Hunt in Kenya 1975
I was 24 and working as a relief milker when I saw an ad in the "Shooting Times" for a hunt in Kenya with Allen Safaris. Milking cows when farmers were sick or on holiday was well-paid and with free board and lodge and working 12 hours a day seven days a week, it was easy to save money. I asked a wealthy friend from college called Richard to come too. He had introduced me to deer-stalking on his father's estate in Scotland but he didn't want to hunt, just take photos. Two other guys had booked as well. Jon was 29 and owned a gun shop bought with profits from the Biafran war. He tendered for thousands of ex-army .303s and then sold them for ten times as much to the Biafran rebels. Not that those rifles did them any good in that dreadful little war. The other fellow owned a Fish and Chip shop and he had only used a shotgun before.
I took a shotgun for bird shooting but the only rifle I had was an open-sighted .303 so I left that at home. Jon took a .270 and we asked David Allen to provide rifles.
We flew to Nairobi together and stayed at the New Stanley hotel. My friend richard's father knew the Block family who owned the hotel so we were well looked after. We were taken for a game drive around the Nairobi National Park which was a useful introduction the the wildlife. The wildlife at the New Stanley was startling too, for a country boy. The ladies were, without exception, very beautiful and at that time see-through blouses and no bra was the fashion. I was 24 with testesterone coming out of every orifice and I had arrived in heaven!
Richard stayed with the Block family for a few days after David Allen collected the rest of us and took us to the East African Professional Hunter's Club and then out to the airport. David owned a Cessna 172 and he flew us to his home near Naro Moru where he had to buzz the Impala off the strip before landing. We saw Black Rhinos during the flight and there was game everywhere on the farmland. David and his wife, Petal, lived in a beautiful Kenyan settler's home which had been the base for making the film "Born Free". We each had one of the cottages built for the film stars.
Over lunch we were introduced to Peter De Mello, a very competant PH of Goan descent who took me out for my first hunt in Africa.
We drove from David's home past a dairy farm where we stopped to watch big-uddered old Holstein cows leaping athletically into a dip, disappearing under water then swimming out, which they had to do weekly to control ticks. They were tougher than the average British cow!
When we came to thorn-bush ranch land, we left the Landrover and walked, seeing Oribi and Duikers and small mobs of Impala ewes. Soon Meresie, the tracker, spotted an old Impala ram on his own browsing so we stalked him until he spooked. Unwisely, he stopped for a pee and a look back. I was using David's old .300 H&H and the buck dropped in his tracks. I have collected quite a few Impala since then but my first one with his 28inch horns is by far the best. I expected them to gut the buck but they loaded him into the truck whole and took him back. The best of the offal was eaten and the rest was thrown onto a length of wire netting over the Naro Moru River. The flies soon came and their maggots dropped into the water to feed the trout. If you needed a trout quickly, a maggot on a hook dropped into the river below the netting gave instant results!
In the morning David Allen took Jon and I up Mount Kenya into the forest. We parked beside a once-magnificent abandoned farmhouse built by someone who thought white-rule would last forever. Cooking fires had been lit in the middle of the once-polished mahogany floor of the dining room and the windows had all been smashed. Soon the forest would take back someones lifetime of effort to build "Something of value".
We climbed a ridge through dense forest with Colobus monkeys above us and Eland and Buffalo cows in the valley below. There were no markers for the boundary of the National Park but the trackers led us on up through bamboo thickets. They stopped suddenly at the sight of a tiny brown/grey antelope beside the path about six feet away. I heard , "This is a Suni!" whispered, and Jon took aim with his .270. Bang! The antelope froze. Again and again Jon fired, shooting below him every time until the rifle was empty. When he tried to reload the Suni decided enough was enough, and opted out. Poor Jon was a much better shot than me but he had a stubborn streak and wouldn't try changing his point of aim. I have seen Suni since then but never had a shot at one.
I was carrying a borrowed .375 and when we came into more open country we came onto buffalo feeding. One of the trackers was a Masai who David had got parolled out of prison for this hunt. (He was inside for poaching of course!) While crawling through the buffalo herd, searching for a good bull, my backside was waving in the air so this Masai gave me a little poke with his spear. A buffalo cow with a calf was watching this strange object waving in the long grass. I learned. It was a fairly big herd but without an old bull so we carried on but had no success. On the way back down the mountain, David suggested that I sit on the spare wheel on the front of the Landrover with the rifle so I could jump off and shoot immediatly if we saw a Waterbuck. That was fun for a boy with no sense of his own possible mortality, imagining I was riding shotgun on a stagecoach. When we bounced off the track onto the main road I was still sitting there, to the consternation of a bus-load of tourists taking photos of the sign marking the equator!
In the evening we went with Peter De Mello up to the Ranger Headquarters on Mount Kenya to see the Park Warden. A buffalo bull was reported to be chasing tourists trying to climb the mountain next to the Headquarters and we hoped to be given permission to take him out. As we passed the bottom of the Park airstrip a Bushbuck ram with a ewe crossed the top end and Peter asked if I wanted to collect him. I stalked up through the scrub beside the strip with K----- (Bunny's old gunbearer, I don't know how to spell his name) until a jet-black Bushbuck ram stomped out of the bush about 20 yards away and faced us. I whacked him in the middle of the chest with the .300 H&H and he went up high in the air and flipped over backwards. K---- found the buck 30 yards away and we loaded him into the Landrover. Peter said I was lucky to get one of the black Bushbuck found on Mt Kenya and in the the high Aberdares. He was old with worn down horns, 14 inches on one side and 13 on the other. Unfortunately when he eventually arrived from Zimmermans, the Nairobi taxidermists, they had used a different headskin from a brown buck.
At the Park Headquarters the Head Warden was away and his assistant couldn't authorise us to take the buffalo but he told us to drive up the track and have a look for him anyway. We showed the Warden the Bushbuck and he asked where I got him. I told him it was near the top of the airstrip. Peter De Mello asked how far above the strip the Park boundary was and the Warden laughed and said it was at the bottom! Just as well he had a sense of humour!
We drove a few hundred yards up the mountain and a skinny Dagga Boy emerged, running straight at us. He bumped the back of the Landrover and chased us for about a hundred yards. It was a useful lesson to me seeing a buffalo charge with his nose straight out from a safe perch on the back of a truck. I've never seen a buffalo charge since, although I've taken my share.
In the morning we left early with Peter to drive a long way north to a ranch where a huge herd of buffalo were reported to be coming to water at a dam. We picked up our informant who worked on the ranch and travelled for about three hours on a good road before turning off onto a track. This was different country with all the semi-desert game. We saw Oryx and Grevy's Zebras, Gerenuk and Grant's Gazelles but there were no buffalo tracks less than a week old when we got to the dam. Peter had strong words with our informant but he had been given a free ride home so he wasn't too bothered! I was allowed to hunt the Grant's on this ranch but not the larger species so I took the largest out of a group of batchelor males. Soon after we saw a much better one so I collected that one too. The huge thorns on the track were hard on the thin tyres available then and we had two punctures on the way in and another on the way back. We only had two spare tyres and two inner tubes and as we approached David's home about an hour after dark, we got another puncture. The lights of the farmhouse were visible only a mile or two away across the plain so I offered to walk there and get someone to come out with a spare tyre. Peter told the tracker Merisie to go with me and it was easy walking towards the lights as you could see the thorn bushes against the sky. A leopard started calling in front of us which didn't thrill me, then Merisie let out a yell. My first thought was the leopard, but when I stepped forward I yelled out too. We had walked into an electric cattle fence!
When we reached David's home and I walked in, absolutely filthy, there was a very fancy house-party going on. Bunny had arrived with a group of people, including an Eastern-European Countess who looked about 25 from behind but when she turned around the wear and tear of some seventy years was well disguised but still evident. The Countess offered me her jewel-encrusted hand so I wiped my filthy paw on my shorts before taking it. I found David and he quickly organised someone to rescue the Landrover while I slunk off to shower and change.
The dinner party that evening was an eye-opener for an unsophisticated yokel like me, with a glamour and richness of dress and conversation I was quite unaccustomed to. They discussed the murder of Lord Errol, still a hot topic, 30 years after the event, and the filming of "Born Free". There was general agreement that George Adamson was a wonderful old bloke while his estranged wife, Joy, who wrote the book about Elsa, their lioness, was a total bitch. Bunny prophesised that her staff would murder her one day and he was soon proved correct.
Bunny moved on to hunting tales but his version of his recent hospitalisation by a buffalo up on the mountain differed in some details from the version his son David had already told me. We all tell the truth as we see it and Bunny's view was coloured by being on the end of the buffalo's horns while David was busy poking his rifle barrels into the bull's neck. A good story either way and Bunny was still keen enough on chasing buffalarses through the scrub.
Personally, I find Bunny's addiction to "Kiss and Tell" very distasteful but I can attest that his attractiveness to women half his age was very obvious that evening. As some of the people present are still very much alive and I have warm memories of one in particular, enough has been said already.
The next morning I went out with David Allen's apprentice PH, another David (I can't recall his surname) to try for a Thompson Gazelle. There were large numbers grazing amongst the wheat stubbles and I stalked a mob with Mericie. We had no sticks but I was used to shooting off-hand so that didn't worry me. However I was a bit shaky after too much booze and too little sleep the night before and I shot a fine ram too low on the shoulder. He limped off and Merisie kept telling me to "Shoot, shoot!" I was too inexperienced to just keep putting lead into a wounded beast as best you can and I waited for him to turn sideways on. Meanwhile the buck joined up with the herd and they took off. My only chance of collecting a Thompson Gazelle so far in my life was gone. That was the first big game animal I ever wounded and lost. I've lost a few since but that first one still hurts as it was all down to my own stupidity.
Peter De Mello had taken Jon and the Fish and Chip shop owner (who shall remain nameless!) up Mt Kenya that morning after buffalo and they returned with a head and a story to tell. Walking up an open glade beside riverine forest they came across a Dagga Boy grazing peacefully about 40 yards away. The Fish and Chip man fired a borrowed .450-400 double rifle and hit him in the middle of the guts. Peter flung a shot after the bull with his .458 as the bull disappeared into the forest and then ran in after him, telling Jon and the gut-shooter to stay where they were. Over the next hour a further eight shots from the .458 were heard then the bull burst out of the riverine and headed across the open country towards the main forest. The gunbearer K---- was carrying a little .22 for birds and he ran across the grassland to try and turn the limping bull back before he got into heavy cover. K---- had more balls than brains and when the bull saw him coming he charged. Peter emerged from the scrub and saw what was happening. K---- stood firm and emptied the little rimfire's magazine into the bulls head without any effect. Peter De Mello fired his open-sighted .458 at 200 yards range and dropped the bull at K----'s feet. I relate the story as it was told to me without further comment but Peter didn't want to hunt buffalo for a couple of days after that!
In the evening I went out again with the apprentice, young David, who was about my age, up the mountain after Waterbuck. They were plentiful and we stalked several small groups without finding a suitable bull. As the light faded we headed back towards the Landrover. When we saw the truck, a hundred yards away, we gave up hunting and David and I were strolling along chatting about the girls at last night's party when there was a loud grunt from a little patch of bush we were passing. Merisie whispered "Mbogo!" which I didn't understand. I was astonished when he emptied all the soft-nose cartridges out of the old .300H&H and plugged the magazine full of solids. Before he could hand me the rifle, the bush burst open twenty yards away and half a dozen Buffalo cows and calves, followed by a grand bull, galloped across the clearing into the dense riverine forest on our left. Merisie slammed the rifle into my hands and tore into the bush after the bull, closely followed by young David. Being young and immortal, I raced after them in the twilight without a PH and a back-up rifle. We soon caught up with the mob but I could only see grey rumps and legs and an occasional horn, ten yards away. It was getting too dark in the forest to see the cross-hairs through the scope but when they spooked Merisie and David took off after them again. Eventually I got the message across that this was a futile exercise and we retreated with our skins still intact.
At dinner that evening Bunny offered to take me back up there to look for those Buffalo in a couple of days when they had settled down. Jon had been up on the mountain too that evening with David Allen and had his own adventure. He said a young Buffalo bull had charged unprovoked down the narrow trail they were on and he had killed it in self-defence. The Game Department accepted the story and took the animal. It sounded unlikely to me then and with 45 years more experience under my belt it sounds even more unlikely now. Few young bulls charge unprovoked and how often is the client in front of the PH on a narrow trail and is forced to stop a charge? On the other hand many exciteable young clients shoot the wrong animal out of a herd and then search for an excuse for the tiny horns!
The next morning David Allen sent me off in the Landrover with Bunny's old gun bearer, K----- and a young Kikuyu driver to look for Waterbuck on the ranch land, west of the farm. It was fun to be out in Africa with a rifle and no PH, although old K------ knew more about hunting than most licenced professionals. His judgement of trophies proved to be sound as well, which is not something you can say about most trackers who are really only concerned with getting meat on the ground. Unfortunately K-----'s English wasn't too hot but we managed to communicate. He told me he had taken sixteen Bongo with Bunny which at that time were a very rare trophy. When we left the car I was surprised and a bit worried to see that they had brought Jon's precious .270 not the old .300 and I hoped he wouldn't mind me using it without permission. We walked through typical rolling East-African country with open savannah mixed with thorn bush scrub and riverine strips along the dry creeks until we spotted a fine male Waterbuck. He was standing on the edge of some bush, staring out across the grassland, and we stalked him to within 100 yards. I was getting all set to shoot him when K------ put a hand on my arm and indicated where the bull was looking. An even larger Waterbuck was approaching, shaking his head. They circled each other then tussled for a few moments before the first one retreated. The victor stood still at last, so I fired and pole axed him through the base of the neck. I was about to go and have a look at him when K----- pulled me away in the opposite direction. I was perplexed as we ran away from the Waterbuck but then I saw the family of Warthogs that had grabbed K------'s attention. I could see the sow and hoglets on the far side of some bushes but K-----indicated to me to shoot an animal half-hidden in the thorns about fifteen yards away. I couldn't see the head but I aimed as far forward as I could see and fired. The pig was hit too far back and ran quite a long way, so for the first time I saw a really good African tracker in action. K-----led me on a winding route for a few hundred yards before we found the boar dead. Both the Defassa Waterbuck and the Warthog were the best of either species I have taken so far. We returned to base triumphant after what I still consider one of my most satisfactory little hunts.
David had promised us some exciting Sand grouse shooting but we were all more concerned with larger game so there wasn't time to organise a trip to the north just for birds. However, that afternoon he arranged a dove shoot on some nearby wheat fields which had just been harvested. In those days, when my eyes and reflexes and muscle tone were somewhat better than they are now, I could shoot a shotgun with a certain amount of style and I soon knocked down a fair pile of the poor little doves. Eventually they stopped flighting in towards the trees we were hiding under so we packed it in. I would be ashamed to raise a gun towards an African dove today although I still murder Red Grouse which aren't a lot bigger!
The next day I went up Mount Kenya with Bunny Allen and the gunbearers K------ and Merisie. Bunny had an old English double rifle and I was armed with a .416 made by Rigby. Merisie led the way to the glade where we had last seen the small mob of Buffalo but there were no fresh tracks so we climbed higher up the ridge. Suddenly something big and grey spooked in front of us and we charged after it. Bunny was still pretty light on his feet for a battered PH in his seventies and I followed him into the thick stuff thinking we had found the Buffalo. I was taken aback when we came up on our quarry and I realised we were chasing a Black Rhino! There was no way I could afford the trophy fee and I tried to explain that to Bunny. He laughed and said that he had no intention of letting me shoot it but he wanted to give me the experience of hunting a Rhino! Fortunately the Rhino opted out of what could have been an embarrassing engagement.
We went back out into the open when we heard David's plane. He had flown his Cessna up to see if he could spot the Buffalo and we saw him turning in tight circles over a patch of trees about a quarter of a mile away. David dipped his wings when he saw us approaching and then flew home. We could see the Buffalo amongst the trees but the big bull was over the far side. The wind swung around behind us and they spooked and ran across our front with the old boy lumbering behind. I put my rifle up to see if there was a chance of a shot but Bunny pushed the barrel up. He wisely didn't trust an inexperienced and exciteable young client not to try a running shot at an unwounded Dagga Boy. They made it into dense forest and despite tracking them for some time and seeing retreating buffalarses there was no chance of a shot.
So ended my hunt in Kenya, without a buffalo, but with some lovely Plains Game trophies and fantastic memories. I am so grateful now to have seen the last days of hunting in Kenya and heard first-hand stories from Bunny about Bror Blixen and the Prince of Wales's second hunt in 1930. We have a duty to bore our grandchildren with our old stories in the vain hope that they may learn a little and perhaps not repeat our mistakes. I am glad now that my father made me listen when I was very young to an old soldier who described the courage of the "Fuzzy-Wuzzies" as he termed the Mahdi's muslim warriors. He went up the Nile to the relief of Khartoum and saw General Gordon's head on a spike and took part in the battle of Omdurman. 140 years later, neither side has learned much tolerance!
We were driven back down to Nairobi where we picked up a little rental Datsun and drove to the coast via Tsavo National Park. In 1975 it was alive with elephant. Just through the entry gate we had to stop for a group of huge tuskers. I have never seen such elephants since, all 70lb a side plus and the largest probably over 90lb. Two years later, after the hunting ban, Jon went back there and all he saw was columns of smoke where the poachers were burning carcases. Some people said that the Kenyatta family, who ruled Kenya then (and now), controlled the poaching gangs and the ivory trade and brought in the ban to deprive the Game Department of most of it's income but I couldn't possibly comment!

Excellent report, I wish I could have seen it!!!

Thanks for sharing.

Wow, what a report and thanks for posting Sir.

To me, and I am sure to others, you experienced a hunting adventure that money could not buy
in todays world. Truly an amazing adventure.

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What a wonderful tale, well written and a joy to read.

The early '70s being the same time that my parents and other family were in Nairobi and an uncle with National Parks as a Game Warden. Plenty of fun childhood memories of hunts and jaunts in the parks and a wonderful and very large Grevys stallion hide on the study floor being the only trophy that my father took whilst in Kenya before the ban.

Thank you for posting and sharing!

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Unbelievable. Thanks for taking the time to recollect that story. You really did get in at the tail end of the hunt in Kenya. Your comments on George and Joy Adamson are the same I’ve heard elsewhere. Joy was indeed a talented artist and storyteller, but... Even in George’s own book he very subtly hints that all the fanfare and whatnot regarding the lions was Joy’s deal, not his; he just enjoyed taking care of and being around the lions themselves.

When you went north to the NFD for Grevys and Oryx, do you remember having to sign in and sign out as you passed through Isiolo? They used to have checkpoints in and out of the NFD that they would reconcile every day.

Thanks again - you truly were there in the good old days.

I love your report and your writing style. Even down to the moniker you have chosen. The way your hunt was conducted by the Allen's sounds a little lackadaisical by them, even for the times. It sounds like the evening entertainment and the stories from an old timer may have more than made up for it however. Thanks for sharing your experience of a different time and place.

When you mention Zimmerman's, it brings back memories. Everyday I walk over a zebra skin, and past other taxidermy done at Zimmerman's. Like you, I also had a bad experience with them. As a youngster I shot a world record. Zimmerman's sent back a shorter model. Unlike you, I have the cape but not the horns. Rowland Ward was right next to your hotel, The New Stanley. Perhaps we both should have used them.

Glad you got to experience hunting Kenya. You are among an elite and shrinking band.

This thread got me looking through photos. I have a photo of Zimmerman's circa 1960's if anyone wants to post it. (posting here falls into the old dog/new trick category for me) Just pm me an email address. If no one wants to post it, that is no problem either.

All the best

quote:

Originally posted by AilsaWheels:
This thread got me looking through photos. I have a photo of Zimmerman's circa 1960's if anyone wants to post it. (posting here falls into the old dog/new trick category for me) Just pm me an email address. If no one wants to post it, that is no problem either.

All the best

I’ll post it. I think you should have my email. Send one, send 100! ;-)

quote:

Originally posted by BaxterB:

quote:

Originally posted by AilsaWheels:
This thread got me looking through photos. I have a photo of Zimmerman's circa 1960's if anyone wants to post it. (posting here falls into the old dog/new trick category for me) Just pm me an email address. If no one wants to post it, that is no problem either.

All the best

I’ll post it. I think you should have my email. Send one, send 100! ;-)

Appreciate it Baxter.

My records of our emails is confusing and I am trying to sort them out. I just emailed you Zimmerman's photo, so hopefully you should have it.

Amazing story and well written. Please tell me you wrote that from your hunt journal, as I barely remember what I did last week!

A couple pictures from AlisaWheels:

Zimmermans:





And the New Stanley:

quote:

Originally posted by BaxterB:
A couple pictures from AlisaWheels:

Zimmermans:





And the New Stanley:

Appreciate your help Baxter. You're great.

The hotel photo is a stock photo, it is not mine. Hopefully this helps give a little better perspective, although both these photos would have been prior to 1975.

Hope you don't feel I am trying to hijack you're report Pom. That is certainly not my intention.

All the best.

Pom,

That was wonderful! I am so envious of you being able to partake in that bygone era.

Cheers,

Mark

Excellent read. Thanks for sharing.

great story

Names are always a bugger, and the spelling of some names passes me also. That is why some are give a shorter nick name. Like #2 as my PH could not spell one assistant tracker name also so we called him #2.

Bunny Allen...what else do you need to say about an outstanding account of a bygone era!

Thank you for posting the events from your wonderful Kenyan safari! What a refreshing trip down memory lane.

Most excellent.

Thank you for posting Pom. A wonderful story!

What an awesome read.

Thank you for sharing!

Thank you kindly sir for the report. What a soul enriching experience.

Too bad that we as a human race...allowed/fomented the demise of such game velds.

Such great stories! So well told and fun to read. Thanks for taking the time to write them down and share them with us.

The term "good old days" is overused in daily life, but not in this case. Kenya was a magical place in the hunting and natural world.

We hunters must never forget.

Nor should we let politicians in other game-rich nations ever forget how severely Kenyan big game populations have declined since the Kenyan government banned hunting in 1977.

Sad to say, but often the "good old days" are deemed so much better than the present only because of intervening human greed and stupidity.

Thanks, again, for sharing these wonderful memories.