The Adventures of Shadrek

In his day there was nobody anywhere in south central Africa to touch Shadrek – an elephant poacher and hunter extraordinaire of the Gonarezhou National Park region. During the 1960s and 1970s every native resident of the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwean) Lowveld knew about and spoke about Shadrek. Between 1965 and 1975 he ran rings around the game rangers and the police who tried to catch him. When the black people were questioned about him, they denied any and all knowledge of this infamous Scarlet Pimpernel of the African bush. Yet mention of Shadrek’s name brought enigmatic smiles to their faces. Strangely, the white community, too, despite their disapproval of his plundering of the game reserve’s giant elephant bulls, begrudgingly respected him.

For five-and-a-half years, during the height of Shadrek’s poaching career, Ron Thomson was the game warden-in-charge of the Gonarezhou National Park. This is the fascinating account of how he and his staff tried unsuccessfully to apprehend the elusive poacher; and how the author and Shadrek eventually teamed up, during the Rhodesian Bush War, to locate and pinpoint 10 of Robert Mugabe’s guerrilla (ZANLA) camps in Mozambique. And how the combined might of the Rhodesian Security Forces destroyed all of these terrorist camps one quiet Sunday morning.

This book is Shadrek's story.

(Available from Safari Press, California)

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