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.