`THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF A VAGABOND HUNTER` STEN CEDERGREN

"THE ADVENTUROUS LIFE OF A VAGABOND HUNTER" STEN CEDERGREN, SAFARI PRESS, 2002, HARDCOVER, 326 PAGES, COMPLETE INTACT DUSTJACKET, WITH SLIGHT TEAR TO THE TOP EDGE OF THE DUSTJACKET, NO NAMES, INSCRIPTIONS ETC. 

There have been many claims of remarkable adventures in the safari business, but one would be hard pressed to find a life story that can top that of Sten Cedergren. Born in Sweden, in 1919 he set out to become a cowboy at an early age-first stop, Paraguay. Next he joined the United States Army to fight in Korea-even though he was a Swedish citizen! After further roaming, he landed in Kenya at a time when most Europeans still carried a handgun in the streets of Nairobi. He eventually joined White Hunters Ltd., in addition to doing elephant control work. During his career Sten was clobbered several times by members of the Big Five, but he never considered it necessary to be treated at a hospital-a tidbit that gives insight into the character of this remarkable man. In 1977 when Kenya closed hunting, he did not part for quieter venues, but joined the bushwar in Rhodesia where he stalked and killed terrorists in Mozambique when he was a young 58. After Rhodesian independence, he took up hunting again.

Sten 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 Africas 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 retells several of his tales that also include James Sutherland. He also met and went to work as a game-control officer for the game catcher John Taylor, and Chris Satertwaith who operated north of Nakuru added many insights, good and bad, into his life.