At the beginning of the twentieth century, east African hunting safaris became a fashionable pursuit among the privileged classes, particularly in Britain and the United States. The completion of the Uganda Railway in 1901 gave easier access to the interior highlands of British East Africa, now Kenya, where large game — especially elephant, lion, buffalo and rhinoceros — was plentiful, and the white hunter served these paying customers as guide, teacher and protector.

It was in Kenya in the early twentieth century that the tourist trophy hunting industry proper began, with wealthy European and American visitors paying settler farmers to guide them on safari.