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Forget the shooting. Learn how to run! And I mean run FAST!!!

But if you insist on training with your rifle (as you know, I shot quite a few hundred rounds with my ele rifle last spring before going to Zim

), I suggest mounting relativly large targets on poles of an appropriate elephant head hight, keeping in mind that a cow is smaller/shorter than a bull, so 2 1/2 meters up should be fine, and drawing a brain sized circle in the middle. Prefferably a few of these pole mounted targets, so that you can switch back and forth between several for each reload. Such as 2 shots to the righthand target, and then 2 shots on the one 90 degrees to your lefthand as fast as you can. As for seeing the brain, I read the various books discussed here before, and watched various movies etc, but found that the best help was when I finally got down there, and spent a few days before the hunt in Mana Pools looking at elephant together with an ex-PH. And then spent several days hunting tuskless cow elephant while intentionally not shooting one, firstly to get the experiance of hunting them and sneaking in and out of herds, but also so that I could discuss elephant head anatomy with my PH. I personally feel this helped more than the pictures in the books etc., although studying the books first help create a basis to work from.

However, now that Buzz Charltons film has been released, I think it is probably a better "teacher" than all the static drawings found in the various books.

As you might recall, I made a target that was mounted on a sled, which could be dragged behind a car past me at around 35-40km/h. In some ways this was mostly for fun. But I think there was actually quite a lot of value in trying to hit the bouncing target at speed coming towards me. And will use it again next time I plan to go ele hunting.

But with all that said, I've only been on 1 elephant hunt, and am sure there are more experianced members here with more (better?) advice!

Good luck with the practice!

Erik

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