Collection of Safari Stories and More

The game is a collection of stories that take place in different places around the world. They are about events and people which will show you what it means to survive in our natural habitat. Play as an explorer or adventurer, be part of this journey!

The “safari deaths per year” is a collection of stories and more. The stories include the death of a child, a woman who was hit by a car, and an old man who died in his sleep.

Chris Hutcheson, a past guest writer and now official Art of Manliness contributor, contributed this piece. Josh Parchman, a friend of his, assisted him with the research for this essay. Thank you, Josh.

Hutch, welcome! With you on board, the site becomes even more manly.

“Nowhere on Earth (or maybe in space) can the senses and emotions wallow in such a confluence of stimuli as those found in the African bush: Flies, the groan of a sway-bellied lion abandoning his kill in the carmine morning, the hacksaw rasp of a leopard in the night, and the bowel-freezing scream of a bull elephant catching your wind The fragrance of sweat-lacquered black skins mingled with the smoke of fading mopane fires; the wild, fragrant decay of buffalo dung; the strange, heady cloy of cordite; and the conglomerate of crimson, sun-raped dust mixed with powdered bits of crushed, dry, golden grass “The whorish influence of jasmine and the buzzing oozing, creeping rot of flesh.”

-Capstick The Last Adventure on Safari, Peter Hathaway

No great experience sticks out more strongly in the minds of men of the past than the hunting safari. The vision of racing through the savannah in an open-top Land Rover, scattering a herd of grazing zebra while seeking for the footprints of the lion that died less than a mile from your camp the night before comes to mind. Maybe it’s pushing through grass that grows four feet higher than most men, getting so close to the rhino you’re hunting that you can smell him, but not knowing where to aim your double barreled weapon. For years, stories like this have captivated boys’ imaginations and men’s fantasies.

Although a contemporary safari (by rifle or camera) is out of reach for the majority of us, the legends of the safari’s golden period are widely accessible in fiction and non-fiction. Authors including Ernest Hemingway, Peter Hathaway Capstick, Robert Ruark, and even Theodore Roosevelt, the father of manliness, have produced books on the subject. Man-eating lions, elephants pursuing fleeing Land Rovers, hippos assaulting river excursions, and much more can be found inside the pages of these works of male fiction. We are given a look into the life of these guys and the experiences they had in a world that most of us will never see, a world of vast grassland as far as the eye can see or jungle so dense that one cannot see what perils lie ten feet ahead of him. Consider the words of Peter Capstick, one of the most influential writers on the topic in the twentieth century:

“There’s a rush of adrenaline when you’re on safari. And there’s terror. There’s the satisfaction of successfully completing a stalk. There’s also the fear of doing it wrong or shooting poorly, resulting in a blur of rushing lions or an avalanche of elephants crashing down on your neck in an instant, tourist board or no tourist board. There will be the sweltering heat, the piercing fingers of cold, the bliss of fatigue, and the dry, cicada-filled hours of boredom when it’s too hot to hunt and you may bask in your own juices for the early afternoon. There will be little squabbles and victories, as well as disappointments and joy. And, if nothing else (I like “but”), there will be adventure.”

Capstick Safari: The Last Adventure – Peter Hathaway

Following Theodore Roosevelt’s 1909 excursion over most of East and Central Africa, safari literature and the safari itself gained popularity in Europe and the United States. Roosevelt killed around 500 great game creatures on this voyage, which he justified in the name of research by giving the skins to the Smithsonian Institute and partner museums, who were all but forced to take them. Because most people consider Theodore Roosevelt’s life to be the peak of manliness, it’s worth recalling what he said about hunting:

“Finding and killing game is just a small portion of the hunting experience. The untamed surroundings, the vast majesty of the countryside, the opportunity to study the ways and habits of forest creatures-all of these combine to give the wilderness hunter’s job its unique appeal. The hunt is one of the finest of all national sports; it cultivates that strong manliness that no other attributes can possibly compensate for in a country or an individual.”

Roosevelt, Theodore

We might experience the excitement of the hunt that Roosevelt so eloquently described by joining these brave men of the past on their exploits as documented in safari literature. Many of the best safari authors, such as Rourke and Capstick, use simple but vivid language in the vein of Hemingway, where the fewest number of words provoke the biggest feelings. When reading about the tracking of a man-eater who is almost certainly pursuing you, or the anxious minutes before the shot is fired on a gigantic cape buffalo capable of delivering you to your creator with a single charge, it’s easy to get caught up in the tale and feel as if you’re truly there. A good example is Capstick’s account of pursuing a bull elephant:

“As he draws closer, you’ll realize there’s no way you can get away from his six tons of murder.” With his deceptive shuffle, he can easily outpace the quickest sprinter, and if you’re thinking of climbing a tree, don’t bother. He’ll either personally knock you out or get up a few of pals to join in the fun. You may as well ignore it if 12,000 pounds of screaming, shrieking, enraged elephant bearing down on you has unsettled your nerves to the point that you miss the six-by-four inch place on his forehead. Even the world’s most accomplished mortuary cosmetician couldn’t rewire you such that your own mother could tell whether you were facing up or down.”

Peter H. Capstick (Peter H. Capstick) (Peter H. Capstick) (P In the Long Grass, Death

For anyone interested in this most exhilarating of literary genres, we’ve put up a “starting pack” below. These works depict exploration of the remaining wild lands, daring hunts, tribal warfare, and the use of huge quantities of gunpowder by day and scotch by night, spanning a few hundred years of history.

Peter Hathaway Capstick is the author of this piece.

Books:

In the Long Grass, Death

Death in the Shadows is a short story about death in the shadows.

The Dark Continent’s Death

Safari: The Last Adventure

Africa: A Return to the Long Grass, by Peter Capstick

These are only a few examples of Peter Hathaway Capstick’s work, which is often regarded as the best in the genre. His unique ability to make the reader break out in cold sweat while depicting a man-eater stalking is not to be overlooked. Death in the Long Grass, his debut novel, should be read first by anybody interested in the genre, since it is unrivaled in both portraying the excitement of the chase and in its wit. Capstick is an inspiration to individuals who are disillusioned with their mundane life; as a successful Wall Street stock trader in his twenties, he left his job to pursue professional hunting, and he hasn’t looked back.

Theodore Roosevelt was the author of this work.

African Game Trails is a book on African game trails.

What can viewers of this site learn about Teddy Roosevelt that they don’t already know? Roosevelt, the embodiment of manliness, recounts his first African safari, which he took only days after leaving the White House. African Game Trails, according to Peter Capstick:

“Since it first appeared in print, African Game Trails has been a staple item in every collection of hunting Africana. It signifies the success of someone who seeded a fantasy in the American psyche to travel to Africa and experience the hunt, and to bring back attributes that would strengthen the hard-working manliness, love of the outdoors, and strength of individual and country that created America.”

Capstick, Peter Hathaway

Ernest Hemingway is the author of this story.

The Green Hills of Africa is a book on Africa’s green hills.

True from the start (Autobiographical Fiction)

Kilimanjaro is located at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Francis Macomber’s Short Happy Life (Fiction/Short Story)

For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea were penned by Papa Hemingway, who was a master of the written word. He was also a well-known big game hunter who spent a lot of time in East Africa, where he helped the government clear the region of problem animals while also doing his fair share of trophy hunting. Hemingway weaves the story of his life in Africa in The Green Hills of Africa and Under Kilimanjaro, including surviving two different aircraft disasters in the latter. True at First Light is regarded both personal and fictional since Hemingway is said to have mixed recollection and imagination when writing it. Francis Macomber’s The Short Happy Life is one of the best short tales ever written, and it follows a man and his wife on a guided safari, documenting the guy’s fight with timidity and his eventual breakthrough, displaying his real heroism.

Robert Ruark is the author.

Horn of the Hunter is a book about a hunter.

Use a Large Enough Gun

Rourke’s approach has been dubbed “the poor man’s Hemingway,” and it’s all the better for it. Horn of the Hunter tells the story of his first safari, which took place in the early 1950s. Use Enough Gun is a collection of Rourke’s safari tales, some of which were previously published in Horn of the Hunter.

John Henry Patterson is the author.

The Tsavo Man Eaters and Other East African Adventures is a book about the Tsavo Man Eaters.

This 1907 story by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, who was despatched to Kenya by the British East Africa Company to construct a railway bridge across the Tsavo River, is another classic of the type. During construction, a pair of man-eating lions known as the Man Eaters of Tsavo, or the Ghost and the Darkness as the natives named them, often slaughtered employees. Patterson set out to free the employees from this peril, and the result is a gripping narrative. He easily dispatches one unsuspecting man-eater, but this is merely the beginning. The man-eaters’ ability to withstand Patterson’s best-laid strategies seems almost magical until the end. Indeed, one of the man-eaters escaped unharmed after being held behind steel bars and shot at point blank range by professional troops. Patterson mentions this in his book:

“They fired nearly a hundred bullets in all, but only succeeded in blowing off one of the door’s bars, enabling our prize to make good his escape.” How they didn’t murder him several times is, and always will be, a total mystery to me, since their rifle muzzles may have been very next to his corpse.”

Before it was all said and done, the Man Eaters of Tsavo had murdered over 140 employees and wounded many more, thus putting an end to the British Empire’s dominance by halting the railway line’s development. This story was partially inspired on the film The Ghost and the Darkness, starring Val Kilmer.

Jim Corbett is the author of this book.

Kumaon’s Man-Eaters is a book about the Kumaon man-eaters.

Rudraprayag’s Man-Eating Leopard

Although he never wrote about hunting in Africa, Jim Corbett is another genre icon. The majority of Corbett’s exploits took place in India, where he was hired by the government to hunt man-eating tigers and leopards. His first book, The Man-Eaters of Kumaon, is a classic that chronicles his quest for some of history’s most lethal man-eaters, including one tiger that killed over 400 people. The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag tells the story of his hunt for a leopard that killed over 125 people.

The “menstruation while on safari” is a collection of stories and more. The author, who goes by the name of Mimi, wrote these stories with her friends while they were in Africa.