The elephant is one of my favourite animals - I could spend hours watching these amazing pachyderms, but as happens with most experiences in the bush, you get to watch for a few minutes and then move on. My best time has been on foot, although you really need to be with someone who knows what they are doing.

I was an young assistant director on a film in Zimbabwe (Hwange game reserve) and we were filming a scene of a hundred elephants coming down to a water hole. We had a famous welsh actor, John Rhys-Davies, who had broken his ankle on a previous film, so it was in a cast, and he understandably couldn’t move very fast.

He was playing the role of a hunter, and in this particular scene he had to stand there, holding his gun as this herd approached. That is a pretty explosive situation, as anyone who knows elephants would understand.

Elephants - especially in a herd with their young, do not take kindly to humans on foot, and especially when they are next to the waterhole they are headed towards, and wielding a gun! The ‘safety officer’ in charge of this scene was a hunter, Viv Bristow from Zimbabwe, who turned out to be amazing at reading the mood of the herd, and the powerful matriarch who was leading them. The director of the film wanted John to raise his gun at the advancing herd as if to take a shot! The matriarch, seeing the threat, charged him, and amazingly he kept his cool, and stood his ground. (I suppose with an ankle in a cast it would have been difficult to run!) Cool as anything Viv stepped forward and lifted his arms and shouted, and she stopped dead in her tracks, and like that the situation was diffused. What an awesome introduction to an elephant in the wild.

I had a lot of fun making this elephant as you can see from the photograph on the heading of this website. My first bronze in motion. Everytime I make a bronze I learn from my mistakes - as would be expected. I had this cast as a solid bronze (not hollow) with a granite base, and it is amazingly heavy! When I cast the next in this series I don’t think it will be completely solid!

This bronze stands 19 cms from the granite base it stands on to it’s shoulder, and 33 cms tusk to tail.

The series is limited to 15 each bronze signed and numbered, with the next available being 5/15

Price: R54 000.00