Forums.NitroExpress.com

I received a PM from safari press along with a biography of Ian Nyschens who left us last week for better (hunting)places.
Many of You had the pleasure to see his interview on the Buzz Charlton'DVD where Ann, Norbert and 500 grains are co-staring.

Ian Reginald Nyschens
1923-2006

Most readers with an interest in African hunting are familiar with the names of the great ivory hunters of yesteryear, men like Walter Bell and James Sutherland. They were part of an elite group of individuals who shot elephants for a living. But if a list of the top ten ivory hunters were ever compiled, one of the names on it would be a hunter of more recent times: Ian Nyschens.

Most of the ivory hunters hunted in the Victorian era when elephants were so numerous that the herds blackened the African veld and there were no limits on the numbers one could shoot. Ian Nyschens came into the elephant-hunting picture very late. Born in South Africa of Danish stock, he moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to escape the cold climate and began hunting in the Zambezi Valley in 1947. This is remarkable because the glory days of most of the professional ivory hunters were over by about 1930.

Ian truly was the last of his kind. He found a companion—Faanie Joosten—and the pair of them started hunting elephants for a living. They roamed far and wide, often outside of the law, as far north as southern Tanzania and as far east as the coast of Mozambique. But Ian’s stronghold was the thick jess bush of the Zambezi Valley, a place he loved more than any other. Here visibility was so poor that sometimes a hunter could be close enough to touch an elephant with his rifle barrel before he could see it.

His life was one epic adventure after another. He once faced a stampede of seventeen furious elephants in reeds over twelve feet tall. On another occasion Ian and Faanie developed a method of hunting crocodiles that entailed walking chest deep into the Zambezi River at night next to an anchored hippo leg to “brain” crocs for their skins. In the end that got a bit too much even for Ian and he gave it up as being too hazardous.

Ian was married for a time, but his lifestyle was not a domestic one and the marriage did not last. Once the Kariba Dam was completed in 1959, it flooded a great deal of his beloved Zambezi Valley, and Ian’s world began to shrink. He continued to shoot elephant under the control scheme set by Rhodesian authorities, but his footloose days were at an end. He joined the wildlife department as a game ranger for a while, but his unsociable character made for a short career.

He remained irascible and to a large degree unknown to all but a few. When I arranged to meet him in the 1990s, I was told by one of his friends, “I do not know if Ian will show for dinner tonight. He sometimes disappears into the valley for weeks and nobody knows where he is. He is an law unto himself.” As it turned out, Ian did show for that dinner and I had the privilege of spending time with him. He deflected most questions about his past and repeatedly mentioned other men of his era that he felt were more accomplished ivory hunters. He had two enormous diaries that contained hand-drawn pictures of elephants and faded black-and-white photos. These were eventually published as a book called Months of the Sun that made the world aware of who Ian Nyschens was.

After Zimbabwe gained independence, Ian became adrift. His meager pension from the game department was eaten up by inflation. His elephant-hunting days were over; the world no longer held a place for the professional ivory hunter. Ian Nyschens died on December 6, 2006. He is survived by his daughter, Cheryl.

None of us knows what is in the hereafter. But I like to think that if there is such a thing as Valhalla, Ian is there pursuing elephants with his trusted Rigby 450 3¼-inch double rifle. Farewell, old friend. You lived a life none of us can quite imagine and one that nobody will ever be able to duplicate.—Ludo Wurfbain, Publisher Safari Press

May he "requiem in pace" though his adventurous life will lead his soul in Purgatory first.

--------------------
"I don't want to create an encyclopedic atmosphere here when we might be having a beer instead" P H Capstick in "Safari the last adventure."

Post Extras