J. A. Hunter

Who was J. A. Hunter?

John Alexander Hunter, born near Shearington, Dumfries-shire, Scotland, also known as J. A. Hunter, was a white hunter in Africa from the early 1900s through the 1950s who led many notable safaris. He moved permanently to British East Africa in 1908, where he later led the Livermore expedition, with the aid of A.P.de K.Fourie, that opened up the Ngorongoro Crater to European hunters. He held several world records for big game at various times, and killed over 1,000 rhinos in Kenya, most of them in the Makueni hunting ground, which the Government needed to get rid of, in order to give these lands for re-settlement of the Kamba people. Besides safaris and other control operations for the Kenya Game Department, in Makueni Hunter killed 996 alone, from 26 August 1944 to 31 October 1946. It turned out that those lands were useless for human settlement. In later years, he became concerned about the possible extinction of the wildlife he had so assiduously hunted, and spoke in favor of conservation. His writings were notable for betraying his colonialist attitude, although his writings similarly betrayed a genuine respect and affection for the locales and peoples that he interacted with.