I have no experience hunting elephants, but Taylor's assertions about this or that round stunning an elephant for this or that amount of time have been the kingpins in my personal belief that he was for the most part a fraud.

I would guess he probably shot some elephants, but nothing like the 1000 +- he claimed, and I also do not believe he used all the rifles and cartridges he claimed to have used. Much of his information could have been gleaned from other hunters, catalogues and good common sense. I wondered about him for years, then read Capstick's book {no I am not suggesting Capstick was the paragon of Truthtelling himself...} and Capstick does an excellent job trying to do the math in calculating the amount of time Taylor actually spent hunting versus his claims of the number of elephant he shot. Difficult to mesh the two. Many on this forum could sit down and pen a good saw about hunting and attribute to themselves this or that feat or this or that experience {do they...?}. Personally, I wonder if Taylor "borrowed" alot of Fletcher Jamieson's experiences. Regardless, it would be easy to pickup practical knowledge from hunters. I have spent enough time talking to friends who HAVE shot lots of elephants that I betcha I could spin a good tale or two myself!

Do the math for yourselves; read Taylor with an open and critical mind and ask yourself: Do you really believe Taylor had experience with all the guns/loads he says he did?

At any rate, even if everything he attributed to himself was absolutely true, I believe his assertion of keeping elephant down with head shots for this or that amount of time is patently ridiculous. To try to understand why a round didn't perform according to what Taylor said it should have is to chase a fast rabbit. The falsehood of the basic premise is going to make the investigation of the effect as easy as catching smoke.

Just my $.02.