By Terry Wieland
PACHYDERMIA
When in elephant country, carry an elephant rifle
Never having hunted elephant myself — at least, not intentionally — I’m hardly qualified to offer much more than some very circumspect opinions on what to do or how to do it in that regard. I will, however, offer this piece of advice: When hunting in elephant country, carry an elephant rifle. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a rats-and-mice safari chasing some arcane variety of dwarf duiker, carry an elephant rifle. Trust me.
No matter how jaded a hunter might be, your first encounter with an elephant when you are on foot and under-armed is a memorable experience. Cape buffalo, formidable as they are, do not have the sheer majesty of an elephant, and while a big maned lion in those circumstances is certainly something to be reckoned with, if you leave him alone he will usually return the courtesy.
But an elephant? One can just never be sure. Their size is certainly a factor, but intellect also plays a part. They are the largest of the Big Five — more than twice the size of the rhino, which is number two — but my dominant memory of various encounters with elephants has always been, “I wonder what he (or she) is thinking?” I always had the impression, even when being chased by a herd of them, with the safari car slewing wildly in the sand, that all these elephants were doing this for a reason. I didn’t know what the reason was, but I wondered about it.
There are numerous tales of people coming into conflict with elephants, and the elephant putting up with a certain amount of annoyance and provocation, until he finally decides he’s had enough and comes for you. It happened to wildlife artist Guy Coheleach, back in the 70s, when he was filming a big bull, and throwing rocks to get him to charge. The elephant complied, with growing truculence, until he finally snapped. Guy was on the ground, with the elephant kneeling over him, trying to get a tusk in, when the professional hunter got a shot into a non-vital part of the skull and persuaded the elephant that enough was enough. The bull wandered away, muttering.
In Botswana in 1996, I had a similar experience, although I was not trying to provoke the bull, just get close enough to get a decent photograph. If ever there was a case for carrying a seriously long lens, this was it. At any rate, I crossed the invisible line that put me on the wrong side of the bull’s territorial limit. You could almost see him thinking, “All right, pal. You want it? You got it.” My guide and I took off running, with the bull pacing behind. When we’d covered about a hundred yards, with the bull effortlessly gaining, he slowed to a halt, tossed his trunk in the air, and turned away, happy with his day’s work of showing just who was boss in this part of the Okavango.
Had he wanted to catch us, he would have, without a doubt. At the time I was running flat out, leaping downed branches and dodging pig holes. I had no way of knowing he was just putting a scare into us.
No other animal I can think of indulges in false charges, either as a deliberate warning or just for the hell of it. A Cape buffalo can’t be bothered, while a lion would probably think it was beneath his dignity. Whatever the reason, when those two come for you, they come for keeps.
A breeding herd of elephants is a different matter from an old lone bull. Breeding herds are led by older cows, and if bulls have a sense of humor, the cows certainly do not. They take any perceived threat personally, and their perception of a threat can be as innocent as a cruising safari car rounding a bend and finding itself hood-to-trunk with a half-grown calf. In the Okavango, where you can usually spot a herd when it’s still well off in the distance, we always came to a halt a few hundred yards away, and more if we could manage it.
On this one occasion, though, wending through some mopane on a narrow, sandy track, we found ourselves in the middle of a herd before we knew what was happening. The herd, intentionally or otherwise, closed in behind, cutting off our retreat. All we could do was gun the engine and pray that we got through before they took much notice and decided we were a threat.
One old cow raised her trunk and screamed, and the next thing we knew, we were skidding this way and that along the winding track through the mopane with the elephants in full cry. The old cow was close behind, with her trunk stretched out over the car. Up in the back, I was frantically trying to get my .30-06 out of its case, figuring to sell my life dearly. There were about 50 elephants in the herd, all crashing through the mopane and screaming like Beatles’ fans. I looked out to the side, and there was one young bull racing along. He looked at me with a big elephant grin — yes, I swear, a grin! — as if to say “Hey, man! Fun, huh?” With the old cow’s trunk only a few feet from my head, screaming so loud I could smell her breath, fun would not have been my word for it. We lived to tell the tale, but we were doubly cautious from that point on. You only get lucky so many times in life.
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One of Robert Ruark’s finest pieces of writing occurs in The Honey Badger, his autobiographical novel published shortly after his own death. In it, he describes an old elephant that he found in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya when hunting with Harry Selby. It was an ancient bull that lived near a muddy waterhole in the nowheresville town of Illaut. He had no friends, no companions. He was ancient, alone, and all he had were memories of a long, long life, now coming inexorably to an end. Bored as he was, living day after pointless day under the relentless NFD sun, it probably could not have ended soon enough to suit him. Ruark shot the bull, and when he slowly crumpled into the dust, he wrote, “Much of what I loved of old Africa died with him.”
That passage from The Honey Badger has stayed with me for more than half a century. I thought about it quite often in 2004 when I was back in Botswana, hunting eland up in the Kwando district north of the delta. A huge grass fire swept down from the Caprivi Strip, and we spent our days dodging the flames as it bobbed and weaved, driven this way and that by the wind. Some days, we’d circle around and hunt in the burned-over areas, which were smoldering seas of ash. At night, sleeping in the open, we cut a fire-break around camp. You just never know.
At one point, we were minding our own business, standing up in the safari car, glassing the distance, when a small elephant herd came out of the bush and surrounded us. They seemed curious as to who we were, and why we were there — just nosing about, not hostile in any way. But an elephant herd is an elephant herd. I eased my rifle out of its case — a .458 Lott loaded with solids. When in elephant country…
But nothing happened. They checked the Land Cruiser from end to end, raised their trunks and sniffed us, mumbled a little to each other, then turned and shambled off. Slowly, we all exhaled. Chris started the engine and we eased off in the opposite direction.
Jack o’Connor, who killed many grizzly bears during his life, but was mainly a sheep hunter, wrote that, while he didn’t care if he ever killed another of the big bears, he hated the thought that someday they might be gone.
“Hunting in mountains with grizzlies is a lot more interesting than hunting in mountains without them,” he wrote.
The same is true of elephants. Knowing they’re there, knowing one might emerge from the bush at any time, knowing that you might come round a bend and find the road blocked by a half-dozen bulls, it just makes it all that much more interesting. And, if you have a .505 Gibbs near at hand, just in case, so much the better.
