196 THE LAND OF THE LION 



not too near at all for a shot in cover, if the elephant is three- 

 quarters facing you, you can easily send your 450 through 

 the shoulder into the heart, and he will not travel one 

 hundred yards, and, what is important, you have no more 

 need to fear his charge. 



Most shots in the side fail for two reasons they are 

 too far back, and they are too high. Few hunters seem 

 to take the trouble to stand by the bloody, high-smelling 

 mass, and wait till they see for themselves how far forward 

 the heart lies, and how low down. When a boy I had, 

 of course, read Sir Samuel Baker's sometimes extraordinary 

 stories of the impossibility of quickly killing elephant. I 

 remember well handling with reverence in Riley's gun 

 store, in Oxford Street, his famous elephant gun, which 

 he nicknamed the "Baby." It took a half-pound shell, 

 if I remember rightly, and I do not dare to say what was 

 its powder charge. It certainly did damage at the butt end, 

 whatever it did at the muzzle. Selous was, I think, the 

 first man to try a small bore .450 on elephant.* He did so 

 because one of his other rifles was not to hand when he 

 wanted it. Thereafter he used that calibre constantly. 

 Then came the day of real small bores, the .303 English 

 gun. Men found that rhino and elephant came down to 

 well-planted shots from even that inferior weapon. 



To-day no one who has had experience burdens him- 

 self any longer with the old-fashioned heavy rifles that 

 were for so long deemed indispensable. I think that 

 shortly the use of even a .500 or .577 cordite rifle will be 

 uncommon. They are not needed. Any good rifle with 

 a powerful powder charge will kill an elephant stone dead 

 if the bullet, however small, is planted in the brain. It 



* This was of course a black powder gun, very different from the cordite .450 of to-day. But in 

 Selous's time, and in the country he hunted, you could ride elephants on a trained pony, galloping 

 up to them, and galloping away. There was no need for the stealthy approach. You easily escaped 

 the charge. In East Africa elephant hunting is no such simple matter. The odds are much more. Even 

 to-day many are maimed or killed and elephants that have been much hunted are very dangerous. 



