I wouldn't be surprised to find that more elephants have been killed by the 7.62x39, 7.62x62 NATO, 7.62x54R and .303 than all other cartridges combined.

I'm still wondering about the muzzleloader era. A truly vast amount of African game was killed during the years 1830 to 1900 and certainly there were lots of elephant among that number. Reading some of the early explorers' and missionaries' accounts indicates that ML's were spread pretty far and wide, and there was much unrestricted killing of elephant for ivory in the latter half of the 19th century. I guess the question is, were more elephant killed before 1900 than after? Because of the dissemination of many documented hunting and culling accounts published after 1900 it's easy to assume more were laid low after, but I wonder.