A PH’S Elephant Musings
The complex mind of the king of beasts
A PH’S ELEPHANT MUSINGS
FIFTY-TWO YEARS ago, I was a 17-year-old cadet game ranger in Rhodesia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, and I was about to witness for the first time the extremely close social cohesion within an elephant cowherd.
Mere months out of school, and still under tutelage when it came to elephant hunting, we were patrolling in the Gonarezhou’s Gulene-tshefu corridor. I was accompanied by our Chipinda Pools HQ’S senior ranger, the late John Osborne. At the time, the Gonarezhou had yet to be gazetted a National Park, and elephants within the corridor were shot as part of the tsetse-fly eradication programme. This meant the exercise would be written up as part of my training.
When we came across an elephant cowherd, John instructed me to shoot one
in an attempt to force them out of the area. Prior to my moving off towards the herd, accompanied by game scout Sgt Hlupo, Osborne ensconced himself atop a huge, tree-covered termite mound, about 80m away, to watch proceedings.
With the game scout immediately behind me, and the wind firmly in my favour, I cautiously made my way to the edge of the herd. It was an ideal situation and, from about 25m away, I selected the largest cow and quickly side-brained her with my issue .375H&H. Unbeknown to me, she was the matriarch of the herd – at that stage I hadn’t yet learned to discern this.
The elephant cow dropped instantly to the shot, her thrown-up trunk and collapsing hindquarters a sure indication that my bullet had found the brain. I quickly chambered another round and we waited motionless, expecting to see the remainder of the herd flee. It never
happened. They immediately started a panicked, noisy trumpeting and bellowing, before they closed in on the matriarch’s lifeless form, some attempting to lift her onto her feet. There were about seven elephants in the group with a young bull some distance beyond.
Heeding Sgt Hlupo’s whispered advice I backed off quietly. Filled with apprehension, I didn’t take my eyes off the milling herd. Joining John Osborne on the termite mound, we then witnessed what seemed like confused elephant behaviour for some 30 minutes. I later learned that this was the result of the sudden lack of leadership.
THE INITIAL CONFUSION soon led to frustrated rage. As we watched, the desperate herd members attempted, by way of group effort, to lift the bulky cadaver and when that didn’t work, one or two of them began to viciously stab her with their short sharp tusks. Another used her forelegs to try to clamber onto the dead female. By then the young bull had rushed forward, trumpeting noisily, and joined the herd. He was the most active of the group participating in their attempts to lift the matriarch.
Eventually a few began systematically to flatten the scrub mopane within a 15-20m radius of the deceased cow. It was as if they were trying to flush out the cause of the problem. That day I learned an important lesson; never become blasé when hunting an elephant cowherd.
Interestingly, there were no big cows in the herd; they all looked remarkably ‘runty’. With us on this patrol was an old Shangaan named
Ndali, now in his late sixties. As a 14-year-old, he’d been a goatherd for the notorious ivory poacher, John ‘Bvekenya’ Barnard, as romanticised in TV Bulpin’s book The Ivory Trail (1967). Although Ndali readily acknowledged Bvekenya’s elephant hunting prowess, he wasn’t too complimentary about him as a person. However, this wily old Shangaan knew his elephant. He now ventured that these runty elephants were indeed more aggressive than larger elephant. Over an hour later, the disgruntled herd eventually moved north, periodically lingering and grumbling.
That day I learned an important lesson; never become blasé when hunting an elephant cowherd
ELEPHANT ARE HIGHLY intelligent animals and have a unique matriarchal social order comprising herds, bond groups and clans of related females. Upon reaching sexual maturity (12 to 13 years) bulls separate from the cowherds and form their own groups or periodically wander alone. While still in adolescence, bulls often associate with their peers, although bachelor groups normally include a wide age spectrum. Bulls too, develop unique relationships while growing up, much of it based on a pecking order system whereby they learn each other’s relative strengths and standing within their commu
nity. It’s all about dominance, through which a type of ‘brotherhood’ is formed.
As has been well documented, elephant seem to have a sensitive consciousness of death. Often when a herd comes across the skeletal remains of one of their number, they will quietly linger, smelling the bones with outstretched trunks as if in recognition of, and mourning for, the deceased. Picking up and carrying away the odd sun-bleached bone is also a well-documented behavioural trait.
During the 1993 season, I had booked a hunt in Tsholotsho, a CAMPFIRE concession (Communal Area Management Program for Indigenous Resources) adjacent to Hwange National Park’s southwestern boundary. Tsholotsho is primarily an elephant concession, and a good one. The big bulls exit Hwange merely by stepping over the 4ft 6in heavy-duty cable boundary fence, at times bending the steel fence poles as they exit the park. They then head inland to plunder tribal crops. Inside the communal lands (tribal area) they are categorised as Problem Animals and over the past decades some exceptional ivory has been taken in this concession.
My client wanted a lion, and on the day we entered the area, a bull elephant had been shot by a European client. It was his last day in camp, and his PH kindly allowed us the use of the hind legs for lion bait.
Lion that wander out of the park into the Tsholotsho communal lands are normally nomadic vagrants who follow in the wake of the buffalo herds and prey on trailing, aged, arthritic and injured animals. Occasionally they leave the park to hunt on easier prey like tribal livestock. When that happens, the culprit is immediately categorised a problem animal.
I hoped to draw one of these lions onto the bait, so we carefully selected sites to hang the elephant meat. The furthest site from camp was some distance north-east along the boundary fence. On the drive there we were disappointed to observe a huge herd of buffalo feeding just inside the park. Certainly not what we wanted; lion bait on the hoof.
Eventually, after finding a track and a dry riverbed crossing, we moved away from the boundary and sought a suitable bait tree where we hung an upper hind leg with the skin still attached, high enough to be out of reach of hyenas but not of lions, then covered it with leafy branches to keep the vultures off.
TOWARDS MIDDAY OF our third day, we arrived at the furthest bait to find that it had been visited. Judging by the ample spoor in the vicinity of the bait tree, a mature, large, bull elephant had stopped by. He had removed the camouflage and scattered it all around. He’d also broken the looped ¼" cable wire securing the hind leg, before carrying the leg about 20m from the tree, where he’d left it.
His spoor told us he’d spent some time lingering near the haunch belonging to his deceased relative, before departing. We back-tracked him to the park boundary, and found that he’d exited, located the bait, done what he felt he had to do and then returned to the safety of the park.
We re-hung the leg, replaced the camouflage and returned to camp. For the next three days we experienced the same scenario – all the camouflage ripped off and scattered, and the now rank-smelling hindquarter pulled down and carried away before being left. Perhaps the old bull had stood guard over the remains of his fallen comrade, for we never found any sign of hyena or jackal having visited the putrid bait. Possibly, he returned to the sanctuary of the park just when day had dawned. Only he knew.
The site on which I had intended building a blind was about 50m from the bait, and each time the old bull had removed the leg, he’d discarded it about 30m in front of this site. Although old elephant bulls are normally gentlemen, had he found us sitting in the blind, he may have taken exception to our presence – I’m glad we never had to find out.