Such a boy seemed destined to become a hunter, but it was on paper that Smith realised his dreams of adventure – and millions shared them through his 49 novels over half a century.
In recent years Smith, who has died aged 88, would say proudly: “I don’t write literature, I write stories,” and added that he always saw himself as the hero in his books and always fell in love with his female characters.
From the instant international success of his first published novel, When the Lion Feeds, in 1964, it was clear that Smith had tapped into the golden seam of masculine adventure writing that flowed through John Buchan back to H Rider Haggard.
Hollywood versions of The Dark of the Sun , which combined present-day African adventure with chunks of ancient history and some dodgy archaeology.
“I only write about Africa,” Smith was fond of saying, and when asked by an Australian fan if he would ever set a book in Australia, he replied that he might, but only after living there for 50 years.
He was, though, influenced by the stories told by his grandfather, Courtney James Smith, who had commanded a machine-gun team in the Zulu war, and used Courtney as the family name in his most successful series of African historical sagas.
Smith was sent to the Cordwalles prep school and then Michaelhouse “academy for young gentlemen”, both in Natal , South Africa, where he excelled only in English.
As a result, Wilbur studied commerce at Rhodes University in Grahamstown , from which he graduated in 1954 and then qualified as a chartered accountant.
His first attempt at a novel, entitled The Gods First Make Mad, was rejected, and Smith later said he had destroyed the only manuscript so that it could not be published after his death.
He married and divorced a second time, then in 1971 he married Danielle Thomas, from his home town of Broken Hill, later to become a novelist in her own right.
In recent years media interest in Smith focused on his relationship with Rakhimova, known as Niso, and his life as a property-owning tax exile with homes in London, South Africa, Switzerland and Malta, more than his books, which from 2015 were made in collaboration with a team of co-writers.
In 2018 he published a memoir, On Leopard Rock, “a rollicking yarn of slaughtered wildlife” in which he lamented today’s lack of “real men” such as his grandfather.
Smith had a son and daughter, Shaun and Christian, with his first wife, Anne Rennie, and a son, Lawrence, with his second wife, Jewell Slabbart.