Mar 17, 2012 - Dangerous Game. The authors are Ingersoll and Prothero, respectively. As one reads these delightful and sometimes dangerous/humorous ...
Write It Down! 3/17/2012 A chemistry professor stopped by my office the other day and dropped off a spiral bound paperback book. “I thought you’d like to read this. It’s the stories of my uncle who had one incredible life of fishing and hunting the world over. He wrote it just for selected family members, but his exploits are extraordinary.” And indeed they are! This uncle of Bill’s hunted and fished with some of the legendary greats of all time. One chapter in particular caught my eye, where he mentions how his PH in Africa, Eric Lundgren, helped bag a gorgeous cape buffalo. Wow, I thought to myself, this guy not only has been around, but he was there at one of the finest times ever when it came to safari hunting: the 1950s. But then it dawned on me. These stories I was so much enjoying were packed with minutiae like dates, calibers, weather reports, names of guides and trackers, etc. How can this be? There is only one explanation for events to be transcribed years after the fact, and it is all quite so simple. You’ve got to “write it down.” My current reading list includes two wonderful books. One is entitled Born to Hunt and the other Dangerous Game. The authors are Ingersoll and Prothero, respectively. As one reads these delightful and sometimes dangerous/humorous stories, you can’t but be impressed as to the chronicling that was done to bring an old memory to life on the printed page. And of course the answer is once again quite apparent. Ingersoll and Prothero (one a contractor, the other an academic) keep meticulous notes which, when the time arrives, they put to superb use in spinning their yarns. How many times have you surrounded yourself with family or friends and soon became lost in the miasma of heated conversation like: what year was that? Was Uncle Larry still alive at that time? You are dead wrong that was in 1988 not 1990! Ad infinitum. My strong suggestion, and it is one I now do religiously, is to keep a journal and log these events. You don’t have to be extravagant. Just jotting down a date and a quick event will kick in those memory cells when and if the time comes that you either need to write about it, or simply retell a story. And it isn’t time consuming either. I’ve even put momentous family events into an Excel spread sheet. It isn’t hard, and it has settled once and for all those nasty details! Check out these two well-written tomes. I promise, you’ll just love the details. Ingersoll, Gary R. Born to Hunt: Forty Years and Six Continents. Long Beach, Calif.: Safari Press, 2010. Prothero, Walt. The Dangerous Game: True Stories of Dangerous Hunting on Three Continents. 2nd ed. Long Beach,
Calif.: Safari Press, 2006.
