Customer Reviews

The African Adventurers: A Return to the Silent Places

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Capstick has an ability to write as few others have ever mastered and those that did are also revered. His stories are addictive and captivating! A must read for those who love to hunt.

I could not put this book down. What a sad world we live in today when there is no dark continent to explore the way that the professional hunters and wardens described in this book had to experience around the year 1900. What a sad world and what a bunch of counterfeits the Croc Hunter and Croc Dundee are. Author Capstick puts you there a hundred years ago, where prides of lions manage to devour 450 villagers before being shot, or where 30,000 elephants are shot in one country alone just to limit crop damage! These examples give you an idea of the world the hunters profiled by Capstick in this anthology of sorts walked into circa 1900 to 1940. Lions walking into huts populated with 100 sleeping people, only to leave without molesting a soul, only leaving their footprints around the myriads of sleeping African tribesman. Big cats jumping through windows to snatch infants in bassonets, toddlers grabbed off porches, the head being found a day later in the grass, Cheetahs killing humans just for the fun of it. Guns jamming and cartridges failing in the face of wounded lions. Deadly snakes, Puff adders, Black Mambas, no antidote, one example of these snakes even dropping out of trees to bite a human victim.

Make no mistake about it, Africa was all the danger you ever dreamed about and more at the turn of the last century. ANy game animal in North America is tame in comparison to the African beasts described so vividly by Capstick. Get this book and dream of an Africa unspoiled, full of game more cunning and ferocious than you, and dream about the original tribes, and the Englishmen that first made contact with them.

I will work my way through all of Capstick's books. I am hooked. This book is fanstastic.

I know Peter personaly and have hunted with him. I am in his book Sands of Silence. I highly recommend all of his books. They draw from real experiences and actively bring the reader into the wild. He loved the outdoors and his work helps preserve memories and times of people and activity that is passing away. Each book is a treasure of adventure. BL Melrose, MD

I've loved all the Capstick books and own and have loaned the ones I own many times, mostly to husbands of friends. But I must admit that I can only read one or two and then I have to stop for a while. Times were different then and there were lots of animals. No talk of endangered species. Today when I read about macho men slaughtering beautiful animals for sport it can get to be sickening. But, again, he is an excellent author and the books keep you on the edge of your chair. When you see the movie based on the Lions of Tsavo and have read the book - the book is soooo much more exciting. And - no love interest.

Another enjoyable read in the riveting style Capstick is known for. If you enjoyed any of Capstick's "Death in _____" series of books you will enjoy this. The only negative is that Capstick doesn't give enough about each of the exciting adventurers that he immortalizes. Each of these adventurers could have a book written soley on their lives and some have. Still a good primer on some of the famous names of old Africa.

I first began reading Peter Capstick's series of books on African / Safari hunting shortly after the first one was released around 1980. From what I've read on the internet since, his popularzation of Safari and Arican hunting was a major factor in rescuing a moribund hunting/travel industry in Africa. I can well believe this, since his books have made a Cape Buffalo hunt a life time dream of mine, even if I never get to go.

I was saddened to learn of his health problems and death, not finding out until years after the fact. Whatever his personal failings, which some have been far too eager to expound upon since his death (but not before), Peter painted a picture of an emerging Africa at the time of his writing that illustrates both the allure of hunting that continent and the social/political hurdles that continue to frustrate Western expectations.

Excelent recount of great african hunters and adventurers, very well written and documented.