Killing in Kenya: Aidan Hartley tracks the last steps of an elephant

 

Laikipia

The bull elephant had roamed our northern marches of the Laikipia plateau for decades. I always recognised him when he passed through the farm because his handsome 65-pound tusks had a distinctive curve and a thickness that showed his ivory might have grown much larger, had he lived. Instead, armed Pokot poachers ambushed him as he browsed with two other younger bulls one afternoon in the woodland at the top of our Pinguaan valley. They sprayed a burst of bullets at him and several rounds ripped into his lungs and guts. He was mortally wounded, but staggered away bleeding. The poachers chased him up and their aim would be to finish the job of killing, then use an axe to hack away half his skull to extract the tusks, which they would take off to sell to a Somali, who would sell to a Chinese man, who would smuggle the tusks to China.