BETWEEN 1968 and 1972, my father, Mike Hissey, was resident professional hunter for Galana Game and Ranching Ltd – a commercial ranching operation that worked hand in hand with big game hunting over a massive area in excess of one and a half million acres in South East Kenya.
The main activity was the hunting of elephant. The ranch had a resident population of between three and four thousand but this number varied considerably with the migration of herds in and out of the park. The big five and an extensive list of plains game were also offered.
In 1967, Mike hunted with Truman (Ted) Fowler in Tanzania where, among other trophies, Ted shot an eighty-pounder elephant. As Ted still wanted a bigger elephant, Mike wrote to him about the potential for big elephant at Galana. Based on this, Ted booked an elephant hunt for a month in September 1969 and was to bring along a good friend, Elmer Keith, who
