Men for All Seasons and Legendary Ladies (Rowland Ward)

The word safari conjures up images of excitement, adventure, romance, new places, and interesting people. This book is the story of the people who are the principal actors on the great stage of the safari scene—the professional hunters. In the early part of the twentieth century, many of these hunters were amateurs who had fallen into the job more by chance than deliberation; however, the field attracted certain personalities, and many of these amateurs evolved into stellar professionals. From the very beginning these men demonstrated the qualities of enterprise and leadership far in excess of their duties as stewards to their safaris.

Tony Dyer is one of these professionals. And if ever there was a man equal to the task of writing this definitive work on the subject, that man is Anthony Dyer, long respected and second longest serving president of the East African Professional Hunters’ Association. He has been involved in the wildlife industry his whole life and knew many of the people he writes about personally. From the well-known legends like Bror Blixen to the lesser known but equally as illustrious and fascinating loners and romantics, all the characters that made hunting in East Africa so special are here in Tony’s book. There are chapters on Philip Percival, Bill Judd, Alan Black, Bill Ryan, Andy Anderson, the Cottars, and many more.

To paraphrase Karen Blixen, Africa's game fields can teach you that God and the devil can be one. If there ever was a big-game hunting area that could only be described by the legends who hunted and pushed game boundaries to their limits, then that area is East Africa. This not-to-be-missed firsthand account of East African hunting and the personalities who made the area so famous also contains stories about those men and women whose careers were cut short when the animals took revenge on the hunter.