Gary Reeder
The main thing about Capstick is he lies, and a lot
Thursday, September 19, 2024, 14:54

of lies. When Sportsman on Film had a series that featured Capstick he spent the whole video telling what a great Professional Hunter he was... a lie. He was never a PH. He was a bartender. On one of his videos he talked about all the elephant he had killed...lies. He mentioned he never took a shot at more than 25 yards so you could hit the perfect spot to kill an elephant...Lie. In another video he saw a big elephant at probably 75 or 80 yards. He threw up his double rifle and fired both barrel almost as quick as you could snap your fingers. Then looked at the camera and said "perfect heart shot". Kase just reminded me Capstick's favorite shot was "a raking shot thru the heart". Later on after they tracked the elephant down there were 2 holes it in, one in the hip and the other a mid body spot. The hip shot was what Capstick said was "a raking shot thru the heart".You could see the blood running down from both shots. I learned later that the PH had to put the elephant down with a brain shot.
In Africa he was a joke and a liar. Scotty, if you had ever been to Africa you would look at this situation a bit differently. I think Capstick ran more people off from going to Africa than he did encouraging them.
On one of our hunts an older gentleman went with us and Capstick ruined his entire safari. In the mornings before we went out he said he wanted to get back to camp by 3PM. John, the PH, asked him why. He said because Capstick said it was dangerous to be out in the African fields after 3 PM. The old fellow also has an old 375 H&H and tried to use it on everything. On the smaller animals the 375 went right thru and the animal ran off. There were several situations like this where Capstick messed with the hunter's head with his "rules" about hunting in Africa. And this was just on a couple of my safaris.

On my first safari in 1992 I believed everything I had read by Capstick and was almost constantly arguing with the PH about things we were doing on the safari. I found out later my PH was African PH of the year and International PH of the year, and I should have been listening to him rather than spouting crap from Capstick. Thank goodness he set me straight before I ruined my entire safari with BS from Capstick.
Getting the original African hunting books is great and is some good reading, but don't believe Capstick's lies.