Texas to Africa Outdoors: Where This Journey Begins

I was about six years old the first time Africa got into my blood. It wasn't a trip, or even a book at that point — it was Sunday evenings with Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler would take me on adventures to the dark continent. At about the same time, I saw John Wayne stomping around in Hatari! chasing rhinos across the Serengeti. I didn’t know yet that I'd spend a career learning to hunt, to write, and eventually to plan a real safari. I just knew that something out on that horizon had my attention, and it never really let go. Long before that trip took shape, though, my education came from a much smaller place: my parents' grocery store in the Texas Panhandle. Every month a fresh stack of hunting magazines showed up on the rack, and I read every one of them cover to cover. Craig Boddington. John Wootters. Hal Swiggett. Bob Milek. Chuck Adams. and Jon Sundra. Those names taught me how to hunt long before I ever pulled a trigger with real intent, and they taught me how to write about hunting before I understood that was a thing a person from Booker, Texas could actually do. Turns out it was. I got my start writing soon after I graduated college. At the time, I knew very little about how the hunting magazine industry operated. I didn’t know at the time that a writer should send queries to editors as opposed to a full manuscript. Well, I did the latter and got it rejected by none other than Craig Boddington himself. Although he rejected my manuscript, he actually provided me with something much better. Along with the rejection letter was a handwritten note which gave me pointers on what to do and what not to do when submitting ideas to editors. Well, I took his advice and wouldn’t you know it, the very next idea I submitted as a query to an editor of a national hunting magazine, it was accepted and I received my very first check as a writer! It actually felt like legalized stealing to me at the time. As I would have gladly told the story I sold to NORTH AMERICAN WHITETAIL to anyone who would listen. Instead, here I was standing there holding a check for $500. I couldn’t believe it. From that day on I owed a great deal of thanks to Col. Boddington for the excellent advice he gave me. It was many years later when I finally got the chance to meet and thank him personally while attending a Safari Club International convention. At that meeting I was able to hand him a copy of that very magazine article he helped me sell so many years before. High Plains Roots Both sides of my family have held land here in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles for more than a hundred years. That's not a small thing to say, nor is it something I take lightly. I manage the wildlife including whitetail, mule deer, quail, pheasant and turkey on that same land today with the help of my entire family. Deer are where most of that management work is centered. Every decision on the ground- habitat, food plots (alfalfa circles), which bucks we let walk and which ones we decide before season to harvest- is aimed at the same goal: growing mature, trophy - class whitetail and mule deer year after year. It is slow work, measured in seasons instead of months, and it doesn’t always show results right away. But is how a buck like Splitter shows up on camera from a decent 2.5-year-old and grows into a 180s class trophy three years later, or how Tumbleweed shows up in velvet the very first night we put out trail cameras. That patience is the entire game. It’s not just deer either. We hunt quail behind pointing Labradors — including Sage, the first female pointing retriever to earn 4X Grandmaster status. Her story, a journey to point, harvest and retrieve all six species of North American wild quail will be told in these pages. Along with the tradition which runs deep in our family of hunting some of the best quail country for bobwhite and blue quail year after year. I will get out heirloom quality rifles that have been in this family for generations: a FN Mauser 98 rebuilt to .280 Ackley Improved, and a Winchester Model 71 Deluxe Long Tang, and even a Dakota 76 in .416 Hoffman with a provenance trail running back to George Hoffman himself. This is the ground that made me a hunter. It's also, in a strange way, the same ground that's sending me to Africa. The Buffalo Hunt In May 2027, I'm headed to South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provinces to hunt Cape buffalo with professional hunter Neel van Heerden of Grootvallei African Safaris. It's a hunt I've been building toward for years without fully realizing it — every stack of magazines, every conversation with hunters and writers who'd already made that trip, every hour spent studying a .416 that once belonged to a man who hunted dangerous game for a living. It's all been pointing here. Texas to Africa Outdoors is where I'm going to document that whole process — not just the hunt itself, but everything leading up to it: the planning, the gear, the gun room, the people I meet along the way, and the High Plains life that shaped the hunter I am before I ever set foot on that ground. You'll find it here on the blog first, and soon on podcasts and video as well. This isn't a story about an exotic trip taken once and forgotten. It's a continuation of something that started with a six-year-old watching Wild Kingdom, and it's still being written. What You Can Expect Here I'll be organizing everything on the blog around five ongoing threads: • Hunting the High Plains — whitetail and mule deer management on ground my family has hunted for generations, plus the stories behind the bucks I've come to know over the years. • The Gun Room — the heirloom rifles, the reloading bench, the gear, and the craft of getting a rifle and a hunter both ready for dangerous game. • The Safari Files — everything to do with planning and preparing for Africa, including a recurring "Ask the PH" column with my professional hunter, Neel van Heerden. • Sage and the Six — life in the kennel with my pointing Labradors, quail season, and the training and hunt test judging side of that world. • T2AO Product Testing — honest field notes on the gear, optics, and equipment I actually use, tied back into whichever part of the hunt it belongs to. New posts will land across all five, so whether you're here for the rifles, the dogs, the deer, or the safari itself, there's a thread to follow. What's Coming Next The blog is just the starting point. Over the next several months, I'll be building out a podcast — pulling in conversations with the outfitters, professional hunters, gunmakers, and writers I'm meeting along this journey — followed by a YouTube channel, timed to bring you along on the ground in South Africa for the buffalo hunt itself in May 2027. The plan is to give you more than one way to follow this story, however you like to take it in. Whether you're planning your own African safari or have simply dreamed of one, come along with me as I plan my first.