Enthralled with the African wilderness and its wild animals, Robert Ruark wrote hundreds of articles detailing his hunting adventures on the Dark Continent. The following excerpts, all taken from his magazine stories, are from “Ruark on Safari,” one of 31 chapters in Ruark Remembered, written by Alan Ritchie, the author’s personal secretary for 12 years.
“Ruark on Safari” will be reprinted in Sporting Classics‘ special Guns & Hunting issue, scheduled for release in October.
To purchase Ruark Remembered or to receive a free copy of the Guns & Hunting issue, call (800) 849-1004 or email: shipping@sportingclassics.com.
The dream to be in Africa might have begun for one when he was a British King Scout, and for the other when he was shooting rabbits on his father’s farm in Oklahoma. For me, certainly, it started with the Old Man and a succession of dogs and guns and boats in Carolina. People like us never grow up, even when we graduate from a timid start on rabbits. We don’t grow up chiefly because we don’t want to.
The pure delight of these two men in the friendliness of the lions and the surly majesty of the buffaloes and the awesome bulk of the elephants was the delight of a child of my own generation, of my father’s, and my grandfather’s generations. It was simple, unaffected glee, mingled with a disbelief that they were lucky enough to be in Africa at all.
I am sad for myself and for those my age and older who love the outdoors and find its discomforts pleasant, who love its game and birds and fish but who do not feel guilty about shooting reasonably for sport and meat and relaxation. I am sad for the hunters and the fishermen who obey game laws and attempt to practice conservation. But I am not sad for tomorrow’s generations. Perhaps they do not care if all the elephants are poached and all the rhinos slain.
The mosquitos here were fearful last night, and I have just plucked a tick from a tender portion of my anatomy, and for the last day no gun has fired. Also, it has been raining. But my two middle-aged chums and I are happy here on the Tana, surrounded by wild animals and a lot of simple savages who have not yet heard of the boons of modern civilization. Perhaps my friends and I, like the elephant and rhino, are a dying breed, but it was fun while it lasted.
There he stood, alone and magnificent on the slope of a sere brown rise with a harsh, cruel, blue hill behind him. There he stood, his two enormous tusks a monument to himself, and a monument to the Africa that was – the Africa that had changed, was changing.
But to me, both writers [Ernest Hemingway and Negley Farson] stood for something that we seem to be running short of. I am talking of manhood, pure and simple, and the uncontrived joy that man has always derived from hunting and fishing and camping and firelight and good bourbon and a reeking pipe and a sound collection of poker players, who also tell tremendous lies about past exploits which have become fact instead of fancy merely by the rubbing of frequent usage.
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