Not a Pleasant Experience dealing with Rolando Nusbaum of Argentina’s Best Hunts
John Chitwood, Jr.

In 2001, my dad bought a three-day blackbuck hunt for two hunters donated by Mr. Nusbaum to the Greater Atlanta Chapter of SCI. They scheduled their trip for April of 2002. However, in the months just prior to their trip, Argentina's political and monetary stability fell to the bottom. The country had five presidents in just a matter of a few weeks, there were massive riots in the cities, and banks were closing. They wrote Mr. Nusbaum, asking for his advice. He said that things were bad and he would certainly understand if they wanted to postpone the trip, which they did.

In an exchange of emails, they discussed several different possibilities and then set a new date. Some months later Mr. Nusbaum sent a confirmation email, but he used a date that had been tentatively selected but was not the final date. When my mother replied with the correct date, he sent her an extremely rude email, asking when she had intended to inform him of the new dates and other discourteous statements. When she responded with quotes from her email to him that set the final date, he claimed he never got it. By the way, it wasn't the first time he had erred in the hunt dates. In one email, he stated their hunt dates as being the latter half of June 2001, when his hunt donation was for March or April 2002.

In the meantime, Eric and Debbie Jones and I bought a three-day hunt from Mr. Nusbaum, so that the five of us could go together. We promptly wired Mr. Nusbaum the payment for our hunt. However, in the ensuing months, I got married and mom and dad decided that they did not want to go because of Mr. Nusbaum's unpleasant email. They gave us their hunt so that Mandy could go.

I began working with Mr. Nusbaum on the hunt dates for Eric, Debbie, Mandy and myself. I explained to Mr. Nusbaum that this was the first time I had made arrangements for an out-of-country hunt and that I would have many questions. At first, he seemed very nice and said he was willing to work with us.

Unfortunately, the story does not have a good ending. Several weeks ago, he advised us that we could stay at his ranch for only one night, even though we had purchased a three-day hunt. Then, we received the following "nastygrams." Granted, we did have lots of questions and we did change dates (all for good reasons), but we did not deserve to be treated with such disrespect.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rolando Nusbaum [mailto:rolando@urgentmail.com]
Sent: Tue 4/6/2004 6:27 PM
To: Chitwood, John C.
Cc:
Subject: Re: 2003 Blackbuck Trip
John
It is very difficult to work with people like you. I do not recall having exchanged so many messages with other hunters like me and my staff has been doing with you. We run a business here and our time is as valuable as yours.

From: Rolando Nusbaum [mailto:rolando@urgentmail.com]
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2004 9:14 PM
To: Chitwood, John C.
Subject: Our email exchange
Dear Mr. Chitwood
Please find attached all our email exchange starting in 2001, please take the time to read them all and if you do some hard thinking , you will find the answer to your current situation. Obviously you have no saying in behalf of other SCI hunters but most important you are not , fortunately , an example of what hunters and hunting is all about, so we will not really worry about your influence regarding our business.
You are welcome to come and take your hunt in the donated terms , it makes no difference to us whether you do or don't. We just do not want to waste any more of our time so this will be the end of our email exchange. Your messages will be blocked from our computers. If you wish to contact us , please do so by phone dialing 011 54 11 47774410.
Have a good day
Rolando Nusbaum
Argentina's Best Hunts
President

Some of the emails he referenced were with my parents, not with me; some were initiated by him; and some we had to resend because he had failed to answer a question or misstated the facts. He says that he's never had so much difficulty with a donated hunt. He's failing to remember that Eric, Debbie, and I paid for our hunt.

From the change in his attitude after he learned that neither my dad, Eric or I were going to purchase additional animals, it is apparent that Mr. Nusbaum only wants hunters that are willing to shell out for his high-dollar trophy fees. If you're unable or unwilling to do so, he wants little to do with you. Perhaps there are others that have had a good encounter with Mr. Nusbaum, and I wish we could say that we were among those. Unfortunately we aren't and wanted to share our experience with the Alabama Chapter members in case they ever considered booking a hunt with Mr. Nusbaum.