The word “poacher” refers to the trigger men – the men who kill the animals. It may also include the people who smuggle the tusks out of the bush, into the African cities, over the ocean and into the craftsmen’s hands – even the craftsmen themselves – all of whom may also be called “traffickers.”
     In 2014 Lazaro Nyalandu, then Minister of Tanzania’s Ministry for Natural Resources and Tourism (TMNRT), described how poachers operate. According to him, one group of men “equipped with mobile phones [and] dressed in Maasai attire [scouts] in the bush locating elephants.” A second group arrives to shoot the elephants and a third group takes the tusks out of the bush. A fourth group delivers the tusks to a fifth group who is “in communication with distant markets” (Kimati, “Tanzania Jumbo”). Although this may explain how some poaching has happened in some Maasai areas, it does not apply to the Selous Game Reserve where there are no settlements or people.

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Often, the poachers make their own ammunition. They fill the bullets with whatever scrap metal they can find.

Notice the heart shape in the tip of this homemade bullet.

Poachers wound many elephants. These elephants die later, and their tusks rot in the sun.

It takes about two hours to get the tusks out of the skull using an axe. When using a chainsaw, it takes about twenty minutes, however, chain saws are heavy to carry, they break, and they require fuel.

     In the Selous, a group of five to ten African men (or Chinese men or some combination) walk into the bush for three to five days. Most men carry supplies, and one or two men have guns. The weapons are usually old military rifles, such as AK47's. 
     The poachers shoot a matriarch (lead female) first. This causes the other elephants to mill about as they wait for her guidance, which gives the poachers the chance to shoot them, too. Although the females and youngsters do not normally have big tusks, the many small tusks add up. Sometimes poachers find bull elephants in singles, pairs or bachelor groups. Although the bulls’ bigger tusks are more valuable, they are more difficult to carry on foot.
     When poachers kill an elephant, they use an axe or chainsaw to chop its tusks out of its skull. (See photo.) Although chainsaws are faster, axes are easier to carry and maintain, and they do not require fuel. The poachers leave the elephant’s entire carcass, covering it with branches or chemicals so the vultures will not eat it. Otherwise the vultures would start circling high in the air, which draws in other vultures and alerts safari hunters and government game scouts. Once the poachers have as many tusks as they can carry, they walk to a parked vehicle or to the nearest village.
     C4ADS, a non-profit research institution, says, “Asian and African criminal gangs control the supply chain from source to market.. . The gangs are increasingly integrated with Asian criminals living and working in Africa, where they can maintain closer control over operations and “nest” illicit businesses within legal import-export companies” (McConnell, “The End”). However, a 2015 report cautions that poachers are not as top-down, mafia-style as assumed. Instead, conventional thinking about poaching organizations, with a crime boss and many lower-level men following his orders, “oversimplifies the reality on the ground” (Neme, “East”).
     In reality, the local men keep a lot of control. For example, to poach one elephant, different people may procure the weapon, kill the elephant and transport the ivory, or one small group of people may do all those things. The report also notes that a middleman does not necessarily sell all his ivory to the same smuggler. Even if he has a preferred partner, he will have several other partners, so if one is arrested or killed, he can keep his business going. In this way, poachers work less like a chain and more like a web, and individuals can move in and around the web quite freely.