I asked this in another thread, but I am curious about it and wanted to start a new topic on it.

Does anyone know what has become of James Mellon, the accomplished hunter and author of the classic "African Hunter"--first published in 1975?

His knowledge of African hunting and hunters was encyclopedic and his experience almost unbelievably wide for someone who started out hunting Africa in the second half of the 20th century.

[ 07-15-2003, 01:42: Message edited by: mrlexma ]

Lex,

I did a search on Google and couldn't find anything current on Mellon. Just a bunch of references to his book.

Did you read his section about the Selous? It is amazing how things have changed there in just the last 25 years. At one time, the Selous had a good number of big elephant. It's my impression that elephant hunting isn't that good in most parts of the Selous now.

Regards,

Terry

I've tried searching, too. Same result. He seems to have vanished into thin air.

I'm afraid you're right about elephants in the Selous, although a really good one is taken now and then. There are reportedly somewhere around 50-60,000 elephants there now, which is about 10% of all of them in Africa. But Botswana's the place for the big ones nowadays, or so I've heard.

Those pictures in Mellon's book of the hundred plus pounders from Kenya and Tanzania are astonishing. If only they could stop the damned poachers, those giants might one day return.

I know that the Tanzanians do have a 50 lbs. per side minimum for a shootable bull, though, and that ain't bad for size.

quote:

James Mellon - HERE.

<> <> <>

The link led me to his Wikipedia biography, which was in German, which I can't read.

Melon did the foreword for my book, "Royal Quest," about his friend, Prince Abdorreza Pahlavi of Iran. I met him only once, and it was at the book signing at the Safari Press booth at the 2004 SCI convention when the book was released.

He said he had stopped hunting years earlier.

I'm told his many trophies are in a warehouse somewhere and he seldom if ever goes there.

Bill Quimby

...I can read German.
:-)

He had now big problems with the taxes, pp. So he stays only some days at one place..., then go to an other...

quote:

Originally posted by billrquimby:

I'm told his many trophies are in a warehouse somewhere and he seldom if ever goes there.

Bill Quimby

If they are stashed away somewhere in "Persia" I doubt he would be going back in a hurry to see if the Ayatollah's weevils have infested his trophies.

quote:

Originally posted by billrquimby:
The link led me to his Wikipedia biography, which was in German, which I can't read.

James Mellon (auto-translation from the original German)

James Ross (Jay) Mellon II (* 25. June 1942 in New York City, USA) is an author and big-game hunter. In connection with offshore leaks, he was a general public than in April 2013 international Steuervermeider known.

After visiting the College in the USA, dedicated to John Mellon 1964-1976 almost exclusively of big game hunting. He lived five years in a Nairobi (Kenya), but also spent some time in New Delhi (India). From here he went on hunting throughout India, Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Thailand, Afghanistan, and Cambodia. Some of these trips were made on behalf and at the expense of large museums. As early as the age of 30 received Mellon for its numerous hunting success than before the recent prizewinners "Roy E. Weatherby Big Game Trophy". An exclusive big game hunting award, which is considered the "Oscar of the hunter world".

James Mellon's name has been a broad international public for the first time announced in April 2013, as this in the context of by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published offshore leaks mentioned and with the establishment of discrete companies in offshore centers has been associated. In an interview with the Swiss Sunday newspaper in May 2013 declared James Mellon that in 1977 his American citizenship abandoned for tax reasons, and instead of the British Virgin Islands have adopted. He sat there for some time down, to develop the local fiscal climate to his dissatisfaction.

Since then, he has logged out there again, he leads by its own account - now a British citizen - a lifestyle, which in English as "Perpetual traveler is called". Accordingly Mellon in any country has a principal residence but divides his time between residences in different countries each other back and forth. Through this permanent journeys he considers to nowhere long enough there to tax to be. Mellon has residences among others in Switzerland (Klosters, Canton Grisons) in Italy (Rome) and in the United States (Fifth Avenue, New York City).

Due to his extensive travel, so James Mellon said in an interview with ICIJ in April 2013, it had proved in the past to be useful to manage all its finances via offshore firms by third parties. In addition, also have tax advantages and limitation of liability risks played a role. James Mellon pointed out that he was in the process followed the advice of his lawyers, and never the tax laws of the States in which he was staying have been injured. Even if he wanted to give any information about how he managed at the time of the interview with ICIJ, his fortune, he expressed but no offshore companies to own more.
Family

James Mellon is the son of Matthew Taylor Mellon (1897-1992) and Jane Bartrum. He is married to Vivian Ruesch, daughter of Swiss racer, publicist and writer Hans Ruesch (1913-2007). Together they have three grown daughters: Diana, Angela and Sarah.

As a member of Mellon family, one of the richest families in the United States, James Mellon inherited a large fortune. He is a great-great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, founder of the "T. Mellon & Son's Bank "(now part of The Bank of New York Mellon), and a grandnephew of Andrew W. Mellon, the United States Treasury under Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover of 4 March 1921 to February 1932. His for the 12th Grandfather William Larimer Mellon (1868-1949) was the founder of the Gulf Oil Company, which from the 1985 Chevron Corporation was acquired. James Mellon's nephew, Matthew Taylor Mellon II was with Tamara Mellon married, the president and co-founder of the shoe company Jimmy Choo.

Fonts (Schriften - ?)
African Hunter. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1975, ISBN 0-15-103954-2.
The Face of Lincoln. Viking Press, New York 1979, ISBN 0-670-30433-6.
(Ed.): Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember, to oral history. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988, ISBN 0-8021-3868-3.
The great uprooting: ancestries of the Mellon, Ruesch, and Delafield families.: A series of genealogical charts. Of 2008.
The Judge. A Life of Thomas Mellon, founder of a fortune. Yale University Press, New Haven 2011 ISBN 978-0-300-16714-6.
Translation [edit]
Per Federspiel:. A fighter for Danish and European Freedom ISBN 87-02-04125-1 (from Danish, original title "Federspiel En dansk Europeans." Ditlev Tamm of)

Awards
2007: Carnegie Medal of Carnegie Hero Fund

Honorary Appointments
President of the "Scotch-Irish of Ulster Trust"

References
- discussion forum on NitroExpress.com
- Gerard Ryle:. Secret Files Expose Offshore's Global Impact International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), accessed on. 8 July 2014.
- tax evasion: Oil Baron saves all taxes by constantly traveling, Süddeutsche Zeitung of 28 May-2013.
- Florian Imbach:. The man without a home Sonntagszeitung, accessed on. 5 May 2013.
- Nancy Hass: Jimmy Choo's Tamara Mellon; The woman behind the shoes all shares. Elle, accessed on. 1 July 2014.
- Gerard Ryle:. Secret Files Expose Offshore's Global Impact International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), accessed on. 8 July 2014.
- Gary Boyd Roberts: # 49 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: Further Changes in Royal Descents, 2000. American Ancestors - New England Historic Genealogical Society, accessed on 24th June 2014.
- Bill Cunningham: EVENING HOURS; May at Last. The New York Times, called away on the 24th June 2014.
- Nancy Hass: Jimmy Choo's Tamara Mellon; The woman behind the shoes all shares. Elle, accessed on. 1 July 2014.
- Dan Fitzpatrick: Mellon family member: Patriarch would have lamented Bank deal Pittsburgh Post Gazette, October 18 of 2007.
- The Mellon Centre for Migration Studies at the Ulster American Folk Park, Omagh - Fourteenth Annual Report 2011-2012

From the following, it seems he is just an end stage trust fund baby, living abroad on his inherited wealth as a British citizen, with his wealth held around the globe to minimize his tax liabilities.



http://www.icij.org/offshore/s...shores-global-impact



Another prominent American in the files who gave up his citizenship is a member of the Mellon dynasty, which started landmark companies such as Gulf Oil and Mellon Bank. James R. Mellon – an author of books about Abraham Lincoln and his family’s founding patriarch, Thomas Mellon – used four companies in the BVI and Lichtenstein to trade securities and transfer tens of millions of dollars among offshore bank accounts he controlled.

Like many offshore players, Mellon appears to have taken steps to distance himself from his offshore interests, the documents show. He often used third parties’ names as directors and shareholders of his companies rather than his own, a legal tool that owners of offshore entities often use to preserve anonymity.



Reached in Italy where lives part of the year, Mellon told ICIJ that, in fact, he used to own “a whole bunch” of offshore companies but has disposed of all of them. He said he set up the firms for “tax advantage” and liability reasons, as advised by his lawyer. “But I have never broken the tax law.”

Of the use of nominees, Mellon said that “that’s the way these firms are set up,” and added that it’s useful for people like him who travel a lot to have somebody else in charge of his businesses. “I just heard of a presidential candidate who had a lot of money in the Cayman Islands,” Mellon, now a British national, said, alluding to former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“Not everyone who owns offshores is a crook.”

Picture of Mr. Mellon from 2011. Just scroll down a Little bit.
James Mellon

A co-worker talked to him a couple of months ago, since kids are out of school he has moved out of the country. He has no interest in hunting. We have invited him to come with us the the DSC/SCI conventions and he said no.

It has been reported that one of the reasons for his long-running safari throughout Africa was to avoid the draft and being sent to war in RVN. To the best of my knowledge, he has never denied this accusation.

James Mellon is an excellent author and historian. I highly recommend "The Judge", which is about his family.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300167146

I have African Hunter of course but haven't read his book on Lincoln photographs and writings or his collection of slave narratives.

http://www.amazon.com/Face-Lin...Mellon/dp/B000MRFMIQ

http://www.amazon.com/Bullwhip...istory/dp/0802138683

quote:

It has been reported that one of the reasons for his long-running safari throughout Africa was to avoid the draft and being sent to war in RVN. To the best of my knowledge, he has never denied this accusation.

Has he agreed to the accusation? If not, this is just hearsay in my opinion...

quote:

Originally posted by bwanamrm:

quote:

It has been reported that one of the reasons for his long-running safari throughout Africa was to avoid the draft and being sent to war in RVN. To the best of my knowledge, he has never denied this accusation.

Has he agreed to the accusation? If not, this is just hearsay in my opinion...

That's a good one "To the best of my knowledge". You mean he didn't call you up to let you know? (not you bwana ...) - and this is of such importance to you that you actually did the research and scoured every report on him? Golly!

And by the way - that war was a complete contrivance, entirely unnecessary and a total waste of lives and resources (and we got our asses kicked). It was a national embarrassment and y'all should just accept that fact get over it.

<> <> <>

My response to LH was not personal at all. Merely two sides to the issue, Mellon didn't admit or deny, therefore, we don't know if his hunting expeditions were used to "draft dodge" or not.

I dislike our tendency to focus on negatives regarding a fellow hunter who wrote one of the defining pieces of African literature. I don't want to canonize him nor tar and feather Mellon based on what he may or may not have done and why...

Dang! I wish I had thought about that in 1968, instead of enlisting in the Army and serving 25+ months in RVN as a Ranger, I could have just asked my Father for a couple million and hunted Africa for seven or eight years.

Heck, he probably hung out with Sylvester Stallone in between hunts at his place in Switzerland (what I was told).

He hunted tiger with Peter Byrne in Nepal and Peter spoke very very highly of him as a hunter

Ludo Wurfbain at Safari Press would know.