My Dad recently received a Presidential Certificate of Honour for his services to Botswana by the President of Botswana. Herewith the article with appeared in this week's newspaper and Baxter will post the pics for me - still don't know how to do it!! :-)

A remarkable man is honoured by Botswana
A salute to Harry Selby, Professional Hunter extraordinaire

Harry Selby, one of the most revered names in big game hunting, has been awarded the Presidential Certificate of Honour in recognition of long and faithful service to Botswana.
Selby lives in Maun and is credited with having been one of the first to recognise the potential for hunting and tourism in this country.
This article is adapted from that written by long-time associate Joe Coogan who lived and worked for many years in Kenya, Botswana and Tanzania. He is an avid hunter, shooter and outdoorsman. Due to his African safari work and writing background, he is known and respected in both the United States and international hunting communities.

A half-century mark in the safari business is a significant one because up to now there has only been one Professional Hunter who can rightfully claim to have guided enough continuous seasons with clients to celebrate a golden anniversary in the safari business. That unprecedented accomplishment was achieved by the remarkable Harry Selby in 1994.
He is retired and lives in Maun and is a familiar figure as he meets up with old friends over coffee most mornings.
A sharp hunter’s instinct, honed by years of experience enabled Harry Selby to guide his clients up to Africa’s largest game on a daily basis for more than 50 years.
In 1997, after completing his 53rd safari season, he throttled back from the demands of full-season hunting and, plagued with knee problems, finally retired from professional hunting in 2000.
Although he grew up on the plains of Africa and shot his first game animal - a Thomson’s gazelle - at the age of eight, Harry’s start in the safari business happened almost by accident.
As soon as World War II ended, East Africa was gearing up to again begin safari hunting, which had been interrupted by the war. Philip Percival, the white hunter of Hemingway’s “Green Hills of Africa” and considered the dean of East African Professional Hunters, needed some help to keep his vehicles and equipment in working order while on safari. Harry, good with his hands from working on his family’s Kenya farm throughout his younger years, was recommended for the job by an older brother-in-law.
Percival initially signed Harry on as his field mechanic, but the veteran white hunter quickly recognized that his talents extended well beyond his mechanical abilities.
His personable nature, combined with a considerable amount of big-game experience and skilled gun-handling made Harry’s transition to the hunting side of safaris imminent. Percival arranged for Harry to be issued a Professional Hunter’s license through the Kenya Game Department and promoted him to second-hunter status for the next few safaris.
Harry’s fate to become one of Africa’s most recognised and respected Professional Hunters was sealed before his 22nd birthday.
Born in 1925 in South Africa, Harry was only three years old when his family moved to Nanyuki, Kenya, crossing the famous bridge over the Tsavo River where man-eating lions held up work on the railway in the early 1900s.
The last leg of their journey was from Nairobi to Nanyuki, which took the family several days traveling in an uncle’s open truck. Harry’s family eventually acquired 40 000 acres of ranch land within sight of Mount Kenya, in a district about 30 miles from Nanyuki. Here the Selby family farmed land suited well for cattle but it was also wild country - mostly open plains punctuated with scattered acacia thorn trees and the wispy whistling thorn bush.
Harry’s earliest recollections of Kenyan farm life are of the cattle and the people that worked there. He remembers playing with the children of the African farm laborers, like most youngsters do, with slingshots and marbles. He also remembers trekking to school each day with his sisters in an ox cart and the excitement one morning of spotting Martin and Osa Johnson’s zebra-striped and giraffe patterned amphibious planes flying overhead. Harry first became aware of big game on his family’s farm, which was also home to herds of Thomson’s gazelles, zebra, eland and magnificent large-horned impala. Seasonally small groups of buffalo and even elephant passed through the property, and from time to time lions or leopard might appear.
In protection of livestock, the presence of a lion or leopard often initiated a hunt, involving all of the farm’s available men, and including those of neighbouring farms who jumped at the chance to join in the excitement of the hunt.
On one occasion the tracks of three elephants were found. A young Harry followed along with his father, brothers and uncles as they tracked the elephants just to have a look, but not to shoot. The tracking party eventually caught up to an old bull accompanied by two younger bulls standing in the shade of an acacia tree. “One of the younger bulls got wind of us and came in our direction and everyone ran - I ran as well.” Harry recollects with a smile. “When we regrouped, someone said to me laughingly, ‘Why did you run?’ and I said, ‘Heck, I was only following you,’ which gave everyone a good chuckle. Of course, we had to run to avoid having to shoot the elephant”, he says.
At the age of eight, Harry Selby was considered old enough to handle the responsibility of hunting with a single-shot .22 rifle.

His lifelong hunting exploits began with this modest sporting piece. Young Selby’s early pursuits with that single-shot rifle kept the family’s larder well-stocked with guinea fowl, francolin, and gazelle chops. The farm was not fenced and game that competed with the cattle for grazing often needed culling.
Zebras were the most destructive and when big herds moved into the area, extensive shooting was the only effective deterrent. It was during these times that Harry perfected his gun handling and sharpened his shooting eye, then using an old blue-worn, silver-looking .303 British military rifle with iron sights. Harry became familiar with dangerous game early on by learning to avoid them while hunting smaller game on the slopes of Mount Kenya. The heavily-forested slopes were full of elephant, buffalo and rhino and when Harry and the young Africans he was with came upon any of these animals in thick bush their survival often depended on outwitting or dodging the animals. Then Harry began hunting dangerous game, he did so with experienced trackers who taught him the bush craft, so essential to survival on the plains and forests of Africa. These trackers were ace hunters in their own right, hunting even the largest game with bow and arrow. Their intimate knowledge of the bush and experience with dangerous game was imparted freely to the eager Selby, who soaked up the benefit of their wisdom like a sponge. They in turn, came to respect Harry’s expert rifle handling and cool-headedness.
In his late teens Harry went on his first elephant hunt with a cousin who, like himself was a keen hunter, but with only slightly more experience than Harry. They each bought an elephant license and travelled in an old three-ton truck to Kenya’s Northern Frontier District (NFD). It was, and still is, considered the wildest and remotest country in East Africa.
For his first elephant hunt Harry bought a Westley Richards rifle in .425 calibre, which pushed a 400-grain bullet at about 2 300 fps. That particular rifle had a 28-inch barrel, which was unusually long for a heavy-calibre rifle, but proved to be very accurate. Harry’s cousin carried a .450-calibre double rifle. “We stopped at a place where elephants had dug in a dry riverbed to find water and put our camp there. We parked the big truck in camp and our hunting was all done on foot.” Harry recalled. “I’ll never forget that safari. One day we tracked eight bulls for quite a distance into the back country. When we climbed up on a rocky outcrop for a look around, we found all eight bulls spread out in front of us. Three carried tusks that weighed well over a hundred pounds apiece. My cousin, who did have the experience of some previous elephant hunting, told me that we should both shoot at the same elephant. “We whacked the big one and watched the others run away. The one we knocked down was a superb elephant with tusks of 135 pounds aside. Two of the others were also hundred-pounders. In fact, one had shorter but thicker tusks.
“If we’d had more elephant experience and knew what we were doing, we certainly could have taken the two biggest out of the group.”
When he began conducting hunting safaris, and up until the early 1960s, Harry returned to that same area with clients and guided them to several hundred-pound elephants - considered by many to be the holy grail of African hunting. Many clients over the years planned their safaris around opportunities to hunt for big elephants in the NFD with Harry.
Harry remained with Percival’s company, African Guides, until he joined Ker & Downey Safaris in 1949. His first safari with the new company was done with Tony Henley, a boyhood chum who would also spend most of his career hunting professionally.
Many years later, Tony and Harry teamed up again with Ker, Downey & Selby Safaris in Botswana and by then both were seasoned Professional Hunters with many years of experience between them. They served as directors for Ker, Downey & Selby Safaris and later for the Friedkin-owned Safari South.
In 1951, Harry took out a newspaper columnist from North Carolina, who came to Africa with his wife, Virginia, for a month-long hunt in Tanganyika (now Tanzania).
The man was Robert Ruark and his first trip to Africa resulted in a book called “Horn of the Hunter” - one of the most widely-read books ever written about safari life. It also put Harry’s name in the history books.
In terms of business, it created a demand to hunt with Harry so great that clients were booking their hunts with him three to four years in advance.
With subsequent trips to Africa, a second book followed, called “Something of Value” - a fictional novel largely influenced by Harry’s experiences growing up on a farm in British colonial Africa and his later exploits as a top-rated East African Professional Hunter. Ruark modeled his main character, Peter McKenzie, directly on Harry’s life and personality, but this kind of attention also put greater pressures on Harry, demanding an unfailing performance for some clients who expected guaranteed success from the now famous young hunter.
In an article written for the Reader’s Digest magazine called, The Most Unforgettable Character I’ve Met, Ruark described his friend in this way: “Harry Selby, a Professional Hunter of Kenya, British East Africa, is the most man I ever met. It is a rare thing to find a man who can combine gentleness with toughness, bravery with timidity, recklessness with caution, sophistication with naïveté, kindness with harshness, mechanics with poetry, and adult judgment with juvenile foolishness.
“And, all the while, making every woman he meets want to mother him or marry him, and every man he meets respect him.
“I forgot honest. He invented it. I have seen Selby slap a lion in the face with his hat. I have seen him hide from a woman. I have seen him equally at home with Bernard Baruch and with a witch doctor in Tanganyika. His business is killing, yet he is gentler with animals than anybody I ever saw.”
Ruark continued to hunt with Harry through the 1950s, visiting different countries where Ruark, on magazine assignments, monitored the politics of newly independent nations. Ruark often referred to the chaotic beginnings of independence as the winds of change sweeping across Africa.
In 1962, with Kenya’s own independence looming imminent and the future of hunting there uncertain, Harry looked for new hunting fields. At the same time, he was offered a directorship in Ker & Downey Safaris, which became Ker, Downey & Selby Safaris (KDS Safaris).
It was also agreed that he would manage the company’s new venture in a then little-known country called Bechuanaland (Botswana). His wife, Miki, hails from South Africa so it was a natural choice for the Selby family to move southward to begin a new chapter in their lives.
When Harry first went to Botswana it was still a British Protectorate, obtaining independence in 1966. Most of the southern part of the country is made up of Kalahari Desert and the northern third is dominated by mopane scrubland, seasonal waterholes and (in those days) tsetse flies. Between these two distinctive areas spreads a 6 000 square mile Okavango delta system.
Here gin-clear water flows along palm-fringed islands and over grassy flood plains to support an amazing variety of big game. In early 1963 Harry spent a total of 20 hours surveying the delta and Botswana’s northern areas from a Piper Super Cub.

In spite of recent rains, long grass and scattered game, Harry recognised tremendous potential for the area. He was also struck by how peaceful the country was, especially after coming away from the hustle and bustle of Kenya, which had just begun to experience a boom in tourism.
Harry’s initial reconnaissance of Botswana confirmed its suitability for safaris and began the move southward of hunting clients, securing Botswana’s place among Africa’s greatest safari destinations.
After initial meetings between KDS, whom Harry represented, other safari companies and Botswana government officials Harry obtained a one-year lease agreement for concession areas totaling nearly 10 000 square miles along the northern edge of the Okavango delta.
At the end of the first season, the original agreement was re-negotiated to give KDS Safaris control of the Khwai and Mababe hunting concessions for a period of four years with a renewable option for four more years.
Harry helped the government structure a package license for overseas hunting clients that included one elephant, one lion, one leopard, several buffalo, plus kudu, sable, zebra, warthog and most of the desert antelope species found in the Kalahari - this ‘Package A’ license cost all of US$150.00 in 1964 (these days P1 200)!
Excited about the prospects for this new safari destination, Harry moved his family to Botswana and for the next 15 years he and Miki managed KDS Safaris.
The Botswana safari operation was in Maun and during this time Harry continued taking out safaris himself with more and more of his clients joining an exclusive, but ever-increasing list.
The interest in photo safaris in East Africa influenced Harry’s decision to build a 30-bed lodge and two 10-bed tented camps dedicated to photographic safaris.
The Khwai River Lodge, completed in 1970, was the first photographic lodge to be built in Botswana catering to photo safari tourism aimed at overseas clients. Limited plains game hunting and bird shooting were also offered from the lodge.
Harry’s children, Mark and Gail, grew up in the shadow of acacia trees and within the sound of roaring lions.
At the age of 14, Gail hunted an elephant with her father taking a bull with 50-pound tusks. On that hunt she used a Rigby .275 originally belonging to the legendary elephant hunter Karamoja Bell, and which had been given to her brother by his godfather, Robert Ruark.
Mark, having gained dangerous game experience early with his first buffalo taken at age 11, was issued with his first Professional Hunter’s license by the age of 18.
In 1978, KDS Safaris amalgamated with Safari South and combining the two companies made the operation the largest and longest-running safari hunting company in Africa
The concession areas then totaled more than 90 000 sq miles with a roster of Professional Hunters, which besides Harry included Tony Henley, Lionel Palmer, Wally and Walter Johnson, Doug Wright, Willie Engelbrecht, John Dugmore, Mark Selby, Daryl Dandridge, Colin Dandridge, Soren Lindstrom, Simon Paul, Tom Friedkin, Charles Williams, Don Lindsay, Hugh McNeil, Steve Liversedge, Javier Alonso, Ronnie Kays, Brian Marsh, Chris Collins and myself.
(Wright, Dugmore, Colin Dandridge, Kays and Collins still live in Maun while Daryl Dandridge is in Kasane).
The 1980s saw the gradual but eventual break up of the large safari companies in Botswana and today the huge concessions have been divided between a variety of photo and safari hunting interests.
I was fortunate enough to have served an apprenticeship for my Botswana Professional Hunter’s license under Harry’s guidance back in 1972.
Once on safari with him in 1999, we stood at Fort Ikoma, an old First World War German fort high on a hill overlooking the edge of the Serengeti plains. We looked out across a landscape of story-book Africa, when Harry pointed to some large trees at the edge of a green meadow below us, saying “see those big acacia trees? That’s where I put up Bob Ruark’s first camp on his first safari, the one he wrote about ‘In Horn of the Hunter’.”
Standing beside Harry at Fort Ikoma and listening to him recall Ruark’s first safari back in 1951, when it took two days driving across country from Nairobi to reach this spot, is a special moment that I will never forget.
Later that evening, sitting around the campfire and listening to Harry reflect back on his incredible career, I asked him which of the Big Five he likes hunting most - it seemed to me, after hearing his stories about big ivory that it might be elephant. The light of the campfire danced in his eyes and he smiled, savoring the memories of past hunts. “Hunting elephants for big ivory still has that special attraction like it did when I first hunted the NFD. But at a young age I rapidly found that I was excited by all kinds of hunting. And even today, I think one of the most exciting hunts, and most challenging, is leopard.
“Although you bait them, it’s always a case of matching wits - yours against his. You do something and the leopard will respond to it and then you have to counter that with something else. It’s as if he is trying to outsmart you
“I think that if I had to choose something for real fun, it’s to creep up into a herd of buffalo and have them all around you - your senses are completely alive. That’s probably one of the greatest feelings that big game provides. Now if you want real chilling stuff, it’s tracking lion in thick bush - nothing can compare.”
His answer was thoughtful and clear with no words wasted. It bespoke a respect, even compassion, for the animals that he’s spent his life hunting.
Harry Selby has experienced the situations he describes many times, but he still enjoys the bush, walking among big game, sleeping in a tented camp, and embracing the events of each day he spends afield, which constantly adds to his wealth of knowledge, experience and memories - these are the safari trophies that Harry savours the most.

Gail,

"A salute to Harry Selby, Professional Hunter extraordinaire"

I second that.

Please give him our best wishes too.

If you email me the photos, I will be happy to post them.

saeed@emirates.net.ae


Thank you for posting this for us.

WE are always glad to hear of any recoginition bestowed on a man like your father.

As Gail mentioned, here are the pics that accompanied the article.

Three cheers to Harry Selby!

To have lived the life he has lived would be truly amazing. Harry Selby has inspired many of us.

Congratulations to Harry! Gail, you have good reason to be proud of your father, "Thanks" for sharing.

Harry Selby is the dean of PHs of all over the world ,he deserves being recognized for his incredible work .Juan

From another era.

Thank you for sharing.

Congratulation and best regards to Mr. Selby and thank you very much Gail for posting the article.Those were the days.

Regards
Aziz

Ms. Selby-- Thank you for posting that article.
Congratulations to Harry!

What an incredible life he has led!

Fantastic story and please tell your father to write his memoirs asap.

How did John Henry become Harry?

quote:

Three cheers to Harry Selby!

Congtatulations to Mr.Selby. what an inspiration to all that dream of Africa!

CONGRATULATIONS and best wishes to Mr. Selby.

Thank you for posting.

Outstanding post! Thank you very much.

Best regards to you and your father.

Congratulations to your father and thank you very much for posting the article!

Thank you for posting. Congratulations Mr. Selby!

Brett

quote:

Originally posted by onefunzr2:
How did John Henry become Harry?

I just asked my dad and he says Harry is the "nickname" for Henry. You will find many people with the name Henry being called Harry!

Congratulations to Harry Selby for a long and illustrious career!!

Long may he live, and be remembered forever as one of the pioneers in Safari History.

He and Robert Ruark are primarily responsible for my early dreams of hunting Africa.

I can add nothing to that.

Rich
Buff Killer

My dad is most grateful for all your well wishes and messages. I am going to South Africa for a week tomorrow but when I return I will show him how to join and he will post a message to you all relating to this topic:-)

Gail, You original posting is going into my permanent file. Thanks for posting it.

A tip of the hat and a raised glass, well done!

Gail, thanks for posting. Your father has lived an extrordinary life and is more than deserving of that award.

i too raise a voice of congratulations, a most well deserved honor

Gail, thanks so much for posting the article. Congrats to Mr. Selby!

Congratulations to Mr. Selby. How many of us set our expectations of what a PH should be after reading the accounts of Harry Selby's safaris?

Congrats to Mr. Selby. To live the life that he has would be truely remarkable.

Congratulations and best wishes for a long and happy life. A legend of Africa, for sure.

Thanks to Gail for posting, and thanks to Mr. Selby for being an inspiration to so many.

Cheers, and best wishes to your father

Gail,

How nice for your Dad to be acknowledged in that manner by a modern day Afrcan president. Nice write up by Joe Coogan. It's obvious that he and your Father have a special bond. Joe has visited a couple of times here in Wyoming with us and I feel on each visit that he leaves a very small piece of that Old Afrca behind that he picked up from Harry and his own boyhood expereinces in Kenya.

Thanks for posting that.

Mark

He has certainly been the hunter we aspire to be. It is great having you post the article and information and I look forward to his post.
Frank

Gail,

Thanks for posting the article. Your father is indeed a remarkable man, well-deserving of such an honor. Though he'd never even met me, he was kind enough to allow me to interview him, via e-mail, for a paper I wrote on the Mau Mau Rebellion and did a couple of other favors as well -- very gentlemanly and kind.

Please give him our best.

Matt E.

Thanks so much for sharing, Gail. Pass along my congratulations to Harry for his accomplishments. He's truly lead a remarkable life, quite frankly, all of you have!

Howdy,

Wow - reading all this makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Beside me are various Ruark books - I simply can't put them down.

I could not imagine a life more interesting.

Thanks very much for posting.

Adios

Sport

Gail, I took out my bottle of Amarula, which I reserve for special occasions, poured a healthy dose over some ice, and raised it in toast to the greats who have gone before. Your dad is one of them. Congratulations to him.
Peter.

Gail,
Thanks very much for sharing this tribute to your father and honores of Mr. Harry Selby. He is a legend in of the African game fields and the type of hunter, adventurer, and gentlemen that all of us who know of him would aspire to be. Congratulations to both and God Bless.

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
Congratulations to Harry Selby for a long and illustrious career!!.....He and Robert Ruark are primarily responsible for my early dreams of hunting Africa.
:

My dreams, still.

Keith

Having only hunted Africa one time, my library of African Hunting books allows me to visit on a regular basis.

Many thanks to men like Harry Selby who were an inspiration for so many of those books.

Congrats to Harry, well deserved!

Thankyou for posting that article.