I thought this article would interest the subscribers here:

Hunting Game With the Big And Mighty

The East African Standard (Nairobi)

January 26, 2005
Posted to the web January 25, 2005

Athman Amran
Nairobi

Despite the confident feel of a powerful hunting rifle, a 460 Walther B Magnum, in his hands, the young professional hunter was dazed for a second.

Adrenalin welled up. He had to either confront the charging angry beast with the proud golden mane or run for dear life. The situation was scary and complicated.

For the hunter and his four companions, the lion charging at them was not the one they had been tracking.

They had tracked a different lion and killed it without knowing that its companion was nearby.

But just as they were celebrating the kill, the fierce beast came out from nowhere, charging.

They were caught with their pants down. The hunters had become the hunted.

"Steady," he told himself as he aimed, remembering one basic and most important rule in big game hunting - never give a charging beast your back, so long as you have a weapon in your hands.

"You are not supposed to leave your ground. If you show an animal your back, you are finished," Ali Daud, a former professional hunter, told The Standard at his house in Tudor, Mombasa.

The lion was now only about 15 yards away - and still charging.

"Steady! Steady!" The young hunter told himself. He knew, for sure, that if he did not kill the lion, it would kill him. He dug both his feet firmly into the ground, then steadied his hands and aimed. The beast was now only 10 yards away. He knew if he missed this one shot he was as good as dead.

"Steady," he told himself and then pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit the target. It hit the lion's left eye and exited through the back of its head and the golden mane. The beast suddenly fell. It was already dead.

Daud sighed with relief. He had saved his life and those of two trackers and two Austrian tourists on a game hunting safari.

That was in 1975 within an area then designated as "Block 24" in Kwale District, before the ban on game hunting in 1976.

The scary tale and others are the staple that form the past life of Daud, a retired professional hunter who once met the late American President Ronald Reagan and former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim while the two hunted in Kenya at different times.

The close call with the lion was not a "big thing" for Daud, though he says in his time he confronted and killed "so many animals", that he has lost count.

Hunting was in his blood as his father had also been a professional hunter in India.

Daud began as an amateur hunter in 1960 and got an official hunting licence after passing a test. As an amateur hunter he went for small game or plainsgame like the oryx, antelopes, gazelle, dik-dik and other small animals.

Daud soon graduated into big game hunting and at one time he held the world buffalo number two record. The number one record was held by another Kenyan known as Andrew Humburg, Daud recalls.

The man liked hunting not only as a prolific sport and for his livelihood but also as an opportunity to meet many people from all over the world.

"I have gone game hunting with famous people and princes," Daud boasts.

He remembers having gone game hunting with Reagan, former Austrian President, who was also former United Nations secretary general Mr Waldheim and Prince Muhammad of Saudi Arabia.

Daud and a tourist hunter, Wenseuburg alias Willy, with their kill during a hunting trip in 1960s near Tsavo National Park.

"By then Reagan was still an actor and Waldheim was not yet the UN Secretary General or the Austrian President. Reagan went by the name "Agent Alritch" while Waldheim went by the name of "Gerald". I didn't know who they were then until later on when they became leaders," Daud said.

The two were both on transit from Japan.

Reagan passed by around 1964 while Waldheim passed by around 1970, Daud says.

He also took on a game hunting tour a Japanese prince from the Akihito family but cannot recall his name.

Game hunting was then under the Game department, Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife.

It had its rules. A hunter could only own a gun after being licensed by the Central Firearms Bureau.

It was illegal to kill an animal with young ones and all the animals being hunted had to be mature and over 25 pounds in weight, he adds.

"Hunters do not go tracking down animals in their vehicles. They have to do it on foot and sometimes they have to travel for long distances following tracks of animals they want to kill."

The meat of the animals killed was not to be sold but was eaten by the hunters and the locals. Some hunters preferred taking trophies like the skin and horns of the animals they killed.

For elephant, the tusks were good business but a hunter was allowed to kill only two elephants per year.

Hunting time was between 6 am and 6pm.

No hunting was allowed before or after.

There were designated hunting areas which were then divided into blocks all over the country and were almost 100 in all.

A hunter got a two week permit to hunt in a block of his or her choice depending on what kind of animals he wanted to hunt.

These blocks were however not in game reserves which were protected areas and it was illegal to hunt there.

Daud hunted all over the country as he went around on game hunting safaris with foreign tourists.

But once hunting was outlawed, Daud had to find something else to do.

"The hunting ban was sudden. We did not expect it. I had concentrate on my engineering workshop after that."

460 Walther B Magnum???

Do we have a speech impediment or ignorance going here?

"Agent Alritch" an alias for Ronnie Reagan, eh? Good to know that the Gipper hunted Africa, so this fluff piece is not without redeeming value.

Thanks, Ann.

RIP, I caught that comment on the gun caliber and left it for you men of knowlege! I fixed some of the other typos in the article. Still, it was interesting, if not fiction.

I personally would never trust a 460 Walther B Magnum to stop a determined lion charge. I would use at least a 19.67mm Glock with something even more formidable as a backup.
On arrival in Arusha I met a "hunter" who told me he was hunting in the Serengeti with a 756 magnum. I suspected he was hunting jets with that caliber. Later his brother came over and told me he did't know which end of a gun to hold.That made me feel a little better on my charter flight over the Serengeti.

Walther B. Magnum was a Dutch-German gunsmith-ballistician who has a long line of now little-known proprietary cartridges to his credit. Among them was the .460 Walther B. Magnum, at one time the most powerful cartridge ever drawn on a piece of paper.

Walther was the first to replace the belts previously used on other magnum cases with suspenders, or braces, which are now of course commonplace on dangerous game rounds.

Alas, however, Walther's cartridges were short-lived and were swiftly replaced in the hands of knowledgeable hunters by another line of hyper-velocity rounds. These were designed by Walther's showmen brothers, the famous gunmaking triplets, Siegfried B., Roy J. and Whether B. Magnum. They added radiused bow-ties above the shoulders and between the suspenders of their ammunition and made it suitable for use in formal hunting parties.

Then of course there was Thomas P.I. Magnum who designed the super-hot Waikiki Magnums. These featured the first two-piece, or bikini, cases, made of a very flimsy grade of brass. No belts or suspenders. Magnum P.I. (as he was known to his friends) unfortunately had his program cancelled by the real "brass" shortly after the Kenyan hunting ban.

Ah, the fourth estate . . . it's a miracle when they get anything RIGHT!

mrlexma,
LOL again! Thanks.