By Ben L. Seegmiller
Hard cover, glossy paper, 260 pages
Available from Rowman & Littlefield
1-800-462-6920
$75 + $5 shipping
Ben Seegmiller is a lifelong hunter who has had the opportunity to hunt extensively in 35 countries all over the world.
He has been on over 200 hunting safaris. A life member of both Safari Club International and the Grand Slam Club/OVIS he is a winner of the SCI World Conservation and Hunting Award and the GSCO Slam Quest Pinnacle. His bag includes over 200 species, and he has 550 entries in the SCI Records. By 2012 he became the first to win all 18 SCI Grand Slams and all 28 SCI Inner Circle Awards by 2015.
He has set his accomplishments down broken up into spans of years and told some of the highlights of each time period. Significantly he does not omit the things that he would do different if he had to do them again and most important, he tells of the pitfalls that other writers always seem to omit.
The actual costs of some of these trips and the places where everyone you deal with expects to receive a generous tip are vital bits of information for anyone planning to go these places.
Guides that want to finish off game that you shot so they can take credit for the kill are represented here.
There are hunting tips that you don’t normally read about such as when the cape buffalo has been going through the thick bush and gotten what they call “Buffalo grass” in their hide it will go into your arm and feel like stinging nettle if you put your arm around your trophy for a photo. There are good hunting tips for some of the animals interspersed throughout the book and many of his experiences can be highly instructional.
This is a good book for giving insight on what hunting all over the world for widely different species is like.
It doesn’t always go smoothly. He was lost for three days in the Gobi Desert when his guide got lost. Later his driver got drunk and drove them with the truck at its maximum speed returning to camp. His wife had a broken bone in her foot set by an African witch doctor who brought the swelling down with an herbal poultice.
These were more than balanced out by the good times though and the author has done a good job of sharing his experiences.—Jim Dickson
