ELEPHANT 



'95 



down in the chest. The eye and ear shot is easier, if only 

 he holds his head steady for a moment, though that mark 

 too, is not large. Care must be taken to shoot below the 

 line of eye and ear as the bullet will range upward. I 

 repeat this, as again and again good men shoot too high 

 for this shot, and then the bullet does no permanent harm. 

 He may stagger to the blow, but is soon going off, and 

 going strong. As he swings straight away from you there is a 

 good shot to be had, one of the easiest, one of the deadliest 

 and, strangely enough, one seldom taken. His spine 

 makes a great curve from its highest point in the centre 

 of the back down to the root of the tail, six or seven feet 

 long this curve extends, and the vertebrate column is fully 

 ten inches across. Land a bullet in it and he comes to a 

 halt. It is a big, fair mark. High up in the hump of his 

 mighty shoulders is another vital spot. If you are stand- 

 ing alongside, and grass and bushes are so high that a clear 

 view of the shoulder cannot be had, here his backbone 

 is at the very widest where the shoulders rise to it. Two 

 feet six inches or three feet from the top of his back 

 straight above his legs put a bullet there and he falls 

 like a log. 



But I have reserved for the last place my final hints, if 

 I may modestly offer them. The shoulder, or just behind 

 the kink of his big foreleg is the easiest mark and quite 

 deadly enough. There lies the great heart, quite as big as a 

 large water bucket, and any man who keeps his wits about 

 him, and fires from broadside, can hit it. Let anyone 

 examine the skeleton carefully, or stand by while the 

 carcass is being cut into, or cut up, and he can satisfy him- 

 self on these points I have named. The trouble generally 

 is, men fire wildly at the vast mass, plant bullet after bullet 

 somewhere. They really don't know where and then 

 go away and insist that an elephant cannot usually be killed 

 without great expenditure of ammunition. At thirty yards, 



