Gary Reeder
just wait til we see Colleen's Cape Buffalo mounted
Thursday, June 20, 2019, 16:56

my gut feeling is it will make mine look like a farmer's goat.


And mine..



I will have to give her credit though as she shot it offhand standing on her hind legs at about 60 yards and dropped him with one shot. She used the 458 American rifle I built for her first trip to Africa in '93. Ebony stock with elephant ivory forend tip and grip cap.

Next to Kase's 416 Rigby that we built for him on that same hunt. I think WB now owns that rifle.

Recently I jokingly asked a taxidermist what a full mount elephant would cost me. He immediately told me $165,000. Apparently he had done a few before. The last Safari Club Convention I went to I saw 5 or 6 full mount elephant on display.

A good friend in Florida who hunted all over with me, shot a big elephant in '92 on our safari over there and as he was always wanting to show off his bank account he told them he wanted it full mounted. Just before our '93 Africa hunt they called him that it was to be delivered that day and he asked me to meet him at his house to show off his full mounted elephant. The flat bed truck was there when I got there and my friend was having his ass chewed out royally by his wife. It seemed he didn't take into account how tall this creature was, something like 10 feet at the shoulder, he had the typical Florida home, concrete block outside with an 8 foot ceiling. For some idiotic reason he thought they could bring it in thru his garage door that was converted to his trophy room and then stand it up.

Anyway the trucking company had to take it back up to Tampa to put it in storage while my friend had his whole garage roof listed off and the room converted to a 14 foot ceiling and the front garage door opening changed to a much higher opening. Needless to say his wife was slightly pissed, until he told her while the house reworking was going on she could decorate the whole house with new carpet and wall coverings however she liked. At the time the elephant cost him about $55,000 and the mount cost him $95,000 and the house revamping about the same.

Another friend whose Dad owned a sports car dealership in Nashville wanted a 90 to 100 pound elephant. They were still available at the time if you looked long and hard enough. He had been a friend for years as another of his Dad's businesses was a miniature golf course just outside Nashville that I took some girl friends to. So he was a good friend and I had bought a couple of sports cars from them too.

A few years later he told me he went on safari 12 times before he got his elephant. The daily rate back in the mid 70s was $900 a day and the safari was 31 days so he paid $27,900 each year for 12 hunts just in daily rates. That works out to over $330,000, not counting the cost of the elephant and all the extras like charter flights and such. If I remember right he told me he spent around $65,000 per hunt for 12 hunts. He got his 95 lb elephant on trip #12. So he had over $300,000 in just the daily rates plus all the other stuff and I think he told me he had almost $800,000 in his elephant and knowing him he probably had it full mounted. And he wasn't one to BS me to show off. When I met him he was sweeping up the Miniature golf course and picking up trash that people had left there. Sort of a no brag kind of guy.