Last weekend I had brunch at Hilary and Ronnie's house. Ronnie is a professional hunter and after we ate he showed us his customized elephant-skin-cutting tool. Being a good Maun crowd we all peppered him with questions on how to skin an elephant and how to extract the trophies (tusks, feet. tail, etc) and were quite the captive audience. Christiane and I especially loved his elephant tail bracelet which you can see below.
This is part of an elephant tail ready for a wrist to adorn. Christiane suggested adding silver to make it into a bangle and I'd love to have that on my arm.
This is Ronnie's weathered and beaten elephant bracelet. Underneath it has a silver clasp.
I'd just like to add a note about hunting elephants in Botswana. There are two hundred thousand elephants in Botswana (most of them in the north) and hunting doesn't even make a dent in the population. Professional hunters like Ronnie take the utmost care with what they do and are in fact the best deterrent for poachers. A hunting safari has a lower impact on the environment compared to a photographic safari and conserves more land. If you want to see Ronnie in action you can catch his TV show on Versus Under Wild Skies. I watch it on Sunday mornings in Brooklyn when I'm missing Botswana.
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