Biology Reference
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Realistically, Peter Capstick was very much focused on dangerous game, whereas Roosevelt
and certainly Craig Boddington - I mean they hunt dangerous game but it is not the only point
of what they are doing. The same thing was true of Robert Ruark.
So, at least on this trip, we are not on purpose hunting dangerous game, but you never know
when it will come along. Certainly one of the reasons to carry a .375 H&H is that it is not for
what we are hunting, it is what is hunting us. It is a little bit different point of view. I have to
say that in retrospect, having read over the last year a lot of things, were I to do it over again I
would probably add buffalo to the list of things that we are going over [for] but, you know, that
is a good excuse to go back.”
Buffalo, of course, have always been the traditional starting animal among the big 5 and they
certainly have been challenging for some people over the years and some people have come
home with some bruise marks from that too.
“And, there are some people who haven't come home - both people [that] have been hunting
buffalo and people have been hunting other things and happened to stumble into a buffalo at
that time with that bad attitude. So where we are going it is free range hunting and so it is not a
controlled situation and we are not looking for trouble but we will see what happens.”
That brings up an interesting issue that in Africa, and I suppose to some extent in Alaska,
also exists. You are usually the hunter but sometimes you become the hunted and that, in many
ways, is where one tries to differentiate between a game and a sport and with the latter the
other guy has a chance to get you too. It brings up the interesting comment that Hemingway
once made, that there are really only 3 true sports: mountaineering, motor racing, and bull
fighting. It is interesting he didn't include hunting of dangerous game in that too for the
potential dangers. What do you think about Hemingway's topic, for example, “The Short
Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and that sort of perhaps existential thought in his hunting
topics as opposed to Capstick, which were really about the excitement and thrill?
“Hemingway it seems to me was quite a good observer and a pretty good storyteller. It
seems as, and I am trying to remember where I read this, it seems as though that some of the
fundamentals of the plot for “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” came from a story
that involved Colonel Patterson who evidently was not an army colonel, who was famous for
his role in “The Man-eaters of Tsavo” and of bringing them to bay [after they had killed 29
Indians and an unknown number of Africans]. Evidently he subsequently, a number of years
after that, ended up with an attractive young woman from England and her husband became ill
and her husband succumbed on the trip where upon Patterson and this young woman ended up
taking off for parts unknown for at least a period of time.”
Yes, the husband was found shot in his tent and it was never clear whether the wife shot him
or he committed suicide [see earlier note on the wife of his batman]. There was a lot of debate
about the bullet injury site which was supposedly the front of his head but the back of his brain
was blown out. There was a difference of opinion on what had happened. Even Churchill said
that he was a murderer and there was a lot of controversy about that.
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