Jon Pardi turns 30 on Wednesday (May 20th), and he’s celebrating by heading over to South Africa on a special hunting trip with his father, who’s been to the country a few times. The trip will also be featured on the Sportsman Channel TV series, Safari Hunter’s Journal.
Jon’s a little wary about the misconceptions of hunting in South Africa, saying he doesn’t want to shoot what he calls “Disney characters,” making reference to The Lion King, but he will go to this 55,000 acre preserve to hunt the plains animals, which number in the millions. Everything they kill will go to feed undernourished folks.
“There’s so much good stuff you can do in South Africa. And then when I got the chance to go on a TV show and go there, it was like, ‘Hey! Come here. There’s a game preservation and we’ve got all kinds of animals and we’ll go hunt the plains game.’ I was always like, ‘Well, I can’t be shooting Disney characters and stuff. Let’s just keep it to the herd animals where we get to go feed people with ‘em.’ So, we planned it out, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” says Jon. “We’re gonna really talk about [how] people don’t really understand hunting and how it helps them manage. I don’t know everything about it, but I’m gonna learn so much about what they do and how they keep it. This place I’m going to has put more animals in South Africa through hunting and management, so now there’s more African animals in this whole preserve than there was in the 1800s. They just have so much care for what they’re doing.”
Jon just released a new EP this week, The B-Sides, 2011-2014, featuring six previously unreleased songs.
Audio / Jon Pardi talks about heading to South Africa for a safari and a hunting trip.
DownloadJon Pardi (So. African safari) OC: …eco-system. 1:18
“My dad’s been to South Africa twice. He’s told me it’s the most beautiful, awesome majestic place to just sit and be at and also hunt and work. He built campsites with a motor grader and runways. He tracked down poachers. There’s so much good stuff you can do in South Africa. And then when I got the chance to go on a TV show and go there, it was like, ‘Hey! Come here. There’s a game preservation and we’ve got all kinds of animals and we’ll go hunt the plains game.’ I was always like, ‘Well, I can’t be shooting Disney characters and stuff. Let’s just keep it to the herd animals where we get to go feed people with ‘em.’ So, we planned it out, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun. We’re gonna really talk about [how] people don’t really understand hunting and how it helps them manage. I don’t know everything about it, but I’m gonna learn so much about what they do and how they keep it. This place I’m going to has put more animals in South Africa through hunting and management, so now there’s more African animals in this whole preserve than there was in the 1800s. They just have so much care for what they’re doing. It’s cool to be able to go to a place like that to hunt and see like their own little eco-system.”
