I have only shot one elephant and slightly muffed a side chest shot, followed by much tracking before we recovered it. I have one question and one comment:

1. For a frontal brain shot, you're supposed to "split a broomstick between the earholes." How do you tell where this is because I can't see the earholes from the front?

2. When my elephant was running away, I just shot it in the ass. Shooting the hip or spine is a lot easier in the book than on the elephant. Maybe I just had buck fever.

Like most things it all looks easier on paper then in reallity. Somehow the books never convey adequately what to do when things go wrong. Not to mention just a wee bit of pressure when it does.

quote:

Originally posted by Indy:
I have only shot one elephant and slightly muffed a side chest shot, followed by much tracking before we recovered it. I have one question and one comment:

1. For a frontal brain shot, you're supposed to "split a broomstick between the earholes." How do you tell where this is because I can't see the earholes from the front?

2. When my elephant was running away, I just shot it in the ass. Shooting the hip or spine is a lot easier in the book than on the elephant. Maybe I just had buck fever.

From the front, you can ussually see the top rear of one Zygomatic arch. The ear hole is about 2"-3" above that.

If the ele is looking directly at you, which seems atypical - seems they will favor one eye so they can see more of you and less of their trunk if you are close enough - the front of the Zygomatic arch is very prominent and this can cause trouble, since you may not see the rear of the arch, which depending on the attitude of the head, height of the elephant and range, etc, may be above or below the prominent front of the arches.

I have sworn off frontal brain shots in less than good light because picking up the arch can be difficult.

The hip joint is actually easy to find, but no one ever describes finding it well in the books. To find it, come up the rear leg until the front bead is at the same height as the base of the tail. Pull trigger.

A light round may need to hit the ball joint to work, a heavy round, like a well loaded 458wm will most likely break the pelvis if it misses the ball joint - or so I've been told. BTW, you can see Buzz do it in his first video.

The spine is a prominent but small (width wise) and difficult target unless the elephant is running absolutely dead away from you. Up and down it is a good size target, but put any ele movement right or left of dead away and you have to lead, and that makes the spine a tough shot. I missed the spine shot on a slightly quartering away ele by only a couple of inches and there was no reaction at all. Thankfully, it turned some and I brained it quartering away! (an even tougher shot)

JPK