with the other hunters from New York.

Landing in the north on the afternoon flight, we we’re driven to camp for a fifteen-day hunt. The camp consisted of getting acquainted and a visit to the sleeping quarters made of concrete and steel doors with grass roofs to keep the lions out. The only other thing we encountered were large spiders that the Danish outfitter suggested help keep out snakes, such as the black mamba, one of Africa’s deadliest snakes. As the saying goes, if you get bitten by a mamba, they bypass the hospital and head directly to the morgue.

Cameroon is a savanna in the north and is close to Nigeria’s border. The 144 tribes of Islamic fundamentalists live there. One of the young chieftains was one of my guides. They drink and eat only at night. As it turned dark, they would get off the safari rig and pray and eat on the way to camp. One of the men drank his dinner from a mobile oil number 2 jug. We returned to camp every night, had a drink, sat by the fire, and indulged in conversation about the hunting days. The full moon in Cameroon is the best part of an evening, then a great dinner with fresh salads and bread from the mobile bakery, which was an African lady carrying bread on her back. The soil in the hunting concession was red like Mars. I was able to take several of the species there. A Lord Derby eland was the grand prize for me, but I also took a warthog, red hartebeest, a roan antelope, and some duikers. The hunting and tracking to find the animals were some of the best I have ever seen.

As we were leaving the hunting area, we met the state man and the military