Frederick Courteney Selous, DSO (/səˈluː/; 31 December 1851 – 4 January 1917) was a British explorer, officer, professional hunter, and conservationist, famous for his exploits in Southeast Africa.

Frederick Courteney Selous was born on 31 December 1851 at Regent's Park, London, as one of the five children of an upper middle class family, the third-generation descendant of a Huguenot immigrant.

His father, Frederick Lokes Slous (original spelling) (1802–1892), was Chairman of the London Stock Exchange, and his mother, Ann Holgate Sherborn (1827–1913), was a published poet.

"On 15 January 1867, 15-year-old Selous was one of the survivors of the Regent's Park skating disaster,[6] when the ice covering the local lake broke with around 200 skaters on it, leaving 40 dead by drowning and freezing.

Going to South Africa when he was 19, he traveled from the Cape of Good Hope to Matabeleland, which he reached early in 1872, and where (according to his own account) he was granted permission by Lobengula, King of the Ndebele, to shoot game anywhere in his dominions.

He made valuable ethnological investigations, and throughout his wanderings—often among people who had never previously seen a white man—he maintained cordial relations with the chiefs and tribes, winning their confidence and esteem, notably so in the case of Lobengula.

[11] In 1890, Selous entered the service of the British South Africa Company, at the request of magnate Cecil Rhodes, acting as a guide to the pioneer expedition to Mashonaland.

Coming to England in December 1892, he was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of his extensive explorations and surveys, of which he gave a summary in a journal article entitled "Twenty Years in Zambesia".

[14] When the Second Matabele War broke out, Selous took a prominent part in the fighting which followed, serving as a leader in the Bulawayo Field Force, and published an account of the campaign entitled Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia (1896).

During the First World War, after initially being rejected on account of his age (64), Selous rejoined the British Army as a subaltern[13] and saw active service in the fighting against German colonial forces in the East Africa Campaign.

On 23 August 1915, he was promoted to captain in the uniquely-composed 25th (Frontiersmen) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers,[15] and on 26 September 1916 was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, the citation reading:[16] Capt.

He has set a magnificent example to all ranks, and the value of his services with his battalion cannot be over-estimated.On 4 January 1917, Selous was fighting in the bush war on the banks of the Rufiji River against German colonial Schutztruppen, which outnumbered his troops five to one.

Exactly a year later, on 4 January 1918, his son, Captain Frederick Hatherley Bruce MC, who was a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, was killed in a flight over Menin Road, Belgium.

In Wiesbaden, Prussia, he knocked unconscious a Prussian game warden who tackled him while he was stealing buzzard eggs for his collection, and he had to leave the country at once to avoid imprisonment.

[19] Selous journeyed in pursuit of big game to Europe (Bavaria, Germany in 1870, Transylvania, then Hungary but now Romania in 1899, Mull Island, Scotland in 1894, Sardinia in 1902, Norway in 1907), Asia (Turkey, Persia, Caucasus in 1894–95, 1897, 1907), North America (Wyoming, Rocky Mountains in 1897 and 1898, Eastern Canada in 1900–1901, 1905, Alaska and Yukon in 1904, 1905) and the "dark continent" in a territory that extends from today's South Africa and Namibia all the way up into central Sudan where he collected specimens of virtually every medium and large African mammal species.

[20] On 2 May 1902, Selous was elected Associate Member of the Boone and Crockett Club, a wildlife conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell in 1887.

[24] He is mentioned widely in foremost taxidermist Rowland Wards catalogs for world's largest animal specimens hunted, where Selous is ranked in many trophy categories, including rhinoceros, elephant and many ungulates.

In 1881, he commented that: Every year elephants were becoming scarcer and wilder south of the Zambezi, so that it had become impossible to make a living by hunting at all.This realization led Selous, and other big game hunters of his time, to become keen advocates of faunal conservation.

[27] Eventually, colonial governments passed laws enforcing hunting regulations and establishing game reserves, with the aim of preventing the outright extinction of certain species and of preserving animal stocks for future white sportsmen.

Frederick Courteney Selous's image remains a classic, romantic portrait of a proper Victorian period English gentleman of the colonies, one whose real-life adventures and exploits of almost epic proportions generated successful Lost World and Steampunk genre fictional characters like Allan Quatermain, to a large extent an embodiment of the popular "white hunter" concept of the times; yet he remained a modest and stoic pillar in personality all throughout his life.

He was widely remembered in real tales of war, exploration, and big game hunting as a balanced blend between gentleman officer and epic wild man.

[citation needed] Millais, friend and biographer, wrote: "As a sport, he loved cricket most, and played regularly for his club at Worplesdon taking part in all their matches until 1915…'Big Game Hunters' vs. 'Worplesdon' was always a great and solemn occasion."