Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa New Karamojo Bell Book

Safari Press is coming out with a new book of previously unpublished stories by WDM Bell.

If you are into African hunting and have never read "Bell of Africa" or "The Karamojo Safari", you missing out on great reading about the most famous ivory hunter of the all.

If you are a fan, check out the upcoming book.

Any idea of the title? His other book, besides the two you mentioned, is "Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter". I love reading Bell's books.

Did you read it yet, Jeff? I had it on my Christmas list, but got a sweater...

You made out like a bandit with the sweater. I got socks and a hankerchief.

I have not read it. I believe it is yet to be released.

Cool! That's one on my wish list!

Ed

You can read??

Incidents from an Elephant Hunter's Diary is already out. I got my copy a few months ago.

I think it's a good read. There are some stories that resemble others already told. It seems that Bell in later years went back and wrote about the same events, but the details worked out differently.

There is an autobiography slated for late 2017.

what did the sweater have in it?

Heller,
you are confirming what I suspected, that it's more or less a rehash of accounts already given by Bell in his old books.
how much of this books content did you find to be actually new and never before published by Bell?

b.t.w. , for those that don't have WDM Bells old publications, here you can find archive digitised versions of


>> Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter. (actual book cover to cover-flip page by page)


>> Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter. (easy to scroll large print)


>> Karamojo Safari (scroll down page by page)

tag

Of the 3 Bell books I've read....Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter, Bell of Africa, and Karamojo Safari, I liked the latter book the best. Any thoughts from anyone else?

Oops! , some error in my previous post, hence reposted.

Archived digitised W.D.M. Bell publications:

>> The Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter. -1923. actual book, flip page by page.
>> The Wanderings Of An Elephant Hunter. -scroll pages.

>> Bell Of Africa. -1923.

>> Karamojo Safari.-1949. flip pages.
>> Karamojo Safari. scroll pages.


Related book that has a section on WDM Bell.

>> Big Game Shooting Records. -1931. actual book, flip pages.

Out of extra interest Frederick Courteney Selous,

>> A Hunters Wanderings in Africa. - 1881. actual book, flip pages.

Thanks for that, Starman.

Tag

I have always wanted a true Mauser in 7x57mm aka 7mm Mauser aka 275 Rigby because of Bell. Not to shoot jumbos,of course not! Just to have an ultra iconic African rifle.

Yes, I agree, I think Bell would as well.

He didnt seem to think that Wanderings of an Elephant hunter really caught the essence of what his hunting was about. He write of it later a little dismissively as 'just a collection of essays.' So then in 1949 he chose to write about one specific safari, and describe how it went, and that was Karamojo Safari.
This really is the book that you want about WDM Bell, and it comes closest to simply being the book by him thats purely about his elephant hunting.

The last one (so far)- Bell of Africa, contains what seems to be an essay divided into a three or four chapters which are purely autobiographical details(Townsend Whelen says it was written for his wife) fascinating nevertheless, about his youth market hunting in Canada, as a pilot in the RFC etc, but then the African chapters of the book are simply reprints of much of Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter.

The newly published material might be accounts or chapters that Bell wrote for Bell of Africa, and then didnt include when he sent the manuscript to Whelen. We cant know why. Maybe he thought the ms was too long. Maybe he thought Whelen would tell him what he thought of what he had so far and then he would send these others later. Maybe he considered them unfinished, or not much good. But maybe he planned it exactly as it has happened, that this material might be another book again.

Of course he died straight after sending off the ms of Bell of Africa to America, so we cant know. His wife might have had an idea, but she died in the eighties. But then she might not, my wife has no interest in my writing at all. (Perhaps she is right to.)

But still, it will be well worth it for anything new and I would like to read what he wrote about the car trip with the Forbes.

I still think Karamojo Safari is his best one, and the one closest to what Bell wanted in a book himself.

What I would love to do, would be to edit and collate all of it together into one volume.
Introduction would be the description by the chap who went to visit with them them in Scotland around 1950.The Bell of Africa autobiographical stuff, followed by his expositions on hunting in Africa, from Wanderings and Karomojo) other incidents and tales - (Wanderings and the new materiel, ac couple of chapter son rifles and shooting collated from books and his other articles, and finishing with one safari entire as an example, from Karamojo Safari.
Call it - "Safari!" (With an exclamation mark!) Or more prosaically, maybe just, "Karamojo Bell".

Re: Bell on the car safari with the Forbes brothers through Chad and Sudan....From what I have gathered,
Bell found it wasn't much of a trip dedicated to actual hunting..but Gerrit Forbes had been with Bell on
some ivory trips yrs previous, prior to WW1.

Im glad Bell went into the details of his life, at sea aged 13, the Yukon at 16-17 ,and later war service,
as well as all the different things that were happening around him or effecting him on his ivory jaunts.
Some of the more remote ungoverned regions he trekked through were telly untamed wild places both
in nature and rouge human activity both native and white European. As opposed to South Africa which
by that time had already suffered the effects of widespread obliteration of game stocks.

His youth/upbringing interests me because of the very young age he was when his parents died.
which I believe effects a persons formative yrs with the lack of parental guidance & presence.
Possibly partly why he ran away from schools on various occasions, leading his life on to other things.

WDM Bell although typically remembered in hunting circles, to me was more of a man of the word-life adventurer,
for he would during periods of his life, drop his lucrative professional hunting career by choice, to also do other
things of merit & substance and also at great hazzard, risk and peril. Between signing up for service in WW1 and
returning to Africa, was like a gap of 7 years. On the other hand, he at one time also opportunistically joined the
military as a way back to Africa after the Yukon didn't work out. Then at the end of his Boer War service 1902,
he remained in Africa to begin his ivory career good and proper.

Despite all the fuss some make of the Rigby Mauser .275 bore steming from Bells well known use of such,
his personal favourite rifle he remarked, was his Daniel Frazer .256 bore Mannlicher carbine.-- And despite
all the accolades the Mauser 98 gets in regards to reliability, Bell discovered that in the harsh conditions
of pursuing bulls through thick vegetation impacted with mud from elephants -that would unavoidably drop
down on him and his rifle, that the sloppy action Lee .303 he had, proved markedly more reliable. -The 10 shot
capacity magazine also proved a definite advantage when his objective was to drop as many bulls from a herd
as fast as possible. At times he would have a gun bearer close by with his 2nd Lee .303 full mag. ready to go.

Bell found SxS rifles were a poor choice for such high contamination dynamic-close-quarter hunting environments,
for when he needed to open the breech as he moved about, dust & grit would fall in preventing the gun from closing
properly. ..btw: there are some amateur idiots on AR that have never in their life hunted elephant in such manner
that have criticised Bell suggesting he didn't know to properly use a SxS rifle....lol....well thats the inter-net for you.

Royal Aero Club Aviators Certificate issued close to this 35th birthday.

Wasn't Bell the one who did a lot of hunting with a 7mm Mauser?

Yes. A 275 Rigby its the English designation for 7x57mm or 7mm Mauser. He shot something like 800 or so bull elephant with that rifle all with solids. He proclaimed that no soft point ever contaminated his barrel,or something to that effect.