http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41972653/ns/us_news-environment/?GT1=43001

I can't believe their solution to clean this up is to scoop them up and dump them in a dumpster.

Gotta be an easier/cheaper way to clean up fish

Familiar Setting....Unfamiliar Critter

I don't know the whole story, but does it really matter? Dad shot an elk on our ranch. Having just recently shot a cape buffalo and a sable, I have to say, I'm still VERY jealous.

By the way, for those of you who know the place, look at the quantity of grass where he is. It is normally rock and dirt.

My birthdays just keep getting better.

Pictures speak louder than words (plus it makes it easier for those of you who are less educated), so here goes ...

We drove 9 hours to the hunting grounds

We sighted the rifle.

We woke up at 3:00 am

We drove to the river to find buffalo (these are not buffalo by the way)

We got all ready to do our 3 day walk for Buffalo

We started walking at 7:00 am.

We walked more.

We waded the Lugenda river and crossed into the Nissa Reserve.

We used elephant poo for gun rests while we put our socks and shoes back on.

We found fresh Buffalo tracks at 8:00 am.

We found the Buffalo at 8:50 and put a stalk on it.....

I pulled the trigger at 8:55.

That's done. Now what?

We covered it up so nobody could see it.

We left.

I shot it there.

Now it's Bekki's turn for her safari.

Nice neck shot with a .22 pellet gun.

Then there was the sable hunt...

Time for celebration.

223lbs of meat from one sable. Tasty!!

Actually, here is the real story...

Bekki organized a buffalo hunt for my birthday. Yes, she is the most awesome wife ever. This particular hunt was a community hunt--meaning that everything except the trophy went to the community. In Northern Mozambique, there is the Niassa Reserve. It is surrounded by hunting concessions. The reserve has villages within it, and each year, they give a quota of certain animals to each village for food. This is the first year that the quotas have been for sale to trophy hunters. All fees paid for these hunts go to the reserve for further management of the park. Everything except the cape and skull went to the local community. Previously, the hunting concessions would send their PHs to take the animals for the communities. I was the first trophy hunter to hunt leagally in this particular section of the park, and I am very excited about that.

The night before the hunt, the PH told me that he had not been on the other side of the river this year, so we were just going to have to walk until we found tracks. Most 10 day buffalo hunts are done by driving until you find the tracks, so I was not really excited about the idea of just walking around and not getting to cover much ground.

The morning of the hunt, my excitement had come back, and I was itching to get out and excercise a bit. From this point, the pictures tell the story. To say that I pulled the trigger at 8:55 is correct, but I also pulled it at 8:55:05. Again at 8:55:07. Again at 8:55:10. And again at 8:55:15. Buffalo can soak up some energy. I was shooting a .416 Rigby. My first shot (hollow point) went right into the boiler room and disintegrated. the next two shots (monolithic solids) went into the south end of the north bound buffalo. We were trying to get it down before it went into thick cover. Finally the buffalo started to turn around. This presented a nice broadside, so I put another solid into the shoulder. He stood there for a few seconds then laid down. I put the 4th solid into him. The PH said to shoot again, but now I was nervous because the other buffalo that was running with this one was getting a little brave. I told the guide I had only one shot left, and I would prefer to have some self defense if the second buffalo charged. He thought it was also a good idea. Finally, we convinced the other buffalo that he didn't need to be there, and he ran off. About that time, we heard the death bellow that everybody talks about when buffalo hunting. It is a very real thing. For reasons I cannot express, it made tears well up in my eyes. Buffalo are magnificently strong animals, and to take the life of one makes you feel entirely different than just blasting bunnies in West Texas. My buffalo hunt lasted 1 hour and 55 minutes. Most people take at least 5 days. My buffalo was one of the biggest shot in this concession this year (40 1/4 inches).

This is what a monolithic solid looks like after passing through the entire length of a buffalo...

The sable hunt was a little more challenging. Not physically, but because we could not find a decent trophy. The one we shot turned up about 10 minutes before we got back to camp on the morning hunt of the day we had to leave. We jumped out of the truck, put a short stalk on it, and ran a 30/06 into its shoulder. The Sable took off like a scalded cat without so much as a flinch. we went and picked upt he tracks, and the trackers went to work. After about 50 yards, they found the tiniest spot of blood. Now I was upset, because I had just wounded an animal and would have to pay the trophy fee without getting anything. That was the only blood we found. After a little more tracking, we found the Sable in a heap on the ground. the '06 bullet mushroomed nicely and destroyed both lungs prior to lodging under the skin on the opposite shoulder. His long horn was 39 1/2 inches and was the larges shot in the concession this year.

The reason for the lack of blood is the exceptionally thick skin (about 1" at the shoulder)

Here is the '06 and .416 side by side.

I am trying to plan another hunting trip next year when my dad is here. If anyone wants in, please let me know.

Got rid of that San Diego skunk!

I've been on two expensive and skunky charters out of San Diego in the last 3 years. Well we tried one more time...and finally tore it up!

Great weather, good company, excellent charter service and loads of tuna. F'Yeah!



It was a relatively short ride out to Mexican waters. Once the capt saw fish on the sonar he shut it down and we drifted while chumming with cut bait and live sardines. The fish slowly worked their way up from 100-150' until they were breaking the surface all around the boat and we had birds diving. We drifted live sardines with the reels in free spool while applying just enough thumb pressure to let the bait swim. When the line started peeling off we would count to three, engage the spool and hold on. Very powerful fish!

After catching my first yellow fin I celebrated with a Modelo and a tuna heart that was still beating. Fresh! We started boating fish so quickly that there were multiple hook ups and not enough time to put them in the cooler. Someone was yelling fish on and someone else was yelling for the gaff. The back of the boat turned into a crime scene and everyone was covered in spattered blood.



We boated 11 yellow fin and 3 blue fin between 25 - 35 lbs. Fished with my sister Andrea, grad school buddy Jeff (some of you should recognize him) & my uncle.

Culinary Arts of Mongolia

Just got back from another run to Mongolia, while whale is not common we had a LOT of goat parts and marmot. I’m here to tell you marmot is delicious.

The way it is prepared is quite interesting. It starts with a good headshot on a fat marmot using an obscure Russian surplus 4.something mm rifle with a homemade bipod.
Next burn all the hair off the body. From there you remove the head and gut it through the neck hole. Then, with a small knife, you carefully remove all the bones (again through the neck hole). Then mix together all the innards and the bones (with meat on them) and some salt and the stems of a small, plant whose name escapes me, that taste like a wonderful mix of onions and garlic. Next push all this and some smooth baby fist sized rocks back into the neck hole to fill the body cavity and tie the neck hole closed.

Cook slowly for a few hours and the little dude bloats up like a football. The rocks heat up and help to cook it from the inside out. To serve, cut the critter open and take all the goodies out of the cavity and pass the hot greasy rocks to all in attendance. These have a ‘special therapeutic value’; you rub them in your hands and suck the fat off of them. The boneless marmot is then cut up like a loaf of bread and served. Quite tasty!
We stepped out to visit some nomadic herder friends out in the south Gobi and got lucky enough to find them. These folks move around quite a bit following their herds but we know where they were the week before so we headed in that general direction and caught up with them. When you show up with several bottles of vodka it becomes necessary to kill a goat. Interesting way they do this, they look over the herd and choose a goat depending on the importance of the guest. Aint every day that a dude in a straw hat shows up at your ger so they picked the fattest goat in the herd. No guns or clubs involved in the deed, just grab one up by the horn and make a small cut at the sternum and reach inside and find the top of the heart and squeeze off the blood supply till the goat ghost checks out. From there they take em apart about the same way we do, sans the hanging from the tree (aint a lot of trees). They lay it on its back and skin it out and stretch out the skin and stake it to the ground. This becomes the catch pan for all (and I do mean ALL) the bits. The innards are segregated to that which is above and below the diaphragm and placed into large pans for further use.
Following the kill you eat guts, the best part, the first night. This is the meal of honor. With a good fatty goat you obviously get a lot of fat. Some of that was cooked down into a broth with the intestines, spleen, gallbladder, and several other bits. The stomach gets stuffed with lungs, blood, small bits of meat, and those tasty garlic/onion plants and gets cooked in a bowl of the innards broth mentioned previously. The large intestine gets a similar treatment to make a sausage of sorts.
The liver, kidneys, and heart are wrapped in the kidney fat with a dash of salt, skewered with a metal stake and cooked in the ger stove over a fire of coal and dried camel crap.


Then comes the drink…vodka…and a shitload of it. An open bottle is an empty bottle and nobody stops at one bottle. They figure, for planning purposes, at a minimum a bottle per person. This meal had 7 folks in attendance, one was a small child who was switching back and forth between pickles and titties so she didn’t have much, another was our driver who was still on the clock so he just had one glass because that is required and considered an offense to not partake in the first glass. Oh, and you only use one glass as shown in the picture above. You are not required to finish the glass and nobody makes fun of you if you don’t however…you are surely judged positively if you do finish the glass each time it is passed to you. I was viewed in a very positive light.

The meat parts are typically placed into a cardboard box and for some reason unbeknownst to me you drive around with it for several days. I assume this is some sort of curing process but I’m not sure. We would trim off bits and boil them with milk and salt to make a tea that was pretty good.

During a trip to the south Gobi there are three things you can count on.
1. You will get the chance to have some interesting meals with very good people

2. You will get a few flat tires at some point

3. You will get very drunk from time to time
Good times!