A female elephant uses the "Let's go" rumble to announce to her group that she wishes to depart and to indicate the direction that she wishes to go(1). The "Let's go" appears to be a sound that states in essence, "I want to go this direction, let's go together". A calling elephant repeats her "Let's go" appeal once every minute or so, sometimes for periods of up to half an hour, as she tries to persuade others to depart. Sometimes she may gain the support of other individuals who join in the calling with her(2), but typically this is a solo call. The calling female(s) stands facing the way she wants to go and rumbles with slow, rhythmic ear flapping(3).

The "Let's go" rumble is one of the more commonly heard sounds among a family of elephants. Adult females are the primary users of this call but on rare occasions a juvenile female may be heard to call(4). Joyce has on one occasion heard this call given by a pubertal eleven-year old male, but he was an orphaned captive elephant and one of the oldest of a "family" of other young orphaned elephants(5). She has also on one occasion heard an adult male give what sounded to her like a "Let's go" rumble in the correct behavioral context. Although one might imagine that the matriarch would be the primary user of this call as she tries to gather her family members together for a change in direction, this is not the case. In Echo's family, for example, Enid is heard to give this call most frequently. Enid, born in 1982 is Echo's second eldest daughter and is a young female with strong leadership qualities. Although Echo does use the "Let's go" rumble, very often she simply moves off without making any obvious (to us) suggestion, except perhaps a flap-slide display with her ears (indicating a change of activity), presumably expecting, or at least hoping, others will follow her without discussion! This is certainly not always the case, and many a disagreement and discussion takes place regarding plans of action in an elephant family(6).

The "Let's go" rumble is a moderately loud, low-pitched, flat rumble lasting about 5 seconds in duration. It is rather easily distinguished from most other elephant rumbles due to its characteristic sound and the posture of the calling elephants(7). It is most likely to be confused with the Discussion Rumble.

The spectrographic example is of a call made by Enid on 17 April, 2000 while atempting to encourage her family to come out of the swamp. Her first call of 'Let's go' was given at 10:51 and she called 14 times over the next half an hour. She succeeded in persuading Eudora and her younger sister Eliot to her side, but finally gave up and entered the swamp herself at 11:27.