I've got very little knowledge where Elephant (or any other African animal) is concerned, but I've been watching a couple of DVD's on the subject recently.

It seems to me that the commercial Ivory hunters that were operating upto the late 70's were shooting big tuskers and they seem to have run out towards the start of the 80's.

If I remember correctly it takes 40+ yyears for a big tusker to mature and produce serious weight of ivory. With 20+ years now passed will we start seeing more big tuskers getting shot in the safari areas or am I missing something?

My assumption is based on the fact that the population demographic was skewed through the focus on shooting the big bulls back then. Assuming that some of the genetics made it through time then in the next 15 or so years we should start seeing some b bulls come back.

Am I in the ball park or way off the mark? With Elephant populations running so high in many areas, it would be nice to think that some of the big boys might make an appearence again.

Rgds,
FB

Depends on what you define as big. There are a few places in Africa where you can take 100 pounders or close to 100 pounds. - But none of them are cheap!

Hi Steve,

What I'm getting at is more the wider distribution of big bulls like that. The old books seem to show that there were a lot of these type of buls around back then, and now they seem very localised.

Am I right to saythat a 100lb bull is now only really viable in Botswana?

Again excuse my ignorance, I'm just curious about how the demographic can change over time.

Rgds,
FB

Buddy,

There's no such thing as a dumb question.....

Botswana is one place you might find a really big tusker, but you might also find them in Tanzania - particularly the eastern Selous & Masailand and also in Mozambique. - Particularly on the Mozambique/Tanzania border.

I'm sure there are other places but they're the ones that spring to my mind..... I'm sure other forum members will suggest other areas & countries.

Fallow Buck I think you've asked a good question there and I may be wrong saying this but I doubt. I don't think there were half as many large elephants around in the old days as the books suggest as you will only see a few pictures and read a few stories about the 'big one'. If you read some books on Selous, Bell and Taylor, most of their elephant were the same average as today ie 30-40 lbs. The elephant had a much wider range in those days and fewer big game hunters so it sounded like there were a lot of big bulls. There have been a number of big bulls shot in Southern Africa this year alone from 80-100 lbs so they are there, we just need to find them. What I found interesting in one book about Taylor was a story about a large bull he chased around for years and never got him. This would suggest to me that there were not that many big bulls as suggested. I hope this creates some discussion as I would like to hear more on the subject myself. Fire away 'dagga boys'.

If memory serves me correctly Harland wrote about great native ivory hunters in the book "NDlovu". If I remeber correctly one of the greatest native hunters had only killed a dozen of those giant tuskers in a lifetime of ivory hunting in the bush.

Nevertheless I have noticed that in the past decade I think there has been an upstroke in the quality of ivory being taken out there. I think it will keep getting better across the board but I have to agree that no matter how strong or well managed the elephant heards are, a 100 lbs is a very rare trophy.

I'm sure that in the old days, there were considerably more big tuskers than there are now.

Ken Stewart of Stewart Bullets for example, used to work as a PH in Kenya/Tanganyika and later had a game capture operation in the same areas, and supplied a lot of game for the 'Africa' movies of the time, has many photographs of fabulous Elephants he'd taken over the years. Ken tells me, they wouldn't even consider taking an Elephant unless it was over 100 lbs.

Another example is the Lemmer family now in KZN but formally from Arusha and surrounding areas. They tell wonderful stories of big Elephants they had taken up there. Back then, they used to shoot an elephant or two, and deposit the tusks with the bank and then use it as security for purchases etc. - Incidentally, Richard Lemmer who is also a fine PH has posted here on occasion.

Whether the big tuskers will ever return in those kind of numbers is another question. Personally, I doubt it very much indeed, but it's not impossible if we hunters manage the areas and Elephant populations responsibly. - After all, the quality of Selous ivory is improving every year.... and if it can happen there, I guess it could happen in other places as well.

I'm writing an article about the same question. And I made lot of investigation about the opportunity of taking a big tusker today. Seems that the possibilities are increasing nowadays.

mario , i agree with you , the chances are increasing and as has been mentioned here , in the old days there were not as many "big tuskers" as might have been ..

given that a big tusker will have to be an old bull to have big ivory , and given that there is a recent population explosion in southern africa of elephants ...i believe we are at the moment seeing a very young elephant population overall ...

statistics show that we have had an elephant problem in southern africa for the last 40 years , do the math , at a growth rate of 4% per annum in the elephant populations , the few old elephants that are there are just those at the very tip of that population pyramid ...

many of the 40 to 50 pounders that are taken today havent even gotten into their last set of teeth ...imagine how big they would have been if allowed another 20 years or more to grow given that ivory grows exponentially ...

likewise i dont believe that the genetics for the big tuskers has been lost , the bulls 9 their offspring) are just not mature in a lot of the areas ...

shakari you are dead right and i have also read , with some envy i must say , those early accounts and spoken to some of the old timers in kenya who as youngsters shot some of those big bulls. but also they came from a very different gene pool with different challenges facing that population , aside from hunting . i have done a lot of work in the chyulu hills region north of kilimanjaro and will say that there are several bulls there whose tusks almost touch the ground !, east africa is a somewhat different question

shangaan i agree with you that if you read closely there werent as many big tuskers as we would think ...however if you look at writings from the hunters who were in the kenyan gene pool hunting in those days , its a different story ...

same as today , we are looking at seperate gene pools and thus different expectations ...


well , i look forward to seeing what quality we are shooting in ten and twenty years time !!

Gents,

Don't forget that during the so called golden age of safari, that many 100 pound eles were taken for clients by the use of spotter planes. Definately non puka these days. I am sure it saved a lot of shoe leather however.

Jeff

A lot will of course depend on how we as hunters AND game departments etc throughout Africa manage the Elephant populations. If we do it, and are permitted to do it right, we should see a lot more big tuskers - if we do it wrong or are not permitted (by political correctness) to do it right, we'll probably see a gradual decline.

some good news is that in Tanzania, they have reintroduced Elephants to the normal 21 day licence rather than a very special and not easy to get, special permit.......

Ivan I agree, I was talking more about the Southern African population. By no means have we lost the gene pool. We had to shoot a bull a few years back which had been wounded by NP on a PAC excercise, it aged at 25 years old and was carring 50 lb tusks, easily a hundred pounder in another 30 years. As a matter of interest, the Save Valley Conservancy has had an independant study done by an ex Parks ecologist who now consults for a few Parks in the region.The pyramid Ivan refers to is very interesting as it supports a certain amount of culling and points to PAC on bulls as being the main negative in the decline of big tuskers. So for instance with the right amount of culling (mostly the cow population) and no PAC (trophy hunting can still be done) the trophy size increases and numbers of bulls increase, so for a young population you could work at getting those 100 lb ele's with in 15-20 years whilst harvesting 60-90 lb in the mean time.

Guys this is really interesting from a scientific point of view. Realistically do all bulls have the same life expectancy, assuming they are not predated/hunted/poached etc?

Also is there an age when Ivory starts "going back"? I believe most ele's are either left or right tusked, and they tend to work with a specific tusk which gets worn down. Is there a point of diminishing returns?

Rgds,
FB

Couple of good questions and to some extent they show how much more research there still is to do on our big eared friends.....

I don't consider myself an expert on Elephants, but I have over the years studied them and do have an interest in them. - I guess the answer to your first question is that like humans, there are long and short lived genetic lines. Some die of old age, as in heart attacks etc, some of diseases such as cancer etc, and some of accidents etc. However, those exceptons aside, most Elephants actually die of starvation due to their last set of teeth wearing out and their inability to chew and therefore process their food. - So I guess that beggars the question, do all Elephants wear their teeth out at the same rate? - My guess, is no they don't and that this would to a large extent depend on their food sources and maybe other factors as well.

Ivory doesn't 'go back' as such, but it does wear and tusks do obviously sometimes get broken due to a variety of reasons, such as fighting & overuse as levers etc. - Simple logic tells us that the older the animal gets, the more chance of a broken or worn tusk.

What do you guys make of the oft used assertion that 'the genetics for large tusks have been selectively shot out'?

At what age are bulls most likely to breed? Are they trophies at this age?

Personally, I think there's plenty of big tusker genetics around still and the picture I posted previously is good evidence of at least one example.

As to what age are bulls most likely to breed? ..... that depends on a lot of factors. They're capable of breeding from adolescence and if they're the only bull in the area, such as is sometimes the case in a translocation, they may well breed from an early age. Usually, assuming a more natural situation, the biggest bulls in the area get the most chance to breed....... At the other end of the age scale. the same principle may often apply. A younger but stronger bull will often displace the older bull in the breeding stakes. Musth is another and very important factor in the breeding stakes. A bigger bull that isn't in musth will often give way to a smaller bull that is. - BUT not always.

Really, it's just another example of 'never say never, and never say always in Africa.......

Those big boys just keep showing up..The reason is they go along for almost a lifetime at say 60 lbs, then the last couple of years of their life they make a growth spurt and become 100 pounders. All their food intake goes to the ivory and very little to the body and that is why so many of them are huge tusked but the body is thin and maciated...

I got this information from Hannes Swanapoel, who worked for Kruger Park as a problem animal control officer and elephant specialist for lack of a better word. He retired to being a PH after 40 years in Kruger..I book hunts for him in that area..Hannes is one of the most interesting people that I have ever known and a cornacopia of wildlife and fauna information, and one heck of a nice person in general.

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:
Ken Stewart of Stewart Bullets for example, used to work as a PH in Kenya/Tanganyika and later had a game capture operation in the same areas, and supplied a lot of game for the 'Africa' movies of the time, has many photographs of fabulous Elephants he'd taken over the years. Ken tells me, they wouldn't even consider taking an Elephant unless it was over 100 lbs.

Hi shakari,
I am PROUD to be one of Ken Stewart´s friends. Ken Stewart is one of the last really BIG hunters (compare him what ever name you want after Harry Selby) still alive from the heydays of hunting in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The biggest elephant he ever saw was what he estimated to a 175 pounder, each side.

They never got him, but saw the tusks...

Two photo´s of elephant´s that Ken Stewart actually shot:



120 Pounder, Kenya, 1960´s



142 Pounder, Kenya, 1960´s

Husky,

Then we have a good friend in common.

As you say, you can compare him to pretty much any of the old time big names. Indeed, he was either related, worked for or with or was a neighbour to most of 'em. If I remember correctly, he learned his trade from J A Hunter himself.

His wife Cathy was also related to, or knew most of the same people. She was also involved in some of the Africa movies of the period and Ken supplied all the animals for the Born Free movie.

Could it be that the reason the tusks get bigger as the body draws down be that they stop eating, and as such, stop wearing down the tusks...

They don't really stop eating as such, they stop processing the food they eat because their teeth can't break it down and it passes straight through them. Dying for most Elephants is a slow process, and older Elephants getting towards the end of the available wear on the last set of teeth can often be found in riverine habitat in search of the more succulent and more easily digested food. - One way to make a guesstimate as to age is to look at their droppings. A younger Elephant will have a higher percentage of well digested food matter in it's droppings and an older Elephant with worn down teeth wil have a lot more undigested food in there. Size of dropping is sometimes another useful guide.

Hi there, I have found all the comments so far to be very interesting and informative. It is just unfortunate that most of the scientific data that we have today was not available way back when, such as general elephant population census' in different areas, as well as general demographics and age-structures, average ivory mass, etc is not available now. Original elephant distributions used to be a heck of a lot wider than they now, and probably followed every major river course all the way down and accross Africa. Unfortunately their free-roaming space is being restricted all the time.

Elephant, being keystone species, are both creators and destroyers. Sadly, their numbers in most reserves where they are currently found are, or are probably close to reaching levels where they are impacting negatively on their environment, affecting the conservation of other lesser species of fauna and flora.Just as I think Shakari stated, due to political correctness, culling has stopped in most areas, which would stop this from happening. However, I can understand that culling itself can have negative impacts on elephant populations and behaviour too, and not too much of this is studied. One negative aspect is the removing old knowledgeable matriarchs, leading to loss of useful knowledge that would have been passed down from generation to generation. It may also be responsible for more aggressive behaviour of some of the smaller younger matriachs seen in some areas, that do not know how to deal with stressful human encounters, and tend to resort to aggressive behaviour.

As to hunting, I do not think that current hunting would have a huge effect on ivory size, although, I am sure that it might have some effect. Past events and heavy hunting pressure must have lead to some sort of reduction I am sure though. Take the Addo elephants, many of the cows are tuskless, the same for a large number of Zim cows. Tusks I think would be a huge selective factor as they are tools in more ways than one for an elephant. In my mind for an elephant not to have tusks, it would have to be either due to the habitat not requiring their use, limiting their size, (as with the forest elephants, having thinner, closer together tusks to get through vegetation) or due to selective pressure from hunting, which would mean that elephants with less ivory would pass on more of their genes than tusked ones.

For male elephants, the same would be true, with large bodied males in their prime in musth with large tusks having a greater chance of mating with females and so passing on their genes, ie there would probably be selection for big males with big ivory. I would probably tend to agree that most of the elephants with big ivory now are probably in areas that have had a past record of tuskers and which are fairly remote or protected from both hunting and most importantly poaching. I hope that I haven't rambled on too much, just my 2 cents worth though on the subject for what it is worth!

I'll add by saying that I'm not a zoologist and the following comments are that of a layman, and I'm assuming a good food supply - but I'd say that the tusk growth could possibly work pretty much on a pro rata basis for all, or at least most of the Elephant's life. While (in younger years) it can digest a higher percentage of it's intake, it can divert a higher amount of energy to tusk growth and when that intake/digestion rate decreases as the last set of teeth wear out, the tusk growth rate also decreases.

However, we have to consider where that tusk growth goes. My guess is that it could well be similar (at least to a degree) to human children who grow in stages of up and out, or if you prefer, taller and broader etc. In Elephantine terms, the tusks grow longer in some stages, thicker in others and the nerve grows smaller and the tusk grows internally at other stages. - Perhaps yet another subject for further study.

Given that the genetic component for big ivory would be carried by cows as well as bulls in a population, it would lead me to believe that it would take a lot of shooting to weed out the genes for big teeth. I guess it is possible.

Shakari, I am afraid I do not know much about elephant tusk growth-curves, but I do agree with your ideas on tusk growth. I would expect that as digestion becomes less efficient in old age, one would expect less energy to be available for growth in any form. I would expect growth spurts in adoloscence, going into sexual maturity, and maybe slowing increasing with age, as physical size of the animal increases too, but obviously depends on genetics and according to dietary intake and quality. I would think that once they get older too, one might expect another tusk growth spurt, with energy going into tusk growth instead of reproduction when they can not compete with younger stronger bulls? Growth would continue just the same until they reach their last set of molars, but this is just guessing, I am sure there is information out there on this somewhere.

Fallow Buck, yes I would think that there certainly are still some decent tusker genes floating around, as one or two hunters have shown lately, there are just far less than there would have been before serious ivory hunting and human encroachment started all those years back, combined with continuous ever present poaching. I think that if given the chance, those genes will show themselves in time, but a great majority of those genes have probably also been lost for good. Obviously for an animal to get to serious ivory size, it would need a combination of good genes, good diet, and it would have to have had a good dose of luck in it's lifetime avoiding poachers and hunters as well as not breaking it's tusks in fights or by using their tusks inappropriately with excessive force, that would result in a broken tusk etc. I don't think it is all too un-common for an ellie to break a tusk, think it is usually the one on their dominant side that they use the most, and one way of telling whether they are right or left 'handed'. Having big ivory unfortunately would always attract poachers and I think that at least a couple of the great Kruger tuskers although relatively protected, have fallen foul to a poacher's bullet. I think that it is quite a feat for a really big tusker to die of natural causes these days, and many don't get the chance to get there. I suppose only time will answer the question for sure, but all is not yet lost in the gene department, the rest depends on propper management.

In the same vein, I have heard from a source I would consider knowledgable, that a bull's tusk length is pretty well set by the time it's in its 20's, and after that it just adds mass.

Doesn't sound right to me, since I haven't seen and really looong tusks that were extremely thin, but then, I haven't seen that many anyway .

Does this sound too far-fetched?

PostDriver,

From my experience of watching Bulls I can age with a degree of certainty, (mostly from translocations), I would say that, that isn't usually true.

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:
Another example is the Lemmer family now in KZN but formally from Arusha and surrounding areas. They tell wonderful stories of big Elephants they had taken up there. Back then, they used to shoot an elephant or two, and deposit the tusks with the bank and then use it as security for purchases etc. - Incidentally, Richard Lemmer who is also a fine PH has posted here on occasion.

Here is a picture taken in the late fifties.
The hunter to the left are Richard Lemmers father, Johannes Casparus Lemmer, and the hunter to the right are Willhelm Jacobs.

Shakari, don't sell yourself short, I am a zoologist, although not an expert in any such department, although not practising, which I wish that I was, maybe somewhere in the African bush!

You will know much more than myself or most other zoologists will probably ever learn in their lifetime, and that experience is something that can not be bought or taught sitting in an office reading scientific papers, etc all day, although to be able to do both must put you in good stead. Direct observations and interpretations about things you see and deduce in the bush over time, for example your acuracy in estimating elephant age, etc compared to actual results goes on to prove that.

What I have noticed quite often with all the really big tuskers, is the prominent sunken in temples and often emaciated body, or baggy pyjama skin, which would indicate an animal of age and not always great condition. Cheers for now,
Nzou.

High praise indeed and I thank you for the compliment.... I agree with your comment about sunked temples and baggy skin. - It is indeed usually an indication of great age, - usually caused by an inability for them to digest food -due to significant wear on the last set of teeth...... in other words, it's the beginning of the end and they are effectively beginning to starve to death.

during my investigation about the big elephants taken in the few years I found these results:
the 100 punder takane in Zimbabwe last fall;
the 100 pounder taken in Tanzania for a game warden;
a 76 X 78 taken from Mark Todd in november of 2006, and a 75 X 73 taken last september for the same hunter in the Caprivi;
115.3 x 17 pounds 2004, 93 x 66-pounds 2006, this year one 79/79 and one 79/61 from Kay Uwe Denker,
a bull with only one tusk of 115 pound (2005) and another 113 x 33 (2006) in the Lugenda reserve (MOZ);
a bull 81 pounds (2006) from Niassa reserve (MOZ)
I think the situation is not so bad ...

Hi Shakari, no worries mate, I am always grateful when great hunters and conservationsists share their knowlege, ideas, stories and and such like on this site.

I know this is off at a tangent, but it has always amazed me how symmetrical tusks can be at times. Even with some really heavy tusks, provided the other tusk has not been broken or badly chipped at some point, can often be within a a pound or two of the other. This is very close, considering sometimes the mass of each tusk has been well over a hundred pounds!

This thread is worth its weight in gold, er, I mean ivory.