The First Time I Saw God

The First Time I Saw God

It was about 5:15 p.m., 108 miles northeast of Oran, I remember, when the starboard gunners shouted, ‘’Torpedo off the bow!” The helmsman tried to swing her so the thing would run parallel to us, but the old bucket was bottom-heavy with about 9,000 tons of high...
Blackout Black Death by Q

Blackout Black Death by Q

More than a hunt, Blackout Black Death is a thesis on the 8.6 BLK caliber, a deliberate test of ballistics and design: can a 12″ suppressed rifle that weighs just ~6 lbs truly take down a Cape Buffalo? The film answers that question in blood and dust, pairing...
Death by Ivory

Death by Ivory

Powerful and tireless, quiet and quick, elephants proved smart enough to avoid hunters. Or kill them. It was another time. We’d picked him up at dawn, a slight, expressionless, middle-aged man who nodded to every query and directive. Motoring along a track toward our...
Roaning Burkina Faso

Roaning Burkina Faso

Our tracker pointed his steel-tipped spear at the lion’s spoor. Pug marks indicated the big cat was headed toward the verdant creek bottom that starkly contrasted with the khaki and brown that surrounded us. Green trees indicated the serpentine creek flowed toward the...
Whiskey and Palaver at the Dying of the Sun

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...
Death Wore A Lion Skin

Death Wore A Lion Skin

The lion came in low and very fast, seemingly out of nowhere. Pete Barrett saw Henry Poolman knocked aside, and the next thing he remembered he was looking down at the top of the great cat’s head, and it had his left forearm between its jaws and was crunching down on...
Big Game Hunting and Adventure 1897-1936

Big Game Hunting and Adventure 1897-1936

(The following selection is from Marcus Daly’s classic book, Big Game Hunting and Adventure 1897-1936 published in 1937 by Macmillan and Co. Ltd. In London.) Leaving the steamer and friends I had made, I fitted out my safari again and plunged into that great...
Fred Selous Heart of Steel

Fred Selous Heart of Steel

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...