Jim's Blog
First Licensed Foreign Hunter in Paraguay
I'm standing in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere, as usual. If you look at a map of South America, just go to the very middle part, just below the Brazil border, where there are no roads and no nothing, that's where I am in Paraguay. Amazing country, I'm really impressed with the country. Very flat, lots of ranching towards the east and west and then out here we're almost desert. It's like a jungle, but desert jungle, hard to describe ... but everything has thorns and spikes.
We flew in here today. It took us two days to get here from North America to Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay yesterday. Then today we hopped on a Cessna 206 and flew for two and a half hours straight north into this totally wild country. They are starting to get roads into it slowly but surely, but this all where there were natives living with bows and arrows, people who haven't seen white people. And a little north of here is absolutely untouched.
We went out today just for a quick scout. We're doing a jaguar darting research for the Jaguar Project it's called down here. Corey Knowlton is here with me and another fellow named Chance. We went out today with Rocky McBride, he's one of the most famous legends in this industry, same age as me, dog hunting for cats and jaguars particularly.
Rocky has been doing this for 30 years all over nine different countries all over the world literally. He is the man whenever they want to do a research project and need to dart a cat of some description. He's done it all for scientific reasons. He has this project going on down here. We're helping to fund it and it's amazing.
Went out today into this track-less land of brush country, looks just like Africa in a lot of places. I saw capybara and camens tonight. Tracks of jaguar, tracks of tapier, tracks of Brocket deer. Saw an armadillo, a giant tarantula.
Tomorrow we'll start actually looking for a jaguar. It's not going to be easy.
The other thing is, fantastic news, I am going to be the first, I have the licenses, official government licenses, to be the first licensed foreign hunter here ever in Paraguay. We have indigenous species, almost 50 different species, quail, ducks, and 13 big game animals, plus camen. We have all of the official documents it's all licensed for the first time ever. So, it's a big, big deal. Last night I had a meeting with the ex-minister of environment here and several other high-up people from the country's chapter of SCI. It's big news down here. We're happy about it!
Right now we're going to do the jaguar darting, then we'll start the actual hunting.
That's the plan, unfortunately, and this is the sad part, Len is not doing well at all ... (Read about Len's condition in Latest News).
6/11/2010
