The war on poachers and the banning of game hunting in many countries has heralded the end of the era of professional white hunters who, in the much glamourized past, rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty.

They would guide the wealthy adventurers on hunting safaris in the African wild, with rewards of big money, adventure and the occasional romance with a client’s partner.

The world of the professional hunters, referred to as the great white hunters, transcended borders. The leading players were a study in machismo.

Stories of their exploits, adventures and romantic escapades were tailored for the demands of Hollywood.

Their lifestyles inspired such writers as H. Rider Haggard, Robert Ruark and Ernest Hemingway to write about the mysteries of the African wild.

Ironically, the professional hunters were also conservationists at heart, and through their association formed in the 1930s, sought to regulate the hunting industry in East Africa and elsewhere.

But, despite its work in conservation, the association was disbanded on the September 26, 1977, when Kenya outlawed hunting within its borders.

The association’s early members were men who would, in later decades, become legends in the annals of African bush adventure.

Percival’s fame

The legends of the African bundu included Philip Hope Percival, born in 1886 and died in 1966, whose eventful professional hunting career earned him the nickname Dean of Hunters.

According to biographers, Percival’s fame was the result of being in the right place at the right time on at least two occasions.

In 1909, when he was only 23, former American president Theodore Roosevelt undertook his famous hunting safari in East Africa.

In Kenya — then called British East Africa — he was hosted by a prominent settler, Sir Alfred Pease. Among other settlers selected to join the US leader was young Percival, whose participation in the hunt would change his life.

The famous excursion was led by hunter-tracker R. J. Cunninghame. Frederick Courteney Selous, the famous big game hunter and explorer, would join them from time to time.

Selous was to be remembered for colonial Rhodesia’s Selous Scouts.

It was his adventures that inspired the British writer, Sir H. Rider Haggard, to create Allan Quatermain, the protagonist in King Solomon’s Mines. Selous Game Reserve in south-eastern Tanzania is named after him.

Cunninghame had begun his exploits in the African bush at the end of the 19th century, and his reputation got a big boost when he was selected to lead what was probably the most publicised African safari ever.

Two decades later, Percival got his second big break. He guided the famous American writer Ernest Hemingway on an East African safari, the result of which was that Percival later became a part of literature, featuring prominently as Pop in Green Hills of Africa (1935), the Hemingway masterpiece from the safari.

Posthumously published

Hemingway returned to Africa 20 years later and hunted again with Percival. That expedition was chronicled in Hemingway’s posthumously published True at First Light.

Also associated with Hemingway was Frank M. “Bunny” Allen, whose safaris with the writer also contributed to the contents of books like Green Hills of Africa, True at First Light, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

Allen arrived in Kenya in 1927, and with time his hunting expertise earned him the respect of the locals. He became a hunting partner of Denys Finch Hatton.

He took part in three safaris involving British royalty, including one in which he is reported to have dramatically captured a cheetah.

Perhaps because of such antics, after 1946, Allen was discovered by Hollywood, and acted as a technical adviser to MGM’s King Solomon’s Mines as well as The African Queen, Where No Vultures Fly and Nor the Moon by Night.

He also gained considerable fame by working on John Ford’s Mogambo, and acted as Clark Gable’s double in action scenes.

Philip Percival had tried his hand at ostrich farming and other activities, but after the Roosevelt trip he immersed himself in the safari business and never looked back, becoming one of the highest-paid professional hunters of his day.

Pioneer filmmakers

Some of his famous clients included Baron Rothschild, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, and actor Gary Cooper.

He also worked with pioneer filmmakers Martin and Osa Johnson and George Eastman and was a great friend of the explorer and naturalist Carl Akely. In later years, Percival mentored a whole generation of professional hunters, including Sydney Downey and Harry Selby.

Acknowledged by his peers as the Dean, he served consecutive terms as the president of the East African Professional Hunters Association.

One of his early partners in the safari business was Bror von Blixen-Finecke, a Swedish baron, writer, and African big-game hunter.

Born into an aristocratic family, Baron Blixen married his Danish second cousin Karen Blixen, also known by her pen name Isak Dinesen, in 1913.

After their marriage, the couple moved to Kenya, where they bought a coffee plantation. For many years Baron Blixen ran a firm of safari guides and Edward, Prince of Wales, was among his clients.

Karen adored her husband’s skills as a hunter. Shortly before her death she was quoted as saying, “If I could wish anything back of my life, it would be to go on safari once again with Bror...”

Man whom women loved

Baron Blixen’s exploits around East and Central Africa were to be captured years later in The Man Whom Women Loved, a biography written by his Nairobi-based godson Ulf Aschan.

“Hunting with Blix was a magnificent experience,” one client is quoted in the Aschan book as saying. “With his quiet, almost lyrical narrative of what happened around us, he got nature to live like I have never experienced.”

The Blixens divorced in 1925, and Karen retained the coffee plantation that had been financed by her parents.

The writer was then involved in a torrid affair with Denys Finch Hatton. The second son and third child of the 13th Earl of Winchilsea, Finch moved into Karen’s house and began leading safaris for wealthy sportsmen.

Among his clients were Marshall Field and the Prince of Wales.

In 1936, the adventurous Baron Blixen married the explorer Eva Dickson, who died two years later. Although Blixen left Africa in 1938 for his native Sweden, his reputation as a hunter was to outlive him.

His legendary status was confirmed by, among others, Beryl Markham, the writer and aviator also said to have had an affair with Denys Finch Hatton.

“Bror was the toughest, most durable white hunter ever to snicker at the fanfare of safari or to shoot a charging buffalo between the eyes while debating whether his sundown drink would be gin or whiskey,” she reportedly said, singing praises to him as she mourned his death.

“The mould has been broken.”

Another renowned professional hunter was Arthur H Neumann, who was born in 1850 and died relatively young in l907.

An elephant hunter, he travelled from Mombasa, across Mt Kenya to Lake Turkana. One result of the hunting trip was a book, Elephant Hunting in East Equatorial Africa, published in 1898.

Bush experiences

Another famous elephant hunter, Walter D.M. Bell, was a particularly intrepid adventurer who was known as Karamoja Bell.

The nickname resulted from his extraordinary elephant hunting exploits in the Karamoja province of Uganda as well as Ethiopia, Central Africa and West Africa.

He recounted his bush experiences in his Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter, a series of essays and stories written at the apex of his career.

Also renowned for elephant hunting was William Cotton Oswell (1818-1893), who also doubled up as an explorer. Accompanied by Mungo Murray, Oswell made an expedition to the interior of Africa, during which he met with the explorer David Livingstone.

In 1849, the three of them discovered Lake Ngami, for which Livingstone eventually took sole credit.

Also prominent among East Africa’s professional hunters was John Alexander Hunter, who was born in 1887. A friend of Denys Finch Hatton, he built the famous Hunter’s Lodge in 1958 at Makindu, Kenya, where he died in 1963.

Having arrived in Kenya from Scotland in 1908, Hunter held several world records for big game hunting at various times.

He is particularly remembered for having killed more than 1,000 rhinos in Kenya, 996 of them in Makueni, southeast Kenya.

He carried out this feat between August 26, 1944 and October 31, 1946 at the behest of the colonial government, which wanted to obtain land for the resettlement of the Akamba people.

It turned out that the selected land was useless for human settlement.

Besides safaris and control operations for the Kenya Game Department, the appropriately named Hunter also wrote books, some autobiographical and some fictional, based on his life experiences.

Among them were Hunter, an autobiography, and Hunter’s Tracks, a collection of personal reminiscences.

Churchill’s escort

Also prominent among the pioneers was Capt. Francis Arthur Dickinson (1874-1915), a British army officer who was also a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a first-class big game hunter.

After the Boer War in South Africa, Dickinson was selected as Winston Churchill’s escort when the future prime minister was sent to British East Africa as the under-secretary of state for the colonies.

Among the younger generation of hunters was Andrew Holmberg, who was born in Kenya in 1918 of Swedish parents. Karen Blixen was the midwife and become his godmother.

Holmberg hunted extensively in East Africa before relocating to Botswana.

Praised by both clients and professionals, he holds the record for the greatest number of 100-pound-plus elephant tusks, 63 of which were for family, friends and clients.

Harry Selby, Holmberg’s earlier partner, who was born in 1925 and participated in his first safari in 1945 under the tutelage of Philip Percival, was reputed to be a resilient hunter.

Between 1945 and 2000, he hunted each season without a break, and made the record as the longest operating professional hunter ever.

Among Selby’s earlier partners was Ken Randall, his older cousin, with whom he hunted elephants in northern Kenya towards the end of World War II.

According to the book The Enormous Zoo by Colin Willock, Randall later diversified into catching game. The Hollywood movie Hatari, in which superstar John Wayne played Randall, were based on the Randall family of hunters and game catchers.

The wider Randall family was involved in several other films, including Where No Vultures Fly, Mogambo, Born Free and Joy Adamson’s popular Born Free TV series.