Brooks, Joe (with Ashly L. Palles) The Autobiography of J. McGregor Brooks, Fifty Years of Hunting Problem Elephant—Buffalo, and Crocodile in the Zambezi Valley of Zambia
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Price: EUR 91,-
2009 Long Beach, 255pp, photos ISBN: 1-57157-289-9 Binding: Trim Size: 6 x 9, hardcover Limitation: Ltd. edn. of 1,000 signed, numbered, & slipcased copies. Series: Volume 63 in the Safari Press's Classics in African Hunting Series. |
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In 1962 Elizabeth Balneaves wrote a book about the life of Zambia Problem Animal Control Officer Joe McGregor Brooks. Obviously, a lot had happened between 1962 and 1992, so Brooks wrote his own book with the help of Ashly Palles. Here then is the story of an elephant control officer in Zambia as well as a PH, crocodile hunter, crocodile breeder, and, in general, an adventuresome individual.
It is true that biographies of professional hunters are many, and only the good stories stand out, but this is a good story. In the beginning of his career, Joe met “Crazy Mack” who took him along hunting for crocs in a leaky boat and showed Joe the ropes of elephant hunting. Mack was a Scot who walked around in a roughly woven woolen kilt and was slightly odd because of his traumatic experiences in WW II. His career launched, Brooks went from ridding a village of a man-killing elephant to shooting two crop-raiding pachyderms with one shot. Crocodiles were of great interest to Brooks, and he hunted some outsized monsters including one that went over twenty feet. On another occasion, Brooks was asked to dislodge a long-since dead elephant carcass from a river. As he pulled the body out of the water with his vehicle, several people jumped on it to float along . . . that is till the carcass turned over and everybody fell in among the crocs that were following their meal!
Brooks's lifetime of being in the wilds of Africa has yielded some interesting stories, and this well-written account is a very worthwhile read. Joe Brooks still lives in Zambia today, and if you are lucky, you can see him if you visit his crocodile farm in Choma and Livingstone.
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