Simon K. Barr
Uganda - In Bell’s Footsteps ‘Walking in the footsteps of giants’ in Karamoja, north eastern Uganda
T
he tracks we drove and the paths we walked were ones that had been used for eons – and likely the very same ones used by one of the most iconic hunters of all time, Karamojo Bell. I was in Karamoja, north eastern Uganda, to hunt with a very special rifle. I was using a magazine rifle built to Bell’s own specification, manufactured by John Rigby & Co. in London, the gunmaker that had made his rifle, too. And, to stay true to his way of hunting, I’d be using open sights in the configuration he specified when ordering his .275 Rigby at the turn of the previous century. Every now and then, while we stalked the shrubby undergrowth, easing our way closer to game, I’d feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Had Bell used this tree to lean against, or rest under 120 years ago? Was this animal a descendent of one that he had hunted? The one big 74
difference in the PiaNupe Wildlife Reserve more than century after Bell had pursued elephant here was the lack of these majestic beasts, but the longterm ambition is to return the world’s largest land mammal to their traditional stomping grounds of Uganda in the future. Karamojo Bell, or William Dalrymple Maitland Bell, is a name that should resonate with modern-day hunters. “He was a gentleman, a seriously selective hunter,” Robin Hurt, himself a PH and renowned hunter, told me, as we talked in camp one evening. Robin and his son Roger had come to the reserve at the invitation of Prince Albrecht Oettingen-Spielberg, who took on the concession in 2009 by express consent of the Ugandan government. Setting up a safari camp in 2012, the team including camp manager and PH Ade Langley have been working tirelessly with the Ugandan Wildlife
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Authority (UWA) to restore the wildlife in the area under the auspices of Karamojong Overland Safaris. Robin had jumped at the chance to see the progress that had been made, having last hunted the area more half a century prior. “There weren’t elephants then, either. While the elephants Bell himself hunted were carefully selected, after his time, indiscriminate ivory hunters came to the area and took the heart out of the population,” Robin explained. It wasn’t just ivory hunting that caused the elephants and many other species to decline or disappear. The local tribe, the Karamojong are traditionally cattle people who graze wild areas and push out native fauna that complete with their domesticated beasts. Combined with an ever increasing population and a history of political unrest in the area, including the rule of despot Idi Amin, there was a
