1981: Tanzania reopens hunting. With Kenya still open to hunting, the closure of Tanzanian hunting in 1974 was not a seminal event. The reopening was, because it returned the classic East African safari to hunters' options. Despite various pressures, since 1981 the government of Tanzania has maintained a firm stance that it is a hunting country, and Tanzania remains an important hunting destination, with the fourth-largest safari industry (after South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe), and it is still the primary destination for a classical general-bag safari.

1989: Federal introduces .416 Rigby and .470 NE. Federal's renovation of these old-timers, then of questionable popularity and future, was a bold move. Federal asked my opinion, and since I owned both a .470 double and a .416 Rigby, I was delighted. But I told them they were nuts. I was dead wrong. The .416 Rigby is now the most popular of the several .416s, and Federal's .470 ammo has helped cause a rebirth of the bigbore double rifle.

1989: International ivory ban instituted. Ivory poaching was totally out of control, with elephant populations plummeting over much of Africa. This critical international treaty cut the legs off the ivory trade. Thanks largely to John Jackson (Conservation Force) and SCI, it contained from the outset exemptions for sport-hunted ivory, provided countries of origin provided survey data and worked within quotas. Since 1989, Africa's elephant population has rebounded from a low of perhaps 700,000 to possibly 1.3 million today. Americans are allowed to import sport-hunted elephant trophies (subject to quota) from five countries: Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Other countries, including Cameroon and Mozambique, are open to limited elephant hunting, with John Jackson's Conservation Force leading the fight to allow importation of legally taken trophies.

2000: Zimbabwe land reallocation. Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe since 1981, began an ongoing process of expropriating white-owned land. There are undoubtedly at least two sides to this racially motivated political issue. Fact is, however, the conversion of producing, exporting, game-rich farms to subsistence acreage has been hard on Zimbabwe's wildlife. Zimbabwe's Parks & Wildlife and Forestry departments continue to do a wonderful job, maintaining some of the finest dangerous-game hunting in Africa. Unfortunately, since 2000 Zimbabwe has lost much of its carefully nurtured plains game (possibly 80 percent of its sable antelope), which was primarily found on private land.

However, once again the safari industry has proved resilient. Between 1981 and 2000 Zimbabwe competed very effectively in inexpensive plains-game hunting, which accounts for the largest number of African hunting safaris annually. Today Namibia has stepped into the breach, supplanting Zimbabwe as the second-most-popular safari destination, with her burgeoning wildlife the primary beneficiary.