The Professional Hunters

The title "professional hunter" carries the great weight of more than a century of safari tradition, started in 1909-10 by Theodore Roosevelt's professional hunter, R.J. Cunninghame, and continued today by grizzled veterans and eager youngsters in the more than one dozen African countries open to hunting. To anyone with African experience, it means one thing and one thing only: a person who guides visiting sportsmen on hunting safaris. In this context, it's often shortened to "PH." But it's not a title easily come by. A PH must be licensed by a game department, and in most African countries, that means a long apprenticeship and exhaustive testing. It carries responsibility, too, because it implies that the person can organize a camp, fix a broken vehicle, accurately judge an impala at 400 yards and stop a charging buffalo at several feet.

A list of "all-time great" African hunters would have to include names like Selous, Harris, Oswell, Baker, Sutherland, Bell and many more. But the Roosevelt safari established the tradition that the role of the professional hunter is based upon. As such, it was easy for me to choose the three greatest professional hunters of all time: Philip Percival, J.A. Hunter and Harry Selby. Perhaps too easy, because, truthfully, who can really say who was the best? Even so, I'm comfortable with my list because these three have stood the test of time, and what makes them stand out is the international recognition they've achieved. All three played a major role in defining our concept of "professional hunter."

PHILIP HOPE PERCIVAL, 1886-1966

Philip Percival's fame was the result of being in the right place at the right time--twice. In 1909, when Percival was but twenty-three, Kenya settler Sir Alfred Pease hosted the Roosevelt safari at his home in Kitanga, Kenya, where they planned to hunt lion on the nearby plains. Pease engaged the Hill cousins, both already famous lion hunters, and young Percival for the hunt. The Roosevelt safari changed Percival's life.

He was a seasoned professional hunter approaching his middle years when, a quarter-century later, he had his second brush with immortality: He guided Ernest Hemingway and became part of literature as "Pop" in The Green Hills of Africa (1935). They were both much older when Hemingway returned to Africa and hunted again with Percival twenty years later. That encounter can be found in Hemingway's posthumously published True at First Light.

Philip Percival traveled to British East Africa in 1906. He was the younger brother of Blayney Percival (Game Ranger's Notebook, 1924), game ranger and the first game warden of Kenya (1915-1923). Philip tried his hand at ostrich farming, but after the Roosevelt safari, he went into the safari business and never looked back.

At the beginning of Percival's career, a safari was a lengthy affair requiring weeks of travel by ship just to get to the starting point. At the end of his career, he met his clients at the Nairobi airport. Established early and universally respected, he became one of the highest-paid professional hunters of his day. Some of his famous clients included Baron Rothschild, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught and actor Gary Cooper. He worked with pioneer filmmakers Martin and Osa Johnson and George Eastman and was a great friend of explorer/naturalist Carl Akely.

One of his early partners in the safari business was Bror Blixen, husband of Karen Blixen (Out of Africa). In later years he mentored a whole generation of professional hunters, including Sid Downey and Harry Selby. He was acknowledged by his peers as the Dean of Professional Hunters and was elected to thirty-four consecutive terms as president of the East African Professional Hunters Association.