Two things that must be borne in mind are how quickly an elephant can move, even when walking slowly, and how silently it can move. One can usually hear an elephant in thick bush long before you can see him, as the sound of snapping branches when feeding and even their stomachs rumbling can be heard for a considerable distance. An elephant can, however, walk virtually silently, due to the unique design of its feet. This means that the outside of the pad hits the ground slightly before the centre of the pad, and all sounds of the footfall are trapped. Many a hunter has been able to hear or see his quarry, and then ducked off through some cover to obtain a favourable shooting position or get the wind in their favour, only to find when they have reappeared, that their elephant has caught a whiff of them and silently sped away.
Elephants have excellent hearing and a fantastic sense of smell, but relatively poor eyesight.
Even then, any approach made into the wind will almost always be successful. Even with a gentle breeze, an elephant can smell a man at half a kilometre, and consequently most hunters carry an ash bag when out after elephant. Figure 1 - Visual comparison showing location of facial features relative to skull and shot placement. Shot Placement Elephants are always shot at close range. It is doubtful that more than one in a hundred elephants are shot at much over 40 yards, and it is inconceivable to take more than a 60 yard shot on an unwounded elephant.