Abstract

The killing of Cecil the lion in 2015 revived passionate debate on trophy hunting in Africa. This article examines the mentoring contributions to this debate made from the 1930s to the present by three prominent hunter-writers: E. Hemingway, R. Ruark, and W. Smith. The Anthropocene has been marked by vestigial atavistic hunting practices that these three writers enacted themselves and dramatized in their fiction, offering role models for hunters and hunter-writers. They have ennobled a controversial vision of sportsmanship in an era that can no longer afford it, and with it they have helped to perpetuate a failed colonial model of white life, ignoring native peoples’ lives in favor of itinerant hunters.