Jack Kramer of Fayetteville knows some things most of us will never experience.
Such as that Cape buffalo tastes an awful lot like beef. And leopard tastes like pork, but stringy.
Kramer, 55, and his wife Erma have lived in the area since moving here from Pittsburgh four or five years ago. He is a working service representative for Grove, a division of Manitowoc Crane.
Well, that’s what he does for a living. What he is all about is hunting, especially big game hunting.
It is a passion that has him out in woods and fields every season. Every few years, he heads off to more exotic places, such as Africa, where he has hunted in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
In Canada he hunted black bear and caribou; in Scotland, it was
highlands red stag and roe deer. In Australia he was after wild boar, feral goats, and various species of deer.
In an earlier trip to Zimbabwe, he hunted kudu, blue wildebeest, impala, zebra, and bushbuck. In South Africa, his game included eland, gemsbok, blesbok, and waterbuck. Namibia saw him hunting leopard, waterbuck, black wildebeest, gemsbok, and red hartebeest.
This summer, Kramer headed out on a 15-day hunt in Zimbabwe, a nation in the southern part of the African continent.
“We left on the 29th of June, and got back on the 17th of July,” he said.
Hunting for big game is not without its challenges. During the most recent Zimbabwe hunt, Kramer and his group were chased out of a blind by elephants.
“When you have a bull
elephant five yards from you in the dark, a .375 is not a big enough rifle,” Kramer said in a remarkable bit of understatement. “The bad part is, we had the leopard on the bait at the time.”
He also had to fire a warning shot into the ground to discourage a lioness curious about what was going on in the blind. She got the hint, Kramer said.
He described the area as a game hunter’s dream.
“We saw a lot of the big five — elephant and lion every day, Cape buffalo and the leopard. The area is better known for the dangerous game, but there is plenty of plains game, such as zebra, impala, kudu, and things like that. I was concentrating on leopard and Cape buffalo.”
The buffalo Kramer shot was of good size, but no record. It weighed in at between 1,500 to 1,600 pounds, and had a horn spread of 37.5 inches, which is within normal range. Kramer estimates it was eight or nine years old.
“He was a ‘boss’ buffalo, which means that the ‘boss,’ or central area between the right and left horns, had grown completely solid,” he said.
Killing one is nothing at all like shooting a cow. The Cape buffalo is considered to be one of the most dangerous animals in the world. Think of a VW Beetle with horns and a bad disposition.
According to Kramer and several other sources, the Cape buffalo is a member of the Big Five in Africa, along with elephants, lions, leopards, and rhinos. They grow to more than five feet tall at the shoulder and can weigh as much as about 1,800 pounds. They cause more human deaths than the others in their group. Only the hippo and crocodile killed more humans yearly in Africa.
The Cape buffalo is known to kill lions foolhardy enough to attack them. They are known for their ferocity, and males or females will attack any hunter who manages only to wound.
For that reason, Kramer said, there is only a certain class of weapon to use. He used a Krieghoff double rifle, which resembles a double-barreled shotgun. This particular rifle fires a cartridge called a 450/400 Nitro Express, a sort of baby artillery round. It fires a bullet nearly half an inch an inch wide, an inch or so long, weighing about an ounce. When the bullet leaves the gun, it has a punch of about two tons of force.
Using anything smaller won’t do the trick.
Kramer said the hunting camp sampled everything that was killed, but “the local villages get most of the meat, and the money from the hunter’s fee. It’s worthwhile. It helps their economy.”
The leopard Kramer killed weighed about 135 pounds, and was nearly seven feet from nose to tail. The skull measured 16.2 inches. Kramer said that would qualify as a record if he troubles to do the paperwork. The cat was five or six years old.
“I don’t go every year,” he said. “I go for deer every year, but every three or four years I try to go somewhere for a trip. If I could afford it, I’d go a couple of times a year. But that’s not in the cards.
“I have a few things I’m working on; I’m always thinking about what’s coming next. If get back to Africa, I’ll be after elephant, but that’s someway in the distance. Otherwise, I’d like to get a moose, and I plan to go the Kamchatka in Russia for a brown bear.
“I just have to work it all out.”
MORE PHOTOS: View more snapshots of Jack Kramer’s trip to Zimbabwe at http://pinterest.com/ponews/african-safari-2013.
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Article source: http://www.publicopiniononline.com/living/ci_23868872/game-is-jack-kramers-african-safari