Gary Reeder
well, yes and no. I have talked to several African PHs thru
Thursday, January 30, 2020, 17:13

the years and each one despises Peter Hathaway Capstick and most call him Catsdick. The reason for that is contrary to his writings, Capstick was never a PH. He was never a cropping officer. He never was an African guide. He worked in a bar called the Duck Inn. The PHs would come in and tell stories of things that happened on their safaris. Capstick would write them down and then in his book, he sorta implied that he did those things. Plus he flat out stole a lot of J.H. Hunter's stories from his book Hunter and again sorta implied that he did those things. He also "borrowed" things from John Pondoro Taylor's various books and again implied that he did those things. But the main thing he did that turned every true outdoorsman in Africa against him is in his book "A Man Called Lion" he strongly implied that John Pondoro Taylor was gay and diddled little native boys. Now this may be true but there was never a reason to sully the reputation of one of Africa's hunting legends. That would be like someone writing a book back in the 60s saying that John Wayne was gay. That person would be drawn and quartered.

When Art Alphin, who was a drinking buddy of Capstick, came out with the 470 Capstick it was soundly snubbed in Africa. Alphin didn't have a sterling reputation to start with and this didn't help a lot. Plus the cartridge was an exact copy (AKA rip off) of The 475 Ackley Magnum, a cartridge well liked in Africa by many of the older PHs.

So between Alphin naming the cartridge after his drinking buddy and it being sorta a rip off of another well liked cartridge in Africa along with Capstick's soiled reputation in Africa, the cartridge didn't make the top 10 big game cartridges in Africa, not by any stretch.

On my 2nd or 3rd safari to Africa I sat down with 8 or 9 very well known PHs who stopped by our camp. Over dinner and afterwards in the bullshit session around the fire they enlightened me with stories about Catsdick and what they thought of him. I won't go into any of those stories here as some may be stretching the truth a slight bit, but suffice to say, when I got home, my collection of Capstick's books were given to anyone that wanted them.

So these days Capstick is officially Catsdick to many in Africa and also to me.