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Originally Posted by RevMike
Hey John:

The next time you talk with Craig "I-Like-A-Cannon" Boddington, tell him that he needs to tread lightly on the legend and legacy of WDM Bell!! grin

Actually, he wrote an interesting article in the current issue of G&A. I'm still trying figure out, though, how he figures that Bell didn't shoot 1000+ elephants with the .275. I'm not saying he did or didn't, but is CB saying that his total with all rifles was 1000+, not just the .275? Somehow I missed how he explained it in the article.

I'll post a picture of the first big old boar I shoot DRT with my new Boddington No 1 in 7x57. You can forward it to him and tell him "little guns" work just fine on big old pigs. laugh


If you have a bone to pick with Craig you should go to DSC Convention and tell him yourself. I'm sure he'll give you a smile and mabe give you an autographed book.


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Originally Posted by rattler
Originally Posted by moosemike
JA Hunter said Bell picked off his elephants at a distance. He said in Bell's day the elephants were found on the open plains and Bell didn't get up close and personal with them the way JA Hunter had to in his day. He also said Bell tried to recreate his success later in life (with his .275)after the elephants had changed their habits to being more forest dwellers and the safari was a dismal failure and Bell was lucky to escape with his life.


this....the habits that elephants had were different when Bell was hunting....as above they changed within his lifetime....Bell killed a slew with the 7x57 but he was shooting them at alot farther distances than the guys that came after him.....he wasnt using the 7x57 at powder burn ranges in the thick stuff like the guys that came after him....


Was it all the activity in east Africa during the Great War that caused the animals habits to change?


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Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."

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Bob, if that was not the cause, it would really suprise me. Surely it had to have a major impact on animal habits.


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To me a campaign lost to history. To me some of the most interesting stories from the Great War are in Africa!!

Google the adventures of Mimi and Tou Tou for a great story! I believe they have a pretty accurate Wikipedia page.


Founder
Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester

"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."

WS

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Thanks! I love to read that kind of history.


"Allways speak the truth and you will never have to remember what you said before..." Sam Houston
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Get you in the mood!


Founder
Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester

"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."

WS

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Boddington has killed an awful lot of game with his Todd Ramirez 7x57. I think it might be his favorite rifle; certainly one of his favorites.

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Originally Posted by MissouriEd
[

If you have a bone to pick with Craig you should go to DSC Convention and tell him yourself. I'm sure he'll give you a smile and mabe give you an autographed book.


Was at DSC a few years back and stopped at Craigs booth to buy a book. Some guy walked up and told Craig he was shorter than he looked on TV. Craig just smiled and signed his book.


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Well the thing with Bell was that he did most of his hunting before WW-I, and he lived to tell the tale and retire in comfort in Scotland! Bell used a lot of rifles, what he liked was light rifles and recoil to go with it, he knew how to shoot and shoot well, my guess he had exceptionally good eye sight, he also served in the RAF as a Fighter Pilot in the First World War. So many have repeated the story in so many articles about hunting and cartridges in general, that if you write something about the 7 x 57 or 7mm Mauser or 275 Rigby and don't drop his name, you are considered in some circles rude! He was an astute businessman, after all he shot elephants for money! And there is no doubt he was one of the few that was really successful at it, but its more than 100 years ago now, these days the big Ivory on the old bulls are very very valuable, considering what it costs to hunt elephant these days and you might just get to do it just once in a life time if ever!


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I've semi-wanted one of the Boddington #1's in .450 Nitro for a long time. Arguably - at least handloaded - it's the most powerful of the factory #1's. Hard to find them with decent wood, however, and every time I've seen one, other pressing items had to come first.


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Why would anyone want to kill 1 to 2000 Elephants? If it was for money it eventually became a poor excuse.

Yea, I know there obviously were a lot of them, and some needed killed but who here would want to kill 1000 Grizzlies even if they could?

Strange fellow.

Last edited by battue; 08/28/14.

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i would love to be able to hunt them but they are out of my price range and you kill them with your feet and my knees prolly wont handle it at all.....big difference between killing 1000 griz and 1000 elephants....griz are a top predator and one person killing 1000 of them would actually put a dent in their population....1000 elephants over Bells career was nothing in the population of millions of animals....


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Originally Posted by Kodiakisland


Was at DSC a few years back and stopped at Craigs booth to buy a book. Some guy walked up and told Craig he was shorter than he looked on TV. Craig just smiled and signed his book.



That says a lot about the man.


These are my opinions, feel free to disagree.
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Originally Posted by battue
Why would anyone want to kill 1 to 2000 Elephants? If it was for money it eventually became a poor excuse.

Yea, I know there obviously were a lot of them, and some needed killed but who here would want to kill 1000 Grizzlies even if they could?

Strange fellow.


For fun no...for money yes.


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My dear chap,he was an ivory hunter, he was shooting them for their tusks, and the ivory was auctioned back in England. He was doing it for the money.

He made 863 pounds in one day once. This was at a time when the average working man would make 70 pounds a year.

WDM Bell sighted his elephant rifles in for 80 yards, and was commonly shooting them on foot at ranges of twenty to seventy yards. Other times he was shooting them over tall grasses by standing on his telescope tripod.
But he shot in many different countries and terrains over many years.
The range he most mentions is about brain shots shooting at around forty yards.
He said that all of his elephant hunting was done with offhand shots, with no support.

I have heard before, about how he shot all his elephants at long range, or something - or even that he used to shoot his elephant when they were asleep by climbing up a ladder and shooting them in the ear!
It is simply not true, if you read his books and articles. I have JA Hunters books, and also WDM Bells, and Hunter often seems to get stories a little bit cockeyed, like he read or heard about Bell several years ago and is telling it again from memory...

(As for shooting them in the forest and not doing well at it, that story was about shooting in Liberia and because the elephant were much smaller forest variety, Bell was very disppointed in the size of the tusks, not because he was unable to get close to them in the bush.
He was lucky to escape with his life not because an elephant nearly got him, but because his African people got lost, and he had trouble finding his way out.)

The total - according to his own records - was exactly 1,011 elephants, of which 28 were cows which were shot because they were being aggresive and were bothering his people.
Bell even itemised elephants shot by region, the most he shot in one area was the Lado enclave, which was 268 bulls. (On the other hand the average ivory wieght was lower in the Lado Enclave than elsewhere.)

He wrote that he shot around 800 with the .275. The rest was with the .303, 6.5x57,a handful with the 450/400, .350 Rigby Magnum and one that people always gloss over, the .318 Westley Richards.
In his last trips it is apparent that he had swapped over to using the .318 WR as a preference.


He gave it up because he was in his forties, and because Africa was closing up, there were fewer places you could shoot freely the way he had done before WW1; he had acheievd his stated aim of a 1000 elephants, and he had money.
Unsaid, but probably just as likely, was that he had got married and after two safaris after the war, the wife probably got in his ear about being away in Africa for most of a year at a time...you can imagine.

This is a typical bell elephant shooting, drawn by himself:

[Linked Image]


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Thanks for the great post.

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Originally Posted by MissouriEd
If you have a bone to pick with Craig you should go to DSC Convention and tell him yourself. I'm sure he'll give you a smile and mabe give you an autographed book.


That's actually a pretty good idea. Or better yet, just invite him to our lease and let him kill a few pigs with a .223.

My OP was just in fun. I enjoy CB's writing and watch some of his videos. And I'm sure he's a great guy. He seems like it anyway. My only beef with most writers is that they make blanket statements about firearm requirements for game without ever mentioning that environment plays a big part in each hunt. What might be the recommended round for one area may be too much or too little in another - but a blanket recommendation is generally made. A case in point is a fellow writing in American Hunter a while back, who was hunting pigs in Florida, and recommended that the .300 Win Mag is the minimum rifle someone should use. Really? I've lived in Florida all my life and if someone wants to use a .300 Win Mag, great. But it certainly isn't the minimum required to drop a pig in our Florida environment. I just wish the writers would end their stories with "In your neck of the woods, YMMV." That sure would have been beneficial to me when I was a kid back in the 60s and 70s.

By the way, one great tid-bit of info that CB mentions in the G&A article is that Bell did just about all of his major hunting before he was 35 years old. I can barely remember the shape I was in when I was 35.

Mike


"An archer sees how far he can be from a target and still hit it, a bowhunter sees how close he can get before he shoots." It is certainly easy to use that same line of thinking with firearms. -- Unknown
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Originally Posted by RevMike
My only beef with most writers is that they make blanket statements about firearm requirements for game without ever mentioning that environment plays a big part in each hunt.


You mean like 2,000 ft-lbs of energy is a good minimum for elk?

Has he backed off that one?



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Great posts. I love hearing about WDM Bell and his exploits. I should get around to reading his book or books one day soon.

Bell sparks my imagination not for all the elephants he killed but for the no-nonsense approach he had to hunting in particular. He hunted for money, and to support his money-making safari, feeding the dozens of helpers that went with him. This approach provided for actual minimums, rather than political ones. If a 275 brought down elephants, then it was used.

People claim that he had vastly different shooting compared to today's hunting, and I agree with this, but I've read scores of modern elephant guides who prefer the brain shot and big-bores, so they get really close. Bell could have done this too, but chose other means, which worked equally well, given his economic approach.

Thus the real minimum for various hunting ends up being far different from the political minimum, or the ever-shifting ethical minimum. I've seen this far and wide with western big game hunting as well. There are endless cartridge discussions that take place because of the political and ethical minimums, rather than the actual minimums.


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Another question. Did firearm and ammo availability play a part? In other words, were they simply using what they could get? Or was this even an issue?

Reason I ask is I remember a story Finn Aagard told. Mentioned there was occasions when finding ammo, all ammo was problematic. He was refering to the days his dad was hunting. Like late teens very early twenties. Best as I remember the story.


Founder
Ancient Order of the 1895 Winchester

"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should in their own confines with forked heads
Have their round haunches gored."

WS

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