While at Sea Winds, we were invited to the home of Henry and Joyce Bynum. Henry is a big game hunter. Joyce is a big game hunter's "widow" as Henry is gone many times out of the country to follow his sport. The Bynums have been involved with oil wells for years so no shortage of funds there. When we got to the house, I was struck at how unpretentious is was - a single story ranch that looked much bigger on the inside than the outside. We were invited into the Henry's display room where there must have been at least a couple hundred exotic animals mounted. I am not a fan of hunting animals for sport, but after listening to Henry describe what he does, I was impressed.
There are certain rules he must follow. Each country has fees that hunters must pay. Those fees are not small. The kill must be an older male. The fees are quite steep, but the money goes to support the people in the villages in the area where the kill was made. The meat of the kill also goes to the people of the nearby villages. The hunter, of course, is interested in the hide or the animal mounted. I couldn't help myself. I started adding up all the expenses for travel, equipment, guides, fees, mounting etc. That's a lot of money!
I was also struck by how down to earth Henry and Joyce are. They are both in their 70's, and he is still quite active as a big game hunter while Joyce holds down the fort at home. They were both quite easy to talk to and enjoyed a good story or two. Henry told us about a time he was with a group hunting in Africa. He had to use the "outhouse" and proceeded to walk a ways from the Land Rover without his gun. As he was relieving himself, a huge lioness slowly stood up in the deep grass around Henry. He told us he'd never been so scared. He had no gun as he'd left it back at the Rover - only a knife. He told us he was sure this was how he was going to die, but slowly reached for his knife and backed away from the lioness. As he slowly, very slowly, backed up other lions stood up. He made it back to the Rover without any of them charging and to this day Henry has no idea why he is still alive after that experience.
Below are some of the pictures of his displays.... Notice many of the mountings are done with the animal's mouth open showing huge teeth and jaws.
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| This is one of my favorite pictures. There's elephant soul in there. |
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| This is just one wing of his display room. |
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| Henry calls this his swamp monkey. That's as technical as he gets. |
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| We saw a few wild pigs in the fields around the campground that looked like this. |
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| Kitty, kitty... |
This final picture is of an elephant's skull. Henry doesn't have many skulls on site, but this was most interesting as a close-up shows the single bullet hole above the eye sockets that felled the elephant as it charged Henry directly. The picture of the elephant's eye above is that same elephant... and Henry said the lion story was the time he was most scared...
We spent about two hours with Henry and his wife, wandering the huge display room, sitting and listening to Henry's stories and sipping a glass of wine. We left having acquired new friends and yet another very unique experience.
As I write this entry, we are traveling west through New Mexico. Sadly, we can't stop or stay as we are due in Arizona at friends. We hope to spend more time next year on our next lap around the U.S. It seemed like it took forever to get out of Texas. We were able to see one area of the state with mountains, and as we headed toward Las Cruces, NM, we again experienced the winds we've come to know in Texas and New Mexico. Sixty mph wind gusts caused us to tuck in the slides and hunker down in a Walmart parking lot. I do want to say how much we appreciate most Walmarts welcoming overnight RVer's. When we are just stopping for the night, it makes sense to park in a parking lot to dry camp. We provisioned this a.m. are are on our way.
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