Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is from the book HUNTING THE BIG FIVE by Robin Hurt.

This is a compilation of all accidents since 1963 to the publication of the book.

Injured by leopard, 54% very rare for leoprad to kill a hunter
Injured or killed by buffalo, 25%; of these, one in 6 is fatal
Injured or killed by lion, 14%; of these, one in 20 is fatal
Injured or killed by elephant, 4%, most don't live to tell the tale
Injured or killed by hippo, 2%, of these, half are fatal
Injured or killed by rhino, 1%.

Nothing about snakes nor gunshot via careless shooters?

Interresting and of note is when a male Lion gets you, he will normally quit when he thinks your down and out and stand over you and defy all within sight..A Lioness on the other hand will not quit until your head comes off or so I am told by those who know...She will stop and pull your head into her mounth..I suppose that is why most Lion dealings are survived as most are male.

As I was leaving Arusha last August, we got word that a well known and respected PH had been mauled by a lion. The story was that his hunter shot a male lion and they walked up to it not knowing a liones was in the tall grass. The lioness took the PH, who survived the attack, but he died in the hospital of a heart attack. It was mentioned here last year and somebody had the name of th PH.

If you look at the stats - the two of the Big Five most likely to kill you are elephant and buffalo

Of 100% of ALL accidents listed - approx 4% of total attacks will result in a fatality from buffalo (ie 25 over 6) and 4% of the total from elephant (close to 100% fatality rate).

The next highest would be hippo and rhino at both around 1% each.

Approx 10% (more or less) of all Big Six (ie including hippo) attacks results in fatality.

However to be meaningful the number of accidents would need to be placed against the total number of days spent hunting each animal and I imagine buffalo would have the largest number of days, reducing the incident probability considerably.

[ 05-19-2003, 09:11: Message edited by: NitroX ]