A Growling In the Rain

Sensing something wasn’t right, the lion popped his head out from behind the tree. Instantly, his big eyes blazed like coals and he issued a deep, rumbling growl. It was a hot and dry September day in Tanzania, just south of the little village of Loiborserrit....

The Lunatic Express

The gruesome exploits of the maneaters, together with those of Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson…form one of the most fantastic tales in the annals of African adventure. In the 1890s Britain’s far-flung empire covered a quarter of the globe,...

Siberian Ibex – Heart of the Tian Shan

And here, among these crumbling cliffs and dizzying heights, I had come to hunt the Siberian Mid-Asian ibex in the dark heart and sharp teeth of dead winter. Eons ago, in a great battle of continents, the Indian and Eurasian plates collided with planetary force,...

New Zealand – A Sporting Country is Born

There was once a land with no people, no mammals, just forested mountains and clear rushing rivers since the rocks were laid down. No deer or antelope, no wolf or bear had ever left a footprint there. That place lay brooding for millions of years, a thing unto itself....

Lessons Handed Down to a Son – The Borrowed Gun

Peter Ryan on lessons handed down to a son. Our son, Jamie, is 10 years old. Today, after much pleading, he is with me at a cabin on the South Island of New Zealand, a long way from anywhere. There at the head of the valley the snow looms high overhead, waterfalls...
A Black-Maned Lion

A Black-Maned Lion

I realized no matter how long I lived or what future hunts might bring, nothing else would ever compare. Such it is when one takes a lion. It seems customary for those who write about hunting lions to begin by citing influences of others gone before. They will first...