[10] Bell convinced his family to back him for a trip to Africa, where he obtained a job shooting man-eating lions for the Uganda Railway at the age of 16.
[15] He became known as "Karamojo" Bell (sometimes spelt Karamoja) because of his safaris through this remote wilderness area in North Eastern Uganda.
Around 800 of his elephant kills were made with Mauser 98 rifles chambered for the 7×57mm Mauser/.275 (using the 1893 pattern standard military 11.2-gram (172.8 gr) grain round-nosed full metal jacket load).
Bell preferred smaller calibers because they recoiled less, were lighter to carry, and in his estimation killed elephants just as well as the bigger bore cartridges.
[22] On one occasion in West Africa in the midst of a famine he killed a herd of 23 forest buffalo using a .22 Savage Hi-Power rifle with lung shots, in order to feed a local villagers who were starving.
He shot over 800 cape buffalo with his small calibre rifles, as well as countless other plains game, including rhinoceroses and lions.
[27] One of Bell's closest African companions while hunting the Karamojo region was a Karamojoan named Payale, a member of a local tribe.
[28] Another of Bell's hunting companions was New Zealander Harry Rayne, who accompanied him on a safari to Sudan and the Karamojo in 1907, and who later became District Commissioner in British Somaliland.
[29] Bell was also a lifelong friend of the American hunter Gerrit Forbes, a cousin of Franklin Roosevelt who accompanied him on three safaris for elephants between 1907 and 1913.
Bell was one of the so-called "gentlemen adventurers" that "poached" the lawless Lado Enclave after Belgium withdrew from the region following the death of Leopold the Second in 1909, and prior to the territory becoming part of Sudan.
[33] At the outbreak of the First World War, Bell was hunting in the French Congo and immediately headed back to England and began to learn to fly.
[38] He was awarded the Military Cross in June 1916[39] which was presented by General Smuts, and received a bar to his MC for service in Greece and France.
[41][42] After a period of time recuperating from illnesses contracted during the war, he returned to elephant hunting, shooting in Liberia, on the Ivory Coast, and travelling far inland by canoe, making a trip of 3,000 miles in 1921.
[46] Bell retired to his 1,000-acre highland estate at Garve in Ross-shire, Scotland,[47] named 'Corriemoillie', with his wife Katie (daughter of Sir Ernest and Lady Soares) to whom he had become engaged during the First World War.
'Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter', which was serialised in Britain's Country Life magazine, 'Karamojo Safari', and several articles about aspects of shooting and firearms in the NRA's American Rifleman in the USA.
[49] He also stalked red stags in the Scottish hills with a Winchester Model 54 chambered in the .220 Swift cartridge, of which he wrote articles describing its superior effect on deer due to the high velocity of the bullet.
1894 d.1958), sole daughter and heiress of Sir Ernest Soares (1864-1926), of 36 Princes Gate, London, and of Upcott House in the parish of Pilton, North Devon, a solicitor and Liberal Party Member of Parliament.