Famous elk hunters

Elephant graveyard saying
Elephant graveyard true story
Bell of africa

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WMD " Karamoja " Bell and his rifle maker

“Karamojo Bell “, a name anyone with even a slight interest in rifle marksmanship will have heard of .

Walter Maitland Dalrymple Bell was a truly remarkable product of the Victorian age . His autobiography ,”Bell of Africa “ published posthumously , should be read , whether you have an interest in Africa , Big Game and adventure , or not . He lived at least 9 lives in one and opens what appears to be an honest , no frills door on the last knockings of colonilisation of the last remote corners of “the dark continent “

The great game warden Bruce Kinloch met and stayed with Bell in 1950 , an account of that stay is contained within " The Shamba Raiders " by Kinloch and will throw more light on the man at the centre of this story who , as you'll read , built light weight 318 s for Bell , however i digress from this previously untold account

This young Walter Bell ventured into what was regarded as the dangerous and hostile territory of “Karamoja “ in North east Uganda in 1901 when he was just 21 . He proved to the indi

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The Great “Karamojo” Bell

Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell was ruined for civilized living by reading books. It happens. Some of us take a perilous step in our youth, crack a Will Henry tale, or read Allan W. Eckert and Vardis Fisher and we’re never the same…

Born in 1880, young Bell fed himself on the dime novel heroics of Dead Shot Dick . On the strength of that infatuation, he left his Scottish home for the Dakota Territory. Poorly equipped, broke and inexperienced, he made it only as far as the train station. He was seven years old.

Young Bell’s literary tastes evolved — to the works of Sir William Gordon-Cumming, one of the early prototypes of the British gentleman hunter in Africa.

“Had my guardians realized what Gordon-Cumming’s writings would do to me, they would have bought and destroyed every available copy of his works in a hundred-mile radius.”

Bell’s mother had died from complications of childbirth when he was just three years old; his father died when he was 14. That left Bell’s siblings in the unenviable position of guardian to a teenager who was determined t

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Every time the question of a bigger rifle or smaller rifle (for any game) springs up, someone’s bound to say it: Karamojo Bell killed a thousand elephants with an .256. No, wait, with a .275. No, wait, he killed 1011 elephants, but only a few with the .256. No, but he was sniping out undisturbed elephants from long distance. Exploits of W.D.M. Bell, Esq., nicknamed “Karamojo” because of being the first European to penetrate the territory of the Karamojo people, became legendary and controversial. Any scientific argument must begin with a study of the sources, so let’s turn to the book that made W. D. M. Bell famous: “The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter”, published in 1923. Our comments will follow.

Chapter II. The Brain Shot at Elephant (extract).

In hunting elephant, as in other things, what will suit one man may not suit another. Every hunter has different methods and uses different rifles. Some believe in the big bores, holding that the bigger the bore therefore the greater the shock. Others hold that the difference between the shock from a bullet of,