If I had been asked this question before the S.C.I. Convention, I would have answered Howard Hill. While at the convention I obtained a copy of "African Sporting Gazette,African Hunting Guide 2004". While reading the bowhunting section (page 64) the author writes how Texan Bill Negley gave up the rifle for the bow. Negley wanted to shoot an elephant with his bow. Negley said that Howard Hill had done it and he wanted to try. Negley's friends then told him that Hill's elephant had been rifle shot in the knee so that it would stay in front of the camera while Hill shot it with arrows. The friend also said the leopard and lion that are shot in the film had been trapped and held by a cable while Hill shot them with arrows.
I have the videotape of "Tembo" and after watching it again I have to believe the author of this story is correct. Hill shoots a leopard in the middle of the day in high grass. After the leopard is hit you can see the reeds bend over from the cable.
I think credit should be given to Bill Negley as having been the first modern archer to take an elephant with a bow.
The African Hunting Guide 2004 is a very good refernce manual.


Kathi

kathi@wldtravel.com

I thought Fred Bear shot a elephant with a bow in the liver. Maybe I am wrong though.

Maybe if you only count modern white guys but there is a tribe in Africa who traditionally hunted elephant with bows. According to what I remember about them, they pulled long bows of 100-150 lbs. and used arrowheads nearly as big as your hand. Who knows how long they had been at work!

Bill Negley shot his elephant in 1957, Fred Bear shot his June 1964.

Oldsarge,

150 lb draw long bow. That is an archer you call SIR! I;'ve drawn a 75 lb recurve, not the easiest thing to hold on target, I would hate to have to draw a 150 pounder and aim TOO.

Scott

dont forget Bob Swinehart. He was the first to take the big five with a bow. Negley also completed the big five. He isnt totally clean himself in his video his lion was hit bad and had to be stopped with a rifle. Might have taken another later I dont know. Fred Bear and howard hill were minus the rhino. And Fred has been accused of using poison arrows. Seems like someone is always tring to sling mud at the greats!

Dean

ps Negleys video "moments of truth" has some decent footage of his hunts for elephant rhino and lion.

Sometime around 1963 to '65 I remember seeing a show on TV where Fred Bear shot an elephant with his bow. He jumped up out of a ground blind with a back up rifleman behind or beside him. I would have been 13 or 14 at the time so my memory may not be exact. I seem to remember a side bar ditty where Fred showed off the special 38" or 40" arrows he made and the bow. I don't remember the draw weight but it was high. I got a 45 lb Bear recurve for Christmas that year 'cause I couldn't shut up about that show.

Posted before I saw your dates. That fits what I saw.

tiggertate,
Do you remember seeing the film of Fred Bear shooting pheasants on the wing with his bow?

Follows a quote from my "Bowhunters Encyclopdeia"

Quote:

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The first modern bowhunter to take an elephant while armed (short)with archery equipment was John (Flathead) McQuire. While on a "walking" safari in 1902, Mr. McQuire exclusively hunted with a 54 pound longbow that he had made from woodstocks taken from Model 1873 Springfield rifles in .45/70 caliber. Arrows were made of tightly wrapped and glued laminations of sun dried tomato vines. Broadheads were made from early Coca-Cola bottle caps, forged in the Damascus style and sharpened on the same razor strap that was used to disipline the young Winston Churchill. Fletching was made from the third,left-wing feathers of lactating Bolivian parrots and attached using the style favored by the Flathead Indian Tribe (thus the nickname).



McQuire attracted the subject elephant by exposing himself, pulling the pockets of his pants inside-out and screaming that his trunk was bigger than any dad-gum elephant's. McQuire's smeared remain (not a typo, "remain" is correct as it fit in a shoebox) was buried in the LU3 block of the Selous Game Reserve in August 2003 by noted archer Ernest B. Gilbert. This late burial was due to the remain being on display for years in the Smithsonian. (Room had to be made for another smeared remain, that being WJC's leavings on Monica Lewenski's dress). The elephant apparently died of embarassment when it discovered that McQuire's trunk was indeed bigger than the elephant's. Subject elephant was of the Species: Rayus Atkinsonus

Quote:

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Gottcha Ray!

I remember seeing that but I didn't tie it to Bear. Didn't he have his own show?

tiggertate,
I do not remember Fred Bear having his own show. Here in Chicago during the 60's there was a show on Friday nights called Jim Thomas Outdoors that would show all these hunts from pheasant to the Big 5.I could be wrong about the pheasant hunt, maybe it was Ben Pearson.

I think HOWARD HILL was the first white man in modern times to kill an elephant with a bow. Several years ago, I saw a movie showing that he did just that. Not sure, but I think it was in 1953 or54.

Mad Dog

Kathi
I thought I saw a TV show with Fred Bear shooting flying grouse with special arrows while on a Brown bear hunt.
The arrows had large wire hoops that helped to "snag" the bird in flight. If I remember correctly they also had "flu-flu" fletching, designed to slow the arrow down and restrict its distance so it could be found and used again, sorta like a "wiffle ball".

"While on a "walking" safari in 1902, Mr. McQuire exclusively hunted with a 54 pound longbow that he had made from woodstocks taken from Model 1873 Springfield rifles in .45/70 caliber."

I knew that the 45/70 would be somewhere in this bow hunting story!!!

The pygmies hunt elephant with poisoned arrows and then track them until they die. Shooting an elephant in the knee inorder to anchor it for bow shooting; now that's cold.

.

The statement that the medieval archer's all shot 150 lb bows is not true. Nor is the oft repeated statement that the Turkish Archers all pulled 160 lb composite recurve bows. The bows brought up on the Mary Rose were from 80 to 130 lbs, and no one knows how far each individual archer could draw his bow. A 100 lb bow at 28" draw may only pull 80 lb at 25" drawn by a short armed guy. Even though the medievial archer practiced all his life, they were not super human. The Turkish archers had a formula if a man could pull and shoot a 100 lb bow, he should back off 20 % and use a bow of 80lb. The man who struggled with too much draw weight, was considered a fool by them and ridiculed.
I believe that Fred bear used arrows of solid fiberglass to get the weight for penetration, and a bow of 70-80 lb. Negley used a heavier over 100 lb bow but ended up heavily dosed with cortisone because of it. I have his book somewhere. Wally johnson was Fred's guide in Mozambique, for buffalo. I have the video, also shows Fred shooting pheasants. There are only a few men who can handle 150 lb bows, flight shooter Don Brown down in Utah is one of the few I know of. The Turk war bows in the Topkapi Museum and in Karlsruhe, Austria, where the weapons the Turks left behind at the 1683 Siege of Vienna, give the lie to the modern myth of the 160 lb turk bow. They are more like half that. The straight limb longbow only stores about 75-80% of the energy of the recurved composite bow. It takes a 100 lb English longbow to get the arrow performance of the Asiatic recurve design bow of 80 lb or less. It's all in the energy storage and leverage.

By Gadfrey, ALF, I knew if anyone could come through on this it would be you. Well done, that man! Those Wata were exactly the fellers I remember hearin' about. Stout hearts and strong backs, y'can be sure.

Scott,
Demned right about callin' that sort of archer "SIR". As I recall the article they trained from childhood to draw those monsters. Had an odd style of draw, if mem'ry serves me, instead of holdin' out the bow and pullin' back on the bowstring, they held the bow straight over head and pushed/pulled simultaneously t'bring the arrow into battery. In'trestin' folk. Damned shame about the Colonel Blimps puttin' an end to it. Hmmpf!

.

The Wata were also know as the Waliangulu tribe. Their whole existence was based on hunting elephants in the area now known as Tsavo East. The tribe slowly became extinct the moment that they were stopped from hunting elephant by the colonial government as they knew nothing else to survive.

The ivory was sold off to ivory traders from the Giriama tribe that inhabited the coastal areas of Kenya who in turn sold them to the asian middlemen of larger ivory rackets. In exchange for the ivory, the Giriama gave the Waliangulu the poison for their arrows as well as lot's of illegal brew made form palm sap.Oh and some money....

In an attempt to evade the persecution by the game department, several Waliangulu villages intermarried with the Kamba tribe to the north (The Kamba were considered the masters at hunting Leopard with bows!) and the Giriama and Digo tribes form the coast. In an attempt to save them from "extinction", Woodley (with others in the Game department) employed most of the Waliangulu hunters - after having arrested them - in the Game department as informers. Some where employed by famous white hunters as gunbearers/trackers and they were considered the very best!

Today, no pure waliangulu exist in Kenya and those with some Walinagulu blood in them probably number less than 100.

If you ever get a chance to read a book called "The Massacre of the elphants" (Can't remember the author?) it is all about this tribe.

Their bows were reportedly in the 100+lbs range and 6-7 feet long! In contrast to what one would expect from a man able to draw such a weapon, they were all small in stature and very thin in build! Their preferred tactic was to stalk in extremely close to the elephants, within 10 to 15 metres before shooting them in the manner described by OlSarge. The hunter then tracked the elephant (sometimes for days and nights!)till it was found dead. The small family would then "camp" around the carcass until the meat supply lasted. The tusks were chopped out, buried in the bush for retrieval at a later date.

However, I doubt that they were the "1st" people to take an elephant with a bow...

How much would a safari with such hunter/trackers be worth today?

TEMBO was a MOVIE. It was a re-enactment. They did not do live video back then. You guys will find tons of infomation if you go on the Leatherwall at Stickbow.com and do a search on Howard Hill, Tembo, or Elephant.

Slightly off topic but there is an entry in Meriweather Lewis' diaries about watching in some astonishment as Plains Indians shot arrows all the way through bison. The source for the story is Stephen Ambrose's "Undaunted Courage". I wasn't there at the time so I can't vouch for it.

You guys might find this interesting� My buddy just completed his big 5 with a bow. From his accounts to me I�d conclude that the buff and the elephant were pretty routine. Complete penetration on the elephant and buff with no issues. He shoots about a 90 pound compound.

Mr spots was a little spooky just because the arrow went in going parallel to the ground and was recovered from a branch pointing straight at the ground. In other words the cat changed directions with the arrow in him and then he exited into the long grass. When Kevin recovered the arrow he had no idea how it wound up in that position (however the video showed it clearly) so the follow up was very scary since the position of the recovered arrow gave him doubts about shot placement. The cat was found deader than a rock in perfect ambush position just 50 or so yards away.

The rino is probably the most difficult animal to kill with a bow because an arrow won�t penetrate the ribs. The arrow must slip between the ribs at the perfect angle (sort of quartering from the back) because the ribs do not have a gap between them as viewed from broadside. If a rino has any idea you are there it will charge first and �ask questions� later and he had set a maximum range of 22 yards for the shot so they spent a lot of time very close to rinos waiting for the perfect angle. From his description they spent many � many - many tenuous minutes with the sphincter tightly shut before they had a good shot on the right animal. I haven�t studied Rino hunting too much but he described to me that even though his PH was there beside him with his .500 nitro double in hand that stopping a rino charge in not a sure thing because of the pea sized brain and the horn obstruction. Anyway he finally killed a very nice rino with one perfectly placed arrow.

After all of that he said the scariest of all, and the one he�d never repeat was the lion. He spent every night for nearly two weeks in a nylon blind (it was surrounded with branches from thorn bushes.. not so much to keep the lions out as to let them know when the lions were close) within 25 yards of a pride of lions. The male would come in long after dark and leave before there was enough light to shoot� day after day. The lions knew they were there but kept coming for dinner every night. He described it as sheer agony since they had to force themselves to be totally silent and stay awake and frightening since the lions were constantly surrounding them and even walking on the thorny branches within arms length. He said the male would come up to the blind and just roar since he obviously knew they were there. It was terrifying, as you can imagine. All night they stayed awake in the blind and then they had to go out and replenish the bait during the day. He said it was absolutely exhausting. The big male finally offered a shot one dawn and that�s all it took� Kevin had his big 5.

The Turkish and Asiatic literature on archery, which is quite extensive, makes it very clear that the bow drawing method that you describe, raising the bow up and bringing it down as they drew the string, was a symtom of someone drawing a bow that had a draw weight above their ability to properly manage, and drew their ridicule. The only justification would be that the English Long
Bow, a plain wood self bow, had to be of a higher draw weight to be effective with a heavy war arrow, one that had enough weight to penetrate armor at combat distances. The bones of the English archers were deformed snd showed the effects of over straining of joints over long periods of time. They never say the same of the remains of people who lived every day of their lives by the bow in Asia or the American Indians, to my knowledge.

Walex & Oldsarge,

I am familiar with the technique of push/pulling to draw a heavy bow. I did it as a boy to draw a 35# recurve (I was something like 8 or 9). My father is the archer, and I am the rifleman. He is the owner of the 75 pound recurve (don't recall the make). He used solid fiber glass arrows. As I recall the story, it was necessary to use the fiber glass as wood was not stiff enough for good accuracy. Essentially, the wood arrow would "snake" in flight.
My father typically hunted deer with a 45 pound Hoyt recurve, the 75 pounder was for bear and such.

That brought back some fond memories. Thanks.

Scott