Hunting!

I must confess to having always had a visceral dislike for the idea of people going out and shooting animals. Growing up in Herefordshire, there is a certain amount of fox-hunting, and I always found the idea of killing something for fun slightly repellent.

Without getting into the fox-hunting debate, I can say my views were changed by an experience in Norway in 2007 - watching a moose hunt. Here's the background to the moose hunt:

• Moose numbers are very carefully monitored so that the hunting doesn't cause depopulation.
• The natural predator (the wolf) no longer exists in the country.
• People eat what they kill. It's not for fun.

All thing put together, this means that for me this is morally acceptable - just as much as eating meat from the supermarket. Like it or not, when you buy a steak, something has to die.

So I decided to take advantage of the opportunity here in South Africa to participate for myself. Marisca and I went away for a weekend to a nice bush lodge, and early on the Sunday morning, my professional hunter and I went off to find some blesbok.

It wasn't long - we crept quietly through a thicket and on the other side, about 150m away, were a group of the antelope grazing. My heart was racing as I steadied the rifle on the hunting sticks. But the cross seemed to be moving all over the target, so I sat down and retried. This was much better. I squeezed the trigger and there was an almighty bang. I watched in horror as the antelope began to run, thinking I'd only wounded it. Happily it quickly fell over.

Turned out I'd got him right through the heart - not only had he not suffered too much, but the meat wouldn't have adrenalin in - good news for the taste!

My PH was ecstatic! He was very impressed with my shooting. Given my lack of experience (ie I've never held a rifle before, let alone shot one), he was expecting the first shot to be a miss, and that we would spend the whole day tracking a wounded animal.

We pretty soon had the thing hanging up and the guys removed all the insides.

After a short game drive, we sat down to breakfast, and served on a small plate, were a couple of unmistakeable round objects. Marisca nearly threw up her toast when she saw me eat one of them. The taste wasn't actually that bad - it's just the idea of eating testicles which makes one want to hurl.

Marisca wouldn't kiss me for some time - but at least I have my testicle-eating story!


I will say though that I've learnt why people enjoy hunting. It's quite an adrenalin rush. Happily for Marisca, I've not become a vegetarian from the experience.

I now look forward to collecting a massive bag of biltong and venison steaks which should last a long time!