Tuskless Elephants should be the target?

[Kevin Peacocke]

There was a question posed on @Tanks hunting report and I didn't want to disturb that, so I decided to post this separately. The question is - should hunters selectively target tuskless to even the shift that was created and is being furthered by poaching? I am not a biologist, my wife is, so I have gleaned some knowledge. There are very few tuskless bulls, but the population of tuskless cows is growing fast, especially where heavy poaching pushed up their proportion in the pool initially. I believe the tuskless gene is not recessive, so a tuskless cow and tusked bull can have a tuskless calf, likely a cow calf, quite readily. In other words, the more tuskless cows, the more the tuskless proportion runs away.
Please all you learned ones forgive my simplicity, but am I on the right track here that tuskless cows should be on the hunt menu not just because they are cheap, but because we need to erradicate some of them, maybe urgently?

 

[IvW]

Yes for sure

 

[mark-hunter]

From game menagment perspective, yes. This is established and proven practise in other countries to remove bad genetics for other species. .
This is also welcome practise to give opportunity to hunt ele, to blue collar class hunter.
I am all for giving value to the game that we hunt, but i still find some trophy fees way too high. Tuskless ele gives some other options.
However if there is a need to remove some of them urgently, culling may be only option.

 

[Tanks]

From game menagment perspective, yes. This is established and proven practise in other countries to remove bad genetics for other species. .
This is also welcome practise to give opportunity to hunt ele, to blue collar class hunter.
I am all for giving value to the game that we hunt, but i still find some trophy fees way too high. Tuskless ele gives some other options.
However if there is a need to remove some of them urgently, culling may be only option.

Who are you calling blue class hunter? I resemble that remark.

Tuskless elephants are monetized and the community gets benefits from their hunts, So, I would not recommend culling them.

They are also used for training PHs. The final exam for my PH years ago was to do a frontal brain shot approach to a tuskless within 10 yards and have his "client" shoot it. If "client" did not manage to kill it outright (and he did not), the designated backup would shoot for heart/lung shot. He was not supposed to shoot unless absolutely necessary.

Tuskless are also not that prevalent. Their numbers are more this year due to not having hunts last year due to Covid.

 

[Philip Glass]

Yes

 

[VertigoBE]

Thanks for bringing this topic up @Kevin Peacocke . I had been wondering the same thing the past few weeks. And I was especially wondering why there are not more deals for tuskless being posted on AH.

This might be an excellent way of adding the thrill of an elephant hunt, to a more general hunting trip for plainsgame for example.

 

[CAustin]

Kevin the tuskless is on the menus for several of us next August.

 

[Hunt anything]

I believe tuskless is the way to go for a budget elephant hunt. If I hadn’t had PAC permit offered to me many years ago I would book a tuskless hunt, heck I may do it anyway!

 

[Frederik]

I am all for it and from what I have heard and seen tuskless can very dangerous thrilling hunt as well.

 

[npm352]

Yes. Mankind has helped perpetuate the gene through poaching, so mankind should keep it in check through hunting.

Also, tusks serve multiple purposes. It is a shitty gene to have in the gene pool.

And they are fun to hunt.

 

[Excessexpress]

Yes, I believe Zimbabwe has offered Tuskless hunts as a management option for some years now.

I would absolutely do so, in no small part because importation is impossible here. The objective is rather paternalistically attempting to dissuade the hunting of elephants, so I want to do it anyway.

 

[mark-hunter]

@Tanks!

hahaha
Great question.
Lets ask who is blue collar class hunter?

In my book, generally, a blue collar is a person who works for the money.
(White collar is the person where money works for him)

In terms of hunting: Blue collar class hunter is a hunter that can afford average plains game hunt in Africa, RSA or Namibia, but cannot afford wilderness hunt in other countries or 60 pounds of exportable trophy ivory.

Tuskless is an option for blue collar.

 

[Nhoro]

Thi subject piqued my interest a year or so ago. So did a little reading up in old hunting accounts. Now this is not emirical eveidence as I am sure Selous etc were not interested in tuskless elephants. But guys like Ted Davison/Rupert Fothergill etc should have been a bit more reliable in noticing tuskless animals. So it seems they were extremely rare in times past where as today they are a great deal more common-maybe 1 or 2 %.

So I think that numbers should be controlled to the historical percentage- lets be real- modern elephants are managed throughout africa. Even so called free ranging elephants in the Zambezi Valley and Hwange Botswana are restricted by settlements and farming. So I think elephants should be hunted (as far as possible) to preserve their genetics. Some tuskless animals always existed and removing them entirely would reduce the gene pool. But having a climbing percentage each year is another big problem.

Maybe sideline to tuskless elephants is the moving of Save valley elephants to Rifa safari area in the Zambezi valley. Bigger bodied bulls pushing the Zambezi elephants out in mating ??

 

[Zambezi]

If we had to reduce all the populations to scientifically acceptable carrying capacity (NOT simply the government capacity) we would have enough hunting to last a generation. Kruger alone needs to reduce numbers by about 6000 individuals and Botswana by 50 000 - 100 000. If we reduced all fees on tuskless in order to eradicate the gene to almost zero I think it would take a generation to do so. Offer hunts at $4000 a pop or thereabouts and you'd have the numbers down in a decade, but it would take a further decade or two to get the numbers to acceptable carrying capacity.

If you don't make the tuskless an attractive cost effective option, it won't be taken up and then the only way to reduce the gene is to cull. yes it's a lot of work for such a low price but stipulate that it has to be combined with PG or other DG etc etc. You'll never ever eradicate the gene having only a few on quota every year. And the longer the current state of affairs is allowed to continue the larger the tuskless population will become.

On the other hand, if tuskless elephants are the only ones left then maybe they won't be poached to extinction... just a thought. A horrible one though...

 

[mark-hunter]

4000 $ a pop + sufficient number of permits issued.
in the opposite, with less then minimum number of permits issued as it is now, in line with politically correct game management approach, prices will remain high, and problem will not be solved.

 

[Nhoro]

If we had to reduce all the populations to scientifically acceptable carrying capacity (NOT simply the government capacity) we would have enough hunting to last a generation. Kruger alone needs to reduce numbers by about 6000 individuals and Botswana by 50 000 - 100 000. If we reduced all fees on tuskless in order to eradicate the gene to almost zero I think it would take a generation to do so. Offer hunts at $4000 a pop or thereabouts and you'd have the numbers down in a decade, but it would take a further decade or two to get the numbers to acceptable carrying capacity.

If you don't make the tuskless an attractive cost effective option, it won't be taken up and then the only way to reduce the gene is to cull. yes it's a lot of work for such a low price but stipulate that it has to be combined with PG or other DG etc etc. You'll never ever eradicate the gene having only a few on quota every year. And the longer the current state of affairs is allowed to continue the larger the tuskless population will become.

On the other hand, if tuskless elephants are the only ones left then maybe they won't be poached to extinction... just a thought. A horrible one though...

Generally speaking in Zimbabwe, the elephants belong to the government and the government collects that money. So for a safari company, they work on their daily rates. Zimbabwe does not hunt inside national parks, only the areas surrounding them called safari areas and communal areas. So it becomes complicated. You cant simply shoot more elephant in the safari areas because they will run away to the parks and make the parks overpopulation worse. So it becomes a balancing act. The government tries to balance the poplution at a natural ratio of cows vs bulls, old tuskers vs youngsters and even tuskless vs tusked.

But if you consider it all, a tuskless eats the same food and roams the same land. Economically, they do not make sense. It is only poachers and ivory hunters that have skewed the population towards tuskless and so man must intervene and restore balance.

 

[Zambezi]

Yep there has to a balancing act in population management. But there is no reason to keep tuskless unless you want some around so that when all the tusked individuals are poached out then at least they will survive to propagate the species

If the aim of the exercise is to eradicate the tuskless gene then making them cheap as chips to hunt is the only way to go... or culling. But nobody derives any benefit from culling.

Let's assume that Africa has 200 000 excess elephant and the tuskless gene makes up 10%. That's 20 000 elephant that have to be removed in order to get the gene eliminated or down to 1-2%.

 

[VertigoBE]

@Zambezi and @Nhoro

So if I understand correctly, the problem does not lie with outfitters not wanting to offer cheap tuskless, but rather with government who only makes available x number of permits for elephant hunting (tusked +tuskless), and due to this constriction of supply, everyone prefers to use their quota for tusked elephant as it is more remunerative?

 

[Zambezi]

That's pretty much the long and short of it.

Outfitters can also play their part by discounting the tuskless day fees BUT the same amount of work and danger goes into a tuskless as a tusked. Sometimes the tuskless takes more time and effort as they have to be identified in the herd as well as ensuring they are not nursing.

 

[BourbonTrail]

Side question: is it legal to hunt more than one elephant per year per client (not that I could afford it), or is it licenses per outfitter and it’s between the client and the outfitter? Does it vary by country?