BIG GAME HUNTER’S DEATH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19970, 11 December 1926, Page 14

BIG GAME HUNTER’S DEATH.

A PATHETIC CIRCUMSTANCE (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, December 10. A pathetic circumstance of the death of Mr John James Simpson, who was killed by an .elephant last week while hunting big game in the French Congo, Africa, is that the deceased, who was a brother of Mr A. Simpson, of the Customs Department in Auckland, was on the eve of retiring permanently from the professional pursuit of hunting, which he had followed for 24 years. How he met his end was not disclosed in the brief cable message received by Mr Simpson from a brother in Tyrone, Northern Ireland, but as it was a common experience for him to kill game while they were charging him, it is thought he must have been attacked by a large herd of elephants. While Mr Simpson had never been in New Zealand, the tragedy is of interest in view both of the attraction such a life of adventure always holds, and of the fact besides Mr A. Simpson, another brother, Mr T. M. Simpson, now manager of the ancestral farm in was well known in New Zealand. He first served as a member of the permanent artillery in Wellington and later with the Expeditionary Forces. Born in Tyrone 42 years ago, Mr Simpson went to South Africa at the age of 17, and after two years’ service in the police force at Kimberley, worked in the Treasury gold mine at Johannesburg for 10 years. Since that time he was engaged continuously in hunting in Uganda and the Belgian and French Congo. Elephants were his main quarry, and the dangers of the pursuit may be dimly realised when it is mentioned that they had generally to be stalked in “elephant grass,” 14ft high. Last year k£r Simpson had charge of a party of hunters which included a Belgian Prince.The fatality has dissipated the plans for a family reunion next year, to which Mr Simpson’s father, a magistrate in the county, who has reached the ripe age of 75, had been keenly looking forward.