I confess to be a little 'smug',in defining Capstick.I've read more then one of his books,so I can't say that I don't like them.
I can say that I prefer to read first hand accounts from hunters like John Taylor.I try to determine if the Author is honest;not selling himself.
I believe that Taylor is honest.He certainly does not try to sell himself.
It's easy for me to understand his belief that going nude in the 'bush' is somehow better then wearing clothes;but impossible to agree with his opposition to ordances that require clothes in the 'cities'.
I can understand that natives that are poor in material things are as happy and content as white folks with much more material things.But I cannot understand his remark that some of the happiest people that he met,are Christian slaves,held by Muslims.
He also lays it out that he is a 'poacher'.
He has to be aware that many folks,living in cities,who obey the law,will not be impressed with his ideas.
Frank

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Frank

I've read Taylor's autobiography "Pondoro" and while he may have embelished some its one of the more entertaining hunting books I've read. I can easily believe his claims as to the # of animals he killed, in his book he freely admits to poaching for over 30 years and tells of killing as many as 38 elephant a day. While not an average day, it probably wouldn't take too many years to run up a high tally if one didn't worry about tags or trespassing. He credits Bell as the best hunter ever and talks about how the only reason he ran up more kills was that he hunted twice as long and most of Bell's kills were legal with license restrictions.

He also talks about the number of guns he used, and while he claims to have stayed in the woods for years at a time, for the first 5 years or so his trips seemed to have only lasted several months at a time. He talks about going through 5 or 6 rifles in his first two years as he was constantly trading up for "bigger, better, newer" ones, most of which were bought second hand in africa rather than ordered from Europe.