You are correct, the posing elephant above is not a youngster any-more. The sunken temples are not too deep and he still has a good tuft of tail hair, so he could still be good for another 5 - 10 years during which time he could add 20 inches of tusk length every 5 years and that could make him quite impressive.
Unfortunately he seem to be in the habit of abusing his tusks by breaking trees. His tusks are too "curly" for digging in the ground.
Some elephants develop a habit of breaking trees and then often also break their tusks like the elephant in the first photo below, who [ while we were watching him ] forcefully put a tusk in the fork of a tree and broke a huge branch off twice as thick as his tusk. On the photo it can be seen that he already has a broken tusk. His friend on the 2nd photo also had broken tusks which were too "curly" for digging roots so, the two of them appear to be actively deforesting the area between Mopani and Shingwedzi.
By the way, notice the fork tailed drongo in the bush right next to the elephant on the first photo - ever noticed that virtually every small group of elephant [ or loners ] have a fork tailed drongo accompanying them to scoop disturbed insects out of the air ?
