He was indeed a fearless young chap, globetrotting and travelling into remote areas as a teenager, with basically no support.
I too have speculated on his upbringing, with no parents and only older brothers and sisters in a large stately home.
Plainly he was unhappy at home, and attacking seniors with a cricket bat as a ten year old, and running away from schools constantly does point to something other than innocent wanderlust. But I can't say if he came from a strict or even violent household, equally possibly he may have been governed with a very light hand and he may have just got away with murder as a young man
His last 'elephant' rifle was a Springfield take-down in .318 Westley Richards with a ghost ring aperture sight. This rifle was bought for a return to Africa in 1939 by aeroplane, but WW2 came up and the trip was cancelled.
The famous take-down Rigby Mauser pictured above was bought for the motor vehicle trip with the Forbess in 1923 (take-down rifles, to English sportsmen anyway, at that time were marketed specifically for packing and carrying by vehicle, so it makes sense.)
As Starman pointed out above, Bell wrote there was no serious hunting down on that trip, and it could well be that the elephant shot by Gail Selby in the photograph was the only elephant that rifle has shot. We can never know - unless he wrote more about that trip in this new book that is coming out.
Out of personal interest I would like to read more about what he wrote about red deer stalking in Scotland. I have his article about the neck shot, but he did write something more of it, I have seen the manuscript pages listed in an auction, from memory it was a description of the stalking season of 1928.
