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The Spanish hunter who killed 1,317 elephants: ‘For better or worse, I belong to another era’

Tony Sánchez-Ariño, now 95, defends legal hunting in Africa in his books and recounts how he once shot a record 20 animals in just 75 minutes

Sánchez-Ariño, on the covers of two of his books, 'Between the Congo River and the White Nile' and 'Marfil.'

Clemente Álvarez
Madrid - JUL 07, 2025 - 13:43 EDT


On the list of the world’s most prolific big game hunters (by trophy count) published last week by the British NGO CBTH as part of a campaign to denounce trophy hunting, the man named number one surprisingly does not appear in any formal rankings, as he has never competed. Antonio “Tony” Sánchez-Ariño, a 95-year-old Spaniard now retired in Valencia, holds one of the most staggering — and deeply disturbing — records in the history of big game hunting: 1,317 elephants, 340 lions, 167 leopards, 127 black rhinos, and 2,093 African buffalo.

Although EL PAÍS was unable to secure an interview with Sánchez-Ariño, few hunters have left a more detailed record of their hunts: he has documented nearly everything in more than a dozen books and has always spoken candidly. “To clarify things from the outset, I want to emphasize that I have been a hunter since I was born. I am very proud of it, and I don’t have to apologize to anyone for it,” he asserts in the 2016 book Hunting Under the Southern Cross and the North Star.



Born in Valencia in 1930, the son of a prominent surgeon who rejected hunting and firearms, Sánchez-Ariño devoted his life to what he had dreamed of since childhood: becoming an elephant hunter. It became his profession — he made his living selling ivory and working in commercial safaris. Though he hunted many other wild species, including two gorillas, he expresses particular pride in his books for having hunted the largest land animal on Earth across 23 African countries. He claims no other hunter in history has matched this feat — or his 62 uninterrupted years of big game hunting on the continent. In fact, he killed his last elephant in Botswana at nearly 83 years old — an animal with 80-pound (36-kg) tusks, according to his book.

This unusual longevity, along with his skill in bringing down the largest wild animals with his rifle, explains the extraordinarily high number of kills over his lifetime. In Memoirs of a Life on the Elephant Trail (2019), he states that only 13 hunters in African history have ever killed 1,000 or more elephants — himself included — alongside seven British and Scottish hunters, one New Zealander, one South African, one Irishman, one Frenchman, and one Australian.

In response to critics horrified by his death toll, Sánchez-Ariño argues that he began hunting in Africa in 1952, at a time when “elephants were everywhere.” He insists all his hunting was legal — carried out either during official culls or with proper licenses, to sell ivory or while guiding paying clients. Sometimes, he claims, he had to kill wounded animals that had escaped after being shot by others. However, he also admits to “legal tricks” — such as using hunting permits paid for by three friends who couldn’t bring themselves to shoot an elephant, and using them himself to kill 16 elephants, whose ivory he then sold.

“I never killed a poor animal for fun; there was always a good reason for doing it, keeping in mind that animals in their world and their environment, with their families, are as happy as we are in ours, and we shouldn’t kill for the sake of killing,” he writes.

“I have often been asked — usually by well-meaning but ignorant people— why we hunted elephants, such good and friendly ‘little animals’,” Sánchez-Ariño writes. “I fear that these people watched Dumbo too many times, all that sweetness and sentimentality... because the reality is quite different. In their natural habitat, elephants don’t let children stroke their trunks — not even close. They were a nightmare for the people who had to live alongside them."

In 2021, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) raised the threat level for African elephants on its Red List, classifying savanna elephants as “endangered” and forest elephants as “critically endangered.” According to the conservation group WWF, the African elephant population has plummeted from an estimated 3–5 million before the 1950s to just 400,000 today, with about 20,000 still killed each year for their ivory. Luis Suárez of WWF Spain explains: “Today, sport hunting is not the main threat to elephants — that would be poaching and habitat destruction — but it did have a very significant impact in the past and contributed to the steep population decline.”

In his 2019 book, Sánchez-Ariño also details one of the most shocking numbers cited by the British NGO CBTH: his personal record for the most elephants killed in the shortest time — 20 animals in 75 minutes. It happened in the former Belgian Congo — his favorite African country for elephant hunting — on an unspecified date, during an official culling operation targeting elephants that had crossed the boundaries of Garamba National Park and were destroying farmland.

To prevent the herd (usually four to eight elephants) from scattering at the sound of gunfire, he describes a method of approaching silently through the vegetation until within 20 meters of the group, usually led by the oldest female. “Then, walking out into the open, you’d approach them directly, gesturing and raising your voice to catch their attention. Usually, after a few steps, the elephants would bunch up behind the leader,” who would then initiate a charge with thunderous trumpeting.

He likens it to a bullfight: “In bullfighting, when the matador charges with the sword, it’s called ‘the moment of truth.’ Facing elephants head-on was similar. [...] The moment in which one had to bring down ‘the team captain’ with a precise shot, without the slightest excuse or pretext [...]. Once the leader was brought down, the other elephants crowded around the fallen one, as if waiting to be told what to do, a precise moment that had to be seized to bring down the rest of the members [...]. The downfall of the rest was to stick to the fallen leader.”


That day, he wiped out three herds — two with six animals and one with eight — making a total of 20 elephants in 75 minutes. But he also killed between eight and 12 elephants in a row on other occasions, and once 20 in Zambia, with the help of a friend, in 135 minutes.

“Some ignorant people were scandalized by the number of elephants that had to be taken down, but those useless folks have no idea how massively destructive elephants are when they feed. When they entered a cornfield, for example, with their bulky bodies and huge feet, they would destroy ten kilos for every kilo they ate,” he asserts. “Besides, those hunts took place in times when elephants were counted in the hundreds of thousands — not like now, unfortunately, when it seems those days are coming to an end. And for the record, it’s we old hunters who are now trying to protect them.”

Throughout Sánchez-Ariño’s writings, there’s a constant sense of mourning for the Africa he once knew and the collapse of elephant populations. “For better or worse, I belong to another era that has already vanished,” he says. However, he never attributes the near extinction of this unique species to the legal hunting he practiced. He consistently blames it on Africa’s exploding human population and on “industrial-scale poaching.”

“The great enemy of elephants is the fact that we’re entering the 21st century. Africa has awakened from the slumber it was in for centuries, and its population is growing at breakneck speed, creating a consumer society that increasingly demands new land for its natural expansion,” he writes in Ivory. The Hunting of Elephants (1999). “The habitat of elephants is under threat from all sides, because logically, no human being is going to sacrifice himself for any animal in this world, where the fight for every inch of land is constant.”

In his latest book, In the Middle of Nowhere: Expeditions and Hunting in Central Africa (2022), published when he was 92, he heavily condemns illegal ivory hunting: “Some African presidents had their own poaching squads who supplied them with ivory to make huge fortunes. The most notorious were president Bokassa in the Central African Republic, Idi Amin in Uganda, Mobutu in the former Belgian Congo, and the so-called Mama Ngina, wife of President Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya — who, abusing their power, committed true massacres among the elephants.” At the same time, however, he harshly criticizes today’s legal hunting restrictions and what he calls “super-anti-sporting” technologies, such as camera traps, night-vision devices, and thermal imaging gear “that locate the poor animals hundreds of meters away in the dark.”

Sport hunting today bears little resemblance to what it was in the past. José Galán, who has spent nearly 20 years working closely on the ground in Africa as a specialist with Spain’s Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking and International Poaching, finds it hard to understand how anyone could shoot even a single elephant. But he admits that the debate over big game trophy hunting in Africa is more complex than it seems. “It pains me to say it, but I acknowledge that in some areas of Africa, if you take hunting away, conservation of these large species disappears,” says Galán, now working in Spain’s Doñana National Park. “What’s worse for nature preservation: one hectare of broccoli or one hectare of hunting ground?” he asks — arguing that agriculture can have a more devastating impact than a bullet. In fact, he points out that most of Africa’s large wildlife “is not in national parks, but in hunting reserves.”

Luis Suárez, from WWF Spain, also acknowledges that despite the overall decline in African elephants, in parts of southern Africa — such as Botswana, Namibia, or South Africa — their growing numbers can become problematic. “They are animals with a huge capacity for movement, capable of altering ecosystems and destroying crops, which increases conflicts,” he says. However, he advocates for controlling the species by relocating individuals to areas where numbers are low, or through very selective removal — not by sport hunters — of sick animals.

I was going along with this article until this BS. Overall decline in Botswana. Really!

quote:

Luis Suárez, from WWF Spain, also acknowledges that despite the overall decline in African elephants, in parts of southern Africa — such as Botswana, Namibia, or South Africa — their growing numbers can become problematic. “They are animals with a huge capacity for movement, capable of altering ecosystems and destroying crops, which increases conflicts,” he says. However, he advocates for controlling the species by relocating individuals to areas where numbers are low, or through very selective removal — not by sport hunters — of sick animals.

quote:

Originally posted by MARK H. YOUNG:
I was going along with this article until this BS. Overall decline in Botswana. Really!

quote:

Luis Suárez, from WWF Spain, also acknowledges that despite the overall decline in African elephants, in parts of southern Africa — such as Botswana, Namibia, or South Africa — their growing numbers can become problematic. “They are animals with a huge capacity for movement, capable of altering ecosystems and destroying crops, which increases conflicts,” he says. However, he advocates for controlling the species by relocating individuals to areas where numbers are low, or through very selective removal — not by sport hunters — of sick animals.

Mark, the way I read it...he's trying to say that areas such as Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa have growing numbers of Elephant (despite the overall decline elsewhere). I think the author just made poor choices in punctuation.

I met him in Ngamo a long time ago. Maybe 94.

Ive met him as well as bought his book. Same with Ian Nychens. Both are legends.

I thought that "Between the Congo River and the White Nile" was a very good read.

In fact, I think I'll pull it off the shelf and read it again!

I saw him a few montes ago.
His mind still very clear.

Best regards