Tracking the Memory: Tales of Hunting
Tracking the Memory is primarily a collection of informative and personal stories about the different experiences of hunting. It is also the culmination of a boyhood enterprise of exploration and discovery that began on a farm in the Chipinga area of British colonial Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) during the mid-1950s and continued along the banks of the majestic Sabi River and lives to this day 55 years on as a lifetime career and passion of the author.
Kevin Thomas is first a professional hunter but thankfully he is also a writer, and as such we have this collection of firsthand accounts of what it is like to straddle both the romantic, adventurous side of hunting and the modern commercial aspect of an often controversial industry.
Hunting is now a business but we must always remember it was once a way of life.
About the Author
Kevin Thomas was born in British colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1950. In 1967 at age 17 he joined the Rhodesian Department of National Parks & Wildlife Management as a cadet game ranger and thereafter served as a game ranger for six years, three of which were in the remote Zambezi Valley.
During this time he met and married Brenda and after resigning from the department they ventured into a short lived safari operation, thwarted by the escalating Rhodesian Bush War, forcing the business into closure. He then joined the regular Rhodesian Army as a Special Forces soldier and one of the founder members of the Selous Scouts, a formidable counter-insurgency unit.
After five years regular Special Forces service he departed the army in mid-1979 and once more turned to professional hunting & safari in Southern Africa. In January 2004 he joined Erinys Iraq where he served for two years as a Security Escort Team project lead, before returning to a professional hunting career in April 2006.
An accomplished hunting writer Kevin also writes regularly for various outdoor magazines such as Magnum in South Africa & Sporting Rifle in the UK, he has written a second book Tracking the Memory.
