Hunting Reflections

50 Years, 17 African Countries

After completing Hunting the Hippotrages – Sable, Roan & Oryx – Africa’s Glamour Game, in September, 2021, I was done with books, photographs and writing. The book was 428 pages long and contained about 700 photos. The photos alone took nearly three months of long, footslogging, eye straining days to find, select, correct, place and check. I said for the second time that this would be the last book I produced.

I thought I might look for another project, maybe another hunting documentary, when to my huge and embarrassed surprise, unannounced, a story popped unceremoniously into my head. It arrived gift wrapped, all but complete and all I had to do was write it down. It took me a couple of hours to write, check and edit compared to the normal four to six days. Then another arrived and another. Fifteen brand new stories also all but complete emerged in as many weeks.

The common denominator in the new stories was that they were unlike anything I had written before and I must thank both Karrie Kolesar, the then editor of the excellent Dallas Safari Club magazine, Game Trails and her successor, Conor Harrison, for encouraging me to keep on producing them. I remember her saying that, when she began one of my stories, she never knew where it was going to end up and the unexpected twists and turns intrigued her. The stories were more reflective and sometimes dealt with different topics such as camouflage and corruption, Africa’s biggest bugbear. While they had hunting themes and often were about hunts and hunting, there was usually more to them than just the hunt.

Gradually, the flow of stories slowed, became less and less complete and, towards the end of the 18 month period, I would be given a few words or a picture and would have to tease the story out but even then they took far less time than my more traditional articles.

For example, a quote from one of the most influential mathematicians, the German, Carl Friedrich Gauss, jumped out at me from the Economist magazine I was reading, “It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment”, and reminded me of the fun of planning hunts and suggested that maybe, just maybe, another story might be lurking given the pleasure that I and many of my friends enjoyed in planning and preparing for a hunt, some of which took up to two years to reach fruition. One of my good friends used to say that the preparation and anticipation was the best part because, as soon as the hunt started, it was over in the blink of an eye!

All told, over the next 18 months I wrote 42 new stories. So, instead of trying to find another home for my stories other than Game Trails or African Outfitter, I decided to post them at the rate of one a month on my website.

I am  77 and have started to wonder what might happen to the stories when I died. Initially, I just wanted a place to preserve them other than on my laptop or in the Cloud. I thought to print a few copies for family and friends but my uber capable and competent daughter-in-law, Eileen Sarah Flack nee Osborne, who designed and manages my website, suggested that I mention this on my blog to see if there was any interest from previous purchasers of my books. What a surprise! By the end of the first day, over 150 people had asked to buy one and the orders kept rolling in. That upped the total of hard cover books with dust jackets from 50 to 500 and then, when the quotes came in, it cost so little to increase the number to 700 that, in a fit of ambition and enthusiasm – I really like the stories and thought others might as well – I increased the number to 700. I have tried hard to substantially reduce costs while not denting quality and adding the extra numbers helped reduce the costs per book.

So, there you have it. The book is 308 pages long, has 250 photos (230 colour and 20 black and white) chosen by Eileen from a selection I gave her and contains 38 stories, some from my blog, some from Africa Outfitter, some from Game Trails, some which have not been published anywhere and all of which have been re-edited by me. Just like my others, this book will not be reprinted so it is in effect a limited edition although, in the interests of cost saving, I have not numbered or signed the books.

This latest and really last book has embarrassed me more than a little as I made the same promise after completing the Buffalo Book. I said the same thing again after completing the Hippotrage Book, so this is the third time I am making the same statement (third time lucky) and, believe me, at the age of 77, it probably really is the last book I will produce, not least because I am sure my daughter-in-law, who is entirely responsible for the book’s production, will kill me if I send her another.