I would first like to give a little back ground about shooting elephants in India. Since 1875 ( or 1873 , according to some sources ) , shooting elephants had been prohibited in in India . This was approximately eighteen years after the Indian mutiny in 1857 and while India was still a British colony. Why this foolish ban was placed , is beyond me. However , according to my late father , the reason is as follows :
The Hindus worship an entity called Ganesha whom they treated as a God . This entity is an elephant.
A picture of the Hindu elephant God which l have collected from the internet.
The Hindus were incredibly aggressive against anyone who shot elephants for this reason . In order to keep the people from getting too aggressive , the British government gave the order that no more elephants were to be shot.
Given how one would have difficulty finding an animal which these people do not worship , l certainly think that my father is accurate in his assessment.
The one exception to the ban was the rogue elephant. These were legally permitted to be shot . However , the Hindu Shikaris did not partake in this activity . It was the Muslim and Christian Shikaris who would invariably partake in this task .
However , if history has proven anything , it is that bans never work and only worsen the affair . The Garo people whom Karim and l used to use for tracking , were blessed by Divine Providence with another skill : the skill of poaching elephants. The weapons that the Garo poachers would use for this task were quite unprepossessing looking weapons. They were crude , locally made smoothbore matchlock guns with barrels up to five feet in length called Jinjalls . They would use round , spherical moulded lead bullets with a weight of between two and three ounces. Never did l see any more primitive looking fire arms. Yet , they certainly did the work on these Indian elephants. These two to three ounce round lead bullets were backed by very large quantities of cheap , locally made coarse Indian black gun powder. At short distances , when fired at the head of the elephant from the side , they would drop an elephant dead by having the bullet reach it's brain. When fired at the lungs of an elephant from the side and if two lungs were pierced , the elephant would run a short distance before falling dead.
However , if fired at the head of an elephant from the front , these round lead moulded bullets would not penetrate into the brain. The reason for this is simple. If anyone has ever cut open an elephant and seen it's skull , they will see that the front part of an elephant skull is far thicker than the side part of the elephant skull. The bone in this area is odd. It is shaped like the honey comb of the hive of a bee. I have helped cut numerous elephant corpses open and have personally been present when three elephants were shot , but as l have never shot one of these large creatures myself , l cannot profess to be an expert on this creature. I can only write my observations as a spectator of them being shot and some one who has helped to cut them open. The brain of the elephant is a little smaller than a foot ball and is found at the back of the skull where the spinal column begins. From personal experience , l have made one observation . If a Gaur has a fore leg broken by a bullet , it can escape. However , an elephant who has a fore leg broken by a bullet will not be able to move , on account of it's massive weight.
The Indian elephant weighs anywhere between five and six tons.
The Garo poachers would take advantage of this and devised a highly effective , yet extremely cruel and inhumane way to kill elephants , which l will describe below :
They would form groups of four .At close distances , they would fire their Jinjalls at the legs of the elephants. The elephants would stay still after that. If they would try to move , then their leg bones would break and therefore these large creatures would become very helpless either way , as the Garo poachers would then easily finish them off with shots to the lungs or the side of the head. I have actually witnessed this practice first hand and even though l am desensitized to plenty of things , l found the scene a little sickening. I believe in giving a quick death to your quarry.
Nevertheless, both Karim and l always looked the other direction when the Garo poachers partook in such activities. It was crucial that we maintain good relationship with them , due to how dependant we were upon their kind , for tracking . Also , poaching was not as rancid as it would become after 1972 . In the time of which l speak , these poachers would kill maybe two elephants in an entire year. As they did it to feed their families by selling the ivory , Karim and l looked the other direction , even though we directly never partook in the poaching. If we were discovered doing such a thing , we would lose our Shikari's license from the Nilgiri Wildlife Association , without any doubt.
By contrast however , my good friend , Mohiyuddin was an absolute artist in Killing the Indian Elephant. He would use a .303 bore Lee Enfield type rifle made from the firm , Birmingham Small Arms which held ten cartridges in the removable magazine . This weapon was issued to him from the armoury of the Darjeeling forest department . It originally belonged to a British gentleman who owned a tea garden in the colonial era and left the gun behind when he returned to England upon India's independence in 1947. With this weapon , he would use old pattern British military ammunition which had round blunt nose metal envelope bullets weighing little above 200 grains. They were very old , made prior to the first world war. Nevertheless, very few cartridges ever missed fire. I cannot say how many rogue elephants Mohiyuddin shot in total , however l do know that he shot six rogue elephants in Darjeeling.
In my next portion , l will relate an incident when l accompanied Mohiyuddin to dispatch a rogue elephant.