doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Peter Hathaway Capstick

Hey, it's a double barreled name....
A mate just gave me an old beat up copy of P H Capstick's "Man Eaters"
Don't want to get into his literary skills or anything else here...
But on the blank page before the book begins , written in pencil, is "83 (Could be 85) Stick's"
I 'd read the whole book before I saw the words.
It is written in a bold hand, seems like who ever wrote it had done it many times, kinda flashy yet quick
Just wondered if anyone had heard of him signing books this way.
It would be cool if it was him ,as he got me started on the
older, & to to me better writtings of the likes of Hunter,Selous(e?) etc
Just curious if it might possibly be original ?

There are no case colours left, APS,so you're all set Pal
Thank you guys
Franc

I have read almost all of the Capstick books to my son at bedtime. He is now 9 years old and we have "graduated" to JA Hunter, but Capstick will always be my favorite, hemorrhaging sunsets and all.

I would love to find a set of Capstick's books bound in blue boar hide that I couldn't afford as a college student when I last saw a set for sale.

CHAZ

Hoof,
I saw some signed sets on Ebay, I think, 2or3 Grands worth or more,perhaps i'm missing some zeros?

Yes , he was a good one for describing the Sunrise/Set , eh??
Franc
But was his nickname "Stick's"??

"Chapstick" was his nickname with outdoor writers. Once he'd finished writing about his own adventures, he started retelling the adventures of other big game hunters--most of whom had written first person accounts (Jim Corbett being one example I recall). An excerpt of Capstick retelling Corbett was published in Peterson's Hunting, with reference to the Capstick book from which it was lifted at the end of the article. I wrote a letter to the editor, pointing out that it might be of interest to readers to reference the fact that Corbett himself wrote several first person accounts of his adventures. To give the magazine credit, they did that the next time they published a Capstick article.

So I still can't afford them, great!
CHAZ

Interestingly (at least to me), I just had an inquiry about an Abercrombie & Fitch OU that was purchased in 1939. The buyer was Ruth Capstick which, it appears, was the name of Peter Hathaway Capstick's mother. She lived in Boonton, New Jersey at the time and the shotgun is still in that general area.

Bob Beach
Griffin & Howe Archivist

For what it's worth, the great Jack O'Connor believed Capstick was a poseur and fraud. Still, the Capstick books are a good read. Then, so is Erich Von Daniken.
"Chariots of Death In The Long Grass"?

Check out the specialist dealers in big-game books on http://www.abaa.org

or look up the titles directly on http://www.bookfinder.com

He was a great writer and I enjoy his work.

For what it is worth, I hunted out of one of his old camps on the Luangwa River in Zambia. The locals there knew him and said he was a bartender, not a professional hunter. They said he picked up the materials for his stories while tending bar. Whatever the source, he was did some good stories.

I think Capstick sent more American hunters to Africa than anyone/anything else.