On 19 May 1977, someone decided that the novel of legal hunting in Kenya had killed off too many main characters and that it was time to write the word THE END.
The Kenyan government turned the page and changed the scenery in the savannah: the hunter was forced to leave the stage.
It was not a one-act play.
Behind that ruling were months, even years, of images of tusks on the market, depleted reserves and whispers of corrupt officials trading permits like poker chips.
The greats of hunting literature, such as Hemingway and Ruark, however mournful at times in their celebration of killing, had certainly contributed to creating an imaginary world: the safari as a ritual, the lodge as an altar. But while Hemingway had transformed the heart of the matter into epic prose and Ruark into stories that smelled of drums and whisky, Kenya in 1977 decided that the novel could no longer justify the agony of the natural protagonist. And so the myth was politely but firmly invited to be photographed instead of shot.
The public diary of that time speaks of a country where wildlife, that great and intangible wealth, is becoming a commodity: elephants decimated for ivory, rhinos that can be counted on one hand, herds thinning out like an audience leaving a cinema during the closing credits. The government's move is therefore presented as an emergency measure to save the last great reservoir of wildlife.
On the other hand, as with many other aspects of prohibition, it will open the door to the supporting actors of smuggling, the non-protagonist poachers, and illegal production and distribution, which in turn feed markets that are far more lucrative than safaris, such as those for weapons and drugs.

This is one of the passages from the thirteenth episode of Freddie del Curatolo's PODCAST “The History of Italians in Kenya”.
It talks about professional Italian hunters and those who reinvented themselves at a time when hunting was not only permitted but was seen as the best way to preserve nature and biological balance and combat poaching and the trade in skins and ivory.
 
A topic that sounds controversial today but which, at the time, based on the figures, made perfect sense.
Starting today, the story of that epic era and, in particular, of two Italians to remember.
(picture taken from the book "L'anima del cacciatore" by Alfredo Pelizzoli
On the YouTube channel of Italians in Kenya (direct link below, italian language)