KOTA GOMBE; The Story of Marc Pechenart, Wilderness Explorer and Big-Game Hunter.
Rowland Ward. 2026 CO, 1st edn, 256pp, 125 photos in color and B&W, maps. Limited edition of 375 cloth-bound numbered copies. New. (There is also a leatherbound edtion of 26 lettered copies, see nearby.). Item #008021
Many sport hunters pursued elephants in the post-World War II era, yet it is unlikely that anyone was more successful in obtaining large ivory than Marc Pechenart, a Frenchman who hunted in Africa in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. It is often said that if you undertake to hunt an elephant, you either do it once and never again, or you become obsessed for a lifetime. Marc’s father passed along his passion for Africa to his children, and three of his four sons became great hunters who ventured into Central Africa in search of big game in areas that, at the time, were nearly unknown to Western guides and hunters. Marc, who became known as Kota Gombé to his African friends, started hunting in West Africa in the 1950s, taking his first elephant in the Ivory Coast in 1959. Marc then moved on to East Africa, lured by tales of the great hunting grounds of Kenya and Tanzania. In the beginning he hunted with well-known elephant guides including PH Bob Foster, PH Terry Irwin, and PH Brian Nicholson. Marc became such a regular that he was soon trusted to hunt on his own without a guide. In East Africa, Marc obtained a number of hundred-pounders, a feat achieved by only a few hundred sport hunters after World War II. In the 1960s, his brothers Xavier and Claude persuaded him to go along on one of their self-guided hunts in the Central African Republic. Once Marc realized what kind of ivory was available there, he stopped hunting elephants everywhere else and concentrated on this stretch of wild Africa, which contained a high density of large bull elephants. It was there that he obtained his best elephant, one with tusks weighing 154 x 148 pounds. In total, Marc shot nine elephants that are recorded in Rowland Ward’s Records of Big Game, all of which had tusks over 100 pounds. This feat has never been matched by any other hunter. Marc remains the apotheosis of elephant hunting in Central Africa. Kota Gombé will be the first narrative hunting book published by Rowland Ward in more than a decade. The proceeds of this book will go to the Rowland Ward Foundation for the benefit of its conservation work worldwide.
Price: $375.00