Frederick Courteney Selous

The Boone and Crockett Club has brought back to life Frederick Courteney Selous' epic African adventure in a meticulously remastered, high-quality paperback edition. Follow noted adventurer Selous as he spends nine years amongst the game of the far interior of South Africa as a professional hunter beginning in 1871 at the young age of 20. In his preface he notes, "...my pages are naturally chiefly devoted to the ferae naturae amongst which I have been constantly living. Some of my conclusions with regard to lions, rhinoceroses, or other animal, may differ from those arrived at by other men equally competent to give an opinion; but, at all events, they are the result of a long personal experience of the beasts themselves, and have not been influenced in any way by the often unreliable stories of 'old hunters.' I have only to add that in the following pages I have done my best to express myself in plain, intelligible English; and if I have not succeeded in this respect as well as I could wish, I trust that my shortcomings will be leniently judged when it is remembered that the last nine years of my life have been passed amongst savages, during which time I have not undergone the best training for a literary effort." Selous delivers with a very entertaining and informative manuscript that will delight hunters, adventurers, and sportsmen of today. "A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa" is a part of the B&C Classics series launched in 2012 by the Boone and Crockett Club. Each book in the series was authored by a member of B&C in the late 1800s or early 1900s and was hand-selected by a committee of vintage hunting literature experts. Readers will be taken back to a time when hunting trips didn't happen over a weekend, but were adventures spanning weeks, months, even years.

A narrative of nine years spent amongst the game of the far interior of South Africa containing accounts of explorations beyond the Zambesi, on the river Chobe, and in the Matabele and Mashuna countries, with full notes upon the natural history and present distribution of all the large mammalia

Frederick Courteney Selous (1851–1917) was a British explorer, officer, hunter, and conservationist, famous for his work in south-east Africa. In early 1882 he embarked on an eleven-year expedition to record species that, to his great sadness, were becoming endangered. First published in 1893, these revealing memoirs document the wildlife, landscapes and people that characterised his journey. Through vivid descriptions and extensive illustrations, he recalls exhilarating adventures with lions, leopards, hyenas and crocodiles, recounts challenging treks across lakes and mountains, and describes hostile - and at times barbaric - encounters with native peoples. Detailed accounts of hunting endeavours, colonial institutions, and commercial enterprises such as gold mining, also feature in this study, which provides a unique and diverse perspective on Africa in the late nineteenth century. Insightful and revealing, Selous' experiences remain of enduring interest to geographers, anthropologists, zoologists, and all those interested in African history and culture.