Tracks Across Africa ─ Another Ten Years

Craig Boddington's first African hunting book, From Mount Kenya to the Cape, chronicled his hunting exploits from 1977 to 1986. Since that time he has written a book every ten years on his African experiences. Now he's back with Tracks Across Africa, which chronicles his third decade of African hunting. He actually hunted in about twice as much territory and for twice as many days during the last decade, 1997-2006, as he did during his first decade. He explains the upturn in time this last decade to the need to support his African TV hunting shows with on-the-ground hunting footage.

But we suspect there is a more basic truth: He simply loves hunting in the Dark Continent---its forests, velds, people, and animals. What serious big-game hunter has not at least thought of Africa with its tremendous expanses, its great game fields, and some of the mightiest (and smallest) animals found on earth. Kenya was the first country he hunted in back in 1977, and there is actually a section on hunting in Kenya in this book. Pretty much every country open to hunting in this period saw Craig Boddington walking on its soil: Cameroon, C.A.R., Chad, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Tanzania, South Africa, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. The animals pursued are as diverse and range from mountain nyala, elephant, and leopard to bongo, and, of course, buffalo. There is hardly a safari where he does not hunt buffalo. In these past ten years, he has hunted more in Africa than most people experience in a lifetime. Hey, we can all dream, but in the meantime we can read about it.

Craig Boddington, born in Kansas in 1952, Craig Bodingron is a hunter and an author of international repute. A veteran of over seventy African safaris, he also has extensive hunting experience in North America, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. The author of eighteen books on hunting and firearms Craig has written in excess of two thousand magazine articles on the same subjects. He has used his hunting trips as field experience for his writing, gathering information about hunting, fauna, ballistics, and firearms wherever he travels. His extensive experience with firearms and calibers has given him insight into what does and does not work and has made him a leading expert in the field.

His outdoor-writing career began in college and continued after graduation while on active duty in the Marine Corps. After leaving active service in 1978, Boddington worked as a hunting consultant/booking agent for International Hunting consultants, based in Santa Monica . In 1979 he joined petersen Publishing Company, where he served as an associate editor for Guns & Ammo Specialty Publications; as an executive editor for Petersen's Hunting magazine; and from 1983 to 1994 as editor of Petersen's Hunting magazine. He currently is executive field editor for Primedia Outdoor Group and a frequent contributor to other major publications, including Sports Afield and Safari Magazine.

In recent years, Boddington has become active in outdoor television, serving as host for the television series Tracks Across Africa and co-host of Petersen's Hunting Adventures and Guns & Ammo TV; he is co-producer of a feature-length DVD series including Boddington on Buffalo and Boddington on Leopard. In 2005 Boddington retired from the U.S. Marine Corps after serving thirty-one years on active and reserve duty.

Boddington, who resides in Paso Robles, California, has two daughters, Brittany and Caroline.