The .375 [H and H Magnum] on Elephant

Harry Manners and Wally Johnson began elephant hunting in partnership in Mozambique in 1937, and both used off-the-shelf Winchesters (Harry owned four during his lifetime, one of which having a ‘bull-barrel’, which he discarded on the grounds of it being too heavy), both used only Kynoch 300-grain solids, and both averred that this rifle/cartridge combination was all that any professional ivory hunter ever needed. They were both expert shots and could place their bullets accurately from any angle for brain-shots on elephant, but both used shoulder shots when these were convenient, alleging that this was the largest and safest target. Harry shot The Monarch of Murrapa (185 and 183 pounds a side and number four in Rowland Ward’s Records of Big Game) with a single 300-grain .375 solid in the shoulder (the full story of this hunt being told in Harry’s autobiography, Kambaku, recently republished by Rowland Ward Publication, Johannesburg).

When ivory hunting was stopped in Mozambique in the early 1950s in favour of safari hunting, Harry and Wally entered the safari field, both still only using their .375s, and I first got to know them when visiting Moçambique Safarilandia’s Savé concessions at the owner’s invitation in 1965. Harry retired unscathed to Skuzuza in Kruger National Park after Mozambique’s independence, where I often visited him, while Wally, who had earlier been gored by a buffalo his .375 failed to stop, joined Safari South in Botswana, for whom I also hunted and where we renewed our friendship. In spite of Wally’s mishap with the buffalo, both he and Harry went to their graves asserting that a .375 H&H Magnum with 300-grain solid bullets was all a professional hunter needed for the hunting of elephant.

Two very experienced Zimbabwean game wardens who only ever used a .375 were John Osborne and Bruce Austen, and both agreed that it was completely adequate for elephant and both shot large numbers of elephant with their .375s, although Bruce told me he had once all-but-lost a bull wounded with his .375 that he was convinced did not have a brain.

His first shot to the brain was taken from close range with the bull standing squarely side-on, but on receiving Bruce’s 300-grain solid, the bull had merely spun around to stand again squarely side-on, whereupon Bruce gave him another similarly placed bullet on the other side of his head. Both these shots were in Bruce’s experienced opinion ‘correctly placed for the brain’, yet the bull took off and was stopped only by a raking shot to the body that Bruce was able to take before it disappeared.

I was very inexperienced when Bruce told me this story and I fervently hoped that I didn’t run up against too many brainless elephant, but I had the odd few even with my .470. The best designed bullet will sometimes deflect on striking bone - particularly when fired from close range before it has had time to stabilize - and Kynoch’s round-nose 300-grain .375 solid bullet is very well designed. But the fact that both of Bruce’s bullets failed to find the brain from the same range and angle might indicate that they had both deflected for the same reason.

We are all influenced by the advice of our mentors and if what they advise works the first time we are prone to become persuaded. My mentor was John ‘Pondoro’ Taylor whom I knew in the mid-1950s while commercial crocodile hunting on Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi), and I visited him whenever I was able and was always asking questions. Those who have read his Big Game and Big Game Rifles, or African Rifles & Cartridges, will know that Taylor was a disciple of the ‘heavy, medium-velocity’ school, and I faithfully followed. Like Tayor, I became a ‘doubles man’ and opted for a .470 double (a 500-grain bullet at 2150fps) when in the early 1960s I was granted the game management rights on the half-million acre Nuanetsi ranch in Rhodesia’s south-eastern lowveld, and had large quotas of elephant to cull.

John Osborne and Bruce Austen both left 'Parks to become safari professional hunters, Bruce running his own company and John hunting for Buffalo Range game ranch which is owned by the Style family, my wife’s cousins. The fifth professional hunter whom I know who has exclusively used a .375 H&H Mag as his safari back-up rifle is Rob Style of Buffalo Range, who for many years has had big-game concessions in the Zambezi Valley and whose clients have taken a great many elephant. Rob’s mentor was John Osborne, and Rob received the best elephant hunting training that anyone could have had and was a highly experienced hunter when he became a licenced professional at the age of 19. Rob followed John’s example in opting for a .375 as I had followed Taylor’s in opting for a .470. Rob had a minor tussle with a wounded lion on one occasion which his .375 had failed to stop, but has never had a serious problem with an elephant, which begs the question: Is there any more that I need to say?

To my knowledge the .375 H&H Magnum has been proven by five experienced professionals to be a suitable calibre for the hunting of elephant, whether for the citizen sport hunter who may shoot only one elephant in his lifetime (provided he knows exactly where to place his bullet) and for the experienced professional, but I confess to a few doubts to its suitability when the newly licenced professional is not yet experienced. I was privileged to be given a preview of Lust for Life (shortly to be released by Safari Press, California), the adventures of professional hunter Sten Cedergren who hunted through the ‘golden era’ of safari in East Africa and retired from professional hunting in 1997 at the age of 78. Sten commenced his African hunting as a problem animal control officer in Kenya in the 1950s, and had this to say about his elephant rifles:

“Shooting elephant cows and young bulls with the .470 was fine, but I soon realized when going after the big bulls in very dense bush, or the close bamboo forests on Mount Kenya and the Aberdares, that I needed something bigger... On my next visit to Nairobi I went again to Shaw & Hunter and was shown a beautifully balanced Westley Richards .500 Nitro Express boxlock non-ejector with 24-inch barrels, and once I had that rifle in my hands I knew I had to have it.”

The .500 NE fires a 570-grain bullet at 2150fps - the same velocity as the 500-grain .470 bullet - which Sten considered inadequate for big bulls in thick bush... Sten also raised a point about relative ‘knock-down power’ which I think is worth recording. He tells of an elephant hunt where his Mexican client took a head-shot on his elephant:

“‘Shoot,’ I hissed, and the client’s .375 boomed, and at the bullet’s impact the bull’s hindquarters sagged a bit, but he quickly recovered, turned around and in an instant the bushes were closing behind him... We found afterwards that my client’s 300-grain solid .375 bullet had only just missed the brain and had he been using a larger calibre with a heavier bullet, the shot would probably have stunned the bull and he would have gone down, giving the client sufficient time to close in and finish him off.”

Sten brought the bull down, but had his bullet not connected it is highly likely that they would never have seen it again. When an elephant escapes from a misplaced brain-shot it just goes and goes and goes, and the chances of the hunter ever catching up with it are about nil.

To my mind there is no hunting offence more immoral than to let an animal escape wounded due to the hunter being inadequately armed. To allow an elephant to escape wounded to die a lingering and painful death, or to recover with hate in its heart and become a man-killer, is nothing short of a crime if the hunter lost it in the first place because he was inadequately armed, and I believe that the inexperienced professional hunter who carries a .375 as his back-up weapon when hunting elephant, is inadequately armed.

No safari client of mine ever lost an elephant wounded. I lost a couple when cropping elephant in my tyro days which led me to embrace the infallible when I entered the safari field. As we all know, the brain-shot is considered to be the classical shot on elephant and I would tell my clients that they must go for this shot and explain how to do it. But then I would also explain that a brain-shot elephant collapses instantly, and if it was still on its feet the instant after he had fired, that he had missed the brain and it was wounded, then it became my duty to put in an immediate following shot to stop it from escaping. When the client came into the aim for the brain, I came into aim for the shoulder, and if the elephant’s shoulder was still in my sights immediately after the client fired, I would pull the trigger. I do not subscribe to the philosophy that it’s the client’s animal, he has paid for it, and he has the right to demand that his PH does not shoot it. The prime hunting ethic is that a hunter makes a quick, clean kill and ensures that there is minimal suffering, and this ethic must supersede any demand that a client may make.

The inexperienced citizen sport hunter using a .375 on his elephant may do well to take heed of the fact that Harry Manners took The Monarch of Murapa, a truly massive elephant bull, with a single side-on shoulder shot with his .375. If properly placed, and we must suppose that every hunter knows exactly where to place his bullet, this shot will sever the main arteries coming out of the heart and will very quickly bring the elephant down. John ‘Pondoro’ Taylor writes that he preferred the shoulder shot on an elephant if he was tackling a single bull, and the Rhodesian between-wars professional ivory hunter, Crawford Fletcher Jamieson, records the same in his diaries which I was privileged to read. Both asserted that the shoulder shot offered the largest and safest target, and if properly placed, and its a big enough target for there to be no excuse for it not to be properly placed, your bullet will always bring the elephant down, generally within 100 metres.

Always using my .470 for elephant during my cropping days on Nuanetsi with a Jeffery .404 as my reserve, I had no need to crop elephant with my peep-sighted Cogwell & Harrison .375 and only ever did this on one occasion. This rifle was fitted with a detachable ‘night’ scope which had two broad elevation pointers and single pointed upright which made it effective for cropping in moonlight, and I had used it to crop hippo on moonlight nights by ambushing them on their exit paths on the banks of the Lundi river.

There was a succession of bad droughts in the south-eastern lowveld in the early 1960s with a consequence that elephant emigrated in numbers from the Gona-re-Zhou onto the European-owned cattle ranches in search of water, causing in some cases a loss of valuable water and damage to troughs. Bruce Austen (mentioned earlier) was then warden of the south-eastern lowveld and I received a phone call from him early one morning requesting I go to the cold-storage ranch at Twiza to chase off four elephant bulls that were nightly breaking the fence around a paddock and half-emptying a storage tank.

“Shoot one of the bulls while they are at the tank,” said Bruce, “and the others will take the hint, and I’ll issue you with a cropping permit for it so you can keep the carcass and the ivory.”

It was just past the full moon, making it feasible for me to go that night, and I drove straight over to meet the manager and see the set-up - to find the pumphouse ideally situated for a night ambush on the tank. It was within easy shooting distance and there was an opening in the side wall through which I could shoot, and I returned that evening with my recovery team and vehicles and my night-scoped .375.

The ranch compound was adjacent to the paddock and I assumed the four bulls would not risk coming in till the inmates had settled down for the night, by which time the moon would have risen high enough to give sufficient light for me to shoot by, but in this I was wrong. I heard the fencing wire break shortly after the moon had risen and the four bulls came in, appearing in the gloom like four floating hulks being windblown slowly towards the tank.

I examined them through my binos when they stopped at the tank, which amplified what little light there was sufficiently to show me that one bull was clear of the others and standing directly side-on to me. I would have liked to have waited till the moon had risen higher but thought they might scent me and take off. I picked up my .375 and peered at the bull through the 2-1/2x scope. The sight picture in the reduced light of the scope made it appear that the bull had not moved, but in fact he had. He was now quartering towards me. I took aim at where I supposed the aiming mark on the shoulder would be and fired, and all four bulls stampeded through the fence opposite and into the mopane forest beyond.

I now strained my ears to hear the bull fall, as I was sure he would, but heard not a sound, and after waiting till the moon was well up I walked to the fence where the bulls had broken through, still convinced that the bull must be down. I then walked slowly into the moonlit forest, staring at every suspicious-looking shadow and stopping often to listen, then walked a little further and stopped again, and after a while I came to a clearing some 25 metres wide where I stopped yet again to listen, unaware that the wounded bull was standing in the shadows at one side of the clearing. I took another slow pace forwards into the clearing, whereupon the bull became aware of my presence and he turned around so that his head was towards me, the moonlight reflecting white upon his tusks.

I swung up the rifle up to my shoulder and fixed the two gleaming tusks in my scope, which now, due to the magnification, seemed to be suddenly at the end of my barrel and for an instant I thought he was charging.

I could not see the elephant clearly in the shadows, but I could clearly see his tusks, and taking an aim at where I supposed the centre of his chest would be, I kept on firing till the bull collapsed.

I was now able to see that my 300-grain Kynoch solid had not taken the bull in the shoulder, as I had supposed, but had squarely struck the bone of the upper foreleg, which had cracked, and by God’s good grace had broken while the bull was running and which had brought him to a halt. On butchering him I found my bullet had not penetrated the bone at all, completely disintegrated on impact instead, and had his leg bone not cracked and subsequently broken I would probably have never seen him again.

My advice to the tyro professional hunter is not to hunt elephant with a .375. And to the inexperienced citizen sport hunter using a .375 on elephant, to use only monolithic solids and to aim for the correct place on the shoulder to ensure he severs the main arteries above the heart.

When I was working in the bush Nigeria in 1976 I discovered some elephant tracks behind the camp one day.
Having never seen elephant tracks I summoned my radio operator, a Nigerian, to confirm that they were, indeed, elephant tracks.
He viewed the tracks with a lot of excitement because elephants in Nigeria were very rare, even in those days.

The next morning there were about fifty people from the neighboring villages at the rig to begin the hunt.
Two days later they were back and, with great ceremony, presented me with a huge elephant steak that had been smoked and dried in their usual cooking fashion.
It had hair sticking out of the meat that looked like toothpicks.
I accepted the gift for PR purposes while trying to decide how to dispose of it without them knowing.

My radio operator was one of the hunters, and he described the hunt with great detail to me.
There were two cow elephants instead of the one that I had assumed, and they had ran these elephants all day and through the night, never letting them stop to rest.
Early the next morning when the elephants were too tired to run and could barely walk, they made the kills.
This was done by one hunter then the other running up to the side of one or the other and taking one shot in the ear then backing away to reload.
Many shots later both elephants crashed to the ground.

He proudly exhibited the rifle that was used to make the kills - a single shot .22 bolt action rifle!

"Yep; I definitely prefer elephants to Africans."

Having spent many years in Africa, I have to agree.
In most parts of Africa they have stripped the habitat of game animals to the point that they have very little protein in their diets.
That's the reason you see so many pictures of little pot-bellied African children - they survive on a high carbohydrate diet of yams.

In most villages along the rivers there are a few avacado trees that belong to the village, and the fruit is harvested communally.
These trees are huge, and they provide the only dependable source of protein.

Sorry...
I meant to say that Karamojo Bell used a .275 and the widespread use of .30 cal. rifles among 'me-too' Europeans may have much to do with Bell and his use of lighter, high velocity ammo on heavy game like the elephants. The widespread availability of military ammo from the .303 to the 7.62 mm NATO and all of the Soviet stuff is what has driven choice among poorer locals hunting for the pot or insurgents looking for profit.

The .275 Rigby used by William David Maitland to take about 800 of his circa 1100 elephants is more commonly known as a 7x57 Mauser in U.S. cartridge designations. But Bell was no fool, and when starting out, himself used a Jeffrey dounle rifle on .450/400, certainly better suited for jumbo and rhino in brush. Note too that Bell's choice of 7mm ammunition was a full-jacketed pointed solid that would provide sufficient penetration to reach the brain, not always possible with some of the larger caliber weapons whose penetrative capabilities were a result of mass and weight rather than velocity and bullet design.

For most other beasties in Africa, the .375 so beloved by John *Pondoro* Taylor as an all-around African rifle will do the job, though something a bit more certain is preferanble for buffalo, though it will do fine on lions and other less massive beasties. Aside from the *big five* the American .30-06 and .308 Winchester will do just fine, and the .300 H&H or .300 Winchester Magnum will suffice about as well as the .338 Lapua Magnum or 9x54r, with the .375, .401 Rigby and similar equipment a step up from that- but the key is expert familiarity with the rifle and the knowledge of where to oplace the bullet, as Bell did.

I don't claim any great expertise, having only taken one elephant and three Nyati buffalo, back in the 1970s. But I believe if I were to return to hunt there again, assuming identical conditions, I'd go with a .450/400 double and a .338 boltrifle, with a .308 handy for cattle and any two-legged pests. And if elephant/rhino/buffalo were the only or primary reasons for the exercise, the .450/400 double and a .460 boltrifle would be just fine. And I wouldn't even feel terribly underequipped even with a .303 Enfield, which will do most anythihng a .308 can- which is quite a lot, actually.

But I'd be very picky about my choice of ammunition, and practice would extend to hundreds of rounds fired.

-archy-/-

I did hit a camel with it in Qatar near the inland sea south of Um Said at about 1700 meters using the swarovski glass it was issued with and special raufaus "HEI" .50 caliber we had. A Qatari we were with had gotten drunk as a skunk drinking Vat 69 and had wounded the critter with a FN he had in the back of his Range Rover.

I just wanted to put the poor thing out of it's misery after the dumbass drunk arab had wounded it. Coyotes , metal gongs and the odd sod poodle are the only targets for the 82A1 these days.

Stay Safe .....

Naww it ain't that bad....:o).......LOL !

The worst recoil I ever experienced was a Daisy built/designed AMAC .50 caliber sniper rifle that had a piss poor recoil brake (read zero effective). I actually thought that the squishy grey part of my brain had seperated from the thick skull I carried it in. I was a hurting pup. Pain defined.

The Ruger No 1 I have was originally a .458 Win Mag according to the factory rep I shared the serial number with. Someone between me and the factory had it rechambered and I added whitworth sights to it.

It is actually a very accurate rifle and the recoil is manageable. Albeit nothing one will shoot from a bench all day long unless they just want to tatto their sholder from the inside out.

Stay Safe !

Early the next morning when the elephants were too tired to run and could barely walk, they made the kills. This was done by one hunter then the other running up to the side of one or the other and taking one shot in the ear then backing away to reload. Many shots later both elephants crashed to the ground.
He proudly exhibited the rifle that was used to make the kills - a single shot .22 bolt action rifle!

That's one way to do it with a .22. Another is up the nasal cavity. Then there's the trick with a 12-bore shotgun, inserted up the rear after lifting the tail, suppository fashion. Marksmanship is not an issue, and the damage is done by internal haemmorage from the expanding powder gasses, with the type and direction of the shot load of less importance. The primary factor in the choice of shooter for that sort of most rude slaughter aside from stealth, is that the shooter be the fastest runner possible, for obvious reasons. And the more the beast runs, the more it injures itself, with death coming after two or three days of agony.

There was a kill of a circus bull in the US in the mid-1960s using a .22 short, by a drunken rube showing off his handgun to his lady companion. Imagine his surprise upon being presented with the bill for his localized safari, following the beating he received from the animal's handlers.

Awwww you didn't eat that elephant steak ? Well if ya pass thru Amarillo get that 72 oz manhole cover the Big Texan gives away. Close as ya'll get to Elephant steak here IMO.

The .22 shot is evidence of bullet placement. I have seen the same thing done on large game in Alaska and lower 48.

Elephant hair is tough I still have a bracelet made of the elephant hair that I was given while I lived in Thailand. Tough stuff.

Stay Safe !

I put a bullet, via shoulder shot at 40 yards, right into the heart of a large Cape Buffalo. It turned, stared at me (along with six of his friends -- a terrifying moment), then turned and ran fifty feet before tumbling. As I approached, he managed to get up on his forelegs and give me a look of such homicidal malevolence that it just about froze my blood.

Oh, yes. Alive or dying, they really do hate us. I've heard it said that nyati [the buffs] probably kills more humans in Africa than any other beast, both due to their capabilities and numbers, with a lack of human respect by the terminally stupid also being high on the list of factors. And I believe it.

-archy-/-

I remember a story about an elephant that had killed it's handler and the townsfolk decided the elephant should be hanged.

They used a crane and I saw the pictures somewhere on the internet. The only thing I can think is that they killed the the elephant first and then hung it as a symbolic punishment.

The story's quite true, it happened in the early 1900s here in my present location of Tennessee. the circus involved was the Sells-Floto show, and the bull's name was Mary. Click on the pic of Mary hanging from the 120-ton railroad crane used to hoist her body for a link to the story with details.

Appropos of nothing in patrticular, my ex's name is also Mary. Coincidence? I think not.

Thnaks for you insights and those of all the others that have been and done!

I'll never have the cash to hunt these creatures, but the accounts of the old hunters never cease to fascinate. The closeset I will ever get was chasing white rhino on the back of elephants in the terai country of Nepal.

Knowing some of the early hunters started their careers with black powder is mind-boggling. Stupifying disease and pestilence. Many of them describe lots of bad ammunition where misfires occurred with horrifying frequency. Dealing with treachery and cunning on the part of tribal chieftans as well as the beasts in the bush. Stopping charges with an arm's reach of the shooter. All of this is potent, powerfull stuff. Made a convert of me as a kid and keeps me well entertained as a big kid still.

Even if all I ever do is snipe squirrel and take grouse on Autumn walks in the woods, the times, lore and vivid stories of this stuff is enough to make me grieve that there is a limit to the body of autobiographical accounts. The books that got me started years ago were Jim Corbet's accounts of hunting man-eaters in northern India. If people haven't read his stories, I envy them for the tremendous read they have to look forward to.

Again, thanks to all of you for sharing your terrific stories! Put 'em in a book...

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