I bought my first shotgun in Nairobi in 1979. I had just started field research on spotted hyenas and the primitive dart guns in those days hit animals very hard, sending them galloping for the nearest heavy cover, where they would eventually pass out. When I went in to find and collar them, I kept encountering all sorts of other interesting things - elephants, lions, leopards, buffalo, cobras. There is draconian gun control in Kenya, and the Firearms Licensing Officer wasn't about to let an American longhair buy a rifle, but he did grant me a shotgun license and I bought a Brno ZP49, which I still have. A game warden friend gave me some Remington slugs, illegal in Kenya, which he had confiscated from poachers. After years of schmoozing the Licensing Officer, and a haircut, I finally got a rifle permit, and a .470 replaced the Brno for field work. By that time I was working on lions, much of it on foot, and the rifle is a lot more reassuring than a shotgun.
Questions about the Brno led me to this forum in the 1990's and I got hooked, leading to a modest accumulation of British guns, mostly Damascus hammer fowlers in 12 10, and 8.
