By Safari Pike
An elephant is a bucket list hunt for many sportsmen and women, myself included. When I was offered the chance to harvest a bull in the Limpopo region of South Africa this past September instead of my original Cape Buffalo hunt I was quick to take the opportunity. I was keen on the idea of starting off my Big 5 journey with the largest animal offered, a hunt I hadn’t even dreamed about taking until I was turning gray. We arrived on a Friday to camp and were met by Andy Buchanan of This is Africa, Ryan Cliffe and Dave Freeburn who had been there a few days, we quickly began the search for a suitable bull, riding dust caked roads surrounded by masses of brush and thorns, the plains thicker than usual from the abnormal rainfall earlier in the year. We spent the first day patrolling waterholes, occasionally stopping to admire a herd of elephants, taking time glassing for a decent management bull, but unfortunately, we had no luck locating a harvestable animal.
The second day we rose early, my father and Ryan had set off in a separate vehicle to scout different areas of the reserve. We got on the road before sunrise; not yet fully awake I sat staring out the window trying to make out occasional impala or zebra legs in the dense brush. We had not even been on the search for an hour before I saw him. A bull camouflaged between two large thorn trees. While we paused to gather some quick content of Kudu and Wildebeest near the main road, I noticed a gentle swishing movement that drew my attention. Just to the right of the bachelor group of Kudu stood a brooding elephant bull looming over the brush.
I excitedly tapped Dave on the shoulder and told him exactly what I saw, pointing out the window and explaining his location. Before I knew it, we were out of the cruiser, throwing ammo and binoculars around at each other while trying to stay as silent as possible. My father was on his way to us when the nerves started setting in. Any hunter knows the adrenaline that comes with stalking an animal before a hunt, what some don’t always have the opportunity to experience is staring at a 5 ton animal waiting for the stalk to begin, the utter size and importance of proper shot placement sinking into your bones. When my father finally arrived, the hunt began.
We crept down the road, the elephant shuffling further into the thick trees. Moving as silently as possible, a round loaded into my chamber, we started gaining ground on him. After a 25-minute stalk and the wind luckily in our favor we met him in a clearing, setting up camp 40 yards away. He had positioned himself behind a thorn bush too thick to see through and too tall to see over, with only his head visible. For half an hour we stood watching him occasionally shuffle forward enough to see his front shoulder then back again behind the bush, never giving us a healthy opportunity to take a shot. Dave and I had decided when the opportunity finally arose to which I would take the shot that he was going to place his hand on my shoulder to give me an “okay” to shoot. Finally, after what felt like an eternity the bull positioned himself far enough out of the brush for me to shoot.
Dave placed his hand on my shoulder, and I slowly squeezed the trigger. The bang rang out, cutting the silence of what had been and was replaced with the elephant's billowing trumpet. The bull began to run but not before I shot again, connecting with his back right hip, a shot that surely should’ve broken the bone and collapsed him, instead he kicked the leg that had been hit out and continued to flee, almost as nothing but a flea bite. I quickly took my headset off and looked at Dave for approval, he smiled and shook my hand, “Nice shooting.”. After waiting for ten minutes, we started tracking, assuming he had only moved a few hundred yards from where he was struck. To our surprise we found him standing in thick brush, staring towards us, he knew something was there but did not make a move to charge, we set up again and placed two more shots on his right shoulder, again, he ran off. Confused, we began looking through footage.
Surely a well-placed shot such as what I placed on his shoulder and hip would kill and collapse him, but alas he still was acting as nothing ailed him at all. We tracked the bull for 6 hours in the blazing South African heat, going off of small spatters of blood and footprints in the sand. I began second guessing myself, worried my shot placement was not how it appeared, my team also became wary of how well I hit him, still we trudged forward graphing blocks of land looking for any small sign of the wounded elephant. Then, as the sun was beginning to set a grey mass a hundred yards ahead laying under a thorn tree gave hope, we silently approached, and it was the bull elephant.
Set in a picture-perfect manor, he lay dead. Shaking hands with everyone, the bull we had spent hours tracking laid not more than a mile from where he was originally shot. We spent the next few hours discussing the reasoning for why the bull did not collapse from the hip shot and how he managed to get so far with such a lethal lung wound. We were completely astonished. The next day while on our way to the elephant for butchering Dave received a call. They had found three of the four solids in the elephant. The first shot had punctured the flesh and went into the first lung, plugging it and not projecting through the other lung like what was expected from a solid.
The second solid was found in the back right hip, not even reaching bone. The bullet had only pierced through the skin and a few layers of muscle before stopping in the meat. The third was the same story, piercing only flesh. The shells I had used were dysfunctional, whether there wasn’t enough powder packed in the shell or possibly another reason they weren’t performing as we had hoped. Disappointed in the ammunition execution we switched to another brand to finish out the remainder of the hunt. Despite the close encounter in the first days of the hunt with my elephant, we finished the hunt harvesting giraffe, sable, warthog and waterbuck. A successful hunt and a story to hold onto for the rest of my life.