White Hunter - Rise of The Hunting Safari

Rise of The Hunting Safari

Around the start of the 20th century, East African hunting safaris became a fashionable pursuit among members of the privileged classes, particularly in Britain and the United States. The completion of the Uganda Railway in 1901 provided easier access to the interior highlands of British East Africa (now Kenya), where large game, especially elephants, lions, Cape Buffalo and rhinoceros, was plentiful. The white hunter served these paying customers as guide, teacher, and protector.

Typically, the hunter was hired or booked by an outfitting company (the first and most famous of these was Newland, Tarlton & Co. in Nairobi); the outfitter would make the local arrangements, gathering and packing supplies and hiring the many African workers without whom a safari was impossible. Porters, tent attendants, armed guards (known as askaris), horse-trainers, and gun-bearers, all worked under the supervision of a "headman." Before the mass importation of motor vehicles, most safaris traveled on foot and horseback and could employ anywhere from 50 to several hundred African workers.

The British colonial government also turned big-game hunting into a source of revenue, charging the tourists and hunters licensing fees for permission to kill the game animals. In 1909, a £50 hunting license in the East Africa Protectorate entitled its purchaser to kill 2 buffaloes, 2 hippos, 1 eland, 22 zebras, 6 oryxes, 4 waterbucks, 1 Greater Kudu, 4 Lesser Kudus, 10 topis, 26 hartebeests, 229 other antelope, 84 colobus monkeys, and unlimited lions and leopards (lions and leopards killed livestock and were classified as vermin).