A chance meeting around a safari campfire on the banks of the Mupamadazi River leads to the grand tale of African adventure by Peter Capstick, the foremost hunting author of our time. Wally Johnson spent half a century in Mozambique hunting white gold--ivory. Most men died at this hazardous trade. He's the last one able to tell his story.In hours of conversations by mopane fired in the African bush, Wally described his career--how he survived the massive bite of a Gaboon viper, buffalo gorings, floods, disease, and most dangerous of all, gold fever. He bluffed down 200 armed poachers almost single-handedly, and survived rocket attacks from communist revolutionaries during Mozambique's plunge into chaos in 1975. In Botswana, at age 63, Wally continued his career. Though the great tuskers have largely gone and most of Wally's colleagues are dead, Wally has survived. His words are rugged testimony to an Africa that is now a distant dream.

As thrilling as any novel, as taut and exciting as any adventure story, Peter Hathaway Capstick's Death in the Long Grass takes us deep into the heart of darkness to view Africa through the eyes of one of the most renowned professional hunters. Few men can say they have known Africa as Capstick has known it--leading safaris through lion country; tracking man-eating leopards along tangled jungle paths; running for cover as fear-maddened elephants stampede in all directions. And of the few who have known this dangerous way of life, fewer still can recount their adventures with the flair of this former professional hunter-turned-writer. Based on Capstick's own experiences and the personal accounts of his colleagues, Death in the Long Grass portrays the great killers of the African bush--not only the lion, leopard, and elephant, but the primitive rhino and the crocodile waiting for its unsuspecting prey, the titanic hippo and the Cape buffalo charging like an express train out of control. Capstick was a born raconteur whose colorful descriptions and eye for exciting, authentic detail bring us face to face with some of the most ferocious killers in the world--underrated killers like the surprisingly brave and cunning hyena, silent killers such as the lightning-fast black mamba snake, collective killers like the wild dog. Readers can lean back in a chair, sip a tall, iced drink, and revel in the kinds of hunting stories Hemingway and Ruark used to hear in hotel bars from Nairobi to Johannesburg, as veteran hunters would tell of what they heard beyond the campfire and saw through the sights of an express rifle.

Peter Hathaway Capstick died in 1996. At the time of his death, the world-renowned adventure writer was putting the finishing touches on this, a stirring and vivid biography of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a man with whom he felt he had much in common. Edited and prepared for publication by his widow, Fiona Capstick, this riveting book is Capstick's farewell to his fans and the final addition to the bestselling Peter Capstick Library.
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen was one of those rare men whom fate always seems to cast in the dramas that shape history. As a young officer, he served in India and Africa during the glory days of the British Empire, defending the crown's dominions and exploring its darkest reaches. His exploits in the bloody colonial wars of turn-of-the-century East Africa earned him a reputation as one of the most fierce and ruthless soldiers in the Empire, yet it was during those years spent roaming the silent places of the Serengeti, hunting its game and learning its secrets, that Meinertzhagen developed a fascination with Africa that would last a lifetime.
But there were other adventures to come, and Capstick narrates them all with his trademark skill and wit: daring commando raids against German forces in Africa and the Mideast during World War I, covert missions to the USSR and Nazi Germany between the wars, work as an OSS agent during World War II, and Meinertzhagen's ceaseless support of Israeli nationhood are all woven together into an epic adventure, a powerful chronicle that follows the tracks of a twentieth-century legend.

Peter Capstick has been hailed as the adventure-writing successor to Hemingway and Ruark. Only Capstick "can write action as cleanly and suspensefully as the best of his predecessors" ("Sports Illustrated"). This long-awaited sequel to "Death in the Silent Places" (1981) brings to life four turn-of-the-century adventurers and the savage frontiers they braved.
* Frederick Selous, a British hunter, naturalist, and soldier, rewrote the history books with his fearless treks deep into the Dark Continent.
* English game ranger Constantine "Iodine" Ionides saved Tanganyikan villages from man-eating lions and leopards. He also gained lasting fame for his uncanny ability to capture black mambas, cobras, Gaboon vipers, and other deadly snakes.
* The dashing Brit Johnny Boyes who gained the chieftainship of the Kikuyu tribe with sheer bravado and survived the ferocious battles and ambushes of intertribal warfare.
* And Scottish ex-boxer, Jim Sutherland, one of the best ivory hunters who ever lived. His tracking skills and stamina afoot became the stuff of African hunting legend.
If you are a Capstick fan, you'll relish "The African Adventurers," his eleventh book. Once again he delivers "the kind of chilling stories that Hemingway only heard second-hand...with a flair and style that Papa himself would admire" ("Guns and Ammo"). The author's pungent wit and his authenticity gained from years in the bush make this quartet of vintage heroics an unforgettable return to the silent places.

Following the smashing success of "Last Horizons" (SMP, 1989), Peter Capstick now presents a second volume of pieces culled from such magazines as "Outdoor Life," NRA's "American Hunter," "Guns & Ammo," and "Petersen's Hunting." The articles showcase a literary style that prompted "Kirkus Reviews" to say of "Last Horizons," "No one since Hemingway (with the possible exception of Ruark) has written on these subjects with such literary gusto."
The stockbroker-turned-outdoorsman recalls his days as an African pro hunter in "The Killer Baboons of Vlackfontein." "Four Fangs in a Treetop" records a foray into British Honduras for the jaguar, "a gold-dappled teardrop of motion." Capstick narrowly escapes the Yellow Beard, Central America's deadly tree-climbing snake, and cows "The Black Death (Cape buffalo) in the kind of article that makes this author "the guru of American hunting fans" ("New York Newsday"). On Brazil's forsaken Marajo Island, he bags the pugnacious red buffalo, which has the "temperament of a constipated Sumo wrestler and the tenacity of an IRS man."
The author discusses 12- and 20-gauge shotgun loads; recalls the pleasures of "biltong" (African beef jerky); describes the irresistible homemade lures of snook fishing expert John Gorbatch; and kills a genteel take of Atlantic salmon with the brilliantly simple tube fly.
Over thirty gorgeous drawings by famous wildlife artist Dino Paravano make this volume yet another collector's item by a writer who "keeps the tradition of great safari adventure alive in each of his books" ("African Expedition Gazette").
Peter Capstick's eight prior titles include "The Last Ivory Hunter" (SMP, 1988); "Peter Capstick's Africa" (SMP, 1987); and "Death in the Long Grass" (SMP, 1978).