Dangerous Jobs: Big Game Hunter; Capstick’s “Death in the Long Grass”
3 Comments Published by Joel November 16th, 2006 in Jobs, Meat. Share This
Reader Brett J. is on point this week, offering up what looks to be another great suggestion for this week’s theme: Peter H. Capstick’s books about hunting in Africa. Brett explains:
He was a stock broker turned professional hunting guide (bwana) in Africa in the 70’s and also a gifted, funny writer. His telling of his brief stint as an elephant-cropping officer for the Kenyan govt. sounds about as dangerous as things get. But maybe his material would have been better suited for last week: In his best story, he credits smoking a cigarette with saving his life when he stops to burn one before following a wounded leopard into heavy cover. He discovers the cat’s whereabouts when a drop of it’s blood falls on his head after he and his native tracker walked underneath the tree it was planning to ambush them from. It had bled out while he smoked.
I knew there was a reason I am still smoking: my inevitable battle against leopards. Brett recommends Capstick’s Death in the Long Grass, his first book about his adventures in the savanna. (It’s a crowd pleaser at Amazon, too, with nearly top-to-bottom five star recommendations.) Wish-listed!
From the excerpted portion of Death in the Long Grass on Amazon, which I had to tear myself away from reading:
Of course, nobody knows for certain exactly how many people are eaten, the very nature of man-eating having a decided tendency to make evidence somewhat scarce. Man-eating lions, if undisturbed, commonly eat almost every vestige of their victims, even the blood-soaked clothes and shoes as well as the bones. Whatever may be left falls to the African Sanitary Department and, after even a few days, it’s difficult to examine a piece of skullcap the size of a demi-tasse saucer and state unequivocally that the cause of death was a lion.
I might have to pick one of these up.
My girlfriend is from Kenya, so theres a strong chance I may end up out there at some point. And I want to know how not to get ambushed by Leopards.
Peter Capstick did his first safaris with me in Zambia in 1969, in the Luangwa Valley. I took a number of the pictures in DEATH IN THE LONG GRASS, and the chapter on hippo hunting extolls my methodology – the real story is a little different but I don’t hold that against him as he has given so many so much pleasure.The picture of the tusks on the cover, shot by Peter and myself with some Mexican clients is still a record for four elephant on one safari in Zambia, at a time when we had 100 000 elephant there. Peter became a great friend, though I never again saw him in person. What he ever had to do with elephant cropping was a brief stint on the elephant cropping scheme in Zambia – not Kenya, where he went out with the croppers for awhile, doubtless helping here and there. I was formerly in charge there so know some of the story.
I was interested to read that ‘DEATH..’ still sells so well. It was first published in the mainstream press, before the anti-hunters pushed hunting into a specialist book section. My book, WITH A GUN IN GOOD COUNTRY published by trophy Room Books in Agoura, California in 1995, was a limited edition (1000 copies) which could have done well as it is really a bush memoire of many years in the bush – not just hunting stories. As there are only a few books (100 or so?) left with the publishers, perhaps you could all buy them so that I can be freed of the contract and put it out to the mainstream publishers where it too might find ready general acceptance, and give pleasure to many.
Go easy on the hunters, for they are our greatest conservationists. Here in Zambia, beset by the bushmeat trade which just saw 5 elephant shot for meat last Sunday in my area, without hunting and hunters, we would see our glorious wildlife follow the black rhino into extinction.
Yours aye
Ian Manning
gamefields@zamnet.zm
Capstick was not only a great hunter, he was a wondeful writer who lived his dream of adventure. He would often describe his occupation as a “professional small boy.”
I highly recommend his retelling of the story fo Patterson and the Tsvao lions. Especially if all you know of it is that steaming pile of crap movie “The Ghost and The Darkness”.