ARTICLES
Cameroon
by John Chitwood

There are many reasons for being a member of the Alabama Chapter of Safari Club International, but to me one of the best things is learning about new and exciting adventures, either through hunting reports in this publication, presentations at Chapter meetings, or reading the literature that accompanies hunts donated for our annual banquet. At the 2002 annual banquet, while looking through the silent auction items, I came across a hunt to Cameroon donated by Antonio Reguera, owner of Mayo Oldiri Camp Safaris. I asked my wife Diann if she would like to go to Cameroon. Without hesitation she said yes and the bid was on. Even though there were others who made bids, at auction’s end, the trip was ours.

After that evening until our departure in February of 2003, we were in email contact with Raquel, Antonio’s daughter who serves as the booking agent, and talked with both Antonio and Raquel at the 2002 and 2003 SCI conventions. In addition, at the 2003 convention, we met Elisa, the camp manager. They promised us they would do everything to make our trip smooth, memorable, and successful, and we can happily say that they did just that.
A warning to anyone who might be considering a future stopover in Paris. Since out flight itinerary took us from Atlanta to Paris to Cameroon, we decided to stopover in Paris for a couple of days. If you ever find yourself flying through Paris and think about staying over, one word of advice - DON’T.

First, after we had booked our flights and hotels, we learned that France had changed its laws about importing guns into their country. Now, the only way to bring a gun into the country is to have a letter of authorization from a French hunting concession. We contacted the French Embassy in Washington, the French Consulate in Atlanta, the Charles de Gualle airport, and the airlines, and none of them offered any kind of help or made any suggestions for us. We already knew that the hunting camp did not keep rifles for clients’ use. To say we were in an awful quandary is an extreme understatement. Fortunately, Antonio came to our rescue and saved the trip for us.

A friend of his was going to be in camp right before our trip and was going to have Antonio’s personal gun. Antonio said that he would make arrangements for the friend to leave the gun in camp for me to use. The second downside is that a break in airline flights means that your luggage is no longer considered to be coming from the US in international status (70 pound allowance) but is considered as originating in France (23 kilogram limit). Air France wanted to charge us over $400 for excess weight. Diann asked wouldn’t it be cheaper just to buy our luggage a coach-class ticket. Fortunately the agent had a sense of humor and a sense of fair play as she finally agreed that it would be unfair to charge us anything. The fact that an extremely long line of waiting passengers had occurred because of a breakdown in the baggage transport belt and we were holding up the line helped quite a bit!

But, enough of the bad stuff - on to the hunt! Upon our arrival in Douala, we were met by a Mayo Oldiri representative, who took very good care of us, both in our arrival to Douala and when we came back through on our way home. He handled all of our baggage, took us to a very nice hotel and stayed until we were checked in, took us to a local market the next morning, and then to the airport for our flight to Garoua. He also kept the souvenirs we had purchased until we returned and made getting through Customs and Security very easy. Elisa met us at Garoua and we then made the four-hour drive to camp. Even though it was extremely late when we arrived, everyone got up to greet us, and we were served a delicious meal of Cob steaks.

At daylight, Darren, our PH, met us and we were off to see the country and start the hunt. Game was plentiful. During our ride-abouts of the camp we saw Western hartebeest, Sing-sing waterbuck, Nigerian Bohor reedbuck, Western cob, harnessed bushbuck, Western bush duiker, red-flanked duiker, oribi, Western roan, Northwestern buffalo, warthog, baboon, Colebus monkeys, and many others. There were other animals that we, unfortunately, did not get to see: elephants (however, we saw a lot of fresh elephant sign), lion, leopards walking through camp, and hippopotamus in the river by camp, although we saw hippo tracks in the sand and heard their nightly serenades.

During our seven-day stay, we would hunt in the mornings and late afternoons, with several fishing trips for good measure and good fun. Mid-day meant naptime, staying inside, or at least in a shady spot as it got up to 127° F. I collected five animals - harnessed bushbuck, oribi, red-flank duiker, Western cob, and Bohor reedbuck. All but the oribi, which seldom reach record-book size in Cameroon, make the SCI record book. The highest-scoring animal was the red-flank duiker, ranked number 11 in the current record book, but the best trophy was the harnessed bushbuck, that was so old that the ridges had been worn off his horns.

All aspects of this hunt were above our expectations, and our thanks go out to Antonio and Raquel for their great donation to our club. They, along with Elisa and Darren, made this trip so enjoyable that we were very excited to learn that they had donated a Cameroon Forest hunt to our chapter for this year’s banquet … and even more excited when we won the auction for it! Antonio and Raquel have done a lot to support our SCI chapter and National SCI as well. They treated us like royalty and have our greatest appreciation.