Horn of the Hunter
It is very likely that Robert Ruark intended all along to write the nonfiction account of his first safari that eventually became Horn of the Hunter. To a writer, anything and everything that occurs in his life is potential subject matter, whether for a book or a newspaper column. So it is hard to imagine that Ruark, the freelance writer, would embark on such a major undertaking without planning to turn it into a book; at the very least, the safari would become tax deductible. No matter what he had in mind when he left New York with his wife, Virginia, in June, 1951, it is unlikely that Ruark imagined in his wildest dreams that he was embarking on a whole new chapter in his life — that the account of the safari would become a hunting-world bestseller and the catalyst that would transform his career and inspire thousands of other Americans to travel to Africa. But that is precisely what happened.
The history of African hunting can be traced back, link by link, through a chain of men who traveled, hunted, explored, and returned home to write about it, to be read by young men who traveled in their turn, and wrote themselves, and were read themselves, and inspired the next generation. This chain goes all the way back to William Cornwallis Harris, the English army officer who hunted in southern Africa in the 1830s, wrote The Wild Sports of Southern Africa, and was read by Frederick Courteney Selous. Selous’s books inspired Theodore Roosevelt, Roosevelt’s African Game Trails enchanted Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway hunted in East Africa in the 1930s and wrote about the adventure in Green Hills of Africa, and that caused Robert Ruark to add himself to the list. The study of who inspired whom, and to do what, is a fascinating pastime in itself.
Green Hills of Africa is a book that is largely misunderstood. Professional hunters hate it, because they think it portrays Philip Percival poorly and glorifies Hemingway’s own accomplishments when in fact he was merely one of that despised breed, the client. Hunters who read it as a hunting story find endless fault with it, for reasons geographical and zoological. The fact is, however, Hemingway never intended it to be a factual account of an African safari per se. It was a piece of experimental literary writing, an attempt to portray fact in novel form and to see if reality could be made into literature. Hence the reason the characters are not named: The professional hunter becomes Pop and the wife becomes P.O.M. (Poor Old Mama), while the real-life hunting partner, Charles Thompson, becomes Karl and the second professional hunter is known only as Dan. If the book fails, it fails as a piece of experimental writing. Conversely, some critics in the hook-and-bullet press who hail Green Hills as one of Hemingway’s greatest works really need to get out more. It is neither a great hunting book, nor a great piece of literature, nor a particularly successful piece of experimental writing. It has been, on the other hand, a perennial bestseller, for which the Hemingway estate is undoubtedly grateful.
This, however, was the competition Ruark was facing as he left for his first safari, and it was formidable competition indeed. Ernest Hemingway was then at the peak of his career, in spite of the poor reception accorded Across the River and into the Trees, his first postwar novel, which appeared in 1950. Two years later, he rebounded with The Old Man and the Sea, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. All of this literary heavy-hitting occurred around the time Ruark published Horn of the Hunter, and comparisons with Hemingway were inevitable.
Throughout his later career, Ruark was forced to endure constant comparison with Hemingway for his lifestyle, his subject matter, his interests in life, even his physical appearance. Almost without exception, he came out on the short end and the resentment built up. To a great extent, however, Ruark helped fuel this, and it began with Horn of the Hunter. For example, in the book he makes a major point of the fact that he was following in Hemingway’s footsteps, that he was on safari with Harry Selby, who had apprenticed with Philip Percival, Hemingway’s professional hunter, and about having “the same basic string of blacks” with whom Hemingway had traveled twenty years earlier. From the tone of the writing Ruark’s references read more like homage than competition, but with hindsight he would have been better off going on safari, writing his book, and saying nothing.
At that time, of course, Robert Ruark was best known as a wise-guy syndicated newspaper columnist and author of two anthologies of that column, as well as one rather forgettable spoof of an historical novel, Grenadine Etching. In 1951 he was neither literary man, nor outdoor writer, nor serious novelist; it could be argued that he was not really a serious anything, professionally speaking, until he wrote Horn of the Hunter. It was a book that made Harry Selby, for good or ill (there are conflicting opinions), but it undoubtedly also made Robert Ruark: It was the cornerstone of his career and set the stage for everything he was to become.
In a note at the beginning, Ruark says Horn of the Hunter is “a book about Africa in which I have tried to avoid most of the foolishness, personal heroism, and general exaggeration which usually attend works of this sort.” To a great extent he succeeded. Ruark the hunter learns as he goes along; Ruark the shooter improves with practice. He stands his ground when he has to and earns the respect of his young professional hunter, Harry Selby, who turns twenty-six during the safari; Ruark was just ten years older, although the tone of the book implies that, even then, Ruark was an old man compared to the boyish Selby.
Anyone who has read any of Ruark’s newspaper columns from the late 1940s, or any of the three books he had published by 1952 (Grenadine Etching, I Didn’t Know It Was Loaded, and One For The Road) will immediately notice the radically different writing style in Horn of the Hunter. It is simple and sincere, with an easy style that is eminently readable. It is witty, occasionally hilarious, sometimes serious, sometimes philosophical, but never heavy or ponderous. Occasionally, Ruark delves into his memory to recall incidents from his childhood, or from the war; in fact, until The Honey Badger, this is the only place where he wrote much about his experiences in the Navy, on the North Atlantic convoy run or in the Mediterranean. He reflects on the meaning of fear and on the need to earn respect. Very little of his own personal circumstances, his psychological state, or the precarious state of his marriage intrude on the almost idyllic account of his first safari.
In the introduction to his anthology Robert Ruark’s Africa, Michael McIntosh described Ruark on that safari as a man “pursued by demons,” whose physical health was failing from the strains of a life of living hard, drinking lots, and staying out late in Manhattan. Harry Selby, reading McIntosh’s description many years later, said he had hit the nail on the head. Although Ruark himself does not give any details about his physical and psychological condition when he stepped off the plane in Nairobi, he certainly explains with considerable satisfaction how his weight dropped, his endurance increased, and his overall well-being improved on a steady diet of angry Cape buffalo, hard-biting tsetse flies, and a regimen of walking many stony miles up hill and down dale. By implication, if he was that much improved at the end, he was that much in need of improvement at the beginning.
During the safari Ruark becomes unapologetically worshipful of Selby and reports, almost with satisfaction, that Virginia was half in love with this paragon of PH-ing virtue. Horn of the Hunter received very little in the way of negative criticism when it appeared, and none at all in the years since except for the odd excerpt used in anti-hunting works to condemn the killing of animals for recreation. One of the strangest examples is a case where Ruark reported the effects of a .220 Swift on a hyena in a blunt and unvarnished account, and was then taken to task by Roger Caras in a book published in 1970 called Death as a Way of Life.
Robert Ruark was one of the best newspaper reporters of his time, and he employed his talents as a journalist to the utmost in Horn of the Hunter. This alone sets it apart from most hunting books, which rarely care about such journalistic virtues as telling the whole story, reporting both sides, or getting the names spelled right. Ruark the journalist cared about all of the above and went to great lengths to do so. As a result, the book is almost a manual on how safaris functioned, how they were organized, and who is responsible for what. He examines the role of everyone from the kitchen mtoto to the head skinner and explains the social hierarchy of what was, in effect, a small, mobile community.
This was all very new and fascinating to Ruark. Just as new to him, if not as fascinating, were the rifles he took on that safari: he had a .470 Nitro Express, a .375 H&H Winchester Model 70, a Remington .30-06, and a .220 Swift. Having never fired a rifle at anything except a target at the Campfire Club, or so he wrote, he was apprehensive about his ability to hit anything. When it came to shooting, he was a shotgunner and wingshooter first and foremost. It is hard to imagine any cartridge less suited to any practical purpose in Africa than a .220 Swift, especially with the light, fragile bullets with which the factory ammunition was loaded in the early 1950s, but Ruark, in his innocence, carted one along on the advice of some well-meaning friend.
His experience with the hyena, which is a heavy animal the size of a timber wolf, was exactly what should be expected: a ghastly, gory travesty of wounding and suffering. After nine or so shots, Ruark finished the animal off with the .470. He then committed a cardinal error: He told the truth, in print. It was an honest mistake on his part, taking the .220 Swift in the first place, and he reported the incident exactly as it happened. He condemned the cartridge as a “wounder.” In his book, Roger Caras quotes the gruesome passage as a frontispiece and later in a chapter on the effect of bullets on wild animals. He never explains the context of the incident, nor does he bother to mention its effect on Ruark — that he swore never again to use the .220 Swift “on any animal I respect.” Ironically, although the passage appears first in Horn of the Hunter, it was reproduced in Use Enough Gun, and it was from there that Caras lifted it. Had he paid attention, or been interested in the truth, he would have seen that that was Ruark’s whole point.
At any rate, journalistically Horn of the Hunter is a highly successful work, which is probably the secret of its enduring popularity. It is a book that anyone can learn from, whether he is interested in the nuts and bolts of safari organization, the tribal traits of different Africans, the personal habits of hyenas and Cape buffalo, or the mechanical skills of professional hunters. Ruark never consciously tries to be profound — at least not obviously; profundity is better when unplanned anyway, and there is a considerable amount of truth conveyed in the simple descriptions of people and events Ruark presents. It is a frank book in which mistakes are made on occasion by all concerned. These are reported fairly and honestly, without judgment, and there are regrets — for wounded animals that escape, for easy shots missed, for difficult shots that are attempted when they should not be and the results are hard to live with. Anyone who professes to hunt, but who has not endured all of the above at some time or another, has not hunted very much. Bad things happen. What you have to do is learn to forgive yourself and then do your best to ensure they do not happen again.
The central theme of Green Hills of Africa was Hemingway’s pursuit of a greater kudu, and not surprisingly, Ruark makes the greater kudu — or rather, the hunting of same — central to Horn of the Hunter as well. In the end, Hemingway shoots two wonderful kudu, only to return to camp to find his friend Karl has killed one that makes his look like dwarves. In Ruark and Selby’s case, they stalked a greater kudu and shot him with the sun behind him, only to find that they misjudged the horns and shot a kudu that would have been magnificent when he reached maturity, but was now just an immature bull with one and a half curls. The meat will still be good, and the hide will make a nice coat for Virginia, Selby says lamely; in bitter atonement, Ruark dines on pork and beans out of a can, and that afternoon they go out with the shotguns to shoot sand grouse.
If Ruark has an obsession in the book to match Hemingway’s, it is for the Cape buffalo, of which he shoots two. And it is while he is on his knees in the long grass, frightened out of his mind because of the proximity of numerous buffalo, that he mutters the immortal words, “God damn Ernest Hemingway.” Interestingly enough, although he hunted buffalo for the rest of his African career, the animal that became his personal favorite was the leopard.
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Horn of the Hunter was published in 1953 by Doubleday & Co. It contained thirty-two pages of photographs and thirty-two original drawings by the author. Most, if not all, of these drawings were copies of photographs, many of which were also reproduced in the book. It was later printed in paperback and remained in print in softcover until at least the late 1960s. By any measure, it is one of the most successful non-fiction hunting books ever written. As Ruark’s fame as a novelist waned in the 1970s, his reputation as a hunting writer gained lustre, and his non-fiction works became highly sought-after by hunters, readers, and collectors. First editions of Horn of the Hunter commanded a premium on the secondary market. In 1987, Safari Press reprinted the book with the permission of the Ruark estate.
As a hunting book, it has had a serious, long-lasting influence. More than any other book, it inspired hunters to go to Africa to hunt in the 1950s and 60s. Even today, according to photo-safari guides in Kenya and Tanzania, their clients often arrive with a copy of the book in their luggage, and almost everyone who goes on safari has read it. In his later years, Ruark occasionally referred to himself as the godfather of the postwar safari industry; the statement was mostly true, and it was mostly due to Horn of the Hunter.
Not all of the book’s influence was good, however. The law of unintended consequences kicked in, most obviously in the case of Harry Selby. At the time, Selby was just one more young PH working with the respected but not extraordinary firm of Ker & Downey, a company that was started after the Second World War by Donald Ker and Sydney Downey. In the early 1950s the crop of young professional hunters in Kenya included many names that became famous, including Selby, Andrew Holmberg, Tony Henley, Tony Dyer, and John Sutton. When Ruark booked his safari, he could just as easily have gone with anyone on that list, and just as easily written most of the same things about them as he did about Selby. His descriptions of Selby, from his physical appearance to his mastery of every situation, whether it was replacing a broken axle, facing down a charging lioness, or driving at full speed across a plain strewn with pig-holes, is frankly hero-worship. There is not a single negative word about Selby in the entire book. What’s more, having written Horn of the Hunter, Ruark went on to write about Selby in various magazine articles. Selby himself went to New York the year after the first safari to visit the Ruarks on their home ground. Altogether, Harry Selby became an international celebrity courtesy of Robert Ruark’s prolific pen.
“Harry Selby made Ker & Downey, and Robert Ruark made Harry Selby,” was a line I heard more than once while interviewing people in Kenya who are still associated with the safari business. Many of them are still guiding for Ker & Downey, which is now the pre-eminent photo-safari company in East Africa and one of the most famous names in safari history. Much of this renown is due to Robert Ruark.
The effect on Harry Selby was a mixed blessing. While his bookings increased dramatically, and going on safari with him became a status symbol for international hunting clients, there was no little amount of resentment from his colleagues in the business. More senior professional hunters resented the fame and fortune that he had been handed, as they saw it, by fortuitous circumstance; what’s more, the attention and acclaim drove a wedge between Selby and the other young hunters of his age group, men that he went to school with, apprenticed with, and with whom he would normally have remained friends and colleagues throughout his career. Harry Selby himself says the benefits were a two-edged sword and that he sometimes feels he would have been better off, overall, had Ruark never written the things he did. His close friend, Joe Coogan, a professional hunter with Safari South during the 1980s, reflected that Harry Selby was cut off from the other young hunters of his age group by the Ruark connection, and that personally (as opposed to professionally) it did Selby no good.
All of this, of course, is speculation — what might have been instead of what was. Aside from the publicity that made Selby one of the most sought-after guides in Nairobi, Ruark later took a hand in the management of Selby’s career. He persuaded him to leave Ker & Downey and form his own safari company in partnership with Andrew Holmberg; many young hunters left with him and went to work for Selby & Holmberg, including John Sutton, Reggie Destro, and Mike Rowbotham. Some years later, Selby left that partnership and returned to Ker & Downey, using the leverage of his considerable prestige to have his name added to the marque. The venerable company became Ker, Downey & Selby — and that also added to the resentment, this time on the part of older, more experienced hunters who felt they had just as good a claim to partnership. It can be argued that Harry Selby enjoyed the most fabled career of any postwar professional hunter because of Robert Ruark, but it can be argued just as strongly that, in the final analysis, Robert Ruark did him no favors.
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Late in life Robert Ruark referred to Horn of the Hunter as a particular pet of his, even after his major novels. This may have been due to the unpretentious, thoroughly honest, and highly personal nature of the book, or because it was his first really serious venture into book writing. Whatever the reason, it occupied a special place in his heart.
As a book about an African safari, it is the most influential by far of the post-war period, and one of the best of this century. In fact, there are not many books on hunting in Africa that can compare with it journalistically, and certainly not in writing style. As a book about Africa, it is better than Hemingway’s Green Hills (although that is comparing two books with completely different aims); as a book about hunting, and what it is really like to seek and kill an animal, it is better than Roosevelt’s African Game Trails. Where it really shines, however, is as a book about a man’s budding discovery of himself, and in that sense it compares creditably with some great works of literature. It may not be as lofty as Lord Jim, but still it ventures into a different realm than the vast majority of African hunting books.
More than anything else, Horn of the Hunter shows how Ruark discovered those things in life that were genuinely important. He then wrote that story simply, truly, and well, and created his first work of literature.