Bill,
Why coudln't you have gone to Zambia earlier and chased those bulls across the Zambezi River for me! I'd think you could help a down on his luck fellow elephant hunter! Seriously, I'd pass the first bull, he just looks too thin at the lip. But the others would be in trouble if I had run across them in the Dande last July. Number 2 and 4 especially, but the number three bull is posing beautifully for a frontal brain shot. Don't know if I could pass him up!

Steve,

He's alot more then 45 pounds. I took a photo of one smaller then that, two Ph's said he would go about 50 to 55 pounds. Yours is much bigger, you should have shot......

Gentlemen,

Elephants are very hard to judge in photos, as one cannot get a real feel of teh actualy size of the elephant itself, let alone the tusks.

We saw many elephants in Tanzania that if they had the same body size as the ones in Zimbabwe, with as much tusk showing, they would be well over 80 pounders.

But, in reality we thought they might just make 30 pounds.

The tusks were very think compared to the ones we have seen in Zimbabwe.

Okay, last one, I promise... on which I think everybody can agree, maybe...



The questions should be more appropriately perhaps: SHOULD THESE ELEPHANT BE SHOT BY ANYONE? (Edit: note these are 4 different bulls) < !--color-->



These are some pict's of bulls that I took a few weeks ago in the Lower Lupande GMA (Luangwa Valley) in Zambia, while hunting with Peter Chipman for lion & buffalo (Peter's direct email: kwalatapeter@yahoo.com). I saw another at dusk that had honest 70lb tusks, long and thin and even, almost touching the ground.



I was not hunting elephant, but somebody will be next year and might even be right now depending if the paperwork is finalized.



I don't want to go into too much detail, but suffice to say there is a real heated debate going on right now between the forces that want to open ele hunting, and those that oppose it (namely the lodge owners across the river in the South Luangwa National Park, understandably enough). Peter is sort of in the middle, obviously benefiting from the ~6 ele tags per year, but like most PH's about a certain animal, he likes elephant and they are not high on his list of animals to be hunted.



Throw in a high number of local human/ele conflicts and some very aggressive elephant, a lot of tuskless cows with no plans to shoot them, and a finite number of old bulls many of which have local names - and you have a real interesting subject.

I am certainly no autority on elephant, but my GUESS is that that fella will go about 45lb. That is a shootable ele in much of Africa, but as ele hunting has been closed in Zambia for years, I would hold out for a better one if hunting in the Luangwa.

impressive.

Yes, i would shoot it. Hold on while I grab my gun.

Look at the circumference of the tusks at the lip. None of the elephants have much in the way of size when it comes to circumference (based on the pictures). Still, not bad elephants. I wonder what the trophy fee will be?



Regards,



Terry



P.S.

I don't know what the photo safari people are worried about. As soon as the shooting starts, the elephants will be across the river and the photo safari operators will have more elephants than they want.

My feeling is that #'2 and 4 were definitely shootable. If it was the last day of one of those $30,000 ele hunts, the others would be in grave danger, as well. However, as a seriously "budget bwana" the only elephant I'll ever be able to afford will be a tuskless, and that's stretching it!

As best as I can recall, and from looking at the pict's (note the ears), these are four different elephant seen during the course of the 18-day safari. Sorry for not being clear on this. Remember that these are basically the same ele as found in the Zambezi, but have not been trophy hunted for years.

There were others, but I didn't always have the digi-camera handy. Saeed's absolutely correct, you see an ele and think "boy he's nice", then you spot another and you know right away that he's special. And head-on it's very hard to tell. The 2nd elephant was the most impressive, maybe it was the way his right tusk pointed down and out, and how large-bodied he was. The 4th one was the "nicest", although check out this picture and it's easy to tell what was on his mind

Did these elephat act 'wild' or were they clearly park elephants that had just wandered away? I don't know about shooting a named elephant....

The other issue that must be considered, which unfortunately cannot be determined prior to shooting, is nerve size/length. I have seen a few tusks misjudged due to an abnormally large nerve.

Geronimo