I will show you something very interesting , Mr. Beagle .
Below , is a photograph l have taken from the internet of Kenneth Anderson .
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Take a closer look at the rifle . You gentlemen all know that Kenneth Anderson owned and used a .405 Winchester Model 1895 lever rifle . A lesser known fact , is that he actually owned and used a .450/ 400 Nitro Express double barreled side by side rifle , built by the British Company , W J Jeffery . This rifle was a gift to him , from Dick Bird . He actually preferred it to his Winchester for the big male royal Bengal tigers .
When most people look at this photograph with a passing glance , they immediately assume that he is holding his .405 Winchester Model 1895 lever rifle . But here is the thing . He is not .
The rifle in the picture is an Indian Ordinance Factories .315 bolt rifle , built on a cheap Indian copy of the service Lee Enfield action . Also , he is wearing a white shirt . Anyone who has ever hunted in India ( especially nocturnal dangerous game ) will tell you that it is suicide to wear a white shirt when hunting game at night .
So , why is Kenneth Anderson using a cheap , Indian Ordinance Factories rifle in this photograph and not 1 of his 2 personal rifles ?
The answer is because , at this point in his life , Kenneth Anderson had sold both his rifles and had actually become a staunch supporter of Indian gun control and anti hunting . Therefore , he used a borrowed rifle for the picture . The reason why he is wearing a white shirt is because he is attempting to evoke the image of a " stereotypical colonial hunter " . This photograph is the most widely remembered photograph of Kenneth Anderson in the hunting community . Ironically , he actually took this picture in an event organized to demonize hunting .
I was not there that day , but a local news paper had covered the event. However , l have also held the actual pictured rifle in my hand . This rifle used to belong to his son , Don ( who was still into target shooting at the time ) . When l met the Andersons in 1962 , Don used to own 3 firearms : That IOF .315 bolt rifle , an IOF "12 Bore DBBL " shot gun ( the same type of shot gun used by Kawshik during his career ) and a .404 Jeffery bolt rifle , made by a company named " Vickers " ( However , ammunition for this was extremely scare and Don had a box of pre 1947 ICI Kynoch cartridges which he made do with , for his entire stint as a hunter ) . He briefly had a .30-06 Springfield Model 1903 bolt rifle , which another Anglo Indian had sold him , but he only had 10 cartridges for it , and he sold it very quickly .
Don was not very bright as a shikaree. On 2 separate occasions , he let someone from his shikar party get killed . 1 was a tracker and the other was a shikaree guide . Their deaths could have been easily avoided , had it not been for Don's impulsive behavior .Kawshik actually guided Don once in a gaur shikar in 1965 .
In 2014 , after Don's death , a man wrote an autobiography about Don based on "interviews" he had with Don , but the amount of inaccuracies that is in that book , is laughable . The writer ( by his own admission ) is an anti hunter and painted hunting in the worst possible way . He also had not even basic knowledge of fire arms , referring to a .404 Jeffery as a " Double barrelled shot gun " . He also portrays every hunter in the book as an adulterous , sadistic and cowardly racist . In the end of the book , the writer makes it sound as if Don dying penniless was the Gods' way of punishing him for killing so many " defenseless animals " . He coyly ignores the fact that it was the Indian government who actually took all of their land and property away .
Yes , l have no fondness for the Andersons . Jim Corbett , however , was a true hero in every definition of the word.
And l wish that l could have met this lion of a man .
