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On Target: History and Hunting in Central
Africa: Christian Le Noel. Limited Edition, signed and numbered.
256 pages, black & white photographs. Not Indexed. Trophy Room
Books, Box 3041, Agoura, CA 91301. Copyright, 1999.
History is always a quandary. It is at once
the dust bin of civilization while also the ointment on our need to
establish ourselves as having progressed beyond the stone tools of
early Homo erectus. Through the lens of history we collect the
indefinable bits of information that ultimately provides us a sense
of triumph over evolution’s uncertainty. That’s why any book of
history is important to us—each chapter is a telescopic lens viewing
the past. Sometimes, however, those history books masquerade as an
exciting adventure tale that stays in our memory long after the last
chapter.
That’s how I felt after reading Christian Le
Noel’s On Target: History and Hunting in Central Africa. This is a
book that can read for historical information or purely a good read
for relaxation.
This is not a newly released book, but one that
has maintained itself on the publisher’s book list and is deserving
of another, more critical look. On Target was published by Trophy
Room Books in 1999 and I have no idea what the original reviewers
wrote, which is just as well as I tend to ignore their comments
because many traditional outdoor book reviews are approval stamp
rewrites of the book’s dust jacket or press release.
The Autobiographical Novel
Any autobiographical novel will, to some
degree, rely on the craft of creative nonfiction, in which the
author is a participant and must use techniques of the fiction
writer to tell the story. The danger is that the author will
glamorize their role with chest thumping bravado and posturing,
dominating and weakening the text’s believability—this doesn’t
happen in On Target. Le Noel is present in the text but in a very
conversational tone throughout the story, as if the reader is also a
participant in the narrative and the two of them, author and reader,
were sharing a campfire and sundowners.
Le Noel begins his narrative with the place and
time of his birth (Normandy, France, December 18, 1938) and, as with
many of the world’s post World War II adventurers, his need to see
beyond the horizon of the English Channel was fueled by adventure
and travelogue novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century. His reading must have played a role in his decision at age
twenty to join French army. The Algerian rebellion was in full
force and he was sent to fight on the African continent. After the
war he snagged a topographer job in Cameroon and he discovered the
world of central Africa. Armed with a surplus M1 carbine that he
was issued to protect himself and his native workers from the
misfits that roamed the African bush he also used the rifle to begin
providing the workers with fresh meat. Hunting soon dominated his
activities but he had to learn how to hunt in Africa, a transition
that was helped along by his tracker.
 ‘“Boss, you are a good hunter. But you hunt
like you are in France,” said the tracker one day. “This is not the
way we do it here.”’ (pg. 5)
The lesson took hold and he changed his hunting
technique from a French countryside style to the African way and he
began evolving into a white hunter. In his narrative his French
romanticism appears in the text when, for example, he compares the
experience of facing his first dangerous game animal to a first
love:
That was March 1963, five months after arriving
in Cameroon. It seems like yesterday. That was the first of a
number of buffalo I would hunt in Congo, Chad and Central African
Republic. For that reason perhaps it is still the most vivid in my
memory. Like the first love affair in one’s life, the first
dangerous animal one meets leaves indelible memories [Italics,
mine]. (pg. 8)
When his first employment contract was
completed he was hired for a second but before reporting for work he
went hunting on the Ngaoundaba Ranch where he met the legendary PH
Henri Eyt-Dessus. The hunt and Eyt-Dessus nudged him farther along
the path that would take him to the role of professional hunter.
This background is important because Le Noel
weaves an intriguing narrative of personal history as a PH with the
region’s history. In “Part One” he explains how early twentieth
century abuses nearly destroyed Cameroon’s game populations and the
successful efforts to counteract these abuses through the Counseil
International de la Chasse under the leadership of Henri Eyt-Dessus.
Another side of the African bush is the
cheapness of life. Le Noel doesn’t avoid the gruesome and one story
he recounts is the 1974 murder of three buffalo hunters by Cameroon
poachers. He writes of other bush tragedies, which underscores the
reality that in the poacher’s war against wildlife human life is
expendable.
The History of Chad
Too often, when non-Africans think of Africa,
the focus is on the region south of the equatorial belt. Recent
events have thrust the northern region into greater international
consciousness. Chad’s shared borders with Libya and Sudan combined
with the nation’s own internal political struggles are maintaining
constant national destabilization and impoverishment of the general
population. One effect of this ongoing unrest is a constant threat
to wildlife populations. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset
observed in Meditations On Hunting (Wilderness Adventures Press™
edition, 1995) that one of the first rights reclaimed by an
oppressed people is the hunt, “In all revolutions, the first thing
that the “people” have done was to jump over the fences of the
preserves or to tear them down, and in the name of social justice
pursue the hare, the partridge” (40). A variation of this occurred
in Chad during the civil wars when roving bands of heavily armed
soldiers, regular and irregular, slaughtered wildlife when they were
not fighting each other. But hunting, in particular the hunting of
African big game, has a way of weathering all but the most brutal
storms and the years of simmering unrest did not stop a constant
stream of tourist hunters flowing in and out of Chad. Le Noel
chronicles this safari industry, explaining how the PHs kept a wary
eye on the politics and were keenly aware that “something” was about
to spill out of the country’s population and into the safari
industry. Few authors can match Le Noel’s power of understatement;
his recounting of an early, savage attack on a medical team was a
grim harbinger of what was to come to the troubled region.
Before Le Noel and his wife were forced out of
Chad he had developed a name for himself as a professional hunter so
that when he reached the Central African Republic he was able to
land on his feet and continue in his career. The CAR years are the
foundation for two-thirds of On Target, and the entire text is a
richly woven tapestry of characters that includes clients, guides,
professional hunters and government officials, both corrupt and
honest.
 Galen
L. Geer is a former United States Marine Drill Instructor
and Vietnam veteran. A professional outdoor
hunting, shooting and gun writer, he published
2000 magazine articles. He has been a contributing editor to Soldier of
Fortune magazine for thirty years and is the author of seven
books. |
Throughout my reading of On Target I was never
able to decide whether the book is only as autobiographical account
of the author’s adventures or it is more an historical account of
the characters who drifted through the region. In the end, I
decided what is truly important is the book accomplishes something
important for the Africaphile—it opens up a region that for many of
us has remained obscure. Today, with the clash between radical
religious zealots and governments threatening more violence in this
region of Africa, it behooves the thinking person to know the
region’s history. Le Noel has, I believe, skillfully blended this
history with his own to provide every reader with an insight that
cannot be overstated.
Readers may contact the author at:
ggeerauthor@yahoo.com and visit his blog, The Thinking
Hunter at
http://galengeer.blogspot.com . |
