Wherever I go, someone always asks me to name my favorite type of hunting. It's a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer. But usually I'm forthcoming with only a politely noncommittal "Whatever I happen to be hunting at the time" and let it go at that. The reason I'm evasive is because even a hint of my true hunting passion invariably provokes shocked outrage or a cascade of questions. You see, my true hunting love is elephants. African elephants.

People who don't know anything about elephants can't understand why I'd want to hunt them. The only elephants they've ever seen are the cuddly pachyderms that munch peanuts and trot around circus rings with pretty girls astride their necks. Those are Asian, or Indian, elephants. They can be recognized by their small size, stubby ivory and stunted ears dangling from their heads like limp rags. African elephants are another beast entirely. Half again or even twice as big as the Indian variety, they weigh up to five tons or more, and may stand over 10 feet at the shoulder. They have giant ears that extend like barn doors when they want to exhibit a temper or merely announce their magnificent presence. No wild creature on earth is as fascinating or as intelligent--or as dangerous.

For many, elephant hunting becomes a consuming passion. Legendary ivory hunters such as Selous and Bell lived that passion. Like a compulsive gambler who is good-or lucky-enough to make a living in the casino, these hunters didn't care about winning; their passion was doing it. If this were the age when herds of elephants freely roamed the African continent, I would chuck it all and go there forever. Hunting elephants is in my blood and they are in my dreams.

Hell Hath No Fury
Unlike the ivory hunters of legend, I cannot count my elephants by the hundreds or weigh my ivory by the hundredweight, but for adventure I'll match anyone's encounters-beginning with the cow that tried to grind my bones into the red dust of Africa on my very first safari. We'd picked up the tracks of a good-sized herd that appeared to be meandering through the broken forest bordering the vast Okavango Swamp. My guide, the late Pat Hepburn, a pair of his trackers and I had made our way close enough to hear the elephants ripping the branches off trees when suddenly all hell broke loose. There was a great thundering of earth, a crashing of brush and the shrill trumpeting of an elephant stampede, but we knew we weren't close enough to have spooked them. Running hard to keep up, we heard more trumpeting and back-and-forth crashing as if the herd was stampeding in circles; then it was suddenly quiet and we slowed our pace, trying to sneak in close enough for a look.

I scrambled up a towering termite mound hoping to see over the brush. Just as I got on top, a smallish elephant broke through the trees and came charging directly at us! My first reaction was that it was only a young bull like those I'd seen on previous days, showing off with adolescent threats before turning and scurrying away. If I'd had more experience then, I would have known that this beast meant deadly business, because instead of flaring its ears-in the typical threatening pose-this one's ears were laid back flat. Any lingering misconceptions I may have held vanished when the onrushing animal crashed through a rotted tree trunk exploding it into flying fragments. The damn thing meant to destroy us just as it had the tree!

Though I had a better view of the charging elephant than Hepburn did, he was quicker to figure out what was happening. When I jumped from the termite mound he was yelling and waving his arms at the animal, trying to make it understand what we were. In a final desperate attempt he fired a shot over its head, but to no use. The second bullet from Pat's rifle hit high on the elephant's forehead, smacking a puff of dust and rocking its head back like a battering ram.

It hesitated, and for an instant I thought it would turn, but then it regained momentum and there was no doubt it would kill us or die. The world switched to slow motion then, and when I raised my rifle the crosshairs seemed to casually wander across the elephant's wide forehead, probing for a route to its brain. It seems so uncomplicated, I later remembered thinking, the power of a trigger finger challenging the might of an elephant, as if I were only a bystander watching the duel from a safe sideline. Then the vast form became motionless, and then it was very silent. I heard no bird sounds or whispers in the trees, as if all of nature was made breathless at what it had witnessed. Neither Pat nor I spoke for a long while. What does one say an arm's length from crushing death?

But why did it happen?

That was answered minutes later when our trackers discovered the stillborn calf the cow had been guarding. The crashing stampede we'd heard earlier was the cow chasing other elephants away from the dead calf she'd been guarding. We'd come between her and the calf and her rage was the most powerful protective instinct in all of nature.

That episode was a turning point in my hunting career, or perhaps it was the real beginning. Like hundreds of African hunters before me, I became entranced by elephants and wanted to learn everything about them, including their 20th-century hunters, such as the legendary John Hunter; Bror Blixen, the husband of Out of Africa author Karen Blixen (also known as Isak Dineson); and Denys Fitch-Hatton, Karen's doomed lover.

I even found an elephant's skull and sawed it in half, so I'd know for sure the brain's location, and, later, would follow herds of elephants using the crosshairs of my riflescope like a surveyor's transit to determine the straightest route to their brain from any position. I read books and found diagrams about where to hit an elephant, but most were not very helpful because they showed only a frontal shot. The fact of the matter is that relatively few latter-day elephants are killed by frontal shots. Aside from my first experience, the others I've taken were with side shots to the brain, aiming at a crease just below the ear opening. Despite romantic lore, frontal shots usually aren't a practical proposition in normal hunting circumstances because the last place you want to be is in front of a wild elephant. Except when they shade up during the day, elephants are usually moving. The trick is to sneak up behind them and find a shootable position from the side. Every elephant I've taken with a shot to the side of the brain fell toward the bullet. Other hunters tell me they've had the same experience.

Truth be known, most elephants bagged by sport hunters are killed by heart/lung shots. Professional hunters (PHs) often prefer that their clients use the heart shot for a number of reasons, beginning with the obvious fact that the heart is a much bigger target than the brain. Also, in situations where the herd is milling around, a heart shot may be the wise choice because the stricken elephant almost invariably takes off at a dead run, followed by its companions. When a brain-shot elephant thunders to the ground, its buddies sometimes run in screaming, panicky circles, and you're just as dead when trampled by accident as when it is done on purpose. (More about this later.)

Elephant Guns
Elephant rifles and cartridges are the stuff of large books and lush legend. In few endeavors have gunmakers labored more magnificently than in the building of huge-bore double rifles for the elephant trade. Heft one to your shoulder and your imagination takes the fast lane. You see yourself firing a right and then a left, levering open the barrels, hearing the pinging ejection of jigger-sized brass cases and inhaling the exotic incense of cordite corkscrewing up from the twin chambers.

Back in the 1950s a Holland & Holland "Modele DeLuxe," then the company's best-grade double rifle, sold for about $1,350. A best-quality Rigby went for a bit less. That was pretty pricey in those days, but still a sound investment for someone wanting to get in the elephant-hunting business. Today, though, a best British double will set you back upward of $75,000, which means they've become the playthings of tycoons and nabobs, and explains why many of the old African professional hunters have long since cashed in their doubles and opted for relatively inexpensive bolt rifles. Four out of every five PHs I've hunted with carry only bolt rifles, and the few I've hunted with who own doubles uncase them just for special occasions.

The only time I've hunted with a double rifle was with a Grant & Lang that belonged to my PH. I accidentally lost one of the hard-to-find .500/465 Nitro Express cartridges and we spent half a day backtracking. After that I decided it wasn't worth the bother and went back to using my bolt rifle.

The magical term "Nitro Express" applies to cartridges developed for smokeless or "nitro" powder. (Cordite is cotton treated with nitroglycerin.) Earlier cartridges made for the elephant trade were loaded with blackpowder; many of them are now known as BP Express calibers. Since blackpowder produced only moderate velocities (usually in the 1,500 to 1,800 fps range), energy was developed by using heavy, large-diameter bullets-a practice that continued after the advent of nitro powders that generated velocities over 2,000 fps and striking energies measured in the tons.

Until recently the most powerful cartridge for double-barreled elephant rifles was the fabled .600 Nitro Express, which delivered a thumb-sized, 900-grain slug at nearly four tons of muzzle energy. Then Holland & Holland brought forth a .700 Nitro of even greater power. I fired one of these at H&H's London test site, and the best way I can explain the experience is that one shot definitely gets you out of the mood for a fast follow-up shot-especially at over $100 per pop. Yet I'm told that several rifles in this caliber have been ordered and there's even rumor of an .800 Nitro. I'll give that one a pass.

Before the invention of breech-loading rifles, the elephant gun was a massive muzzleloading affair, hurling hunks of lead nearly the size of golf balls. Back in the 1970s, I went on an all-blackpowder safari with Turner Kirkland, founder of Dixie Gun Works, which then, as now, was the world's center for blackpowder firearms and accessories. Turner had a huge-gauge, double-barreled muzzleloader that had been made in Capetown, South Africa, for an early 19th-century elephant hunter. The round, cast-lead balls weighed upward of a quarter-pound apiece. When Kirkland test-fired it at our safari camp, the bullet felled a good-sized tree-a sight that caused considerable wide-eyed admiration among the native onlookers, who pronounced the gun to possess great magic. Samuel Baker, the famed Nile explorer, fancied guns of gigantic caliber and in one of his journals describes steadying the barrels of his rifle on the shoulder of a porter for a long shot. The muzzle jump was so severe it ripped off the porter's ear.

When Winchester announced its .458 Magnum in 1956, it effectively ended the reign of the great British Nitro calibers. Though the .375 H&H had done good service for generations, it had never gained real acceptance as a serious elephant round. The .458, however, loaded with a 500-grain, full-patch, .45-caliber bullet and having over 5,000 foot-pounds of muzzle energy, equaled or bettered the power and penetration of many of the traditional elephant cartridges. Better yet, it was inexpensive and easily available.

All of the elephants I've taken were with a do-it-yourself rifle I put together back in my college days-when hunting elephants was only a dream-and .458 Win. Mag. ammo that I handloaded with 500-grain Hornady steel-jacketed bullets. The reason for using steel-jacketed "solids" is so the bullet will penetrate several inches of an elephant's thick, honeycombed skull without deforming or coming apart. African lore is filled with stories of hunters being trampled to death because their bullets failed. Most of the old elephant hunters also have stories about elephants they thought were down for good but then got up and ran away. That's why I've always followed the rule of putting a "safety" shot into the back of the head after the animal is down. I also pay the skinners and ivory choppers a bonus if they recover the bullet. Usually the steel-jacketed bullets are bent or flattened, which gives you some idea of how tough an elephant's skull is, but one recovered bullet was so perfect I reloaded it for another elephant! Imagine that.

Tricky as a Whitetail
People who have never seen a wild elephant in its native habitat think that because they're so big hunting them is like shooting billboards along a highway. The fact is, elephants can be as elusive as whitetail deer when they want to be and 10 times as canny. Once I was following a trio of old bulls through miles of scrub mopane when they ambled into a patch of taller trees that couldn't have been more than 30 acres total. Thinking this was a chance to get close enough for a better look at their ivory (and possibly a shot), we pussyfooted into the trees after them. The problem, though, was that we couldn't find them! It's still a mystery how three elephants could elude two sharp-eyed African trackers, a professional hunter and me in a patch of trees no bigger than a woodlot-but we never laid eyes on them again.

Another time I was hidden in some heavy cover along a dusty game trail when a small herd of elephants came marching by almost within arm's reach. Despite their size, there was not a sound except the soft puff-puff-puff of their feet on the trail as they glided by like ghostly galleons.

My favorite hunting is actually moving with a herd of elephants as they browse through scattered trees and scrub. They move a lot faster than you think and you have to hurry to keep up. My best memories are of the times when the wind and terrain were such that I was actually able to get inside the herd and single out good bulls. This is a chancy proposition, however, because once you get inside a big herd of elephants you also have to figure how to get out without being detected. One false move and a peacefully grazing herd can instantly become an earth-shaking stampede. They don't run in any particular direction and, as I said earlier, you're just as flat when they run over you by accident.

Where's the Beef?
One question always raised by non-hunters is, what happens to all that meat? Does it go to waste? The fact is that even when you think you're a thousand miles from the nearest soul, there are always some protein-starved natives nearby. When an elephant is down, they seem to appear from nowhere, coming by the dozens and carrying baskets to haul away the rich meat. I've seen them slice open an elephant's belly and crawl inside to carve away the much treasured fat, yelling to those outside to be careful where they plunge their long knives.

Usually, by the time the ivory has been removed from the skull, which generally takes about two hours, the rest of the carcass, including the trunk (a delicacy) will be stripped, and the natives will be on their way back to their villages for a night of celebration and feasting.

Will I hunt elephants again? Sure. Despite a ban on hunting them in most African countries, elephants can be their own worst enemy and gradually outpopulate their range. When I was on another safari to Botswana in 1993, I hunted plains game in areas where I'd hunted elephants in the 1970s. There had been no elephant hunting for a dozen years and I saw bigger herds than ever. The population had grown so that endless miles of vegetation were stripped of every edible leaf, and what had been the few passable roads had been destroyed by thousands of elephants.

I also saw some great ivory-some going over a hundred pounds-and learned that the game department had realized that controlled sport hunting was the only way the magnificent animals could be saved from themselves. Everyone benefits, especially the human population, because the price of an elephant license will now pay for a desperately needed schoolroom, or a teacher's salary for a year.

Yes, I'll go back for elephants; they're in my blood and they won't leave my dreams.

Even though I don't like the idea of people sport hunting elephants, I have to admit that was a very interesting piece. I especially liked some of the wording he used to describe them. =)

You didn't notice that those elephants end up being eaten?

Yeah, I guess I was just thinking about the reason it was being hunted in the story. =)

C'mon and admit it RF....with an animal as big as an elephant, there's simply more blood to be shed.

i know why he wants to shoot an elephant....its cuz he has this really big wall that would be the perfect spot for a head mount. and the kids could use the tusks as a little indoor jungle gym so to speak.

You would be wrong.

I would like to hear the noise it makes when it comes down.

Ok, I have a solution. Sneak up behind one, and push him over.

Wouldn't mind trying some elephant meat.

Dang, ST, you're a regular meataholic...lol.

You betcha. I'll try (almost) anything once.

what weapon would you use?

You're a food adventuress...sounds like my mother!

I remember when we moved from Texas to Florida, one of the things on her "list of things to do in Florida" included wanting to try eating gator meat for the first time. She'd read somewhere that it was some good stuff, so naturally, she just had to try it...lol. She did and she liked it. Even back then (I was only 12 at the time when we moved), I was picky about what animals I'd eat; and, not being a food adventuress, I had no desire to try it. She'd say things like, "You don't know what you're missing! It's good!" I'd say, "No, I'm not missing anything, because I don't have any desire to eat alligator" and then I'd laugh.

No matter where her travels have taken her, she's tried whatever is the "food to try" in any given area. She's a hoot. Yep, mom's a meataholic!

New culinary experiences are fun! I like to try unusual fruits and vegetables, too. I'm lucky that there is a large Asian and East Indian population here, so every once in a while the local grocery store gets in some very exotic, strange produce. My husband has gotten to try some very weird things during his business travels.