Bunny Allen

From The Times

Bunny, Allen, hunter, was born in London on April 17 1906. He died in Lamu Island, Kenya, on January 14, 2002, aged 95.

Bunny Allen was a famous hunter of beasts and pursuer of women. He once claimed to have slain a charging rhino with a Masai spear, using his rifle to fell three more within a matter of seconds. His forearm bore the scar of an angry, hungry leopard; his nose had been broken by a lion (or a leopard, depending on which version he was recounting); and to the end he had a lame hip, thanks to a buffalo that had charged him.

Frank Maurice Allen grew up in Berkshire, where his father worked for an insurance company. Taught to hunt by Gypsies, the boy showed early skill in snaring rabbits; it earned him a nickname that stuck. He arrived in Africa at 21, with the aim of finding work as an apprentice to a professional hunter.

His first safari was headed by Bror Blixen, husband of Karen, and in 1926 Allen was assistant to Deneys Finch- Hatton on safari with the Prince of Wales. Allen also hunted alongside Philip Percival, the inspiration for Ernest Hemingway's Pop in Green Hills of Africa.

During the war, Allen was acting regimental sergeant in The King's African Rifles, fighting the Italians in Somaliland. In the wake of these battles, lions would pick the flesh from dead bodies, acquiring thereby a taste for human blood. The creatures thus soon began killing locals, who asked the soldiers for help. Allen was taught to hunt lions by tribesmen and dispatched his first two as they fed upon a villager they had killed.

There were some hairy moments, such as the time an empty gun was mistakenly handed to him as a buffalo charged towards him. Taking account of his perilous situation, Allen ducked the oncoming horns, grabbed one of them, and swung himself up on top. He was carried some distance before his son shot the beast. 

When Hollywood came to Africa after the war, Allen was in demand. He was locations scout for The African Quen (1951) and worked on King Solomon's Mines (195), Where No Vultures Fly (1951), and John Ford's Mogambo (1953). For Ford's cast and crew in Kenya, Allen had organised and prepared a 300- tent camp, 20 white hunters and more than 1000 Samburu warriors. He was stunt double for the film's male star, Clark Gable, and is said to have made a great impression on the female stars, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. A tall, bronzed man with considerable sexual magnetism, he had a reputation as a great seducer.

He later expressed some regret over the number of animals he had killed. Retiring to a coastal village in Kenya, he could be seen strolling along the beach bare- chest, with a gold ring in his left ear.