1899-1961
THE HUNTER: Ernest Hemingway was a
hunter from childhood. From the age of four, his father took him hunting in northern Michigan. Hemingway was both a legendary big game hunter and a keen sports fisherman. While fishing off Key West in 1935, he shot himself in the leg with a Colt revolver that he had drawn to kill a large shark. The bullet was said to have stayed in his leg for the rest of his life.
greatest hunters
Ernest Hemingway
Edward of Norwich, second Duke of York Around 1373-1415
THE HUNTER: Hunting was both a pastime
and an important resource in late Medieval England. Every class went hunting, although the best game was reserved for the King and the aristocracy. Edward of Norwich, grandson of Edward II, is known as the author of the first book on hunting in the English language: ”The Master of Game”. It considers hunting from every aspect – from the social rituals to detailed descriptions of wild game.
THE AUTHOR: Hemingway wrote some of
the most famous descriptions of hunting in world literature. It is the subject of several of his works, of which the best known is probably ”Green Hills of Africa”, which describes big game hunting at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in 1935.
THE AUTHOR: The book is a translation of the
French ”Livre de Chasse”, but Edward wrote an additional four chapters on hunting in England. This 600-year-old book is still read today, and one later edition from 1904 has a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt.
Karen Blixen 1885-1962
THE HUNTER: The Danish author Karen Blixen was surrounded by hunters all her life – and
was herself a skilled huntswoman. Her father wrote books about hunting, and her husband, Swedish Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and her lover, Denys Finch Hatton, were both professional hunters. In 1914, she got her first hunting rifle, a Mannlicher-Schönauer, and she is said to have shot 44 wild animals with the first 100 cartridges. THE AUTHOR: Karen Blixen’s hunting and her romance with big game hunter Denys Finch
Hatton are unforgettably portrayed by the author herself in ”Out of Africa”, and in the 1985 film starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The hunting descriptions in ”Shadows on the Grass” are also very famous, although she wrote her books long after leaving Africa, and her last hunt.
Theodore Roosevelt 1858-1919
THE HUNTER: Theodore Roosevelt, 26th Pres-
ident of the United States, was a passionate hunter throughout his life. As a child, he hunted in Maine, although the western USA was where he loved to hunt the most. Theodore Roosevelt took a highly ethical approach to hunting and there is a famous story of how he spared an old black bear while hunting in Mississippi in 1902. This was caricatured in a drawing of the president with the bear – and is the origin of the iconic ”Teddy Bear”. He later said that nature conservation and the creation of 150 national parks were the results of his presidency (1901-1909) of which he was most proud. THE AUTHOR: ”Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”
from 1885 is his most famous depiction of hunting, and served as an inspiration to later authors such as Hemingway.
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