Only kind of related, I believe it was on your recommendation that I purchased "Mambas and Man-eaters" which I just finished, great book! Quite the character Ionides was.
Glad you like the Ionides book, Steve. He was indeed a wildly eccentric man, who made major contributions to African conservation and science. He ran the Selous Game Reserve in its early days, still one of the most important conservation areas in Africa, and after retiring from that he made major contributions to herpetology. There are a few older white Kenyans left who still have stories about him; Lady Anne Delamere, recently deceased, accompanied him on snake collecting trips to Kenya's Northern Frontier District as the teenage daughter of the Governor in the 1950's.
His Evans .470 is the crown of my modest collection; on long leaves from the Selous, he hunted all over Africa with this gun.
