Its known that T.Roosevelt was somewhat of an haphazard irresponsible shooter of game in Africa.

Now after reading something about WDM Bell, id like to know more about the facts of his poaching techniques.

http://www.go2gbo.com/forums/index.php?topic=139594.0

"the 7mm for elephants is such a hoax by todays standards. Please realize he was a poacher who did in fact kill hundreds of elephants with a 7mm. However there was a lot more to this. He would shoot as many as he could in a herd and let them scatter until his giant caravan of donkey carts could safely move on to the next herd. His trackers led the way, folloing spoor and getting him ready to shoot. They might travel the bush for a month or two shooting all along the way. In this time they would deplete all the resources of food and water and then return back the same way they came. During the one way trip out they did not collect any ivory, they just shot elephants and left them to run off. Much safer this way and no work at all to spend hours trying to chop away the ivory from the fresh kill.

Then on the return a month or so later they followed their noses, and the hyenas, vultures, and lions to the dead elephants. At which point they could very easily slide out the ivory as they had been rotting in the sun for a month or more. No worries no animals eat or pack off the ivory. He was not hunting and doing the right thing with a sporting arm, he simply put a lethal shot into a bull that may die that night or next week, no matter he was in no hurry to collect the ivory til next month anyhow. The same trackers running ahead and scouting on the way in, scouted for the dead bulls on the way out.

You cannot ever compare what Bell did as a sporting, ethical, or functional means of hunting. No more then shooting a whitetail in the guts with a .22 rimfire would be and then finding his antlers after the spring thaw. Who then would say " Well so and so shoots huge bucks with only a .22 rimfire......... so then it must be good enough to be called a deer rifle!

He's accomplished an amazing feat with a small arm, but he was still a poacher and broke many laws. Not to mention the unethical and brutal slow death of hundreds of elephants."

I guess sportsmanship is a fairly modern concept. It's probably best if we don't judge our ancestors by modern standards.

Thanks for the post, it makes one think.

I think there are several things at least in that statement that could be considered debateable to say the least.

Firstly, I don't recall WDMB ever writing that he considered himself a sports hunter.... more a professional ivory hunter. He had a limited number of bullets, supplies and staff etc and wanted the maximum return..... which is nothing more than a simple business principle.

Secondly, although it's a while since I read his books, I seem to remember that he was one of the first white men into most of the areas and therefore in most areas, there would have been few if any game laws. I also seem to remember him saying he used to negotiate with tribal chiefs for permission to hunt in their areas..... How then, could be be a poacher? I've no doubt he might have been a tad flexible on occasion and at least once crossed from one country to another with a load of ivory to reduce taxes..... but how many of us have taken an extra bottle of duty free through customs..... I'm sure to him, it was a similar thing.

I also remember him saying he always had limited ammo supplies and would therefore try to restrict himself to only shooting old bulls with big tusks and not females or calves because it takes the same ammo to kill an elephant with big tusks rather than small ones... therefore, it could be argued that (perhaps unwittingly) he was practicing good management principles.

As for his marksmanship, he has the reputation of being one of the very best and even went to the trouble of equipping his staff with double handed saws and having them cut skulls open so he could work out bullet placement. In fact, according to his books (and I'd consider him more honest than most of the early African writers), he used to try to drop as many as possible where they stood/in the same area to save time and effort. Which is nothing more than another basic business principle.

As for his sometimes leaving the dead animals for a period of time, he had a good reason for that. According to his books, (and this certainly makes sense) he could only load ivory onto his donkeys and/or staff when their loads of food and supplies were used up. So it makes sense to leave them and pick them up on the way back.

Let's also remember that it was in a different time with different attitudes and perhaps it might be a mistake to apply modern day attitudes.

I see Bell as analogis to the American Bison hide hunters in the 1860s and 70s. Its wasnt about sporting ethics, it was about harvesting animals in tha most efficient way possible. Lets not mix apples and oranges, even those from a differnt eras.

SSR

I would venture to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

What JJHack posted is nothing short of despicable. I have no doubt that JJHack is a an intelegent fellow, but form time to time he takes the stance of an expert on things he knows nothing about.

He and I have history as he once publicly accused me of doing something illegal, when in fact I had been 100% in accordance of the law. The simple truth was that he was dead wrong and could not believe that there could possibly be anything that he did not know.

His post on Bell is much the same. He accuses Bell of things that have no basis in truth. It is clear from his post that he has not read Bell's books.

Bell did not shoot Elephants and "let them run off". He was a great proponent of brain-shots and dropped them where they stood whenever possible. I don't have his books right here, but I believe most, if not all, of his safaris were on foot(no donkey carts). His men carried all supplies and ivory on their backs.

Also, Bell was known to shoot as many as he could from a herd, then run the others down on foot as they fled and execute them with a brain shot from the rear.

quote:

Then on the return a month or so later they followed their noses, and the hyenas, vultures, and lions to the dead elephants. At which point they could very easily slide out the ivory as they had been rotting in the sun for a month or more. No worries no animals eat or pack off the ivory.

The idea that Bell would shoot elephants and let them run off to die and leave them for weeks of months without attempting to follow them is preposterous. The tusks of any dead elephant that is found by other hunters or tribesmen would be fair game unless the tails had been removed to show ownership. And if an elephant was left for a "month or two" the carcass would be stripped clean. There would be no vultures or hyenas and no smell to follow.

JJHack is simply full of BS. I am at a loss as to why he would post such garbage. He is a PH in South Africa, and he does have some interest in dangerous game as I remember he had a 458 lott built as his back-up rifle. To my knowledge JJHack only PHs for plains game, so I have no idea where he gained his expertise.

The idea that elephants can be killed with a small bore such as a 7x57 is nothing new. Culling teams in Zimbabwe killed many thousands of elephants cleanly with cartridges such as the 308 and 30-06. Ron Thomson killed over 5,000 elephant using many different cartridges including the 30-06. IIRC he only lost two or three wounded elephants in his entire career. Several of Thomson's contemporaries had similar records.

To say that the small bores can't do it is simply wrong.

It is important to keep in mind that marksmen come in many different skill levels. There are people like Anne Oakley and WDM Bell who can do things with a rifle that few people would dream possible, and even fewer would be able to emulate.

If you think I am streaching things to say that Bell was on par with Anne Oakley, keep in mind that he was an ace pilot in WWI and he recorded several kills on enemy aircraft shooting a bolt action rifle freehand from the pilot's seat!

All that JJHack has done is shown that he is willing to write of that which he does not know. It kinda reminds be of another blow-hard who was run-off this site....

JJHACK has obviously never read Bells books

quote:

Originally posted by ddrhook:
JJHACK has obviously never read Bells books

Read some of the shit he posts on the Political Forum and you'll quickly see that he has a bunch of axes to grind and often spouts off a line of B.S.

I would very much like to know where Bell has written that this was his technique of shooting, gathering and hunting. I do not recall this description ever.
I do recall reading that Finnaughty stated that on many occasions he would cache his ivory by burial or by sinking it into pools of water to protect himself being caught with ivory he should not have and perhaps this practice was assumed in the description of Bell's own hunting.
I wonder also at his allowing elephant to run off to die as he was quite competent and knew well the necessity of accuracy in his shooting. The fact that he experimented with well placed shots using a double rifle versus ill placed shots with that same double rigged to fire both barrels as one would preclude his interest in the instant kill rather that tracking willy nilly a month or more later to "find" dead animals.
For the sake of his livelihood and to some extent his desire to stay alive in the bush I question this process of ivory collection.
Even Denis Lyell in his collection of writings about The Elephant and its Hunters does not describe anything close to this description of gathering ivory. He was in fact very interested in the writings of Bell, so much so that he carried Bells' Wanderings book with him while travelling in the Interior. The copy with inscription handwritten by Selous.
In any regard I would like to know where I can find this writing. I believe I will pull Wanderings out and go through that again to see If I perhaps just don't remember reading this detail.

Frank

I have read Bells books and I this original post is both skewed and also ignarant of some basic facts about Mr Bell and his activities.

In fact it's so far off the mark, one stops thinking about how WDM Bell operated and starts wondering about the poster.

He obviously knows very little about Bell, and has decided to get some attention.

I wont bother taking his post apart peicemeal, but rather say that it should be completely disregarded in it's entirety.

(Although I will address the 'poaching' aspect. I believe Bell hunted some within the borders of what was then the Belgian Congo. As an Englishman and given the political situation at the time, Bell may have considered it a patriotic duty to shoot Belgian elephants and make money off them.
As far as the term is meant today ie - disregarding game laws and shooting illegally, also with connotations of behaving unethically as a hunter - it doesn't apply.)

As far as a comparison with T Roosevelt goes - one thing I will say is that Roosevelt comes across as a man of his time as far as race relations go. Walter Bell on the other hand very much seems to have been a man who generally worked well with the native peoples and doesn't display any of the common forms of rascism prevalent in those days, particularly amongst the British. In this he seems a man apart from his time and to be admired.)

Please let's not be abject apologists.

Bell was definitely and undeniably a poacher.

Plus, let's not forget that everything written about Bell was pretty much either written by Bell or derived from his writings.

As I say, I would wager that the truth is somewhere in the middle ground.

But we will never know, and how the poster of these original comments can feel justified in making the statements he has made is beyond me.

Gut-shoot an elephant, let him go and die wherever he wants, then come back one month later...

IF you find it, guess how many tusks he'll have left?

Besides, Bell points out in his books how he always tried to recover all the elephants shot in the day. Would you leave thousands of dollars worth of ivory lying around in the bush?

Plain common sense would sink the thought.

Philip

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Robinson:
Bell was definitely and undeniably a poacher.

how the poster of these original comments can feel justified in making these statements

All of the old elephant ivory hunters seem to have been "poachers". Of course this was not about conservation, but about revenue.

As far as the poster's justification: loud-mouth, know-it-all,illiterate, d-bag, all of the above..... You make the call.

Philip,
you know common sense is dead here in the usa and has been for a long time