The Best of Ellijay, Blue Ridge & Jasper Funpaper issue 7 | Page 13

Interview with Jim Gray by Robb Newman
Photos by Jim Gray

What follows is the “in print version”
of what started out as an 8 page interview and layout. Though we hated
to do it, we had to cut it down to five
pages and leave out lots of great photos. Fortunately we have plenty of
room online and you can see all the
amazing photos and the entire uncut
interview on our website. Go to:
www.TheBestOfEBRJ.com/safari
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Robb: We’re here with Jim Grey,
owner of the Gun Pro Shop, Jim recently returned from Africa where he
helped set up hunting for Americans
that wanted to visit and took a safari
of his own.
Jim: My main reason was to do some
hunting to acquire trophies to have in
my store and have some stories to go
along with them to share with people.
The primary animal that I hunted on this
trip was a lion. I guess maybe I was a little bit naïve and not very smart going
into it to not realize how big that animal
is and I’ve seen pictures on TV where
people got charged when the lions were
hunting and I thought “you know, that
will never happen to me.” Well, it did
and that was way more exciting than I
expected but, when you go on a trip like
that you go with quality professionals
who know what they’re doing; they’re
experienced; they’ve done this many
times, so you’re safe with them.
Robb: You’ve been to Africa several
times right?
Jim: Yes. I’ve been to Africa twice before. Those times I was hunting "plains"
game; antelopes and warthog pigs. Not
dangerous animals. I hunted two dangerous game animals on this trip. The
Nile crocodile, and the female lion. We
tracked the lion for a couple of days.
The way that we would hunt was to
drive on the roads and property looking
for tracks. We saw tracks on the road
and stopped and got off the vehicle and
walked in on foot with our guns. We did-

n’t go very far before we could actually
see the lion in front of us in the brush. I
got a shot and I took the shot and got it
through the heart, which is a killing
shot, but it ran about 10 feet; stopped;
then came running straight for us. At
that point there were 3 professional
hunters with me that had weapons and I
had my own weapon. We all started firing. The guys at the back of the vehicle
said it sounded like World War III be-

put more bullets in my gun.
Robb: Amazing. So they don’t come
down easy?
Jim: I was shocked at how tough and
how big the animal was.
Robb: I know there are lots of animal
lovers in the North Georgia. So I
want to make this clear, this lion, the
people there eat this as a food
source. It’s not just for trophy.
Jim: It is used for food and in fact the

cause we were all just shooting away.
Robb: It was coming right at you.
Jim: It came right at us and got to less
than 20 yards from us before we
knocked it down. It had already roared
a couple of times by then but when we
knocked it on the ground, it roared
again and rolled over and dust was flying up everywhere and then it came up
and I guess it had enough of us at that
point and it ran off to the side about 100
yards. By then I was out of bullets so I

skinners and the trackers were fighting
over the meat. All of the meat you kill
on any of the hunts over all goes to the
local people. A 300,000 acre ranch that
has forty people that work on the ranch
and most of them don’t get paid a
whole lot, but they have a place to live
and part of their compensation is to get
the food. None of it goes to waste.
Robb: So, a lion is food, for the people that live there. Even though for us
it’s rarity and it’s size really makes it

Why is "abbreviation" such a long word?

valuable for hunters to hunt.
Jim: Yeah
Robb: If there were 600 pound chickens, you’d be over there hunting
chickens and there’d be a big chicken
here in your trophy room.
Jim: That would be the world’s biggest
chicken.
Robb: Right. So it’s really the same
thing, for the people that might get
upset about it.
Jim: Well, a lot of people don’t understand this, but the fees from hunting,
most of the money goes to pay for the
game wardens, and animal preservation
organizations in the government in
Africa.
Robb: So this actually helps preserve
the species. And it’s actually a good
thing?
Jim: It does and it is. It’s the same
thing here in the US with deer and other
animals that are hunted, elk and such,
the exact same thing. When we shot this
lion; we knocked it down when it was
charging at us, it got up and ran off to
the side and then I had to put more bullets in my gun because I had shot all the
ones that I had. And we went after it
and and I shot it and finished it off. All
of what I just described took place in
about 10 seconds. I’d heard people describe it like being in the Twilight Zone
and I couldn’t relate to it until I went
through it myself. It’s like, you’re hearing the lions roaring, the guns are going
off, but it’s almost like you’ve got cotton
in your ears. You don’t really hear them
and you don’t feel the impact from the
gun, it’s in slow motion, but sixty yards
to twenty yards took like a second. They
go from zero to sixty miles per hour in
half a second.
Robb: So it’s totally possible it could
have got right on you.
Jim: Oh, it had every intention of doing
that. A couple of days before we went
on the hunt we went into a large outfitting store in South Africa and when the

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