The Adventurous LIfe of a Vagabond Hunter by Sten Cedergren

A fun read! Much like the "The Hunting Blackbeards of Botswana" or any of John Burger's books (Horned Death or African Adventures) or others by Brian Marsh. Cedergren is a Swede who has lived a couple of lifetimes in one. He was adventurous, was a cowboy in Paraguay, a ranger in the 101st Airborne, served in the Selous Scouts in the bush wars and hunted in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Tanzania. His style is very upfront and easy to read. Most of his stories are a bit understated and he does not brag about his own exploits. He tells funny stories about clients and especially daughters or wives that made for interesting reading. He gives a good view of the safari business in the 1950's and 60's from the working man's perspective. He helped with the movie "Hatari", knew the famous snake catch Ionides, knew Harry Selby and crossed paths with many of the "name" African characters of his era.

Overall, a fun book, worth the price. I rate it a solid 7 out of 10 and give it a recommendation to be read.

I ordered that book also , it was on sale at a good price, and it was too good to loo away from getting it at that chance.

Have

I would like to know ifthe books has photos of hunting ,and if speaks about guns and techniquesof hunting too ,i ordered it ,because im very intersted in Southern africa contemporary history.Juan

He talks briefly about guns - he favors the .470 in a double rifle. He does not talk about techniques of hunting at all, just stories about clients and his life.

Does it have photos.Juan

Yes, a few.

There are other books out there that you may like better - AFrican Epic by Richard Harland, may be more what you are looking for. This is a story of a pioneering safari operator named Paul Grobler that is facinating. "A Pioneering Hunter" by Brian Marsh is excellent as well.

Thanks ,dogcat,im a big fam of hunting and Africa literature,my wies grandfather a well known guide who hunted with PHC in la patagonia introduced me to John Hunter books,then my father presented me when i was very young with a WILBUR SMITH novel,while we were flying to our hunting ranch in his small plane .Then i received gifts from all over the world mostly from BILL BERLAT,BILL QUIMBY,STEVE THORSEN,DON HEATH,ERROL LABRETCHS ,DAVID BARBER, and many more whose lives can be a model for an intersting action novel .Juan

Dogcat:

Does he mention what he did on the film Hatari?

I am writing a book about Jan Oelofse of Namibia who captured and trained the four baby elephants and the cheetah used in that film while working for Tanganyika Game Ltd., an animal capture company owned by an extraordinary character named Willy de Beer.

When the on-location shooting wound down, Oelofse accompanied 40 of the animals to California, for the in-studio shots. After that, he worked for the Natal Parks Board in South Africa and invented the "Oelofse Method" of capturing large numbers of animals with a helicopter and plastic sheeting before moving back to Namibia and becoming a hunting outfitter and tourist lodge operator.

Willy de Beer is listed in the film's credits, but Oelofse is not nor are the various white hunters who were hired to guard everyone from the wild critters.

Oelofse said three of those PHs did not react soon enough when a lion on a cable attacked and killed Diane Hartley Knodi, daughter of East African archeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey, when she walked into a roped off area on the set. I wonder if Cedergren was one of them.

Bill Quimby

Bill,
He mentions that he was John Wayne's bodyguard and spent a lot of time with the "Duke". He does not mention being involved in the lion incident but said that someone was killed. He did some animal catching prior to being involved in the movie, hence his being invited and hired to be there. He had learned to rope animals while a cowboy in Paraguay, getting him involved in that business. He talked about problems with rhinos more than lions, especially the scene in Hatari where the female rhino hits the landcruiser.

Bill - You had best email Brian Marsh on such issues. Brian was a good friend of Sten's and had to substantially re-write the book. Sten wrote everything in two sentence paragraphs, and I remember Brian and him stitting for days working through the manuscript. Sten could be cantankerous and Brian fightfully correct so they were days of tension that I stayed well clear of. Or give Lulu (his Widow) a ring. She still lives just up the road.

Juan

I have many of Stens Photo's scanned for Norma, I'll See if I can get then mailed to you

Thanks for that info Ganyana, i`m looking forward to read the book about Cedergren, and Hatari is a good classic movie.

Ganyana did you see the photos of my last buffalo safari ,and my great dogo the late PAIMUN .We hunted them with a merkel express 375hyh and the last photos are with a cz416Rigby.Im leaving again this timeone of the clients will use a ruger 458lott and the other a 500sw revolver.Juan

"Bill - You had best email Brian Marsh on such issues. Brian was a good friend of Sten's and had to substantially re-write the book. Sten wrote everything in two sentence paragraphs, and I remember Brian and him stitting for days working through the manuscript. Sten could be cantankerous and Brian fightfully correct so they were days of tension that I stayed well clear of. Or give Lulu (his Widow) a ring. She still lives just up the road. "

Ganyana:

Funny thing. When I was at his lodge in Namibia in June, Jan Oelofse showed me dozens of photos of himself with John Wayne -- barhopping and chumming around, and hunting antelope and buffalo with a double rifle that had belonged to a British royal -- in Tanganyika as well as in California but he never once mentioned that the Duke had a bodyguard.

Also, if Sten wasn't actual employed by Willy de Beer's company, he probably was not involved with animal capture and training.

Some of Oelofse's anecdotes are really funny. He talked about Wayne wearing a hairpiece, smoking too much, refusing to let bars shut down until he was ready to go home, as well as scaring bartenders with a python and a cheetah, but never once mentioned anyone named Sten.

I don't have Brian Marsh's e-mail address. Would you send it to me at billRquimby@cs.com ?

I'm afraid I'm much like Brian, I try to be "frightfully correct" to the best of my ability about what I write. Thanks.

Incidentally, it was very interesting to watch a CD of "Hatari!" while Oelofse talked about the stories behind what we were seeing.

For example, when the baby elephants went into the pond after the actress, they actually were trying to join Oelofse, who was in the water wearing a snorkel.

When the film showed them chasing her through the streets, he was running ahead of her, out of camera range. The street scenes were shot on location in Arusha, but the in-store stuff and everything else that took place indoors were shot in California.

Bill Quimby

Bill,
I have been on a "reading binge" for the last few months trying to learn and grasp what Africa was like from about 1850 to 1970. It has been a blast.

One thing I have learned is that many of the "characters" (Pondoro Taylor, Selous, Sutherland, Boyes, and more modern folks) took a little liberty with the facts. I have read on several occasions descriptions of events where a couple of the writers were supposedly in attendance, yet get a much different view. One writer went to far as to say that Selous was viewed a vagrant poacher and lackey for Cecil Rhodes. Another said that he basically worshipped at Selous' feet.

In reading Pondoro Taylor, I have serious doubts that his "is all that he says he is". This is solely based on what he says versus what others have said. The same can be said about Capstick, however both were very good story tellers.

This is much the same as reading the history of the battle at Gettysburg in the Civil War. Read the view of a Southerner vs. a Northerner and all you know is that a lot of people were killed rather than who "won" the battle.

I have been enjoying my reading immensely as well as reading the vanities and twists told by the various authors.

Another fun read is the new book - The Hunting Blackbeards of Botswana - fun and full of interesting stories about Botswana.

Dogcat:

The problem with writing for today's readers is that they will pick an author to pieces for the smallest deviation from fact. If I were to have a client write, for example, "I shot five times before reloading, but the buffalo did not drop." You can bet that my reputation will suffer among readers who know the guy's .416 Weatherby holds only two rounds in its magazine and one in the chamber. As I said above, although I don't always accomplish it, I strive to be "frightfully correct." There were few who experienced what Taylor, Selous, Sutherland, et al, did when they were writing, so ignorance was bliss.

Bill Quimby

Reference Stan Cedergren. On the recent DVD by Buzz Charlton - Elephant Hunting - there is an interview with Cedergren. I'll inquire of the "Duke" when I meet him someday.....
My reading has deteriorated to novels of late, but I have also been watching many of the old John Wayne movies. Green Berets, Cahill; he was the best.

Bill,
As an engineer, I appreciate accuracy as well. After reading the same story told by different people of the same event, they inevitably see things differently. I just finished Kwaheri! by Robert von Reitnauer and he recounts a story of Frank Hibben shooting giant leopard. I read the same story in Hibben's book but took a different view from him.

Overall, I agree with you and would love to see everything line up, but sometimes it just does not. Anyway, I still read them and enjoy them.

In the middle of Cedergren's book now and really enjoying it. An easy to read style and an interesting life. From his vaquero days in Paraguay to the merchant marine, service as a U.S. Army para, to professional hunter.

Here are comments about this book from the African Gazette -

The Adventurous Life of a Vagabond Hunter
by

PH Sten Cedergren
Reviewed By Brooke ChilversLubin


Generally, I like knowing a PH personally before reading his book. Then again, not every hunting book makes me wish I knew the author personally. But after devouring PH Sten Cedergren’s autobiography, The Adventurous Life of a Vagabond Hunter (published by Safari Press Inc.), I’m convinced that even at 85+ years, he’s great company around the campfire and that his blue eyes and sly smile still make a lady blush. (I hope none of the husbands in this book recognized their wives!)

Cedergren is among the few Swedes in the safari business and got there the long way around. Born on one of his country’s largest private estates, where his father was senior forester, he owned a .22 rifle at age eight, and a 12-gauge shotgun at 12. After a pleasant military service as an officer in ever-neutral Sweden, he put aside the idea of becoming a game warden in Sweden as “you had to have a private income because the position was unpaid,†and found himself instead in Paraguay, ready to become a gaucho the very day in 1947 the government was overthrown by the army. The chapter, My Early Years, is good reading, describing the ranch life of vaqueros, then his sailoring, then his soldiering for the U.S. Army. He embarked for Kenya in 1953 with a U.S. passport and a .45 pistol.

His apprenticeship and entry into East Africa’s restricted safari world - when the three companies (Ker & Downey, Safariland, and White Hunters) were all run out of Nairobi by retired British army colonels – was due to good luck and chance encounters. He met Major Andy Anderson at the Muthaiga Club and nicely retells several of his tales that also include Jim Sutherland. He also met and went to work as a game-control officer for the game catcher John Taylor. Finally, PH Chris Satertwaith who operated north of Nakuru added many insights – good and bad – into his life.

Eric Rundgren himself advised the young Cedergren to go to Shaw & Hunter’s gun shop and purchase (for 70 Kenyan pounds) a retired PH’s .500 Jeffery No. 2 with boxlock ejector, built in 1906 of Krupp steel, with interchangeable .470 calibre 24-inch barrels made in Ferlach. He eventually added a .500 Westley Richards Nitro Express boxlock, scoped pre-64 Winchester .458 Magnum with 26-inch barrels, a .375 H&H Magnum, a Winchester .300 H&H, and a Brno 12-gauge shotgun to his ‘toolbox.’

Cedergren writes with flair and precision, comparing the "great swishing noises made by elephant trunks sweeping in the wheat" to a harvester’s scythe, or again "outstretched like a vacuum cleaner" while it followed his scent. He recalls his friend J.A. Hunter’s advice on hunting elephant: Get as close as you can – and then get 10 yards closer!

His hunting stories from the years at White Hunters are interesting and often hilarious. "In those far-off days there were no controlled hunting areas. Game was plentiful everywhere, and full bags, which included elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard, could be obtained just 50 miles from Nairobi." Between safaris, Cedergren based himself in Malindi, a sleepy, safe haven on the coast 70 miles north of Mombasa where the athletic and inexhaustible PH dedicated himself to spearfishing and stewardesses. "Freedom of movement in the old days was unbelievable, and good relationships between professional hunters were the order of the day."

Again, Cedergren tells good stories – about Jack Blacklaws, René Babault, Bunny Ray, Tony Henley, Eric Rundgren, Rolf Trappe and Robert Foster, and others who should have gotten more of their adventures down on paper. (I wish he’d told more tales on the goings-on during the 1964 filming of Born Free, which, with a crew of 160, he could not have avoided.)

I especially liked Two Danes on the Tana River and The Postmaster of Itigi; and could relate all too well to the story of the odious, malodorous hunting client, Heinz, or to the Italian prince who probably wounded his animals on purpose "in order to experience a more exciting finish of the hunt." All this is interwoven with interesting details like: 'All the buffalo along the Galana River had a reputation for bad temper because the Wakambas and Liangulus used to shoot them with bows and arrows, often wounding them in the process. Sten guided nobility and Texas oilmen, and more than his fair share of randy gals, although eventually, the man who agreed that "a bachelor is a man who hasn’t made the same mistake once" married the lovely Lola and fathered two children, one named Mara, after his favorite lioness that played Elsa in Born Free.

Cedergren had his share of close calls – including a huge knock by a black rhino with 28-inch horns that, he thought to himself before passing out, “would certainly make the Rowland Ward record book.†Snake Encounters is very detailed and interesting, and deserves a close read. From an information point of view, this chapter alone is worth the price of the book. One cannot spend a lifetime in Africa without ‘coming close’ a few too many times; Cedergren was also mauled by a leopard, and had his ribs broken by a buffalo.

When Kenya closed, Cedergren did like nearly all the other PHs, and hunted – accordingly to their upheavals - in Sudan, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. By 1981, the Zimbabwe hunting industry was again in full swing, and Cedergren had good years in the Matetsi and the Dande area of the Zambezi Valley. Eventually the changes in the industry and the hunting methods dismayed him, and the book rolls to a close.

After living the golden era of safari hunting, which for him was 1950 to 1965, Cedergren stopped professional hunting in 1997 - at 78. “I must conclude by saying that if it had not been for the heavy English-built double rifles that I used throughout my hunting career, I would not have been around to write about my experiences in the African bush.â€

This well written, thoroughly enjoyable, informative book, nicely illustrated with several dozen black & white photos, can be ordered for $39.95 from Safari Press Inc. (Tel: 714-894-9080; www.safaripress.com).