I'd like to respond to the posts here in the hope that what I have to say might be of some general interest:
1) As to Africa, I've been on safari twice. Both were camera only, no shooting of anything but film. One was in Kenya. The other was in South Africa. Each lasted somewhere between a month and six weeks and each covered more than 3,000 land miles. I did manage to photograph all the big five: lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and cape buffalo. Most of the popular, hunted, buck such as eland, oryx, kudu and the elusive bongo, on the slopes of Mount Kenya, at night, with artificial light, plus most of the more common animals. Of special note was a pretty good photograph (As a wildlife photographer, I also took and sold prints of North American game taken, mostly, in the far north and our western states.) of a grant gazelle that may, at that time, have been a world record head. But, who knows, hard to measure horns on a live animal and no one with me had either a gun or a permit to shoot one.
2) I spent a lot of time, over the years, at the Outlaw Inn attending Kalispell Gun Shows. Elmer used to sit near the front lobby in a rocking chair, in his later years, holding court to any and all who were interested. As to John Buhmiller (or is it spelled Buhlmiller?), I never met him but an old friend of mine, here in Spokane, Al Biesen, the gun maker, has a bunch of letters from John recounting his adventures in Africa and, also, discussing barrels. With Jack O'Connor, what one has to keep in mind, and I'll write more about this in the ELMER AND JACK series of commentaries, is that he was a most unusual man for his era. First, he grew up without a father at a time when divorce was almost unheard of and divorced women, like his mother, were hard pressed to find work that would support a single parent family. This was at a time when Arizona, where the O'Connor family lived, on ground which is now a part of the Arizona State University campus, was still a territory and not yet a state. He was fortunate in that he was a smart kid and managed to earn two university degree's, one, a master's degree, at a prestigious university (MA in journalism from the University of Missouri) at a time when many, if not most folks, especially in the west, we are talking about the early to mid 1920's, had ever been to high school, let alone college. For a quick comparison, in my family, on my mother's side, I was the first to graduate from high school and that was in 1961. Plus, before going to college, Jack had enlisted in and served, briefly, he was only 15 at the time, in the US Army and also served a tour of duty with the US Navy. In more ways than one, Jack was not a typical man of his times. Remember, Elmer, because of where and how he grew up, never even finished elementary school. So, Jack was indeed different. Think of it this way, if you see Elmer as a sort of cowboy type guy from a working ranch and outfitting background, then you should probably be thinking of Jack as a sort of academic type who not only taught at several colleges and universities but was a journalist long before he started writing hunting stories for a living. I see them as two great, but quite different, men who contributed much to hunting and the shooting sports. Moreover, some of us, who knew and visited both men in their homes over the years, respect them way too much to write all that we know. Both could be crusty. Neither suffered fools gladly. But, both, could also be most generous and gracious. I'm proud to have known them.
Hope these comments prove to be interesting. I've got to be careful not to put the cart before the horse here and write ahead of the series that I'm now in the process of posting here.
Again, comments are encouraged but I'll try to limit my responses to what I think might be of general interest and use the private message system for just that, private messages.
CJ