The Great Buffalo Con Job
“The Cape buffalo has a well-earned reputation for being able to absorb a magazine full of thumb-sized bullets and still have enough meanness left to grind his adversary into the ground.”
Whiskey and Palaver at the Dying of the Sun
Moses threw another load of sticks upon the coals. The fire crackled, sparks flew and smoke rolled. Zambia, in the valley of the Great Zambezi. Out on the sandbars, hippos were grunting up dates, a-hunka-hunka-hunka. A leopard coughed in the gathering dark and the...
Two Sports
Men of remarkable talent and courage, Er Shelley and Paul Rainey brought a unique form of hunting to Africa. As the 20th century dawned, the gamelands near Memphis beckoned two very different young men. One was a pointing dog trainer from rural Michigan, uncannily...
South African Rangers Dehorn Rhinos to Save Their Lives
At the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve bordering Kruger National Park in South Africa, a single engine aircraft circles overhead, looking for endangered African white rhinoceros hidden in the bush. Down below a ruby red Raven II helicopter patiently waits with a...
Fred Selous: Heart of Steel, Frame of Iron
In the words of his contemporary and close friend, Teddy Roosevelt, Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917) was “the greatest of the world’s big-game hunters.” Certainly, there were few sportsmen of the late Victorian and Edwardian period who would...
Joseph Thomson: Mystery Man of Africa
Over the course of the 19th century, phenomenon sometimes referred to as “the opening up of Africa,” hunters and explorers, along with a solid sprinkling of traders, were in the forefront. They pioneered the way into the interior and their tales of grand adventures,...
The Best Plains-Game Rifle for Africa
The gun has to be capable of dropping everything from ten-pound dik-dik to 2,000-pound eland.
Ruark On Safari: Gin
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. During the next few weeks we’ve changed locations many times with a series of fIy camps, sometimes setting up without anything except mosquito nets. The whole...
A Terrible Silence: Cape Buffalo in the Zambezi Valley
The author fulfills a life-long dream of hunting Cape buffalo in old Africa. When things do not go as planned, he finds himself following a wounded bull — and reconsiders his reasons for pursuing dangerous game. At the shot, the Cape buffalo bull whirled from his bed...