Dangerous Jobs: Big Game Hunter; Capstick’s “Death in the Long Grass”

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.