GAMEMASTERS OF THE WORLD

A Chronicle of Sport Hunting and Conservation

by Chris Klineburger

The name Klineburger is synonymous with the era of international big-game hunting following WW II. From a humble beginning in Arizona, the three Klineburger brothers—Gene, Chris, and Bert—built up one of the world’s largest hunting agencies and taxidermy firms in the world. They are also credited with opening hunting in many different countries, and in the process they did an extraordinary amount of hunting for themselves.

Brother Chris had never written a book until now, and it is a whopper: over 700 pages with scores of photos and a host of interesting tales. In the late 1950s, Chris lived for a season with the Eskimos in the frozen north learning how they hunted and fished. Equally at home in high diplomatic circles, he knew the right people and had the right connections to help him open up Afghanistan for Marco Polo sheep hunting in the late 1960s. Both Africa and Asia saw the Klineburger brothers arrive dozens and dozens of times--whether to help open Uganda to sport hunting or to try to set up exploratory hunts in China and the Soviet Union.

Some of Chris’s tales include his quest for a Grand Slam. This journey encompassed no less than seven hunts for bighorn and persisted till he finally got one. Then there is the story of the months he spent in the Pamirs looking for a markhor and a Marco Polo sheep. Chris has hunted as widely as just about any person of his time, and he brings us his experiences from a unique point of view—that of a person who has first hand knowledge of the many venues available to modern sport hunters . . . because he and his brothers were the ones who organized and helped open many of these places for hunting. Whether it was a client who died on a high mountain hunt in Asia or guiding the king of Nepal, Chris has lived through some of the most interesting moments in hunting since WW II.