Much can be said about hunting in East Africa for big game, but the truth is by a long stretch more hunters come to Namibia. The draw is the great variety of game, including buffalo, leopard, lion, huge elephant, and rhino as well as all sorts of antelope. In fact, Namibia is now only one of two countries left where the entire Big Five can be shot-and that includes the black rhino!
Brad Fitzpatrick, together with the Namibian Professional Hunter's Association, has interviewed the finest of the finest Namibian PHs and got each to give us their most interesting, exciting, or dangerous hunt. There are thirty-two chapters in all on a great variety of game. There's a story of an exciting hunt after a red hartebeest that takes no less than ten miles of tracking over rough ground; there's another story of a Polish client who suddenly gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shoot a problem lion with a huge mane near Etosha Park; and then there's a leopard hunter in the Caprivi Strip who has some excitement as the boat they are in is attacked by a hippo. But there's more: An elephant hunter near the Kavango River has to immerse himself up his armpits in water with his rifle above his head as he follows a group of bulls from one brush-choked island to the next-and this incurs a deadly serious charge. Then there's the tale of a PH who takes his client on a grueling days-long game of cat and mouse with two huge cattle-killing male lions that craftily move between Botswana, Namibia, the protection of a park, and a small village; each time the hunter and the PH come oh-so-close, the twins slink off in the no-go-zone...until the hour of reckoning arrives.
The contributors to this book are a who's who in professional hunting in Namibia: Allan Cilliers, Jofie Lamprecht, Cornie Coetzee, Jaco van der Merwe, Jacques Strauss, Hannes du Plessis, John Wamback, Dirk de Bod, and many more. From a dangerous boomslang to a crazed hartebeest, all the game of Namibia is covered! As Craig Boddington, who wrote the foreword, said, "Namibia truly has it all." It's about time some good literature on Namibia was made available.
