Hunter Profile
Hunter Profile
By Archie Landals
My sable after several years of dreaming. Kimberly, 2016.
I
was born in Edmonton, Alberta Canada in 1945. I guess that makes me a city kid, but we were never far from the country. Although Edmonton is home to almost 1.5 million people today, it was only 100,000 when I was growing up. When walking out the back door we were soon in the woods with a lot of small wetlands. Birds and small mammals were abundant. Many of my relatives were on the farm. My family spent a lot of time outdoors, hunting, fishing and camping. We were always learning new outdoor skills. I have a Master’s degree in physical geography. My career of 40 years was committed to parks, land use planning and conservation - things I loved. I often joke that I never did get a job. In 2010, I reconnected with Carole, a friend from university days and we soon married. Carole, a true city girl had never participated in any of the outdoor activities that were part of my life. She was keen to try them all and learnt to shoot, and once we decided to visit Africa, she was committed to getting a zebra. Our shared love of Africa has resulted in five visits so far! My fascination with Africa started when I was a child. I broke my collarbone when I was five and was taken to “Doc Cameron” who practiced from his house. His walls were adorned with spears, shields and other 94
www.africanhuntinggazette.com
memorabilia from his time in Africa. I couldn’t take my eyes off the pig with the big teeth. In 2011, Carole and I had a chance to join a tour through Namibia prior to the World Veterinary Congress that my brother was attending in Cape Town. I fell in love with the landscapes that were new to me. Alberta’s landscapes are young, the result of glacial action. The province was covered in ice until 10,000 years ago. In Namibia I was seeing ancient landscapes, the result of the action of wind and water over millions of years. I was experiencing landscapes that I had studied in geomorphology at university but had never seen. Watching and photographing wildlife in Etosha National Park, I was hooked. On our four subsequent trips we hunted different areas in part for the different landscapes. We added a tour of the Garden Route in South Africa and visited the diamond mine and Boer Museum near Kimberly. How can I forget walking with the lions on my 70th birthday? A houseboat on the Chobe River in Botswana and Tiger fishing the Zambezi River were fabulous experiences. Victoria Falls was awe-inspiring. My love of Africa includes the scents - The Kalahari Bushveld, the smell of flowers after rain, the aroma of Sand Camwood. If the early morning smells of the camel-thorn dotted savannah grasslands near Kimberly could
be bottled they would put the final touches on any trophy room! I think hunting was in my blood. Dad and my uncles were hunters. In the days before television, storytelling was an important part of socializing. As a kid I would listen, enthralled by the hunting stories of my elders. I wandered the fields with Dad or sat in the duck blind before I started school. I was allowed to skip school for a few days when I was about seven. What a thrill to sleep in a wall tent in winter with the wood stove for heat. Though horses were no longer used on the farm, one of the uncles kept a team for the annual winter hunt. I vividly remember riding in the sleigh behind the trotting horses with the bells jingling. After that I was hooked and could not get enough. In Africa, we hunted Namibia near Grootfontein in 2012. In South Africa, we hunted several properties near East London as well as the Queenstown area in 2015. In 2016, we hunted near Kimberly as well as north of Port Elizabeth. In 2020 we again hunted the Karoo, north of Port Elizabeth. In New Zealand we hunted chamois in the Lake Hawea area north of Queenstown and Himalayan tahr at Rata Peak, west of Christchurch. In the U.S. it was pronghorn in eastern Wyoming. In Canada I have hunted extensively in my home province of Alberta over the past 60 years. Extended horse trips in the roadless areas of the Rocky Mountains were especially enjoyable, and we hunted mountain goat in the rugged coastal mountains of northern British Columbia near the Alaskan border. Our quest for caribou took us to the fringe of the tundra in the Ungava Peninsula of northern Quebec, while Great Bear Lake on the Arctic Circle in Northwest Territory was our destination for musk ox. I had my favourite weapons, but on my African hunts I used the rifles that the outfitters provided. I shot .300 Winchester, 7 mm Remington Magnum, .300 Remington Ultra Magnum, .300 H & H and .375 H & H. All were bolt action and mounted with good scopes. I particularly liked the pre ’64 Winchester in .300 H & H, a bit heavy to carry but very steady on the sticks. In Canada I am old school. I only own one rifle, a Remington Pump action in .30-06 Springfield. I had a 4X Weaver scope for most of my life. A few years back I traded it for a Bushnell
