The platter-like spoor indicated mostly bulls, heading up from the river into mostly burned miombo forest. It was blistering hot, and it promised to be a long afternoon. Thankfully, it was not. We tracked for just an hour, the spoor white where huge feet had crushed blackened grass into white ash. Then we heard branches breaking ahead and the low belly-rumbling of elephants at peace with their world.

After years of effective antipoaching, Lukwika elephants were some of the calmest the author had ever seen.

The breeze was unstable in the heat of the day. Old Sengi, our Wakamba tracker, must have done this thousands of times in more than fifty years of elephant hunting. He quickly led us to the left, taking the best average of the fickle wind for our approach.

The elephants, ten bulls of varying age and size, were tightly packed in an island of shade somehow left behind by the recent burning. We closed to sixty yards, using binoculars to study their ivory intently, trying to see all the bulls and all the tusks. I thought I saw a bull that was clearly larger than the rest, but in that moment a breath of swirling breeze kissed the back of my neck, and the mass of huge gray bodies were in motion. I tried to pick out the bigger bull in the press, and again I thought I caught a glimpse of longer, heavier tusks. But it was only an impression, and then they were gone.

Sengi and his younger proteges conferred, then spoke with Michel in soft Swahili. It was very hot, and only one or two elephants had caught just a whiff--not the full blast of our hated human scent. Chances are they wouldn't go far in the open, burned ground ahead. We'd wait a little while, then try once more.

We found them an hour later, stopped in the scant shade of some larger trees, listening and scenting. The wind seemed to have steadied, so we closed in once more. In this more open ground we could see them clearly, and one bull towered above all--a giant among giants. His tusks were not especially long, but in perspective with his extra-large frame and huge head, they were long and thick enough. We watched him for long moments, carefully wiping sweat from our eyes. By Tanzanian definition, this was a legal bull, certainly in the fifty-pound range. I imagined the frontal brain shot, that last crease above the trunk and between the eyes. Then we took a few pictures and walked away. This was not the elephant we sought.

At Lukwika the cashews were ripe, and crop raiding by elephants was a nightly event.

Elephant wander over vast areas, making hunting them one of the most physically demanding of all African challenges. It's usually a tracking hunt. You can readily discern the larger track of a big-footed bull, and in softer soil you can see almost as easily the worn, deeply cracked pads of an older bull. Only at the end of the track will you see the ivory, and most bulls will fall short of your expectations.

Elephants are part of wild Africa, not the mosaic of manicured game ranches. Some of the best hunting, when they are concentrated, happens during the most miserable times of the year: early in the season, when crops are ripe but it's hot, humid, rainy, buggy and snaky, or late in the year, when ground water has evaporated and elephant must concentrate near remaining pools and rivers and it's blistering hot and dry, as well as buggy and snaky. Whether wet or dry, you'll walk many miles for every elephant you see, and if you see the tusks you want at the end of the track, you have won.