A Brief Hunter’s Chronology

1899

July 21. Born in Oak Park, Illinois.

1899

September. Clarence and Grace Hemingway take their infant son to Walloon Lake near Petoskey, Michigan—his first trip into the American wild. EH will spend July and August of every summer of his youth at the family’s Windemere Cottage.

1909

After leaving the presidency of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt makes an almost yearlong trip to Africa on a safari.

1909

July 21. EH receives his first gun, a 20-gauge, single-barrel shotgun, from his grandfather Anson Hemingway.

1910

Roosevelt comes to Oak Park on a whistle-stop tour after his African safari of the previous year. EH, with his grandfather Anson, cheers him on.

1913

Summer. EH and Harold Sampson shoot a porcupine in the woods near Walloon Lake.

1915

July 30. EH illegally shoots a blue heron and runs away from the game warden. Eventually he faces the judge and pays the obligatory $15 fine.

1919

Summer. After returning from the Italian front of World War I, EH summers at Walloon Lake and hunts in the autumn around Petoskey, Michigan.

1922

Shoots quail in the prairies of Thrace while covering the Greco-Turkish war.

1928

March. Begins A Farewell to Arms (1929), which includes EH’s recollections of bird shooting in the woods of the Abruzzi, Italy.

1928

August–September. Travels to see Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Teton Mountains—his first taste of the West.

1930

Fall. Hunts quail in Piggott, Arkansas.

1930

Fall–Winter. First visit to Charles Nordquist’s L-Bar-T ranch in Wyoming. Shoots two grizzly bears using a dead horse as bait. Around this time, Uncle Gus Pfeiffer puts up $25,000 of stock to underwrite the African safari.

1931

December. A fire in the Pfeiffers’ barn destroys EH’s typewriter, boots and several of his guns.

1932

July–October. EH hunts sage hens, elk, rabbits, and bear at the Nordquist ranch. Charles Thompson joins EH for a mountain goat hunt (unsuccessful). In September, EH kills a seven-point bull elk up on Timber Creek. EH keeps lucky bullet from the kill for many years.

1933

December 20. Hemingway party, with their guide, Philip Percival, depart Nairobi for a two-month safari.

1934

March 1. EH and his friend Charles Thompson compete in the XVIème International Concours de Tir aux Pigeons shotgun shooting competition in Paris. EH later attends another at Monaco.

1934

May 11. Begins Green Hills of Africa (1935).

1936

February. Finishes drafts of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”

1936

July–October. Patrick accompanies his father on a grizzly bear hunt that summer, and EH makes a three-day antelope hunt.

1939

Fall. Visits Sun Valley, Idaho, for the first time.

1940

September. Hunts duck, pheasant, snipe, and grouse with sons, Jack, Patrick and Gregory, and Martha Gellhorn in Sun Valley. Organizes rabbit hunt.

1941

September. Gregory joins his father on an antelope hunt on horseback in Idaho, described in the story “The Shot.”

1941

November–November 1944. With the Pilar outfitted with machine guns, EH and crew patrol Cuban waters for German submarines.

1948

September–April 1949. EH hunts widgeon, mallards, and pintails in the Veneto for the first time. Also enjoys excellent duck shooting on Torcello and at the Villa Aprile in Cortina.

1949

March. Begins Across the River and Into the Trees (1950).

1952

May 4. Begins “The Last Good Country.”

1953

May 15. Signs contract with Look magazine for a photo-journalism piece on his 1953–54 safari.

1953

September–January 1954. Hemingways, with their guide, Philip Percival, are on safari in Kenya.

1954

December 30. EH is appointed an Honorary Game Warden of Kenya.

1955

October 28. Wins Nobel Prize. Works on his African novel True at First Light (1999).

1958

October–December. Hunts pheasant and duck in Ketchum, Idaho, while renting the Heiss House.

1961

July 2. Dies in Ketchum.