News
Souris farmer experiences once-in-a-lifetime hunt
Tyler Ohmann
08/14/2012
One area resident recently returned from a trip of a lifetime.
Myron Hanson, 61, of Souris, N.D. experienced a 10-day African safari hunting trip, which he characterized as a “terrific experience.”
Hanson had been dreaming of the trip since high school, and realized the dream hunt was in reach when a relative went four years ago.
“Ever since I was in high school, I would wait for the Outdoor Life to come, so I could read the hunting stories,” Hanson said. “Jack O’Connor would write about how he was in Africa or someplace, and four years ago Becky’s (Myron’s wife) cousin went to Africa, and I got to thinking about it and decided to start saving my pennies to do this.”
Hanson left Minot on July 17, flying into Johannesburg, South Africa on July 18. After a night in Johannesburg, Hanson headed to northeast South Africa and the Limpopo Valley to a ranch four hours from the South African capital.
Hanson, who has hunted in North Dakota for years, said there was quite a bit of difference in hunting in Africa.
“The difference is in the animals,” Hanson said. “Here we have our whitetails, but there you have all theses species, a lot are different species of antelope.”
Hanson’s ‘hunting package’ included: blesbok, kudu, gemsbok, impala, warthog, wildebeast and he also added a zebra. He managed to bag each of the animals that he set out to get.
Within the hunting process, Hanson was also lucky enough to spot many other native African animals.
“It was a terrific experience,” Hanson said. “You come driving around a corner and here is a big bull giraffe standing in the middle of the road, or you look off and there’s a giraffe munching on the top of a tree.”
Along with the giraffe, Hanson also viewed cape buffalo, nyala, sable, tsessebe, ostrich, klipspringer and even an elephant.
Hanson stated that the ranch he hunted was a cattle ranch, but due to a declining cattle market many ranchers have started hunting operations. The different ranch areas that he visited were from 2,000 to 8,000 acres in size, and the rancher that owned them had a total of approximately 100,000 acres of land.
Two other differences in hunting the states and Africa included that Hanson traveled with a “personal hunter” or PH, and a tracker. The other difference was the selectivity involved in choosing the animal in which he would take.
“I developed my hunting ethic a long time ago, I’ve been a hunter safety instructor for over 20 years, and this was just a different experience,” Hanson said. “The people there practice selective hunting. They don’t just go out and see a nice animal and shoot it. You’re out there with a one-on-one guide and they are incredible to see an animal and judge it.”
“They only want to take animals that are past there prime, and are out of their breeding cycle to maintain the vigor of the herd that is left,” Hanson added.
Language too was a difference as South Africans speak many languages including English, Dutch and Afrikaan.
“My PH, I called him Johann 16, because his last name had 16 letters and I couldn’t pronounce it,” Hanson said. “And that language difference is big, and then you see South Africa, which is probably the richest country on the African continent, but there was disparity.”
Hanson also noted the differing level of wealth in the country based on housing that he saw.
“There were some people living in shacks made of tin siding, the disparity in the living area was very apparent,” Hanson said.
Another difference Hanson noted was in power outages.
“It is different,” Hanson said. “For example, one day the power went out in the middle of the day, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Which is different for me, because here, the power never goes out.”
However, not all of South Africa is different, on the trip to the ranch Hanson spotted some familiar sights.
“But it was very nice country as well, there was a lot of agriculture and a lot of new John Deere and Case tractors,” Hanson said.
He noticed the similar use of irrigation and farming techniques that South African farmers employed. As a farmer himself, it was a familiar sight.
However, the differences were what stuck out for Hanson, and that was part of what the trip was about he said.
“That is part of the experience,” Hanson said. “Seeing how people live differently and the culture, the dynamic of the country.”
Hanson enjoyed himself so much on the hunt that he hopes to go again one day. Next time he might think of venturing north into what he called “wild Africa” countries north of South Africa such as: Botswana, Zimbabwe or Mozambique.
The skulls from the trophies he bagged including a 50.5 inch kudu bull, will take about a year to make it back to North Dakota. All the meat from the animals Hanson harvested stays in South Africa and is given to locals.