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Poaching? I never understood where this idea came from. Bell was actually already in the Lado Enclave with a paid-for hunting permit from the Belgian authorities when the Belgian King died. He writes that the Belgians left immediately and there was a six month period before the land became the property of the Sudan. A whole horde of rascally adventurers descended on teh place and some of them behaved terribly towards the native people. (Out of interest, I dont think that border was formally settled with Sudan until the 1940's.)

Bell didn't use a ladder. He used to stand on the tripod of his telescope in order to see over the ten foot tall grasses so he could shoot properly. He made the observation that the elehants in that area were not much disturbed by a rifle shot. (to the brain, meaning a death with no fuss.) They would move off a way, but not stampede. Perhaps this page is what has been misconstrued by the poster above.

Bell did not willy nilly shoot elephants, just as any other market hunter does not. Throughout his books he makes it plain that for a businessman who is shooting for ivory the brain shot is the best because when an elephant drops with no fuss, it does not alarm the rest of the herd and the shooter may get more animals before the rest of them spook.
But remember he was not adverse to a body shot, and also examined the interior of an elephant the same way that he had had an elephant skull sawed in half. He noted not only the position of the heart but also of the large blood vessels above it which made as much of a target in themselves.

Someone else wrote somewhere that he used to jsut shoot elephant anywhere and then find them using the vultures a few days later....I am not sure where this could have come from and perhaps someone has mistaken Bell for someone else. The closest I can come to this is when Bell was off with a small crew of men and they didnt have the manpower to turn the elephants head over to get the bottom tusk out. (He wrote that if left for two days the tusk could be slid out due to decompesition.)

His favourite rifle and caliber were undoubtadly a 7x57 Mauser for much of his career. However, people change their minds over time. By the end of his African days we find him using a .318 WR regularly, both on a Mauser and also a double rifle. He also used a .303, a 6.5x54MS, .350 Rigby, .450/400, .416, and possibly others. Bell loved his firearms it was plain.
He shot 800 elephants with the 7mm and the rest with the other calibers; but by the last of his safaris it seems he had settled on a .318 Westley Richards. He was using by that stage a braind shot from the rear which worked well for his and the .318 WR bullets penetrated on a straighter line than the 7mm or the 6.5 bullets.

As for the big bore versus small bore thing...Bell wrote his own article about it which I can refer you to "Big Bore SMall Bore" for American Rifleman 1952 which explains what he thinks of Big Bore people who look down on his using a 7mm Mauser on Elephant.
Suffice to say he tried a .450/400 on his first safari but it didnt kill anything deader than his .303. He wasn't a fanatic though - when the .416 came out he bought two of them from Rigby in 1912 or 1913.

As for his prowess as a shooter, the anecdote about shooting the herons out of the sky with a .318 WR is related by himself; but another is related by JA Hunter (which Bell does not mention in his books) - he was observed shooting fish that were jumping from the surface of a lake with his .275.

He was plainly a superlative marksman. But then, let us remember that Bell continously in his books refers to shooting Elephants at close range, he mentions 35 yards as about optimum. Other times these ranges are easily inferred also, even when he does not mention a figure. Even from what he describes as his sighting in procedure we can see that he expects close range shots - he says that he filed the sights of his elephant rifles so that the bead covered the group of shots at 75 yards.
The assumption that Bell got most of his elephants in the open at long range is not true. And another - that the herds had never been hunted and were not afraid of man is also not true, he may have been the only white man in the territory, but Arabs would shoot at them with muzzleloaders; ivory was worth money.

To write Bell off as potentially a liar simply because he wrote the books about himself seems silly. On what grounds do we challenge the man? He undeniably shot more elephant than anyone on this forum, so I would read what he wrote with a little respect. As for the small bore thing....remember he wasnt the only one successfully shooting elephant with small bore rifles. The .303 and the 6.5x54MS were used by others. This is not a magic trick, nor was he the only one. Just that WDM Bell was particularly good at it, did well financially, and wrote a book that was successful. (1923, Wanderings of an Elephant hunter)
As pointed out above, .7.62NATO in the SLR has been used for culling elephants extensively and for exactly the same reason Bell used the .303 and the 7x57 - the ammo is cheap, the recoil makes it easy shooting, and it works fine.

I am curious though, because Bell seems to have been well known as a successful African hunter before he wrote his first book. In 1916 a bio of him appears in the Royal Flying Corps magazine "Flight" describing him as the 'famous' big game hunter...I wonder what was written about him prior to WW1 and where...

(I will observe that the small bore thing seems a less of a deal to Australians and NZ's though I think, as we have been shooting big game animals with .222 Remingtons for years...internet fights over whether a .243 will kill an elk for example, just seem silly to us. Although I think this is changing as more and more young people read and get their ideas from the interweb, which is largely American opinions.)

WDM Bell is also one of my favourite hunting guys, as you can see. But I think if you are going to detract from a historical figure people should at least have read the books properly. There is no mystery about how WDM Bell achieved his success as an epehant hunter with a 7x57 - he wrote it all down because he wanted to share the experience.

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If you carry a cat home by the tail you will receive information valuable to you for the rest of your life.
Mark Twain

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