I've heard this before quite a few times, but wonder quite honestly why it occurs.

Meaning, in sport hunting as it is done today, is it not reasonable and common to put finishers into an elephant to make sure this doesn't happen?

The fact that we have here this thread and discussion each of those who have experience on elephant admitting difficulty with the brain shot and we know that elephant can be stunned but not killed outright by a shot that looks good from the outside but that misses the brain.

Is it not common to fire finishers into each elephant that goes down, brain shot or not? Or do some hunters not want finishers fired in order to call it a one shot kill all of their own?

{I have no personal experience hunting elephant, only what I came to know from friends who killed many elephants in the Congo many years ago. There, "sport" had nothing to do with it, and they told me every animal that went down was shot again to insure it didn't get up, whether it looked dead or not.}