Vortex Canada: Pro Staff

In his own words:

Born and raised in Southern Alberta, fishing, hunting and shooting quickly became a way of life. Currently I reside in Kamloops BC with my wife and 3 kids and my faithful Black Lab, they too also all enjoy the outdoors including hunting and shooting.

I attended Lethbridge College and graduated from the Renewable Resource Management, Conservation Enforcement Program. I have guided clients for both hunting and fishing in the Northwest Territories and have hunted and fished over most of Western Canada.

Having also worked as a predator control officer presented me with numerous opportunities to practice my hand at shooting and trapping. For the last 25 years I have been employed as a Conservation Officer with some of my duties including, armouring firearms, firearms training to staff and public alike as a CORE instructor. My armouring duties carry over to my custom rifle business with our company specializing in building or tuning bolt action rifles whether it is for competitive F-class, tactical shooting or lightweight rifles for general hunting and backpacking.

I am very involved with the hunting groups and am one of the founding directors of the British Columbia Wild Sheep Society as well as member of theKamloops Target Sports Association, BC Wildlife Federation, Grand Slam Club, Wild Sheep Foundation, British Columbia Conservation Foundation and a few more that slip my mind at the moment.

My firearms business and passion for hunting and shooting has allowed me to test many of excellent products offered in the extensive Vortex line up. I am sure you will be happy with Vortex products too and if I can help anyone in any way please feel free to drop me a line!

Hunting

I have collected many species of game including Dall, Stone and California Bighorn Sheep, Mountain Goat , Mule and Whitetail Deer, Moose, Bison, Pronghorn both Black and grizzly bear.

We are fortunate in British Columbia in that many species of game can be hunted with over the counter tags. Like many others, I also put my draws into many provinces & states and am hoping to draw a much coveted Desert Bighorn Sheep tag, which if successful would allow me to complete my Grand Slam. I just returned from another African Safari and have reported on that further down the page.

We should soon all be receiving our various draw results back from our submissions so I wish you all luck this upcoming season!

2012 Hunting Updates

Namibia

Our hunting group of 10 just returned from Namibia. We had a great time and were fortunate in being able to see a wonderful country full of different species and managed to hunt and harvest, Blue Gnu, Oryx, Waterbuck, Kudu, Impala, Blesbuck, Warthog, Jackal and Hartmann’s Zebra to name a few. We saw many more animals and spent a few days on photo and sightseeing safari as well. The trip started on the west coast in Swakopmund where we toured the Nanib Desert which is the oldest desert in the world and features the highest sand dunes. This was followed ocean charter fishing and then onto the hunting Safari. I took the new Vortex Viper HD 10x40 and 10x50’s on the trip to use and review and was very impressed with the clarity both up close in the bushveld and distance viewing.

I lent our various PH’s my Vortex products and they too were very impressed with the quality and always asking to borrow them. I think we have some converted hunters in Africa who also appreciate the clarity and quality of Vortex optics. We hunted 12 of our 15 days on the ground and were successful in sending 36 animals to the taxidermist. Game harvested ranged in distance between 30 and 300 metres. If you are hunting different places, I would highly recommend hunters taking along the new Vortex Rangefinder. I found distances were very deceiving in Africa and even the PH’s were very humbled by the verifying of their ranging abilities. We traveled in central and northern Namibia and I was fortunate in being able to hunt 5 different concessions. Namibia is vast, diverse and the people and government value their wildlife and go out of their was to cater to hunters. While in the north we toured Estosha National Park as well the Caprivi Peninsula on the Angola border.

I have included a few pics of our trip and if anyone wanted more info or information on products or our trip feel free to drop me a line.

2012- Planned Events

Stone Sheep Hunt

I was fortunate in being able to draw a Stone Sheep tag in British Columbia’s Edzizza Park. We will be flying into the area in August and in preparation I purchased the new Vortex Summit SS tripod for my spotting scope and hope to have the New Razor 10x42’s in hand to try and report back on........Stay tuned!

location: Kamloops, British Columbia

email: r.mkendall@shaw.ca

Pro Staff

Mitch Kendall