Sands of Silence

October 14, 1991
Although he had ``culled'' many elephants as a game officer in Zaire and elsewhere, safari leader Capstick ( Death in the Long Grass ) had never killed a tusker. Here he records his part in a legal hunt with a company licensed by the Namibian government to take 10 elephants annually in the northeastern region of the country, part of the northern Kalhari Desert, where some 1000 old bull elephants range, about a dozen dying of old age each year. The sparsely populated area is home to the Bushmen, one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes, whose way of life the author intended to film. Another aspect of the safari was Capstick's signed agreement to hunt ``problem animals'' to reduce predation by lions and leopards, and he was accompanied by a native guard to ensure that the meat went to natives. In his lively account of adventures amid stifling heat and dust, Capstick tells of encounters with poisonous snakes, of learning about poison arrows from Bushmen and of getting his elephant. He argues that Namibia's legal hunting is a desirable practice, benefiting local people and the national economy. Photos.

September 15, 1991
Unapologetic great white hunter (22 years in four countries), prolific author (nine books, many articles), editor (reprints of African hunting classics), and video producer, Capstick brings his considerable knowledge of Africa to this frank description of hunting in Bushland. In 1989 he spent six weeks in the northern Kalahari, home of the Ju/Wasi, in order to film and write about hunting for leopard and elephant. In a low-key account described with humor and sometimes exaggerated metaphors--but also with interesting historical notes and definite opinions about African game policy, ethnology, and politics--he vividly describes a modern safari and the various supporting characters vital to its success. He ranges from descriptions of the people of the Bush to the crisis in African elephant populations and the need (and advantages of) ethical big-game hunting. Photos not seen. For public libraries.--Roland Person, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

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