Was scanning through the past posts and happened on this one.

On defining Africa's greatest elephant hunter we need to delineate between "writer hunters" and those who did not write about their exploits.

Southern African hunting history has it that there are unknown to the followers of Safari press and Trophy room books a number of Boer hunters who qualify as Africa's greatest hunters.

The likely candidate one Jan Viljoen, the mentor and friend of Selous. Selous himself elevates Viljoen the to level of Africa's greatest hunter. This guy hunted for some 30 years compared to Bell's 14 year span in Africa. Selous only hunted about 16 years.

Then there is Petrus Jacobs who hunted for 40 years and died of wounds sustained from a wounded lion attack when he was in his 70's. Jacobs shot 200 elephant alone in the company of his friend Viljoen.

The proof of their hunting skill unfortunately never written up until relatively recently . What we do have is archival documentation showing ivory shipments from Africa at the time of their hunting. Also historical data pertaining to the amount of ball and powder used by these hunters at the time.

There are a number of historical books in Afrikaans in South Africa that explores the historical fact of their passing.

As to Rowland Ward: This is a topic in it's own right sufficed to say RW was never a Record book as we use it today. RW was a scientific publication citing species and horn dimension as measurement. It is only with the advent of the american- african hunting expereince in the 50's in East Africa that RW takes on a new role and that is a statement of status as it pertains to the shooting of a big specimens.