Great White Hunters?

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alaskamatt17

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So, I've always been into fantasy, but my current WIP calls for some knowledge on the old "Great White Hunter" type from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Can anybody direct me to the best short stories featuring these kind of characters? I don't mind if they are caricatured, since my own character will kind of be that way.

I'm thinking somebody like the antagonist in Jumanji (movie, I don't know about the book) except not as crazy.
 

alaskamatt17

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And yes, Tornadoboy, this is for the same WIP as the CDC emergencies and toxic fungus.
 

TheIT

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These are examples I've seen in TV/movie adaptations of the stories (I haven't read the originals), but they might be helpful:

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has a hunter character named Lord Roxton. I believe there are several stories using these characters.

The Quartermain (sp?) series (by ???) - same hunter character as played by Sean Connery in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
 

alaskamatt17

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Sounds like I'll be reading some Hemingway and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Thanks.
 

alleycat

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Start with Hemingway's The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. It's a classic short story.
 

arrowqueen

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'The Quartermain (sp?) series (by ???) - same hunter character as played by Sean Connery in The League of Extraordinary Gentleme.'

H. Rider Haggard.
 

Tiger

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I'd also try Jack London for short stories. Some novels and other books should be great resources too: "African Game Trails," Teddy Roosevelt. Try Wilbur Smith too.
 

Kentuk

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Once met a great white hunter, was eight, my family was visiting our expat grandparents in Mexico. Don't remember much about the man, he was WWII generation with plenty of white hair but his house was fantastic, every kind of trophy animal imaginable. Being a kid I didn't realize how rare the experience was. My mother and sisters were quite talkative afterwards. Zebra skin rugs, a giant stuffed bear, tigers and lions. The 'oh mys' were real.
 
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Parkinsonsd

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Teddy Roosevelt has written some very interesting books on hunting from his personal experience.

H. Rider Haggard wrote the Quatermain novels and a host of others. As far as I've read, however, the hunting is only peripheral to the stories.
 

sharra

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Wilbur Smith probably does this very well, although he is a bit obsessed with elephants pulling peoples heads off.. He is great with descriptions of the animals & areas concerned though.
 

sharra

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sorry, push send too early. You can also take a look at Jim Corbett - he was a pro hunter in India back in the 60's & 70's.
 

Tiger

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Hey... I found Smith's decapitation via elephant descriptions to be very stimulating :D
 

sharra

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maybe in the first two books he used it in. When it popped up in almost every book that had a pissed off elephant (& there were a lot of those), it got a bit much..
Now if he'd had an irritated mongoose doing that...
Got to say, the descriptions are awesome. When I got up to Zimbabwe I could recognise a lot just from reading the books.(Ballantyne series).
 

Vanatru

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H.Rider Haggard did the Allan Quartermain books. Fascinating reads and you can find most of them on Gutenberg.

P.C. Wren did a few based in Africa....the same author of the Beau series of books.

As for shows.....Bring 'em Back Alive based off the Frank Buck type of character.

Hatri with John Wayne.

Rudyard Kipling did some nice work about life in that environment.
 

Stressed

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Try doing a search on Jim Corbett: he’s that very famous early 20C hunter of man-eating big cats who was the inspiration for that movie The Ghost and The Darkness. Wikipedia might have something on him… I read his book [very blood-soaked] a zillion times when I was a [very bloodthirsty] kid…
 

Stressed

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I couldn’t resist looking him up myself after you jogged my memory…

“between 1907 and 1938, Corbett tracked and put down at least a dozen man-eaters. It is estimated that the combined total of men, women and children these twelve animals had killed was in excess of 1,500. His very first success, the Champawat Tiger in Champawat, alone was responsible for 436 documented deaths. He also shot the Panar Leopard, which allegedly killed 400 after being injured by a poacher and thus being rendered unable to hunt its normal prey. Other notable man-eaters were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater, the Thak man-eater and the Chowgarh tigers.”

If only my writing career was as prolific.
 

Stressed

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God, me again. Actually that movie is based on another hunter, John Henry Patterson… he is on Wikipedia too. You have created a monster in my house.

I’m going now.
 

aka eraser

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As a kid, I devoured everything I could find from, or about Frank Buck.

See if your library has old (I'm talking 50s, 60s & 70s) issues of Outdoor Life (Jack O'connor wrote some great hunting tales), Sports Afield and/or Field & Stream. They may have them on microfilm.
 
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