Gun Digest 2011. Dan Shideler

      TR and his son Kermit, who also carried an H&H double Rifle on Roosevelt’s famous safari.

      President Theodore Roosevelt was a man whose life was lived on the stage of world affairs on a grand scale. In a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, on April 23, 1910, he remarked:

       … credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

      TR was a rancher, politician, statesman, soldier, historian, and Nobel Laureate (he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his mediation of a settlement of the Russo-Japanese War), a strong-willed leader of men who lived the credo he preached. Less than three weeks after leaving the White House in March of 1909 after more than 40 years “in the arena” of public life, this vigorous and virile man took up a new challenge: a massive safari to collect specimens of African wildlife for the Smithsonian Institution and the New York Zoological Society. His year-long trek is perhaps the best-known and certainly one of the best-chronicled hunting trips in history, a grand adventure on a scale to suit the tastes and abilities of America’s 26th President.

      Hunting was in TR’s blood, a passion he indulged during his days in the western US, and in more sedate settings in the east. He had an abiding love of the outdoors, expressed in the preface to African Game Trails, the book that describes his safari:

       …there are no words can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm. There is delight in the hardy life of the open, in long rides Rifle in hand, in the thrill of the fight with dangerous game. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.

      TR’S “BIG (FIRE) STICK”

      Royal Grade Double Rifle with Case and Accessories, Presented to Theodore Roosevelt, 1909. Holland & Holland, Ltd. English (London). .500/.450 Nitro Express Caliber. Serial Number 19109. Frazier International History Museum. Museum Purchase, 2001.32. Holland & Holland, Ltd. Photo courtesy Frazier International History Museum.

      These are words of a romantic, a semi-mystic who is also a visionary. TR was all of these things and more. His love of the outdoors life led him to become the founder of the National Parks System and a founding member of the Boone & Crockett Club as well as the New York Museum of Natural History, testimony to both his love of the hunt and his respect for the hunted. He is justly recognized as one of the fathers of the modern conservation movement. As a hunter, he well understood the basic principle that preservation of wildlife requires that economic value be afforded to it, game and non-game species alike; that a species’ very survival depends on its value to man. He undertook his safari with this vision in mind:

       Wise people…have discovered that intelligent game preservation, carried out in good faith, and in a spirit of commonsense as far removed from mushy sentimentality as from brutality, results in adding to the state’s natural resources…. Game laws should be drawn primarily in the interest of the whole people, keeping in mind certain facts that ought to be self-evident…. Almost any wild animal…if its multiplication were unchecked...would by its simple increase crowd man off the planet; and that far short of this…a time comes when the existence of too much game is incompatible with the interests of the cultivator. There should be…sanctuaries… where game can live and breed absolutely unmolested; and elsewhere…allow a reasonable amount of hunting on fair terms to any hardy and vigorous man fond of the sport…. Game butchery is as objectionable as any other wanton form of cruelty or barbarity; but to protest against all hunting of game is a sign of softness of head, not of soundness of heart.

      The first animal to fall to TR’s H&H double: the Kilimakiu rhino.

      Planning such a safari necessarily started well in advance, as it was a complex logistical and scientific undertaking as well as a grand adventure. He was accompanied by scientists and specialists from the museums involved, as well his 19-year-old son Kermit, then a freshman at Harvard University. Many of the arrangements were made through two of the world’s most famous big game hunters, Edward North Buxton and Frederick Courteney Selous. Other famous hunters who joined him on arrival included R.J. Cuninghame and Leslie Tarleton, hard-bitten Englishmen who were Old Africa Hands. The expedition’s ponderous equipment included motion picture cameras and technicians, too, as this was the first safari to be filmed. The equipment and supplies for such a trip required no fewer than 150 porters and assorted gun-bearers, askaris, and of course their camp followers, all of whom had to be fed on the march. TR, in charge, had his work cut out for him and had no lack of hunting opportunities.

      Among his preparations was the assembly of his famous African Battery: a pair of Winchester rifles in .405 caliber; Springfield rifles in the then-new Army caliber, .30-06; and the most powerful rifle in his collection, a “Royal” grade double rifle made by Holland & Holland of 98, New Bond Street, London, recognized then as now as “The Royal Arms Maker,” whose elite list of customers included not only Presidents, but King Edward VII, numerous Indian Rajahs, many members of the European Royalty and the American plutocracy, and those lesser notabilities who could afford their prices, people who demanded – and got – the best.

      TR’s rifle is now on display at the Frazier International History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, the centerpiece of a fabulous assemblage

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