Teddy Roosevelt ?

E

Embellishment

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Is it true that President Teddy Roosevelt dropped a charging White Rhino at 50 paces on a big game hunting trip to Africa. I was thinking I heard this in a TV documentary once?

This sort of hunting seems a bit intense for me.

Embellishment
 
I have no clue, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. Based on bits and pieces that I've read, he was really into serious hunting, and apparently a pretty good shot.

IIRC, he liked the 1985 lever action in .405 Winchester.
 
If you're into T.R. stuff, a bunch of his letters to Winchester about getting his rifles the way he wanted them were reprinted in the book "Winchester, the gun that won the west." As I recall there were some pix too but I read that book about 40 years ago....

Tony
 
I don't know what TR considered "a few yards away" but this is from TR's book, "African Game Trails" (first addition).

As the bull rose, Kermit gave him a fatal shot with his beloved Winchester. He galloped full speed toward us, not charging, but in a mad panic of terror and bewilderment; and with a bullet from my the Holland I brought him down in his tracks only a few yards away".
Click to expand...

I don't know if this is the incident the OP is referring to, but its all I found with a quick search of this book, which I haven't read in years.

Guess I'm going to have to re-read it.
 
No hunter ever does!

With that said, the type of hunt described isn't unusual. You can find similar hunts with hippo, rhino, lion, wildebeest, etc. in numerous travelogues of the 1800s and early 1900s. You can even find a couple such videos on youtube today.
 
Here is one account of a charging rhino shot by TR, but it wasn't at 10 yards.
The rhino dropped at 13 paces, and if the description is right, likely CNS crippled via the shot from the hunting partner. I like the second link better as it is a news account, but the same text.
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tr.htm
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...uoTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ov8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=2739,2239677

Going back to Kreyzhorse's quote, Roosevelt referred to it as Ciceronian theory, basically that if you shoot enough, sooner or later you will hit. Today, we would call it spray and pray. Of course, Roosevelt, like the rhino he pursued, was poor of eyesight.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/taking_issue.html
 
I believe it. Teddy was the real deal. He was a cowboy out west, traveled on an expedition down an unexplored river in the Amazon, and led the charge up San Juan Hill. I have no doubt he had some crazy encounters while hunting in Africa.
 
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