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Once an Elephant Hunter
David
D
Blunt wrote in his book,
Elephant, that “once an elephant
hunter, always an elephant hunter.”
Unfortunately, that statement is too true.
I have been very fortunate to be able to
travel to southern Africa several times, but
mostly on a pauper’s budget. It wasn’t until
my tenth trip that I had saved enough to
seriously consider an elephant hunt. I booked
a tuskless cow hunt along the Zimbabwe side
of the Zambezi. Due to cancellations by other
hunters, when I arrived in camp I had the
option of hunting a bull, cow, or tuskless cow.
Fortunately, I had tucked away enough
traveller’s cheques to opt for whatever one
came my way.
On previous trips I had seen plenty of
elephant, and my heart longed for the chance.
I wasn’t necessarily prepared for it. Not
knowing what you might get yourself into
By Bill Stewart
when hunting elephant gave me a touch of
confidence, albeit false confidence. On this
first trip I was fortunate to have a great guy
to give me the tour of the Zambezi valley, on
the Zimbabwe side, in the form of PH Carl
Carinus. Carl was a laid-back sort of guy,
which suited me well. We spent the next nine
days looking for a bull with a couple of decent
teeth and passing on several tuskless cows.
“We don’t want to alert any bulls by shooting
a tuskless cow…not yet”, Carl tried to assure
me. As much as I wanted to find a decent
bull, the tuskless cow more closely matched
by budget.
It was the ninth day of the ten-day hunt
and still no bull elephant with any amount of
ivory showing. Not that I was foolishly
thinking that anything over 30 or 40 pounds
was within a couple hundred miles of the
hunting area. A bunch of little ivory, both
bulls and cows, and loads of tuskless cows.
Not that we were not trying. We had spent
the previous eight days spooring several
Loxodonta africana that eventually were
found to be too small, or too smart. We had
slipped up to several bull elephant, all too
puny when judged against Carl’s benchmark
of 50 pounds. I was hoping, against all
probability, that we would eventually, even
accidentally, discover one somewhere in the
bush.
Carl and I kept putting off removing one
of the tuskless cows from the gene pool for
fear of spooking any decent bulls in the
immediate neighbourhood. I don’t know how
tuskless cows came to be, but the Zambezi
valley is full of them. We also had to dodge a
few temperamental cows, with and without
tusks, which probably impressed their infant
calves by screaming and giving us chase. The
Page 52 African Hunter Vol. 7 No. 6

government scout probably expended more
ammunition that week over the heads of irate
cows than on the practice range in the last
two or three years.
We were spending the morning of the ninth
day spooring a fairly big bull, if the tracks
were any indication, but the tracks were mixed
up with the cows and calves, and progress
was pretty slow. I was silently hoping it
would be more successful than the day before.
We had tracked one big bull but eventually
lost it. Too hot and too tired by the late
afternoon, we were trudging back to the
Cruiser through a dry riverbed. There we
crossed the bull's spoor again, with the bull's
spoor right on top of our own. He had been
leading us on a merry big circle.
“Pow!” like a rifle shot. The now familiar
sound of a large branch breaking. Again the
popping of breaking branches emanating
directly in front of us, which we concluded
was the bull we were following. The bush
wasn’t really that thick, for a mopani forest,
but you still couldn’t see more than 25 or 30
yards. After quietly moving ahead several
yards along one of the many game paths, we
spotted a cow at some 20 paces, torturing the
trunk of a baobab tree. I found myself being
somewhat disappointed, but an elephant is
an elephant on your first elephant hunt. And
on the ninth day of a ten-day hunt, it appeared
that finding the 50 pounder, or anything close
to it, was a slim possibility. After nine days
of not finding a bull worth taking, the decision
had to be made whether to take this bird in
the bush. I must have given Carl that quizzical
look.
"It’s up to you now," Carl whispered. Time
for a management decision. I was
simultaneously trying to make that decision
and trying to visualize the side brain shot, as
the cow was facing to my right, in perfect
position for a broadside shot. I had been
worrying about making that shot for almost a
year. I knew very well that the only sure shot
on a tormented buffalo is the brain shot. It
would be a humane and quick final shot on an
elephant.
Long ago at home in the States, I had
decided that before I could attempt to take a
brain shot on an elephant, I wanted to know
exactly how to make the shot, and to do that
I had to know exactly where an elephants
brain is located. I wanted to have a clear
picture and to practice every possible angle,
so when the time came there would be no
hesitation. I was hoping that constant mental
practice would be sufficient and assure myself
that I would be up to the task if and when it
presented itself. Every hunter performs a
similar mental exercise in imagining what the
circumstances will be when the moment finally
arrives. But I knew that it would be
impossibly difficult to visualize making the
shot if I didn’t know where the brain is hiding.
Spending approximately half of the last
year thinking about elephant hunting, it was
quite stressful to think that taking my first
elephant may be a complete screw-up if the
shot was missed. And there would be hell to
pay if I muffed the shot. If the client misses
the shot, it was an easy shot and the rookie
really messed up. No one talks on the way
back to camp. The PH-client relationship
cools, if not turning downright cold. By the
way, if the PH misses, it was a very difficult
shot, the elephant turned at the last moment,
etc. etc.!
Even when my first elephant hunt was
still a year off, I was panicking as to how I
was going to learn where to shoot an elephant.
I reviewed all the hunting books on hand. Not
a whole lot of help. Many of the videos related
vague instructions. Nothing very reassuring.
The months were ticking by, and still nothing
upon which to hang my safari hat. It is one
thing to gain experience as to how to bag an
elephant when you have taken dozens or
hundreds of elephants, and a few get away. It
is another to have to wait years and years for
your first elephant and you can’t afford to
mess up, even once.
I read all the books on elephant hunting.
Taylor and his forty years of elephant hunting
throughout Mozambique. Bell’s daring
exploits in the midst of hundreds of elephants.
Finaughty’s hundreds of unsuspecting bulls,
sometimes hunting in what was the general
neighborhood of where I stood now, in
northern Zimbabwe. The classic tales of
"It’s up to you now," Carl
whispered. Time for a
management decision. I was
simultaneously trying to make
that decision and trying to
visualize the side brain shot,
as the cow was facing to my
right, in perfect position for a
broadside shot. I had been
worrying about making that
shot for almost a year.
Sutherland, and of Arthur Neumann’s
pounding by a bull on his trip from Mombassa
to Lake Rudolph. As admirable as their
extended sacrifices were and as thrilling as
the stories of the classic elephant hunters’
books might be, very few of the classics are
actually instructional to a neophyte elephant
hunter. I needed a more analytical approach
to elephant anatomy.
Neumann includes a single sketch as to
where the elephant’s brain is located. The
sketch is quite accurate as I eventually
convinced myself, but it doesn’t include any
guidance as to how to unerringly and
consistently locate it from any angle on a real,
live elephant. Bell gives some of the most
detailed instructions and sketches as to where
to bang an elephant in his first book,
Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter. Bell, of
course, knew exactly what he was doing, but
still didn’t leave me feeling very good as to
how I was going to get the job done. In his
second book, Karamojo Safari, Bell
concluded, “ keep your bullet directed toward
the centre of things, neither high nor low.”
Not very analytical.
In the last book, Bell of Africa, published
after his death through the help of Townsend
Whelen, there are more sketches of an
elephant’s anatomy. There is still no detailed
frame of reference as to where the brain is
located. To make matters worse, Bell has a
sketch of how to make a quartering shot from
the rear. That would be a tough shot in
anybody’s book and I didn’t think that sketch
was going to help get the job done either.
Many experienced hunters, like Harry
Manners in Kambaku, have described the
location of the brain as being at the centre of
a line connecting the ear holes. This positioning
system apparently has served many hunters
well, but hunters like Manners knew where
to shoot from long experience. A line through
the ear holes is a good reference if you know
where the ear holes are actually located,
underneath the elephants’ epidermis.
Guessing where the ear holes are located is
not an easy task, especially in the heat of the
moment. I still needed a clearer and easier
reference system, especially for a rookie such
as myself, if I could only find it.
Probably the best reference I found is Ron
Thomson’s book Mahohboh. Thomson
gained his valuable and extensive experience
from his cropping duties in Rhodesia. To stay
alive as a cropping officer you had to know
precisely the brain location from any angle.
More importantly, he was able to put his
knowledge and experience into a reference
system that is clear.
Much has been written about the difficulty
of the frontal shot, not to be attempted by
the novice. There is a natural tendency to
think that the brain is at a higher location than
it actually is when the elephant is viewed
from the front, which is why the frontal shot
is sometimes placed too high. I hoped I didn’t
have to prove any proficiency with that shot.
And hoped I could remember all this,
especially if an irate cow tried to mess me up
someday.
At home, I had practiced with the sideby-side
using the 25 yard pistol target stands
at the gun range. I could never see the purpose
of practicing with a side-by-side at a hundred
yards, as I can’t focus on the front bead and
the target at the same time at distances much
beyond twenty-five yards!
As I stared at the cow using her tusks to
tear away at the baobab, I thought of
Pondoro’s advice to get as close as you can,
then get another 15 yards closer. Except in
the case of trying to approach an elephant on
bare ground, it is not that difficult to approach
an elephant, assuming that the wind is in your
face, and if you move extremely slowly. I
moved a few degrees slower than cold
molasses. If you make the slightest sound,
elephant can zero in on you like radar. To be
standing within spitting distance of an
elephant, and feeling very much alone
somewhere in the middle of nowhere,
watching an elephant that might be watching
you can be a very disconcerting experience.
Now Carl was staring over my left
shoulder, waiting for me to make up my mind.
Like Thomson, Carl had been a member of
the old Rhodesia game ranger fraternity. Carl
carried the then typical government issue pre-
64 Model 70 in .458, minus any vestage of
African Hunter Vol. 7 No. 6 Page 53

any remaining bluing. I could now sense Carl’s
and the trackers’ growing impatience. We had
approached within a mere fifteen yards and I
had to make a decision quick, or get out of
there in one piece.
I now found myself peering down the
barrels. At 15 yards I was too close to have
the excuse of not being able to see the sights.
I pulled the rear trigger. The rear end of the
cow started to collapse first, but was
immediately followed by the front legs, and
in less than a second was laying down in an
upright position. A perfect brain shot, luckily.
I felt confident, like I had been doing it all of
my life.
My experience with my first elephant has
to be tempered by the fact that indeed it was
my first elephant. But the next year found
me back with Carl, searching for those 50
pound tusks again. It wasn’t long before we
happened upon a bull with 35 pound ivory.
Remembering the difficulty of finding
anything this big the year before, we decided
to try to take it. We approached the bull from
behind, who by the time we were within about
25 yards, had come to a halt, probably
considering some problem only known to bull
elephants. We stood almost in his shadow for
some time, or at least it seemed so, waiting
for him to move off or to turn. Suddenly, he
must have heard something as he turned his
head. Unconsciously, I threw up the 470 again,
and neatly placed the solid in the same place
as on the cow the year before. Call me an
elephant hunter! Or so I foolishly thought.
The next year, in a different area and
hunting with a different PH, proved to be a
rude awakening as to what I knew about
elephant hunting and what I thought I knew
about elephant hunting. When an elephant
charges, it is a whole new experience.
We were puttering along in the Cruiser
trying to find an elephant, after two 4-hour
hikes trying to track down two different bulls
that finally wound up joining cow herds,
which we gave up due to the “danger” of
mixing it up with cows. It was late in the
afternoon as we slowly travelled down the
track through the mopani forest. All of a
sudden there were two bulls crashing through
the bush on the right hand side, so we drove
on a hundred yards or so and stopped the
Cruiser. We went back, sneaking through the
grass and around the scrubby bush and
mopani trees, back to where the bulls had
been seen. They were waiting for us, with
ears out and trunks up. We slowly maneuvered
into a position where we could see ivory on
the bulls. One bull had little ivory, with maybe
a foot of tusk showing, and the other bull was
sporting even less ivory.
At that point the bigger bull swung around
to face us, and gave a little bluff charge for a
second or two, but he was faking it, and swung
back around and took off running, with the
other smaller bull right on his tail.
When we had stopped the Cruiser to go
look at the two bulls, another elephant or
elephants could be heard crashing through the
bush on the left side. When we got back to
where the Cruiser was waiting, it was decided
to give chase to see if there was yet another
bull in the area. The elephant had travelled up
a slowly sloping hill, from which it was soon
determined by the trackers that it was a lone
elephant. So up the hill we went, and fairly
quickly, as tracking was pretty easy. The grass
was still thick and the tracks could be plainly
seen in the matted grass where the elephant
had stepped. At the top of the hill, within
scattered mopani and waist high grass, the
elephant had turned to go along the ridge of
the hill. Soon the spoor led us to a patch of
open grass, about 50 yards long and wide.
The elephant had crossed this open patch of
grass and entered a stand of thick mopani
trees.
We were just starting to cross the open
patch of grass when there was a sudden
crashing of brush and trees in the expanse of
mopani ahead of us. The elephant had
probably heard the rustling grass as we walked
along, as the wind was calm. Too late, the
elephant was now running off for all it was
worth.
Well, not quite. The crashing sounds and
the breaking of tree limbs was not getting
further and further away, but getting closer
and closer. Oops. Everyone started backpeddling,
but the PH said to stop, as we
couldn’t outrun it anyway. The PH and my
son-in-law Mike got on one side of a small
mopani and I on the other side, to await our
fate. All this organization took a couple
seconds. The elephant was heading straight
in our direction, though it was still invisible
in the mopani.
Boom! Like a cannon ball, out comes a
cow with her ears spread out wide and trunk
hanging straight down, not the typical posture
during a charge, running like a bat-out-of-hell,
straight at us. The PH yells not to shoot until
he does, as he will yell at the cow and she will
probably stop. Now only about 25 yards
away and halfway across the patch of grass
the PH yells, with absolutely no effect on the
cow. She is still running as fast as she can go
directly at us.
The PH finally shoots, with a solid from
his 460 Weatherby, with no effect whatsoever.
The cow comes on. This is too close for me.
I have been aiming at the cow the whole time,
and let loose with a solid from the 470, aiming
between the eyes. I thought she was going to
drop from being brained. Not so. Much to
my surprise, she is still full-steam ahead,
straight for us. Another shot, from Mike with
another solid from his 416 Rigby, and the
cow finally decides she has had enough. She
comes to a sliding stop, and turns to run away.
The PH shoots again, I shoot again, and cow
goes down. The PH shoots again as she tries
to right herself, and she is finally finished.
Of course, all this happened in a matter of
a four or five four seconds. Things were
happening so fast there wasn’t time to get
scared but Mike looked pretty shook up
afterwards. Welcome to elephant hunting.
In retrospect I suppose we could have let
it go off wounded after she turned, but that
really didn’t occur to me in the heat of the
moment. Wounded it would either recover,
die later, or just get really ticked-off and again
try to kill the next guy that came along.
On that hunt I wound up getting another
second-to-last-day elephant, a bull, but not
very big ivory. But when you get two elephant
for the price of one, who is complaining? Even
if one tried to put you out of service,
permanently, transforming you “into a furry,
raspberry jelly,” as Capstick would say.
FESTIVE
MEIKLES
The festive season has been a highlight
for almost a century of the Meikles
Hotel year with its grand and
memorable Christmastides providing
wonderful menus and entertainment for guests
in restaurants richly festooned for the
occasion.
Even the hardships associated with
wartime did not deter the Meik1es’
management from following tradition. In the
1940’s, dinner-dances were staged at
Christmas and New Year with amazingly
sumptuous meals, first class entertainment
and novelty prizes that impressed the most
travelled and worldly visitors.
In 1940, for 17 shillings and sixpence,
diners savoured their way through a l0-course
meal reminiscent of the smartest of pre-war
Continental restaurants and which contained
such delights as sole crevette and asperges
frappe a la creme followed by duck1ing,
turkey or suckling pig. Those interested only
in the dancing - a feature still synonymous
with Meikles’ dining - were charged 10
shillings for a double ticket with half rate for
men in uniform.
Generations later and the hotel still prides
itself on offering only the best. Christmas is
considered so important on the Meikles
calendar that managers and staff virtualIy start
preparing for the next season at the conclusion
of the last. In a similar vein, numerous guests
leaving the dining room on Christmas Eve,
Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve, make their
reservations for the following year.
While private Christmas parties are held
in the hotel from the end of October, Meikles
puts on its festive mantle in early December,
traditionally following a décor theme repeated
throughout the hotel. The millennium
celebrations saw the hotel draped in icy blue,
a theme incorporating an almost futuristic
element. This year will feature a return to the
traditional with red, green and cream fabric
festooning the reception area and decorating
the hotel’s 16 Christmas trees.
Successive executive chefs have planned
their festive menus to include both the
traditional and a delectable selection of dishes.
"This year the Stewart Room and Pavilion
will be offering a varied Christmas buffet while
the Bagatelle and the hotel’s flagship
restaurant, La Fontaine, feature six-course
table d’hote menus which include the
traditional as well as such delicacies as baked
Norwegian salmon or herb-crusted loin of
lamb," says Meikles executive chef Chris
Gonzo.
For a taste of Christmas tradition, dinner
and lunch bookings can be made through the
Meikles reservation department. And for
those hunters in Harare over Christmas,
Meikles has a special rate of US$150 for
sing1e accommodation and US$180 for
double.
Page 54 African Hunter Vol. 7 No. 65
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