God Created Man the Hunter

This is the first big game hunting memoir book in a series of six. God Created Man the Hunter chronicles the author’s development as a game ranger and big game hunter in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). By the time he was twenty, besides a goodly score of soft-skinned animals, he had killed six leopards, one elephant and a 14 foot-long crocodile. He hunted these animals on his own and he solved all the problems he encountered by trial and error. He does not project himself as being a fearless young man who had the capacity, then, to hunt down these dangerous animals in a gung-ho fashion. The first leopard he shot was the first leopard he had ever seen. The first elephant he shot was the second elephant he had seen. He honestly describes the terrible fears and serious doubts he endured whilst executing these early hunts. In November 1959, aged twenty, he joined Rhodesia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management as a game ranger. He was first posted to the Matopos National Park where, in less than a year, his leopard tally rose to nearly twenty. In October 1960 he was transferred to Main Camp, Hwange National Park. Within three months, in the company of a more senior game ranger who was his mentor, he hunted eighteen elephants, five buffaloes and a hippo; and he had killed one stock-killing lion on his own. These animals were all tracked down with Bushman trackers and shot outside the boundaries of the national park. After January 1961, he began hunting all these dangerous game animals on his own. His confidence grew, in tandem, with his constantly increasing experience. Some of the hunts the author describes in this book will surely be recorded as being amongst the most exciting African big game hunting stories ever told.