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Greg Mead of Wood River found himself down under last July.
Way, way, way down under.
Mead traveled to the Northern Territory of Australia to a hunting area southeast of Darwin. It took a full day of driving on dirt roads to negotiate the 200-kilometers to the hunting area.
"I'd been there a week or so before I actually drove down to the hunting area," Mead said. "The first night in camp, I laid on the ground and looked at the stars. I thought, 'How on earth did I wind up here on the other side of the earth going to hunt in such a remote area?'
"I've backpacked in Wyoming, but this was definitely the most remote I've ever been in my life."
The long trip paid off for Mead, who designs bullets for a living. He harvested both a wild hog and a water buffalo on the trip.
His job is what took him to Australia in the first place. He went there to visit a customer. That led to the hunting trip and some fishing as well.
"The fishing was OK," Mead said. "It was the wrong time of year. Now is the best time of year to fish there. It's coming off the wet season and everything is flooded right now.
"When I was there it was the middle of the dry season."
The trip was certainly an interesting one for Mead because he saw some things he had never seen before.
"There were termite mounds in camp three to five feet tall all over the place," Mead said. "They have a lot of poisonous spiders and snakes, but I didn't see any."
Mead did encounter some spiders while stalking the water buffalo. He walked through a spider's nest and had baby spiders hanging off the bill of his cap and crawling down his neck.
"I had to wipe them out and keep going on because this buffalo was aware of us," Mead said. "I had to pay attention to what I was doing."
Much of Mead's hunting adventure was captured on film and ran on television a couple of weeks ago on "The Hunter's Journal."
Mead was the only hunter in camp at the time, and one of the guides had a video camera. His only job was to run the camera and record the action.
The guide had connections with the television show, and the video ended up on the screen.
Mead said he saved the hogs' teeth as a souvenir and saved part of the buffalo to eat. The shoulders and rear quarters are not considered fit for human consumption and were used as dog meat.
He brought the hide and horns back to be mounted, but they are still in Omaha waiting to go through customs.
It may have seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime trip for Mead who had never been out of the United States to hunt before but that may not be the case.
"Now that I've been there, I'll probably go back," he said. "I'll probably go to Africa this year too."
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