Maybe everybody knows about this but I just got it in an email from Safari Press. Here is the article.

At a hunting convention in January, Tanzanian professional hunter Rolf Rowher was overheard to predict that Tanzania would produce an elephant with tusks weighing more than 100 pounds per side in the next five to seven years. The latest news shows that his prediction has proved true in less than a year: The Tanzanian Game Department reports that an elephant with tusks of 48 and 47 kilos (106 and 104 pounds) was killed recently in the Mbinga District in southern Tanzania, close to the border of Mozambique.


In the 1970s and early 1980s, Tanzania, and especially the giant Selous Reserve, was well-known for producing several 100-pound tuskers every year. But by the mid-1980s, poaching had greatly reduced elephant numbers. With the help of the hunting community, the Tanzanian government brought poaching under control by the early 1990s, and elephants have been thriving there ever since. Even though hunters take many elephants with impressive ivory every year, jumbos with 100-pound tusks are still extremely rare--in fact, it has been twenty years since a sport hunter has shot a 100-pound elephant in Tanzania.


The recent 100-pounder was shot not by a sport hunter, but by two game scouts. As the story goes, there had been no elephants in the Mbinga District in recent memory, but one day an old elephant bull suddenly appeared in a maize field close to the small village of Ruhehe. The animal was damaging crops, so the locals tried to chase it away. Then, according to the official report on the incident, a youth climbed a small tree and threw a club at the pachyderm as it wandered in the vicinity of the tree, hitting it in the head--an incident that proves that a teenager loaded with testosterone and a five-ton elephant are not a good mix. The now-angry elephant grabbed his antagonist out of the tree with his trunk, smashed him against the tree, and proceeded to stomp on him. Needless to say, the youth was killed.


About four days later, two government game scouts arrived on the scene and managed to dispatch the bull with four shots from a .458 Winchester. The animal had remained in the maize fields, doing considerable damage to the crops.

This story about the Tanzanian tusker is only one of the many exciting big-game hunting adventures appearing in the December 2005 issue of Sports Afield. You can also read about a close encounter with a cantankerous Cape buffalo, a trek to the top of the world for mid-Asian ibex, and a hunt for Coues deer in a desert snowstorm. There's even a classic grizzly-hunting story by Russell Annabel! Sports Afield's December issue will be available on fine newsstands on November 15, or to subscribe to Sports Afield, click here. Or call 800 451-4788 and subscribe to Sports Afield for $29.97 for one year ($49.97 outside US). After you subscribe, you can ask for the December issue to be sent first class mail at no extra charge.

I just received a fax from a PH friend that a 90+ bull was recently shot near Plumtree in Zimbabwe.

The picture of the scouts with the ivory was posted on the site a couple of months back. It was impressive.

"Tanzania: Game Scouts Shoot Hundredpounder"

By Rolf D. Baldus


It took four shots from a worn out Governmental issue .458 to put down Tanzania’s first hundredpounder elephant after nearly two decades. The last two shad been shot by tourist hunters in 1983 and 1986 in the Selous Game Reserve. The grotesque drama took place in Mbinga District, the most south-western corner of Tanzania, which borders Mozambique and Lake Malawi.

Elephants have given way here to cultivation long time ago and those who stayed were poached out in the eighties. Therefore crowds of people gathered and watched the spectacle when a huge elephant appeared one morning in Ruhehe village. Youths threw stones, and later in the day 19 year old Lazaro Ndunguru climbed a small tree close to the animal. According to the official report by the Wildlife office in Mbinga he clubbed the tusker on the head with a knobbed stick. Being so unpleasantly disturbed, the elephant bull grabbed the unfortunate young fellow with the trunk, smashed him against the tree and stepped on him. Death had been immediate according to a medical doctor.

The elephant left and destroyed in the following days several hectars of crops. On May 8th two game scouts who had been dispatched by Mbinga District authorities shot the bull at 2 pm in Uzena village. The District Game Officer, P.H. Ndimbo said that the tusks weighed 47 and 48 kg respectively, had a length of 225 cm and a circumference of 50 cm at the bottom.

Excite me by posting pictures of Mugabe, or better, his teeth, shot with my favorite, the 375 H&H...

I don't believe a word of it. I think it's an attempt to justify selling tusks they have had sitting around, for years, even though the sale of ivory is banned.

GS

quote:

Originally posted by GS:
Excite me by posting pictures of Mugabe, or better, his teeth, shot with my favorite, the 375 H&H...

I don't believe a word of it. I think it's an attempt to justify selling tusks they have had sitting around, for years, even though the sale of ivory is banned.

GS

heh?
Their confiscated ivory stock pile is over 10 tonnes. So they make up a story of a rogue 100 pounder shot by the Game Dpt so that they may sell 10 tonnes of ivory....

I guess I am missing your point.

I'm not surprised. I just returned from hunting the K4 block in the Selous, and there were elephants seemingly everywhere, and many of the males had good tusks.

Tanzania does it right......

AD

quote:

Originally posted by allen day:
I'm not surprised. I just returned from hunting the K4 block in the Selous, and there were elephants seemingly everywhere, and many of the males had good tusks.

Tanzania does it right......

AD

I leave for K4 on Monday. Now I won't even be able to pretend I'm doing anything useful.

Dean