Hunting -- Bang for the buck

YAKIMA -- Two years ago he paid nearly $2 million for four slices of cake and three cups of coffee.

He finds what he calls "the finest meat I've ever eaten" halfway around the world, a trip taking upwards of 24 hours each way.

But Jim Pearson isn't some pretentious snob. He's not even a jet-setter. The retired Yakima English teacher and freelance writer is a roll-up-the-sleeves guy who has been willing to spend his diligently saved dollars on the African hunting experience of a lifetime ... more than once in a lifetime.

And he does it without breaking the bank.

Honest.

Even with that seemingly exorbitant cake-and-coffee experience.

That $2 million was in Zimbabwean dollars, then already rendered all but worthless by that country's political instability at that time -- and even more so now.

"Here's 250 million in Zimbabwean dollars," Pearson says, holding up a single piece of colorful scrip. "I asked a woman if this would buy a loaf of bread. She told me, yeah, it probably would, if you could find a loaf of bread."

That conversation took place in South Africa just a few weeks ago, during the most recent of Pearson's four hunting trips to South Africa and Zimbabwe. Since then, Zimbabwean dollars have plummeted to the point that the scrip in his hand is worth less than two American pennies.

$6,900 compared to $12,000 closer to home

Pearson jokingly calls his hunting trips across the Atlantic "doing Africa on the cheap."

It's not really cheap, of course -- but it can look that way when considered alongside some other big-ticket hunt fees.

"I can go to Africa and hunt for 10 days and take several animals and spend less money than it would cost me to go to Alaska or Canada on one of those hunts for (Dall, stone or bighorn) sheep or grizzly bears or brown bears," Pearson says. "You start at $12,000 to $15,000 for one of those, and I can go to Africa for half that."

The prices Pearson and his wife, Judy, paid on their trip this spring were comparatively frugal: $1,500 each for round-trip flights from Yakima to Johannesburg, plus the $5,400 he paid for his all-inclusive hunt package that enabled him to take up to six big-game animals.

No, not those big-game animals.

"The hunts I do are inexpensive hunts," says Pearson, 71. "I can't afford to hunt elephants, but I wouldn't want to kill one anyway." The same goes for a rhino and a lion, Pearson says, adding, "I'd like to hunt a leopard one day, but they're expensive."

Instead of going after pricier prey, Pearson signed on for a trip with a professional South African hunter named Rudolph "Dolph" Baard -- who he met at last February's Safari Club International convention in Reno -- to hunt such exotic animals as kudu, steenbuck, warthog, impala, blue wildebeest and gemsbok.

The latter is a Pearson favorite, and not just for its uniquely regal appearance and towering antlers.

It's just mmm-mmm good.

"The meat is wonderful," Pearson says. "I haven't eaten waterbuck, I haven't eaten zebra -- the (safari) hunt refuses to cook zebra, he says the strong smell ruins their kitchen. But we've eaten warthog, it's wonderful; a warthog is like pork -- very, very lean pork. Impala is good. kudi is good. So is springbok.

"But the finest meat I've ever eaten, period, is tenderloin of gimsbok. Sweet, mild, tender ... I have a hard time comparing it to anything else, because nothing else tastes as good."

More than just a safari

Pearson hunts for more than prey in Africa; he and Judy were after experience -- seeing cheetahs in the wild, even though he wasn't hunting them ... seeing ostriches race one another, each carrying a full-grown man as jockey ... seeing penguins cavorting on the beach just up the coast from Cape Town.

And, of course, the people.

Pearson's trips have given him a profound empathy for the blacks of South Africa and Zimbabwe, for many of whom a gimsbok meal would constitute pure luxury. When Pearson talks of his own Africa experiences, much of his conversation revolves around theirs.

After years of tyrannous rule under brutal dictator Robert Mugabe, thousands of poor, starving Zimbabwean refugees have been streaming into South Africa -- where the locals, many of them scarcely better off, haven't always been hospitable.

"They had riots while we were there," Pearson says, "and I think 43 blacks were killed in rioting in Johannesburg. It was South African blacks killing Zimbabwean blacks because they were taking their jobs."

Pearson related a story told to him by his hunting group's tracker, Frons, a black South African. The evening before, two Zimbabwean refugees had knocked on his door, begging for something to eat. They had walked for 13 days, Frons said, and hadn't eaten for most of that time. Frons made them some porridge.

By the standards of most South African blacks, Pearson says, Frons is considered well-to-do. "Blacks that work for hunt camps are successful," he says, "because they get meat."

Of the meat from the animals killed on South African hunts, some is eaten by the hunters themselves, but the rest is given to the landowner to distribute to employees or to sell to local markets. On hunts on public land in Zimbabwe, a game warden travels with the group, and the hunters pay the warden for any animal taken and also provide to the warden the meat, which is then distributed to tribes in the area.

"Believe me," Pearson says, "nothing goes to waste in Africa."

The fenced ranches on which Pearson's group hunted were large, about 2,500 acres each. So the outfitter's employees, particularly trackers like Frons, were invaluable to the hunters' success.

"Those guys have the most incredible eyes," he says. "You will never see game before they do. And they could track a mosquito, I'm telling you. Their eyesight is just incredible."

Those watchful eyes helped Pearson take four trophy animals -- kudu, blue wildebeest, impala and nyala. He also had an easy shot at a gimsbok that he opted against taking, because he already had a more-impressive gimsbok mounted at home.

Adding his latest kills to the wall of what will be called his "man room" will add to Pearson's trip expense, but even that part he is saving some money on. He's having the taxidermy done in Africa, where it's less costly "because labor is so much less expensive there."

Something less than $2 million, presumably.

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