AK's have killed more game than all the double guns in the world, ten times over. Poachers, rebels, soldiers and all of the natives have been so desperately poor for so long that any chance to harvest a tusk was taken until the market dried up for poached ivory. That and the general meltdown of governments in general and all control in the bush has caused drastic declines on wildlife numbers and quality. Only the areas lucky enough to have some government oversight, protection or have a economic way to make money off game animals have not been devastated.
There are no more wondering 100 pound tuskers in Africa, outside of a park and few of them even there. I suspect the bulls in question are either living in a park and are coming into the fields at night to feed. Perhaps they are non park bulls who just refuse to leave the fields alone and are being harvested to offset the crop losses and to help the farmers and others see a value of not poaching the elephants.
Either case is sad when you have to harvest animals which just a few decades ago would have been protected by their very small stature instead of valued as the biggest you can get these days. Sad day indeed and elephants are just more visible than most game animals. Easy to put a picture of an elephant on a stamp harder to choose a plains animal and get the same response.
