Subsistence Hunter of the Week, John "Pondoro" Taylor.

This entry may be controversial.  

Certainly, it's questionable.

John Howard "Pondoro" Taylor was a near contemporary to last week's entry, Jack O'Connor.  O'Connor bore an Irish last name, and Taylor did not, but Taylor was a Dublin born son of a well-to-do surgeon and fit into the Anglo-Irish Protestant class that basically ran Ireland until the Anglo-Irish War.  Indeed, it is rumored that Taylor may have gotten into trouble somehow with the IRA, resulting in his relocation to Africa.

I've read the Peter Hathaway Capstick's biography of Taylor, but I've forgotten almost all of it. I usually retain a great deal of what I read, but Capstick is not my favorite author and I've lost the details.  That means this entry is, to a large degree, uninformed.

First, does Taylor deserve a spot here at all?

Taylor was an Ivory hunter, and frankly, he was a poacher.  That puts him outside of the classification of subsistence hunter, to be sure.

More on that in a moment.

Taylor went to Africa in the golden age of African big game hunting, which roughly stretched from the 1890s until 1950, and which coincided with the height of late stage European colonialism.  A "remission man", that class of English man who was sent overseas by their family, with a sort of allowance, in order that they not cause trouble in their line of succession, he was a prolific hunter but oddly solitary.  He had no interest in guiding hunting clients at all.  As noted, he was an ivory hunter, and a poacher, at a time when that was not admirable, but which did not threaten the game populations, but he also hunted other African species very widely, to include African game bird species we otherwise very rarely think of.

Taylor is known to us today as he was well-educated and very literate.  He authored two books, one of which is an absolute classic to this day in terms of big game cartridges.  His book on African cartridges basically picks up where Jack O'Connor's leaves off.  He cannot be discounted as an expert on big game hunting, or on cartridges.

All together, Taylor write at least five books, with African Rifles and Cartridges being an absolute classic. There is a sequel to it, which I have not read, just on hunting cartridges alone.  Interestingly, his last book, Shadows of Shame, was not only his only novel, but it apparently had subtle homosexual themes, with Taylor widely believed to be homosexual himself, which may have led to his explosion from Africa.  He was also a slaveholder, in this case the two being linked as he purchased a young man in the bush from the boys desperate parents, with the African man going on to be the object of his attention later on.

Slavery and pedophile behavior cannot be excused, so the question is why list Taylor, who ended up dying in poverty in London?  Perhaps he's a reminder that some individuals of great talent also have enormous faults.  At any rate, he lived by his rifles for most of his life, existing off of what he shot for food and an income.  He's not wholly admirable by any means, but his written works remain among the best ever written on rifle cartridges.