Elephant Hunting

"Watch a human being walk through a bush, and it is a messy business. Watch an elephant encounter a thicket of twigs and thorns, and he seems to flow through it." Anthony Smith

"If you know elephant's habits and temperament, if you work with a good tracker, use caution, and keep your nerve, you're in little danger from the big beasts." Alexander Lake

African Elephant Trophy Minimums

Loxodonta africana (African Savannah Elephant)
RW Minimum	RW Record	RW Measurement Method	SCI Minimum	SCI Record	SCI Measurement Method
80lb	226lb	16	100lb	302lb	14

African Elephant Facts

Habitat and Requirements

Elephants can live in a wide range of habitats.
Their only requirements are sufficient food, shade and water.

Social Structure

African elephants have an extremely complicated matriarchal social structure that is divided into family units, bond groups and clans.
Each family unit is dominated by a matriarch. Male calves are ejected from the herds of cows and calves around the time they reach adolescence and the young males then move off to form loose associations with other males.
They are highly intelligent when compared to other mammals and can communicate with each other by subsonic rumbles over long distances.

Gestation Period

22 months, after which a single calf is born. Calves may be born any time of the year, but births may reach a peak during the rainy season.
Cows are extremely protective to their young and calves are highly valued in elephantine society. Should anything happen to a nursing mother another lactating female will often take over the feeding of the baby.

African Elephant Gender Identification

African elephant males when fully mature are usually about 30% larger than the females.
Look for more angular foreheads on the males, and thicker tusks.
Don't look for a male undercarriage as the elephant keeps his testes in his body cavity and the penis is not easily seen unless he has lowered it for some reason. When he does, you can't miss it!
Females have breasts on the chest and more rounded foreheads.
Males from time to time come into musth, which translates to a desperation to mate. They can breed without being in musth, but a male who is not in musth will almost always give way to one that is in musth. The most obvious indicators of this condition are their weeping liquid out of the glands in their forehead, aggressive behaviour, strong smell and liquid leaking from the penis, which often turns a greenish colour.

Elephant Hunting Methods

Usually by tracking on foot. Walks after elephants can often be very long drawn out affairs.
Large calibres and solid, preferably monolithic solid bullets are essential when hunting this species.

A Good Elephant Trophy

The old bulls are the very best animals to take. They are past breeding age and will have already passed on their genes.
They have six sets of teeth in their lifetime and when the last set of teeth wear out, they slowly die of starvation.
Old tuskers who are approaching death can often be found in dense riverine habitat where they can source soft, easily digestible and succulent plants.
Obviously, every hunter wants heavy tusks for his trophy room and the embodiment of a truly wonderful tusker is to reach the 100 lbs a side, but trophies of this quality are extremely rare nowadays and anything over around 40 lbs a side is considered a good trophy.
A good way of judging tusk weight is to estimate the circumference of the tusk at the lip in inches, multiply by the length of the tusk from lip to tip, minus 10% and you'll have the weight in pounds.
Elephants from east Africa tend to have longer, more slender tusks and those from southern Africa tend to have shorter thicker ivory.

Elephant Hunting Shot Placement

Elephants have a very large 'engine room' area. Bring your sights up the foreleg, divide the animal in half and half again and you'll have the centre of the heart in your sights. If taking a side on chest shot it helps to wait till the nearside front leg moves forward.
If taking a frontal head shot, imagine a broomstick shoved in one ear hole and out of the other. Then aim to break the broomstick in the centre.
A side head shot can be achieved by shooting into or just behind the ear hole, exact spot really depends on the angle of the head and the height of the animal.