quote:

Originally posted by the Pom:
Saeed, I hunted buffalo with Bunny Allen on Mt Kenya in 1975. My hunt was booked with his son David but David seemed more interested in photo safaris and left most of the hunting to Peter De Mello and occasionally to his semi-retired father, Bunny. Bunny certainly knew how to tell a story and he was pretty colourful but I never found him odd. I think his claims to being a gypsy were certainly a bit exaggerated. He spoke and behaved like an upper middle class gentleman of his era but that could have been a result of the circles he moved in.
At the time I was a farm worker and I saved for a year then sold my car to finance my hunt in Kenya. I still try and hunt in Africa every year although this year's trip to Uganda has been put off until next August. It's not the same though, mainly because in 1975 I was very young and hard but now I am neither!

quote:

Originally posted by the Pom:
Saeed, I hunted buffalo with Bunny Allen on Mt Kenya in 1975. My hunt was booked with his son David but David seemed more interested in photo safaris and left most of the hunting to Peter De Mello and occasionally to his semi-retired father, Bunny. Bunny certainly knew how to tell a story and he was pretty colourful but I never found him odd. I think his claims to being a gypsy were certainly a bit exaggerated. He spoke and behaved like an upper middle class gentleman of his era but that could have been a result of the circles he moved in.
At the time I was a farm worker and I saved for a year then sold my car to finance my hunt in Kenya. I still try and hunt in Africa every year although this year's trip to Uganda has been put off until next August. It's not the same though, mainly because in 1975 I was very young and hard but now I am neither!

quote:

Originally posted by the Pom:
Saeed, I hunted buffalo with Bunny Allen on Mt Kenya in 1975. My hunt was booked with his son David but David seemed more interested in photo safaris and left most of the hunting to Peter De Mello and occasionally to his semi-retired father, Bunny. Bunny certainly knew how to tell a story and he was pretty colourful but I never found him odd. I think his claims to being a gypsy were certainly a bit exaggerated. He spoke and behaved like an upper middle class gentleman of his era but that could have been a result of the circles he moved in.
At the time I was a farm worker and I saved for a year then sold my car to finance my hunt in Kenya. I still try and hunt in Africa every year although this year's trip to Uganda has been put off until next August. It's not the same though, mainly because in 1975 I was very young and hard but now I am neither!

quote:

We flew out to Nairobi together and stayed at the New Stanley hotel. My friend Richard's father knew the Block family who owned the hotel so we were well looked after.

quote:

Originally posted by the Pom:
Sorry I can't post any pictures of my hunt in Kenya. The only ones I have left are on slides (remember them?) in my New Zealand home and at present we are in our UK place. We came over here despite the covid for the birth of my first grandson and now we are stuck here. (They named the baby "Hunter" so either he will be taking pigs with a dogs and a knife when he is 8 years old or he will be a militant vegan!)
I was 24 and working as a relief milker in 1974 when I saw and advert in the "Shooting Times" for a hunt in Kenya with Allen Safaris. Milking cows when farmers were sick or on holiday was well-paid and with free board and lodge and working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week it was easy to save money. I asked a wealthy friend from college called Richard to come too. He had introduced me to deer stalking on his father's estate in Scotland but he didn't want to hunt, just take photos. Two other guys had booked as well. Jon was 29 and owned a gun shop bought with profits from the Biafran war when he tendered for thousands of ex-army .303s and then sold them for ten times as much to the Biafran rebels. Not that those rifles did them any good! The other fellow owned a fish and chip shop and he had only used a shotgun before.
I took a shotgun for bird shooting but the only rifle I had was an open sighted .303 so I left that at home. Jon took .270 and we asked David Allen to provide rifles.
We flew out to Nairobi together and stayed at the New Stanley hotel. My friend Richard's father knew the Block family who owned the hotel so we were well looked after. We were taken for a game drive around the Nairobi national park which was a useful introduction to the wildlife. The wildlife at the new Stanley was startling too, for a country boy. The ladies were, without exception, very beautiful and at that time see-through blouses and no bra was the fashion. I was 24 with testosterone coming out of every orifice and I had arrived in heaven!
Richard stayed with the Block family for a few days after David Allen collected the rest of us
and took us to the East African Professional Hunters club and then out to the airport. David owned a Cessna 172 and he flew us to his home near Naro Moru where he buzzed the Impala off the strip before landing. We saw Black Rhinos during the flight and there was game everywhere on the farmland. David and his wife, Petal, lived in a beautiful Kenyan settler's home which had been the base for the film "Born Free" and we each had one of the cottages built for the film stars.
We were introduced to Peter De Mello, a very competant PH of Goan descent who took me out for my first hunt in Africa.
(To be continued!)