Hunting The Elephant and Other Game In Africa - with Recollections From Years of Safari

- Quality Digital Text
- Introduction by Theodore Roosevelt
- Hyper-linked Table of Contents and Photos

From Roosevelt's Introduction:

"Captain Stigand is one of the most noted of recent African big game hunters and explorers, and he is also a field naturalist of unusual powers. His studies of the tracks of animals have been almost unique. He has the keenest appreciation of the vivid and extraordinary beauty of the teeming African wild life, and has made close first-hand observations of the life histories of very many species of big game.

He has, as I can myself testify, the reputation among all first-class African hunters of being himself one of the foremost. He is equally fond of venturing into unknown regions and of the chase of dangerous game, and is an adept in the especially difficult art of wood and bush tracking and stalking. Three times he has been nearly killed by his quarry: once by a rhinoceros, once by a lion, and once by an elephant.

In short, Captain Stigand has written a book which ought to appeal to every believer in vigor and hardihood, to every lover of wilderness adventure, and to every man who values at their proper worth the observations of an excellent field naturalist."

–- THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

Book excerpt:

"My Dorobo hunter and I crept to the edge of the nullah and saw two lions lying near the base of a tree, at the bottom of the nullah on the opposite side. There was a thick tree growing close to the foot of our slope, and we climbed down the side sheltered by this. Then we crept along the bottom of the nullah, sheltered by the palms growing beside the watercourse, till we reached a point opposite the tree and about fifty yards from it. There was nothing to be seen, and I was just crawling along a little farther, on hands and knees, when a lioness suddenly came out from behind a clump of palms and lay down facing me.

I did not dare move because there were only a few little clumps of grass, which did not cover me, and the least movement would betray me. I waited perfectly still, on all fours, for some time, when she suddenly got up and disappeared behind the palms. I then very slowly and carefully sat down and got into firing position. I waited an interminable time…

Finally she came out again…

I took careful aim and pulled the trigger… There was a short pause, and then two more lions… I had a shot at the nearest, and then… four more rushed out… I fired again at another, and she rushed for a pool on my left…"