Archduke Franz Ferdinand is probably best remembered not for his life, but for the manner of his death. Were it not for the fact that he took a detour through the streets of Sarajevo and ran into Gavrilo Princip, the archduke might have lived a life devoid of incident. Instead, the spilling of his noble blood led to World War I and the death of millions. Yet, long before that fateful summer day, Franz Ferdinand had shed a lot of blood himself, not in the name of politics or conflict, but entertainment. Archduke Franz Ferdinand didn’t just like hunting – he loved it, and the man who died by the bullet lived by it too.
In his lifetime, Franz Ferdinand’s trigger finger took down 274,899 animals, a number confirmed by his meticulously kept records. He lived in palaces and hunting lodges that were stuffed with the grim trophies of his kills, all sorts of exotic remains lining every wall of every room to bear testament to his hunting prowess. In fact, Ferdinand bagged so many beasts on his world tour that he dreamed of opening a museum to show them off.
To bring the scale of his killings into perspective, in a hunting career spanning over half a decade, the keen and dedicated hunter Emperor Franz Joseph killed 48,000 animals. Of course, unlike the emperor, the enthusiastic archduke embraced technology, sometimes even mowing down his prey with a machine gun.