THE ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 137, 26 June 1937, Page 11

THE ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS

It is Only by an Organised Killing Expedition That Raiding Elephants Can be Driven Away From Villagers' Crops Into The ; . ' Uncultivated Areas

J^£ANY PEOPLE have probablv had first spring lettuces eaten by rabbits; and probably ' did not fe'el too kindly disposed towards ' those rabbite, says Mr. M. T. Stephens in the Listener. Yet in parts of Africa raiding elephants will come down and destroy the entire crops of an African villager, representing till the next seed-time -all his food and all his wealth. This is something rather more than the nibbling of a few lettuces: at "is the rain and starvation of hundTed's of' human beings. Obviously something has to be done. Elephant shooting for private prolit as . in the days of the great professional JHinters has been stopped. You may only shoot two or three elephants in the ycar at the present time. Now all the while the herds are increasing at the rate of about five per cent. per year. And since we brought peace and . comparative prosperity to the African native the population ha« Tisen enormously and tivation. The result is that the herds have to vation. The result is that the herds have to be redueed in size and kent away from cultivated areas, as far as possible. . . . To-day the Government "controls" elephants, shooting them when necessary and taking what profit accrues from' the sale of ivory, a fairly large one. Thds practice has been .most fully developed in Uganda, and to a eomewhat lesser extent in Tangan- \ yika, and it is about to be introduced into Northern lthodesia. It has two very definite advuntages over the private shooting of elephants. It eliminates the elemeut of killing for profit, the. bugbear of all preservationists. And it means that control can bo applied as and where it is wanted, and viewed as a whole. not spasmodically by individuals going' here and there trying to shoot the big bulls. I want to describe to you a good day car- . ried out by an expert, Captain K. J. D. Salmon, one of the Game Kangers of Uganda. My own unaided efforts might be as " stirriDg and would probably be as amusing, but they would not be half as instructive, for Salraon is to elephant shooting what Michelangelo .was to painting, Shakespeare to letters^ and Beethoven ,to music. We were on this occqsion out in Bun- ■' yoro, a part of Uganda wh'ere there is a lot of trouble with elephants from time to time. Quite soon we got a lesson in what a herd ; •*of elephants can do. Messengers, urgent pressing messengers, came an at regular and frequent intervals telling us to come and come quickly. The next morning we were on what the police report call "the scene of the outrage," and we got an ob- ' ject lesson in what an elephant herd can do. . We were greeted-by the lamentations of a dozen miserable natives, on whose little patch of cultivation some forty elephants ' had been making merry all night. It ds completcly wiped out: trampled down as if it were 3^as"schendaele. To those natives " that little , patch represented six months' . food and livelih'ood. We set off in purguit. This was to be Salmon 's cjay. He had prbmised to show me how contTol could be effectively and efiioiently carried out; for we must bear in mind that elephant shooting is one of the ' , most highly finished arts in the world. To mention - just two points: the elephant hats - the most acute sense of srqcll, and one puil of wind up .to a thousand yards away may set him off. After all he has the longest

nose in the world. On the same principle I ; always think what a splendid-senso of taste a' giraffc must have. Then : again - y ou may 11) in k that if you are shooting at an , elephant you are trying to hit something the size of an. elephant. You are not. You aro trying to hit something rather smaller than ■ the ordinary sort of cushion. For unless ' yo.U hit him in the heart or 'the brain your sliot is Avorse tlian riselbss. No other target is any good. ' What Salmon wanted to show me was - "'how to ;try and "stall" or etampede the

' herd.; This means ; shooting . the leaders , or . \ outside , elephants of- th'e herd, so that'The* ; ' • remainder panic and can be taught a, lesson . " before..they , make off. We soon' found : the • ' grea,t ("brohd traek; of the elephants, and off ' ■' jwe'set down'it'at a steady pace. There in . ; ' the "gap; in the'ltrees, perhaps sixty yards' in ' : ' ; front,.;was 1 a>'bull elephant elowly nodding- . , 'hte head/ the 'picture of dignified • contemp- . . ; plation. Salmoriwas earrying, as he always . . > doesr an .old rsock in his hand from which . . every few, minutes or so he shook a ldttle '

cloud . of ashes to see if the wind was still right — blowing generally from the elephants to us. Fortunately it was. Silently we approached to within thirty yarde of that bull; Ave began to make out the vague shapes of others behind him. The herd was still unsuspecting. And twenty to thirty y ards is the right range to kill elephants. Suddenly Salmon iired two shots at one of the further elephants on . the fla'nk, and almost before I _ -realised that the acute silence had been broken he had changed to his second rifle, threw it up like a shot-gun, and the giant in front of us suddenly buckled up, back legs first, and came crashing down. It was as if one was standing by. the Queen Anne statue, and the pillars of St. Paul 's subsaded and let down the dome slowly and deliberately to the ground. Salmon fired again and another flanker dropped — —the three outside elephants all dead, shot through the brain, the three which, would have led the getaway. I should perhaps add here that if an elephant is shot thTough the heart he gallops about sixty yards before he d'rops. If he is shot in of near the brain he falls at once, front legs first 'if Stunlier, back legs first if killed. To return to our herd. As the flankers dropped there took pliaee the most perfect '•'stall" or stainpede fmaginable. The whole herd, moved by • tsome unknown gregarious impulse seemed to close on the centre, and there in front of us was a seething mass of packqd elephant sterns, all struggling to . ' breqk away, and yet . only wedging theme'elves the tighter by the effort. Salmon ran round to .a fiang, firing as he went perhaps ten shots. All round elephants seemed to be dropping on us from the sky. They are so enormous, looming up above you at that point blank range. All the time one is looking up. Salmon was shooting with precision and' an unholy cairn. Meanwhile I suddenly remembered that I, too, was carrying a rifle. It had been arranged that on this particnlar day I was not to shoot till Salmon had opened the ball to ' my eatisfaction. I ran round to .the flank. ;An elephant was lumbering off about ten .yards away. I. fired — both barrels. "He collapsed. I 'turned round to take my second rifle .from the nativ'e who was carrying it. He ' wsts only a temporary gun-bearer. and ho ,hacl made a' discreet retreat "from the 5 ^cqne. of . active .pperations. ; p" ^pm't ^blaanb. ; , j him. I relohded, but I had tb ; fif.e three ... v sliats before"! found the brain of "the next -Elephant, and we both, Salnubh Mn on "after the , herd which had ' sttaxghte'ned • out from the original jam, and, was- Broken , v •and" scattering*. • We . f ollowed f of .two hun- ' dred* yards,. but Salmon di'd not want to ' shoot more. He is no buteher, and- he had ■ ' * taught; that herd a real lesson. It had been a wonderful demonstration of what an expert cci.uld d,0. . Now 1'et me tell the aftermath of that story. ;The herd travelled twenty miles.that night' crcssing the maiu road, where we • found their tracks. The night after, still ■ travelling, they raided a village forty . miles awav, and the; next day: they retired >into the waste area, to whieh the game staff was trying to restrict them, so our piece of control'was a really effective one, and pTobably the kindest' thing for that herd in the long ran, saving them much intermittent harrying-, . .