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.