Little-by-little we are getting closer to identifying the mystery hunter mentioned in previous posts. Already we have been able to identify his shikari (guide) as Rahima Lone, well-known for guiding the Roosevelt brothers and other prominent personalities in the early years of the 20th century. I have been reading the accounts of hunters and travellers who crossed the Pamirs during this period. Many have already been ruled out, due to their routes or intentions. However, today I made another little discovery that may help find our elusive trophy-hunter.
In 1941 a 19-year-old Norwegian apprentice called Wilfred Skrede decided he would make his way from Oslo to the training camp for the Norwegian Air Force at Little Norway in Toronto, Canada. His route was unusual, in that he went across Russia and Siberia before heading south through Xinjiang, across the Taklamakan Desert, then across the Karakorums and Himalayas to Kashmir, and thence from Mumbai via a ship to Singapore and then New York.
Some years after the war, in 1954, he published an account of his journey in English, called Across the Roof of the World (Staples Press, London, 1954). Looking through the book today I was struck by one photograph in particular entitled ‘Kazaks on the way to Kuldsha‘. Here is its:
As soon as I checked with my collection of 87 slides from the hunter’s journey I realised it was identical to one of them, as you can see below:
The Skrede photo is credited to the Royal Geographical Society in London. The hunter’s slide has a different caption, ‘A yurt on the Pamirs‘, but is otherwise identical. My guess is that this caption is more accurate that that of the Skrede photo. The ‘Kuldsha’ (actually Kuldja and now known as Yining) he mentions is a long way to the north in the Ili Valley and it would have been out of sequence amongst other slides of Hunza and Kashgar. Skrede used none of his own photographs in his book, but used several from the RGS and others by Sir CP Skrine and Col R Meinertzhagen. Presumably the RGS gave him permission to use a slide already in their collection. So the next job is to find out if the RGS can identify the slide and then, presumably, the identity of the photographer. Watch this space…
Siberian Steppes 
I’m fascinated by your search for the mystery hunter; it’s a brilliant story within itself. Along the way, you have met extraordinary characters. First, the guides, the Roosevelts and now Wilfred Skrede, whose journey is filled with adventure and set back. Onward and upward, the mystery hunter is waiting to be found…
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This is just fascinating! The Great Detective strikes again.
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Very, very fascinating topic!
Just guessing – but could it be Colonel G. D. F. Sulivan?
He wrote a short pamphlet “Notes on a Trip After the Ovis Poli” in 1907. A quick search in Google Books revealed, that he was indeed accompagnied by a “Rahima”. And he has several trophies in “Rowland Ward’s Records of Big Game”.
Not many hunters bagged an Argali back then. But i have some books by German and Austrian hunters who travelled in the Tian Shan in the 1920s (Aristocrats like Dungern-Oberau, Schwerin and Hoyos-Sprinzenstein). I’ll check out if they mention a Col. Sulivan.
Best regards: Christian
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Hi Christian,
In fact, if you read on to the following articles, you will find that I was able to identify our hunter as Willy Read, who has an amazing back story. He is also in Rowland Ward. Interested to hear about Col. Sulivan. Rahima worked for several hunters, including the Roosevelt brothers, which is how I was eventually able to identify him. If he is mentioned in any of your German sources, I would be very interested to hear. Many thanks for your comments,
Nick
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Hi Nick!
Thank you for your quick reply!
So great that you found the hunter, i have never heard of him. I collect books about big game hunting and wild sheep in Asia and your slides are fascinating.
Best wishes: Christian
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It is surprising that Willie Read never wrote about his experiences in Central Asia. Certainly his 1912 expedition was one of the most ambitious ever undertaken in that part of the world. The only similar expedition that I know of is that by P T Etherton, who wrote it up in his book Across the Roof of the World, published in 1911. Like you, I am fascinated by these hunters, some of whom were truly intrepid, even if I dont approve of the object of their travels. I spoke to the descendants of one of these hunters who told me that the hunting logs of their grandfather showed that he had personally shot over 40,000 creatures. Almost impossible to believe.
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Thanks, Nick. I have the Etherton-book and several others by him, a good writer!
I went to the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia and Mongolia twice and those old books were a great inspiration to me. I travelled mainly on horseback and on foot in the mountains and it seemed to me that not much had changed.
I am a hunter myself, because i want to obtain the meat i eat for myself – but 40.000 animals??? Not my cup of tea; what a slaughter. Must have been birds mostly, i guess. Those times are surely gone.
However: Willie Read did indeed write about his hunts! I found this on “archive.org”. You will recognize the photos 🙂
https://archive.org/details/sim_country-life_1914-04-11_35_901/page/510/mode/2up?q=%22w.+r.+read%22+argali
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I am very grateful for this. Thank you very much. There is not much new here, but his narrative is important. I have an unpublished autobiography of Read, but it does not provide as much detail as can be found in this article.
On hunting, I have no objection to hunting for the pot. However, in the period before the 1WW the hunters were uncontrolled. I have read so many accounts of hunters wiping out small herds of animals on a regular basis, in search of a large ‘head’. Often they bemoan the fact that the heads they shot were undersized. These were often just left where they fell. And by shooting all the large heads they were weakening the genetic diversity of the herds. Everyone who went into the mountains wanted a bear, a snow leopard, an ibex, an Asian wapiti, as many varieties of Ovis Ammon as they could find, plus numerous varieties of deer. Clearly it was unsustainable. As Read mentions, there were tigers in the Tian Shan when he was there. The last of these was shot out in the 1950s. The Kazakhs are now talking of reintroducing them, which would be amazing.
Like you, I have also travelled in southern Siberia and Mongolia, both walking and riding. These are amazing places and we should do everything we can to preserve what until very recently was a pristine wilderness.
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I restrain to blame the old explorers/hunters, they had to feed their porters, guides and themselves along their long and hard route. And many travellers were backed up and sponsored by museums and had to bring back as many species and types as possible in the name of science.
We must remember, that there was – and still is – some confusion about the species and subspecies of the asian wild sheep. Where does the distribution area of a “karelini” end and where starts it with the “poli” and so on… And furthermore, they look very different in summer- or winter fur.
But, like you, i am against unscrupulous killing only to obtain a trophy that makes the “record book”. I know a hunter who threw away the horns of the Argali that he killed and bought a better set of horns from a local peasant – it was four inches longer… However, the meat was fully used.
I am also very interested in tigers and hope that they can survive in the wild. Caspian tigers were wiped out by the Sowjets by destroying their habitat around the lake. A few were still in Afghanistan and Persia in the 1960s. Today with the ever increasing human population and the worth of a dead tiger for chinese medicine i don’t see a chance for them anywhere.
When i was in Asia, the locals urged me to shoot at every predator that we saw – wolves, bears, foxes and so on. They feared for their livestock, which is understandable, but i always refused. The photo i took of the big brown bear is more precious to me than it’s hide.
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Yes the collectors were responsible over what they shot. The Roosevelts and Douglas Burden were both collecting for a museum in Chicago. But there were many who went up into the mountains and shot indescriminately at anything they saw.
As for tigers, the Kazakhs seem confident that they will be able to reintroduce them in the eastern part of the country, especially around Lake Balkhash, where they were once common and preyed upon the wild pigs. It will not be easy as the tigers are no respecters of borders and the nearby Tian Shan Mountains lie partly in China. And the local herders have no respect for any carnivores. So while some deer species may be safe, I seriously doubt if anyone locally will stand up for wolves, even though they are a vital part of the ecosystem.
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