When I hunted in Zambia a few years ago my PH told me he had taken his only elephant with a 30-06, his first lion with a 12ga loaded with half buckshot half no. 6 shot and his first leopard with a 22 rimfire, the latter two while he was a teenager. I suspect most African game that is taken by locals is taken with way smaller calibres than we trophy hunters use.

Sadly, I suspect the all time greatest elephant cartridge (in terms of number of animals shot) is the 7.62x39 (AK 47), if we are too believe that elephant numbers declined from 1.2 million to 500,000 - 600,000 in the '80's.

mike