Hemmingway and Ruark have a new hunting partner.<\/p>\n
Harry Selby passed away on Saturday at the age of 92.<\/a><\/p>\n I’ve touched briefly on Selby in the past<\/a>, but more in the context of Ruark. So please indulge me:<\/p>\n Mr. Selby was a postwar prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of the East Africa hunter Philip Hope Percival, who took Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway on safaris, and he became a professional hunter himself in the late 1940s. He took the American author Robert Ruark on safari in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), and with the 1953 publication of Ruark\u2019s best-selling book \u201cHorn of the Hunter,\u201d Mr. Selby became one of Africa\u2019s most famous hunting guides.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n …<\/p>\n Without cellphones or evacuation helicopters, Mr. Selby had to be the doctor, mechanic, chauffeur, gin-rummy-and-drinking partner and universal guide, knowledgeable about mountain ranges, grassy plains, rivers, jungles, hunting laws, migratory patterns, and the Bushmen, Masai, Samburu, Dinka and Zulu tribes. He spoke three dialects of Swahili. And he improvised; if there was no firewood, he burned wildebeest dung.<\/a> …<\/p>\n For 30 years, Mr. Selby ran company operations in Botswana, and guided hunters and photographers into leased concessions covering thousands of square miles in the Okavango Delta in the north and the vast Kalahari Desert in the south, home of the click-talking Bushmen. He cut tracks and built airfields in the wilderness.<\/a> Noted actor Bradford Dillman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Dillman played prominent roles in \u201cThe Enforcer\u201d and \u201cSudden Impact,\u201d the third and fourth films in the \u201cDirty Harry\u201d series, and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1975 for his work on the TV series \u201cThe ABC Afternoon Playbreak.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n He was “Capt. McKay” in “The Enforcer” and “Captain Briggs” (not to be confused with Hal Holbrook’s “Lt. Briggs” in “Magnum Force”) in “Sudden Impact”. As we all know, Callahan went through captains like CNN goes through Russian conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n And finally, more of local interest: Hisako Tsuchiyama Roberts<\/a>. Mrs. Roberts and her husband, Thurman, founded the Salt Lick barbecue restaurant in Driftwood, a little outside of Austin.<\/p>\n
\nHe was no Gregory Peck, but had an easygoing personality that made for good company in the bush. He coped with emergencies, pulling a client clear of a stampede or a vehicle from a bog, treating snakebites or tracking a wounded lion in a thicket \u2014 his most dangerous game. He was left-handed, but his favorite gun was a right-handed .416 Rigby, which can knock down an onrushing bull elephant or Cape buffalo in a thundering instant.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nIn 1970, he established Botswana\u2019s first lodge and camps for photographic safaris. He hired guides and a large support staff for what became a dominant safari business in Southern Africa. After Ker, Downey and Selby was bought by Safari South in 1978, he remained a director, and even after resigning in 1993 he continued to lead safaris privately until retiring in 2000.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n