Roosevelt’s departure for Africa in March 1909 culminated almost a year of planning. The wildlife of Africa had fascinated him since his boyhood days on the Nile; more recently the great beasts of the East African highlands had implicitly challenged his prowess as a hunter.
He had killed the most fearsome animals America had to offer-the cougar and the grizzly bear—but what were these against the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros? “I have never shot dangerous game,” he wrote to Frederick Selous, a famous hunter and explorer with long experience in Africa, “unless you can call the very few grizzly bears I have shot dangerous.” In fact, one certainly could call grizzlies dan-gerous, but Roosevelt realized that he was a mere tyro compared to a veteran of the veldt like Selous. Consequently, he consulted Selous and other experts in laying plans for his safari. “I quite appreciate what you say as to the need of taking a certain number of delicacies on a trip of this kind and traveling in comfort, and anything that you think proper I will take,” he told Selous during the summer of 1908.
He inquired as to the best arma-ments, the optimal pursuit techniques, the appropriate season for the different game species. “People have told me that I can not start with a caravan in the rainy season,” he wrote to an outfitter in Nairobi. “Other people have told me that it is entirely possible and, indeed, that that is a good season.” Where lay truth in the matter? Sensitive to the charge of bloodthirstiness, Roosevelt took pains to cast his safari as a scientific expedition. He pledged his prizes to the Smithsonian museum; the animals, stuffed, would depict the large-mammal life of East Africa to future generations of students and other museum-goers. He explained his strategy to a British official in Kenya: “Except for actual food—and these only to the extent that I am permitted under your general regulations—I shall merely desire to get one specimen, or perhaps one specimen of the male and one of the female of each of the different kinds of game, for the National Museum at Washington.” Only he and his son Kermit would be shooting; the professional naturalists who would join them on the journey would not, as a rule.
Roosevelt noisily warned off journalists who might have wanted to follow him. He declared that he would refuse to talk to any reporter who had the effrontery to try to track him down; pleading the privacy of the ordinary citizen, he demanded to be left alone to hunt in peace. “I do not think any English newspaper men will attempt to follow me, for the English are rather decent in such matters, and if our own people pursue me as they did when I hunted in the West I may be able to get the authorities to intervene until I elude them in the wilds.” He promised to give them the slip-or (half-jokingly) worse. “They will never catch up with me if I get ahead of them once, and if they do in the jungle you may see my expense report to the National Museum read something after this order: ‘One hundred dollars for buying the means to rid myself of one World reporter; three hundred dollars expended in dispatching a reporter of the American; five hundred dollars for furnishing wine to cannibal chiefs with which to wash down a reporter of the New York Evening Post.'”
Source: T.R., The Last Romantic: Pages 642-645
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand was also fond of trophy hunting; so much so that it actually weirded out other monarchs. Franz Josef, Ferdinand’s uncle and Emperor of Austria-Hungary, called him a mass murderer. In his diaries he logged over 272,000 kills, 5,000 of which were deer. He had over a hundred thousand trophies on display at his KonopiÅ¡tÄ› castle.
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There is a shopping list of TR game I’ve seen somewhere.
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Roosevelt’s departure for Africa in March 1909 culminated almost a year of planning. The wildlife of Africa had fascinated him since his boyhood days on the Nile; more recently the great beasts of the East African highlands had implicitly challenged his prowess as a hunter.
He had killed the most fearsome animals America had to offer-the cougar and the grizzly bear—but what were these against the lion, the elephant, the rhinoceros? “I have never shot dangerous game,” he wrote to Frederick Selous, a famous hunter and explorer with long experience in Africa, “unless you can call the very few grizzly bears I have shot dangerous.” In fact, one certainly could call grizzlies dan-gerous, but Roosevelt realized that he was a mere tyro compared to a veteran of the veldt like Selous. Consequently, he consulted Selous and other experts in laying plans for his safari. “I quite appreciate what you say as to the need of taking a certain number of delicacies on a trip of this kind and traveling in comfort, and anything that you think proper I will take,” he told Selous during the summer of 1908.
He inquired as to the best arma-ments, the optimal pursuit techniques, the appropriate season for the different game species. “People have told me that I can not start with a caravan in the rainy season,” he wrote to an outfitter in Nairobi. “Other people have told me that it is entirely possible and, indeed, that that is a good season.” Where lay truth in the matter? Sensitive to the charge of bloodthirstiness, Roosevelt took pains to cast his safari as a scientific expedition. He pledged his prizes to the Smithsonian museum; the animals, stuffed, would depict the large-mammal life of East Africa to future generations of students and other museum-goers. He explained his strategy to a British official in Kenya: “Except for actual food—and these only to the extent that I am permitted under your general regulations—I shall merely desire to get one specimen, or perhaps one specimen of the male and one of the female of each of the different kinds of game, for the National Museum at Washington.” Only he and his son Kermit would be shooting; the professional naturalists who would join them on the journey would not, as a rule.
Roosevelt noisily warned off journalists who might have wanted to follow him. He declared that he would refuse to talk to any reporter who had the effrontery to try to track him down; pleading the privacy of the ordinary citizen, he demanded to be left alone to hunt in peace. “I do not think any English newspaper men will attempt to follow me, for the English are rather decent in such matters, and if our own people pursue me as they did when I hunted in the West I may be able to get the authorities to intervene until I elude them in the wilds.” He promised to give them the slip-or (half-jokingly) worse. “They will never catch up with me if I get ahead of them once, and if they do in the jungle you may see my expense report to the National Museum read something after this order: ‘One hundred dollars for buying the means to rid myself of one World reporter; three hundred dollars expended in dispatching a reporter of the American; five hundred dollars for furnishing wine to cannibal chiefs with which to wash down a reporter of the New York Evening Post.'”
Source: T.R., The Last Romantic: Pages 642-645
Archduke Franz Ferdinand was also fond of trophy hunting; so much so that it actually weirded out other monarchs. Franz Josef, Ferdinand’s uncle and Emperor of Austria-Hungary, called him a mass murderer. In his diaries he logged over 272,000 kills, 5,000 of which were deer. He had over a hundred thousand trophies on display at his KonopiÅ¡tÄ› castle.
There is a shopping list of TR game I’ve seen somewhere.