Millionaire Fatally Gored by Stampeding Elephant in Africa After Paying $40,000 to Hunt Antelope

Millionaire Ernie Dosio, 75, had splashed out $40,000 to stalk small forest antelope with two professional hunters when tragedy struck on April 17.

At the time, the group was in the thick forest of Gabon seeking the elusive yellow-backed duiker.

Instead, they stumbled into five female African elephants — the globe’s largest land mammals — with calves.

The beasts, which can stand 12 feet tall at the shoulder, weigh nearly four tons and run at speeds of up to 25 mph, were so well hidden in the dense undergrowth that they appeared “as if from nowhere,” a source told Daily Mail.

The startled herd stampeded, repeatedly charging the hunting party. One elephant attacked and seriously injured one of Dosio’s hunting partners.

An uninjured hunter grabbed Dosio and tried to get him to safety behind a tree, but another elephant attacked again, fatally goring Dosio with her tusk, his close pal and frequent hunting partner Dax McCarty.

“I would rather not go into detail, but it is safe to assume it would have been quick,” a retired game hunter in Cape Town who knows Dosio told Daily Mail.

The father of two had been to Africa many times and frequently hunted in South Africa and all over the U.S., sources say.

“Ernie has been hunting since he could hold a rifle,” the retired game hunter added, via The Times.

“Although many disagree with big game hunting, all Ernie’s hunts were strictly licensed and aboveboard and were registered as conservation in culling animal numbers.”

His home in Lodi, Calif., overflowed with hundreds of his stuffed hunting trophies, including elephant, rhino, bear, buffalo, lion, crocodile, zebra and leopard.

Photos show him next to the bodies of a male lion, an elk and a gemsbok, a large antelope native to Africa, among other animals. He also hunted gazelle and almost every species of wild deer, plus moose and reindeer as well as wildfowl, including turkeys and geese.

Dosio owned Pacific AgriLands, which has a 12,000-acre vineyard in Modesto, Calif., but specializes in providing management for local wine farms.

He’d hired Collect Africa, a safari company based in Coral Gables, Fla., for the hunting trip to Gabon.

McCarty, head of hunting operations at Wagonhound Outfitters in Wyoming, told The New York Times his pal was aware of the dangers of big game hunting and adds: “Ernie went out doing something that he loved to do.”