There is a quiet satisfaction in the poacher's voice as he describes killing an elephant with a poison arrow.

“We choose an elephant by looking at the size and killing the biggest one,” says Alex, one of three poachers who has agreed to talk on condition of anonymity.

They prefer arrows to guns as they are cheaper, easier to obtain, and quieter, and the man in the middle - who calls himself Master - says the poison, made from a local herb, is highly effective.

 Once you shoot the animal it takes just 15 or 20 minutes. So you just track the animal and it collapses.”

Their attitude toward killing elephants is surprisingly matter-of-fact.

“I don't regret it,” Master says. “I feel heroic, because they terrorise us, they invade our farms. And we don't get any compensation, so you end up with no food and no money.”

From his perspective there is more value in a dead elephant than in a living one that tourists might pay to see.

“We never know how much money is made from the animals in the parks. There is never any accountability,” he says.

Alan is the quietest of the three. He says that a lack of work, and of money, led him to kill an elephant but that the experience left him feeling remorseful and anxious.

“Because if I kill the animal I am aware I will be in danger and my family will be in problems if I am caught or shot,” he says.

Master has been doing this for six years, and he describes how they take off the tusks and prepare them for sale.

“Once you remove them, there is some meat on them, and they are heavy, so we have to make sure they are clean so they are light to carry,” he says.

 We use battery acid to erode the meat or if there is no acid we bury them and the meat rots away.”

Master is a hunter but also a low-level broker, and he explains the process of hiding the ivory in the bush, finding a buyer, negotiating a price and then providing directions to his customer. Being caught in possession of ivory is where the risk lies.

He had at least one tusk for sale, but I wasn't allowed to see it. He took video footage and photographs of it resting on a daily newspaper as proof it was genuine.

“We don't sell directly to the Chinese, but we go through local brokers who rip us off. We get maybe 5,000 Kenyan shillings ($50, or £34) per kilogram but they sell it for a lot more. It is not a high-paying job. The people who make the most money are the middlemen.”

And according to Master, corrupt officials allow the whole process to continue.

“They collude with us, we collude with them and once we sell the tusks we give them money,” he says. “Bribery and corruption make it easier, because the salaries they are being paid are not enough.”