Got my Livingstone eland today! We went out looking for elephant, and way ahead of us through the forest we saw these eland. We made about a mile stalk on them and came up 75 yards from them through the trees. I made the shot, a little far forward, so the eland ran a little farther than I wanted. But a beautiful eland, 36 1/2 inches long.

Ronnie and I are getting along good now. He showed me as scar on his back that goes like 12 inches up his back. Four years ago when he was 63 years old, he climbed up on a tree limb looking for elephants. The branch broke, and he wiped out, broke his back. He spent a ton of time in the hospital, thought he wouldn't walk, but they repaired it with metal plates.

His hero was J.A. Hunter who is the exact same guy who turned me in to a hunter. J.A. Hunter wrote the book called "Hunter." He was a professional hunter in Kenya. When I did an interview for Michael Waddell's show, Michael asked me what brings me over to places like this. I said J. A. Hunter, and Ronnie was listening and got all excited and said the same guy was his inspiration as well.

There's a new guy in camp from Houston, Bud, is his name. He will be hunting elephants, and he's originally from Saskatchewan just like I am. Real good guy.

TWO DAYS LATER ...

Elephant stampede today. Didn't see hardly anything, just a few cows and calves from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. Then we hit some fresh tracks, went in and tracked five big elephant bulls. One was for sure a shooter. For an hour we were working in just trying to get within 30 yards. We had em and looked like we were going to get him. The wind died off and the sun was just about to set, and all of a sudden a little puff circled around and for some reason all five of these big bull elephants came right at us. Unfortunately we didn't get it on camera because we turned to run and then realized there was no time. So we stopped, and then Ronnie started yelling, and they parted like the Seas of Galilee and went around us on each side of us about 15 yards away.

It was really exciting; "intense," as Todd the cameraman said. Also today we saw three dead elephants that have just died from pure overpopulation here. There are too many elephants. The people have protected them here which is great, but now there are 180,000 elephants living in Botswana in 10 percent of the area of the country. Probably carrying capacity is 30,000 to 40,000, so they're dying. There's going to be a crash here, there is no question; that's nature boom and bust. When it happens it's going to be just a terrible travesty. They need to be controlled. You know, conservation is different than preservation. You preserve, preserve, preserve, and all the best intentions go bad because ... I guess they're killing them with kindness. They're going to wipe out the whole herd if a bad case of anthrax comes through here which there is a lot of in this area. They lost a pile of animals in the local park here a few years ago to anthrax, and if that happens with these animals it's going to be trouble. Anyway it was very sad to see these dead elephants. They just died; couldn't survive because of the habitat loss. Anyway that's my tirade for today. Hunting is the cure. "Hunting is the cure," that's my new saying.