Hunting status? Power and buffalo shooting in the Albany and Bathurst districts of the Cape Colony c. 1892 – 1916

Abstract

The hunting of buffalo in the Bathurst district of the Cape Colony during the closing decades of the 19th Century serves as a case study of the system of issuing permits to shoot big game introduced by the Game Act of 1886, and provides an opportunity to identify and interrogate the competing interests of those who wished to obtain for themselves the right to hunt these increasingly threatened animals. The administrative process by which the Department of Agriculture considered and determined permit applications is a lens through which to view the use of influence and connection in the pursuit of personal hunting interests, particularly when the clerk to the local Civil Commissioner, whose duties included recommending permit applications, sought to secure hunting opportunities for himself to the exclusion of others.