Killer elephant named after Osama bin Laden shot dead in northeastern India

Canadian Press ^ | 17-12-06

[jome]

GAUHATI, India (AP) - Sharpshooters in India's northeast have killed a rogue elephant blamed for 14 deaths in the region and was so feared that villagers named him after Osama bin Laden, wildlife officials said Sunday.

"Dipen Phukan, a licensed shooter, shot and killed the three-meter-tall bull near the Behali forest reserve in northern Assam," wildlife warden Chandan Bora said.

Wildlife authorities had ordered that the elephant be shot and killed by Dec. 31.

The order came after the bull, dubbed "Laden" - which has twice evaded attempts to kill him - was blamed for the death of a woman Wednesday near the thickly wooded evergreen jungle where it lives.

Behali is about 240 kilometres northeast of Gauhati, the state capital.

Conflicts between humans and elephants have escalated in northeastern India in recent years as the destruction of the elephants' natural habitat has expanded, forcing them to forage for food in human areas.

In the past five years, more than 250 people have been killed in Assam by elephants, while angry villagers killed 268 elephants during the same period. Assam is estimated to have 5,300 Asiatic elephants.

© The Canadian Press 2006

[jome]

at last...lolzzz

[brothers4thID]

tease

[dforest]

I think it was really Rosie O'Donuts

[Frank_2001]

I'm sure we'll be hearing from PETA about this;)

[Chode]

.308???

[Steven Scharf]

Not big on shooting, but don't sharp shooters shoot at small targets? I would think jsut about anyone's grandma could fund the side of the elephant.

[Steven Scharf]

I should really proofread my psots better. I meant find the side of the elephant.

[The KG9 Kid]

Hitting an elephant is probably the easy part.

Hitting an elephant so that it causes a fatal wound before the elephant stomps you flat in it's fury is another thing entirely.

[gotribe]

Bury it with bacon grease.

[ImAmericanFirst]

[SWAMPSNIPER]

"Sharpshooters"?
Goodness, gracious, a maneating squirrel could have had their butts, for breakfast! How damned hard can it be to hit a target the size of a dinner plate, inside of a ball park? Hell, they should have closed in, to "point blank range", whatever that is, at the moment!
Ain't ever had to shoot an elephant, but I know where to aim, just in case I need to!

[upchuck]

Wow! - 3x

[exit82]

Lessee...from the headline, I guess the elephant received a name after someone shot Osama Bin Laden in northeastern India.

But what could one have to do with the other?

[exit82]

Lessee...from the headline, I guess the elephant received a name after someone shot Osama Bin Laden in northeastern India.

But what could one have to do with the other?

[exit82]

Hey dummy, stop double posting. The first one wasn't all that good.

[Brilliant]

So Osama came back as an elephant? How far is that behind a cow?

[CarrotAndStick]

Something interesting:

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

George Orwell, in Shooting an Elephant.

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/

Something interesting:

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

George Orwell, in Shooting an Elephant.

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/

[MunnaP]

QOUTE:
"Sharpshooters"?
Goodness, gracious, a maneating squirrel could have had their butts, for breakfast! How damned hard can it be to hit a target the size of a dinner plate, inside of a ball park? Hell, they should have closed in, to "point blank range", whatever that is, at the moment!
Ain't ever had to shoot an elephant, but I know where to aim, just in case I need to!


Killing an elephant is not easy.
The hide itself is half an inch thick. Even large caliber high velocity bullets donot reach vital organs easily.
There are very specifc places on an elephants head that you need to shoot to kill it..Otherwise the bullet goes into tissue and bones and the animals just runs away..Yes ..Runs quite fast too for its size....You cannot kill an elephant by shooting in heart...The heart is just too deep in the cavity and well protected by thick bones and tissue layers...

[MunnaP]

As the article describes you have to shoot at an imiginary line beween the ears ...Targeting the brain with multiple bullets...Shooting any other part damages the body but the animal does not die...

[IamConservative]

Killing an elephant is not easy. There are very specifc places on an elephants head that you need to shoot to kill it..

You sneak around behind the elephant and shoot him in the danglies. Then, when he turns to stampede you and squash you like a bug, you shoot him in the head..??..