SIZE REALLY DOES COUNT Hunting elephant in the rainforest
…with shotgun cartridges
IT’S more than a decade since I first hunted the rain forest of the Congo basin – the region known in colonial times as French Equatorial Africa. Over the years I have hunted mostly in the savannah regions of east and southern Africa but, forest hunting was not new to me. When younger, I pursued buffalo on control, high in the Aberdare’s in Kenya which, because of the elevation, could at times be cold, wet and miserable.
Here in the lowland rain forest, it was hot, wet and almost unbearably humid. I had been there for a couple of days and made one solo excursion of not more than perhaps a kilometre, into the dark, damp, gloomy jungle. In that short walk I saw no mammals, but the birdlife was prolific; the popular noisy African grey parrot was present in big numbers, as was the Great Blue Turaco, the largest of what we used to call Loeries.
The buttressed trunks of the forest trees towered so far overhead that their tops were lost in the verdant gloom of the canopy. The forest floor was in perpetual darkness, and the silence of the forest was marked only by the steady drip of water with the occasional cry of a hornbill from the crowns of the trees.
One of the strangest effects of the forest is the loss of a sense of direction; the dim light which filters down through the leaves gives little or no indication of the sun. I felt insecure and intimidated and not entirely in control. Despite these formidable conditions this is one of the last true hunting adventures that Africa has to offer.
I was to be here for just over a month, and on securing accommodation at an oriental logging camp, I was offered a tour of one of their many concessions. A seat was erected for me on the back of a Cruiser and although we drove for some while, other than the odd primate and birds, we saw nothing. Suddenly the driver spotted a blue duiker close to the track and thinking that I would like to shoot it, he slammed on the brakes.
I was catapulted over the cab and into the mud. Shaken but not damaged, I got to my feet but the Brno .375 that I was to use had broken in half at the pistol grip.
Back at camp I was dismayed to find that the only available firearm was a Fabarm shotgun which in theory took three rounds. My knowledge of firearms is minimal and it took me at least two subsequent expeditions to find out how to actually get three rounds into it – you load the last two rounds as if they were one, not individually. The good news, however, was that I had a variety of shot sizes which included slugs.
The previous day I had made acquaintance with a Mr Chin who was a sort of field manager for the company and came from Borneo. He approached me that morning and said, “Mr Alan, I know nothing about hunting, but I would like to come with you today,” adding, “I can borrow a gun.”
I told him he was welcome but that in the forest he had to stay close to me, and not to fire before I did. We agreed to meet later. In the meantime I took on a tracker/ guide named Pierre, not for his alleged forest abilities, but because he spoke English – my French being of schoolboy standard.
Expecting to see elephant, I loaded up with slugs. Mr Chin duly arrived with a pump-action shotgun and a bag of assorted cartridges. After driving for about 20 minutes, we then proceeded on foot along an old, disused logging track. However, these man-made tracks are not straight and you keep thinking there will be something around the next corner, although there usually isn’t. The three of us had been walking for some time when, on rounding one of the endless corners, there below us, in a depression, was a herd of elephant.
We crouched as low as possible and, from our elevated position, I could see that there were ten elephants, all cows. Initially none of them presented a shot but our patience was rewarded when the one nearest to us, about 15m away, moved fast, across and away from us, right to left. I promptly shouldered the shotgun and put two quick shots just behind her shoulder. She stumbled from the impact and then there was a single shot from Mr Chin who was positioned on my right. The elephant regained her footing and took off with the rest of the herd down into a steep ravine. We heard them going up the other side, but could not see them. When I peered over the edge I saw that the cow we shot was at the bottom, dead. By now it was getting late and as there is no twilight on the equator, we made our way back to the vehicle and arranged to return early the following morning.
However, because Mr Chin had various duties to perform, our planned early start ended up being late morning. When we arrived I could not think of a way to butcher the carcass at the bottom of the ravine, but Mr Chin had a plan and took off – returning much later with a huge fork-lift truck and lengths of steel cable. On the first two tries to haul the cow out, the cable came undone and the elephant crashed back down. Mr Chin persisted and eventually managed to deposit the carcass on the track. By this time more than sixty of the African staff had arrived to claim their portion of the meat.
This elephant was not really what I had hoped for; it was a cow and to be candid, it was not quite mature. Nevertheless it was an awesome event and being an enthusiastic naturalist since childhood, I could not wait to compare this Loxodonta Cyclotis with its savannah cousin, Loxodonta Africana. There were certainly differences: the body was smaller, the skin much smoother, the ears appeared to be rounder and a different shape, the amber-coloured ivory was thin and protruded straight down rather than outwards, and perhaps most significantly, there was an extra toenail on each foot.
My shots were about 2 inches apart, just where I wanted them to be, but look as I might, I could not find Mr Chin’s shot. I shouted across to him, “Looks like you missed the elephant yesterday.” He replied, “No, no, Mr Alan, I hit.” We walked around and there on the elephant’s backside was a dark circular mark about the size of a soccer ball, with no trace of any blood.
I asked, “What size shot did you use?” He replied, “Big one – it say on cartridge, no. 9.” I knew that it was entirely my fault, after all, he did say that he knew nothing about hunting.
What had happened was, on receiving the bag of assorted cartridges, he discarded those with letters like say, LG, not knowing what they meant, and from the ones left with numbers, he assumed that the bigger the number, the bigger the shot, hence no. 9!
On my return to Cape Town, I called in at Suburban Guns and purchased a new stock for the .375. At the time I did not
expect to shoot an elephant with a shotgun again. But, several hunts later in the same region it occurred once more, although in an entirely different way…
From my first forest hunt, my long-time friend, Chris, handloaded my .375 cartridges – 40 rounds per hunt. This was far more than I needed as I restricted myself to two elephants per hunt and sometimes the odd forest buffalo, but it did enable me to build up a bank of ammo, as nothing other than light shotgun ammo was locally available.
On this hunt I returned to my favourite area, my guide as always was Pierre, and I used the .375 now fitted with a totally unnecessary low-powered scope, and the same Fabarm shotgun.
On our hunts Pierre always carried the gun which I was not using, my backpack, containing a few oranges, a toilet roll and two cameras. This was because in that climate, cameras continually fogged up and the only way to de-fog them is to remove the lens and place both lens and camera body in the sun. There is only sun in the early morning, by late morning the horizon is enveloped in ink-black clouds with constant thunder and lightning, a prelude to the coming rain, rain in a volume I have never seen before.
That morning, Pierre and I were on a quest for duiker which are usually hunted by calling them up – the caller rendering his interpretation of a distressed cry. It is interesting to note that the only antelope species to respond to the call are the duikers, while sitatunga, bushbuck, etc just ignore it. Leopards and chimpanzees are also attracted by the call, which can produce an interesting situation.
It wasn’t going well that day; we had gone quite a long way but Pierre’s calling had produced nothing before it started to rain lightly. Suddenly Pierre crouched down and I immediately followed suit, searching the lower ground ahead but could see no duiker. Pierre whispered, “Elephant!” I looked up and at about the same distance as between cricket stumps, was a lone bull elephant, sideways on to us and seemingly asleep.
I quickly passed the shotgun to Pierre and took the .375 which had a round in the breech. I flicked off the safety catch and settled the crosshair of the tiny scope between the bull’s eye and earhole. Surprisingly on the report of the rifle the elephant didn’t even look up. I was confused but gently bolted in another round. The effect of my second shot was just the same!
I cursed Chris and called him names he wouldn’t like, assuming some error in his handloading, before snatching the shotgun from a bewildered-looking Pierre, took out the 00s and inserted a single slug. Taking the same aiming point, I fired, and the elephant collapsed on its stomach before reeling over onto its unwounded side, dead.
Later, when I picked up the .375, I was astonished to see that the scope was flopping around and had almost fallen off its rear mounts. It wasn’t Chris’s fault after all. The elephant must have thought that the two rifle shots were just claps of thunder!
Being late afternoon, we returned to deal with the carcass the following morning. The sawmill staff chopped out the long, but rather thin ivory, and then the butchering began.
I know that Gregor Woods has had some experience with slugs and has produced several well-written and informative articles about them for Magnum. It is my view that slugs are underrated. I have found that at 70 paces I can consistently hit a target the size of a dinner plate, and that slugs are also very effective on feral pigs here in the Western Cape.
Self-guided rain forest hunting is certainly not for beginners and probably not for most hunters, but for me, an enthusiastic amateur, it was absolutely fascinating. So that’s the story. A third time? No, I don’t think so...