South African Safari Hunt Questions

[Prairiewolf]

Although it is likely a few years out, myself and a few friends are thinking of booking a hunt in South Africa. We're in the early planning stages, but I thought I would poll those with experience on trips such as this.

What were your thoughts overall of the experience? One guy in the group seems convinced New Zealand would be a better time - anyone done both?

Any cautionary tales of outfitters / companies? Any good recommendations?

What firearms did you take? Calibres?

Did your spouse / significant other come with as non-hunters? What did they think?


I'm most interested in peoples' past experiences with these hunts, so please avoid comments on your own wishlist hunts etc, although that would be a good thread itself. Thanks.

[C Taylor]

There is a African show coming to Edmonton jan 18-19. There will be lots of outfits there to talk to an see who you like. Check your areas for size of animals. Has there been a drought ? Ect. I'd advise that a week isn't long enough of a hunt. Ask about ticks, some areas have lots.
Budget the animals you want to hunt, then double it.

[roger]

the wife and I did 10 animals in south Africa.
personally id would not bother with a gun, use the PH's. but we travelled around the country after and dragging a rifle around a golf course
its unlikely to get cheaper so id go sooner rather than later.

[ksteed17]

Don't forget that hides and skulls coming back from Africa have to go through a mandatory program now that requires them certifiable clean by a certified taxidermist. $150 per hide and skull adds up very fast. Pm double shovel on here he has more information.

[albertadave]

Originally Posted by C Taylor

There is a African show coming to Edmonton jan 18-19. There will be lots of outfits there to talk to an see who you like. Check your areas for size of animals. Has there been a drought ? Ect. I'd advise that a week isn't long enough of a hunt. Ask about ticks, some areas have lots.
Budget the animals you want to hunt, then double it.

There's also one in Calgary, I see that's where you're from prairiewolf, on Jan 24-26 at the Carriage House

[nube]

I wouldn't waste my money on a hunt in SA. If you want to do Africa, do it right and go to any other place than SA. SA is like hunting a fenced Texas ranch. Yes it will be fun but it won't have the feel of a true African Safari.

[Torkdiesel]

Originally Posted by nube

I wouldn't waste my money on a hunt in SA. If you want to do Africa, do it right and go to any other place than SA. SA is like hunting a fenced Texas ranch. Yes it will be fun but it won't have the feel of a true African Safari.

I have to ask Nube, why do you hate S.A. so much ? Everybody that posts anything about it you bash. Did something happen to you that you don't want to talk about while you were there ? Did somebody hurt you ?


All joking aside I've hunted Zim and S.A. and they both had there pluses and minuses. Both were fun and both challenging. Don't book a hunt in S.A. on a 250 HA farm or it would be just shooting fish in a barrel but with lots of farms being 10,000 acres up to 100,000 acres it's a challenge and most importantly fun. ( which is why we go )
I have no problem dropping 30,40 even $ 50,000 on a hunt Nube but many could never swing it. But they could hunt S.A. for a fraction of this and not have to save for 10 years just to do it once.

[nube]

Most of those hunts in SA are like you said shooting fish in a barrel. Most outfits drive around a high fenced place and you hunt form a truck basically. A lot of places buy their animals that are captured and placed on those farms as well. Most places you hunt are going to be less than 50 000 acres as well and you can hunt the crap out of 50 000 acres in a week hunt no problem especially when it is an open type terrain.

Also you will not see the culture of the people in SA as well.( for the most part) You won't see the mud huts. The poor. Didn't go through the armed roadblocks like I did in Zim. Didn't see the military doing anti poaching Rhino patrol, din't get to chase poachers and a whole lot of other stuff in SA that I saw in Zim. Hands down by far Zim was way worth every penny. It doesn't cost much more either.

If it is all you can afford then by al means go to SA but until you go to a more wild Africa you won't understand it. I didn't.

Will I go back to SA some day. More than likely yes. There are a few more animals I would like to collect. Yes I call it collect because some of it honestly I don't believe calling it hunting is right. I witnessed this with a friend of mine when he " collected" his sable. They had a 46" sable on a 10K ranch. It took a day of walking around to find him. They even knew he was 46". I wonder why they knew that?

Doing a plains game hunt in other places is not going to run you $30K Tork.
Basically the trophy fees are not much different. The day rates are a couple hundred more a day. The downside is that SA has a lot of animals that ZIm or Zambia have. That is the fun part of SA, seeing a lot of different types of animals.
All i am saying is that I think there are better options than SA. Even Namibia as it has some massive concessions. never been there but I would think you would get into the culture there a bit more than SA.

[C Taylor]

I sure didn't find it like a Texas hunt. But I guess it's all on what outfit you go with.
The Calgary an Edmonton shows are pretty well the same maybe a couple different booths. Seems it's all going to be a happy bunch of outfitters instead of the separate shows like last year.

[Torkdiesel]

Originally Posted by nube

Most of those hunts in SA are like you said shooting fish in a barrel. Most outfits drive around a high fenced place and you hunt form a truck basically. A lot of places buy their animals that are captured and placed on those farms as well. Most places you hunt are going to be less than 50 000 acres as well and you can hunt the crap out of 50 000 acres in a week hunt no problem especially when it is an open type terrain.

Also you will not see the culture of the people in SA as well.( for the most part) You won't see the mud huts. The poor. Didn't go through the armed roadblocks like I did in Zim. Didn't see the military doing anti poaching Rhino patrol, din't get to chase poachers and a whole lot of other stuff in SA that I saw in Zim. Hands down by far Zim was way worth every penny. It doesn't cost much more either.

If it is all you can afford then by al means go to SA but until you go to a more wild Africa you won't understand it. I didn't.

Will I go back to SA some day. More than likely yes. There are a few more animals I would like to collect. Yes I call it collect because some of it honestly I don't believe calling it hunting is right. I witnessed this with a friend of mine when he " collected" his sable. They had a 46" sable on a 10K ranch. It took a day of walking around to find him. They even knew he was 46". I wonder why they knew that?

Doing a plains game hunt in other places is not going to run you $30K Tork.
Basically the trophy fees are not much different. The day rates are a couple hundred more a day. The downside is that SA has a lot of animals that ZIm or Zambia have. That is the fun part of SA, seeing a lot of different types of animals.
All i am saying is that I think there are better options than SA. Even Namibia as it has some massive concessions. never been there but I would think you would get into the culture there a bit more than SA.

I really do think you hunted the wrong place in S.A. Nube. I've never hunted on a put and take ranch which are generally under a 1000 HA. I know on the few ranches I've hunted on they have to cull animals every year to keep the population in check. One farm actually kills about 10 cow buffalo a year because there are so many of them. Another farm has a herd of 250 Sable that are completely self sufficient. Like anywhere else in the world there are good and bad operations, if your lucky you never see the bad.
I also don't agree that you can hunt the **** out of 50,000 acres in a week. That's almost 80 square miles. That's 8 miles wide by 10 miles long, my trapline is not much bigger then that and you could hunt it on foot for a year without seeing it all.
I agree wild Africa has it's appeal and I'm not knocking it, I love it all. But S.A. is cheap, safe and most importantly fun. I would never suggest to anybody that they go to Zim or Moz or Tanz for a plains game hunt either. Why pay for the extra flights, the day rates are way higher, although there are some unique trophies available it's generally not what the first timer is looking for, getting trophies out of Zim or Moz can be difficult and lots of people feel nervous about going to a new country to begin with, let alone flying into countries with far more limited resources to the North.

I personally think everybody should start out with S.A. and work up from there if and when they can.

[nube]

There are points I disagree with Tork but we are not going to agree on it so no use fighting over it. I know for an overall experience Zim to me win hands down. I think if you hunt the more northern parts of SA yes it will be a better experience than the southern stuff where I hunted. To me on my SA hunt It was like hunting Southern Alberta antelope hunting. It was 80 000K acres and I did laps around that place. Yes it was fun but to me it was not the African experience like I just had last year.
Day rates for Zim plains game are about $150 -200 a day more by the way as well I might add.

[Torkdiesel]

Originally Posted by nube

There are points I disagree with Tork but we are not going to agree on it so no use fighting over it. I know for an overall experience Zim to me win hands down. I think if you hunt the more northern parts of SA yes it will be a better experience than the southern stuff where I hunted. To me on my SA hunt It was like hunting Southern Alberta antelope hunting. It was 80 000K acres and I did laps around that place. Yes it was fun but to me it was not the African experience like I just had last year.
Day rates for Zim plains game are about $150 -200 a day more by the way as well I might add.

Your right Nube. I hunted mostly the Limpopo and Northwest provinces. The Northwest was more open so shots were out to 150 yards max were the Limpopo were usually under 75. I've never hunted the free state or further south where the vast open areas are.
I liked Zim and I'll go back for sure. I've emailed your buddy Theory about 2015 for Leopard so we'll see what happens

[nube]

Can't go wrong with Thierry if you want a Leopard. I think he was 33/35 with mine. He is one of the best PH's in Zim right now. You will pay top $$$ but you will be in some great areas and you can't beat his skill. CMS is another good outfit I would recommend as well. If your looking for a good Cheap Buff hunt I would go with Martin Pieters in the Omay area. Very cheap and some decent bulls for sure. Just don't expect much for plains game as it is all poached out.

[Torkdiesel]

Originally Posted by nube

Can't go wrong with Thierry if you want a Leopard. I think he was 33/35 with mine. He is one of the best PH's in Zim right now. You will pay top $$$ but you will be in some great areas and you can't beat his skill. CMS is another good outfit I would recommend as well. If your looking for a good Cheap Buff hunt I would go with Martin Pieters in the Omay area. Very cheap and some decent bulls for sure. Just don't expect much for plains game as it is all poached out.

Who was the outfitter when you hunted with Thierry ?

[nube]

http://zambezihunters.com/galleries/...il-cahoon.html

[TIMWOLF]

Originally Posted by nube

Can't go wrong with Thierry if you want a Leopard. I think he was 33/35 with mine. He is one of the best PH's in Zim right now. You will pay top $$$ but you will be in some great areas and you can't beat his skill. CMS is another good outfit I would recommend as well. If your looking for a good Cheap Buff hunt I would go with Martin Pieters in the Omay area. Very cheap and some decent bulls for sure. Just don't expect much for plains game as it is all poached out.

X2 for Thierry, hunted with him in 2005 while he was hunting for Roger Whittall Safaris in the Humani area of Zimbabwe. You will not find a better PH.

[nube]

Originally Posted by TIMWOLF

X2 for Thierry, hunted with him in 2005 while he was hunting for Roger Whittall Safaris in the Humani area of Zimbabwe. You will not find a better PH.

He will keep you laughing all day long for sure.
Timwolf, you have hunted there a fair bit have you not? How do you compare SA to Zim? What do you see as the pros and cons of it?

[TIMWOLF]

Originally Posted by nube

He will keep you laughing all day long for sure.
Timwolf, you have hunted there a fair bit have you not? How do you compare SA to Zim? What do you see as the pros and cons of it?

Its really hard to have a bad time in Africa. Most if not all people would be considered lucky just to get to hunt over there just once so every experience in Africa will be memorable. Having said this though, what might be one guys cup of tea might not be the next guys. Different people have different expectations on what they want out of a hunt, and what they think "hunting" actually is. All the power to people that love hunting SA, if its their deal and they want to do it, hey, who are we to tell them its no good. I don't want to offend anyone who has hunted SA so please don't take anything to heart as it is merely MY opinion. The last thing I want to do is cut down someone's hunt.

There is some excellent hunting in South Africa but I will be the first say that SA, in MY experience, comes in last place in regards to MY opinion of quality "hunting".

Personally, I am going to have to agree with Nube on the whole "Real Africa" hunting topic. I've hunted other parts of Africa besides SA and Zim so I would like to think that I have something to compare to. Not saying I'm Craig Boddington or Jim Shockey by any means, but I've done quite a bit of hunting to the point where my opinion has something backing it.

I think hands down out of my hunting in Africa and other parts of the world, the "hunting" in Zim was the best, plainsgame AND dangerous game wise.

I can remember hunting with Thierry in 2005 in Zimbabwe for Cape Buffalo and other plainsgame. Sitting here trying to put into words what it is like is proving rather difficult at the moment, as its not something you can describe properly to someone, they will never know until they experience it. I don't have that same feeling about SA. I guess my biggest reason for liking Zim hunting so much is that the animals I hunted there were the most challenging to obtain. Not because there were no animals there, or that we sucked as hunters, but the level of actual "hunting" done was far greater than other places I've been. I recall losing 19lbs on my last hunt with Thierry due to all the walking we did after buffalo and other critters, the scratches on my hands/face/legs from days of busting through thorns after one buffalo we called "bigfoot", and the mental aspect of trying to outsmart our quarry under challenging conditions. One can factor in the cultural aspect of seeing the mud huts that the locals live in, the total lack of fences, quality of trackers and PH's, and that surreal feeling that the place is so wild that you feel that you were hunting like they did 100 yrs ago. Again its something you have to experience to understand.

Flip over to SA, and I remember gates and driving around in the truck looking for the next animal on my list. I think someone used the term "collecting" and I find that very fitting. Sure I had a good time and took some nice critters, but if I knew then what I knew now I would have saved my pennies and hunted Zim,CAR,Cameroon, Tanz before I went to SA. The hunting there involved some walking, but realistically that only occurred when we spotted something we wanted to chase after from the truck. We didn't see Springbok tracks and follow them like we did for say buffalo in Zim. All in all it reminded me of what would equate to road hunting here in Alberta....drive...spot the animal....get out.....stalk...hopefully shoot but if not get back in the truck and repeat the previous steps. Good fun, but really not my idea of hunt.

The stigma of hunting in SA and the whole shooting of farmed animals behind a fence is largely false but does have a small bit of truth to it, which is why I choose to not give SA any more of my business. Lots of the hunts in SA are carried out on farms and the animals that exist on those farms are introduced solely for sport hunting. Further to this some of these hunts are carried out in areas smaller that I would consider ample enough to give the animal a sporting chance. To me hunting something that was raised on a farm then placed out to pasture for hunting is really not the same as running into that same type of animal in the midst of a massive expanse of wild unfenced habitat. This is one con for SA and a big Pro for Zim as that is not very evident at all there.

What I also find very sad is these bull sh*t TV shows that portray these SA fenced hunts as real classic Africa/hunt of a lifetime trips and people believe them. There are all too many people that book hunts in SA and get let down as it wasn’t what they expected, or even worse yet they have a decent time and go back again because they think that’s what hunting in Africa really is, when in fact they are just sheltered by what real Africa has to offer. For anyone looking to go to Africa, take the time to research and it will become very evident that there is a difference between countries and the outfitters operating in said countries. Don't just go to the safari show in Edmonton and look at a flashy booth and think its all good as there is soooo much more to making sure you go on the hunt you want.

Plainsgame hunts in SA with some of the better outfitters are around $300-500/day, whereas a plainsgame hunt in Zim is $700-$1000. Things like having exclusive access to the best hunting concessions in Africa don't come cheap, nor is it cheap to operate in these areas, hence the higher price. Finding quality PH's/trackers/camp staff and anti poaching patrols to produce excellent results out of these areas also costs $$$. On a 10day hunt is going to run you another $2500-5000 to hunt in Zim, but let me assure you that the cost is long forgotten after you legitimately have the hunt of a lifetime. A couple/few grand is not a lot of money when you factor in the overall cost of the hunt itself, so work some OT or postpone a year to get the $$$. Like most things, the more elaborate the experience, the more its going to cost to provide such experience. Some people have more disposable income to play with and they can go on some of the higher end hunts, but some people cant. The key is to ask yourself what you want your African hunt to be and find that outfitter/area combination that will give you that. If its in SA great, Zim, great as well, as long as you are happy that’s all that matters.

So to sum up.

Pros for SA are: Cheaper, variety of animals, easy to get to and from, relatively safe, cull hunts for those who like to shoot

Cons: Less challenging hunt generally, smaller hunt areas, high fences sometimes, less remote of area, farmed animals in some cases.

[Donny Bear]

Originally Posted by C Taylor

I sure didn't find it like a Texas hunt. But I guess it's all on what outfit you go with.
The Calgary an Edmonton shows are pretty well the same maybe a couple different booths. Seems it's all going to be a happy bunch of outfitters instead of the separate shows like last year.

Still to seperate shows just 2 different weekend this year.

[nube]

Well said Timwolf and it is exactly how I feel as well. It is something you have to experience to understand for the most part I think

[mcreg]

TIMWOLF: Your latest commentary regarding S/A Pros & Cons and being an overall true African experience is pretty much bang-on - "in most cases"? I say "in most cases" because there are Ranches that are so big (100,000 ha +) that once you get thru the gate you'll never see another high fence for days. They rival the size of some National Parks. Problem is that seldom, in fact almost never are they open the general public?- example the Oppenheimer Ranch!
As for the reasons people choose S/A over the other areas is that you are pretty much guaranteed your intended trophy? And the fact that many hunters won't pay any amount of money (large or small) to possibly come home empty handed! Society has educated us to be goal/result driven and as such, not to achieve it deems us a "failure". It seems unless we can put something on the wall or the floor we're not a real hunter, IMHO, nothing could be further from the truth! Those that are prepared for the possibility of coming home empty handed and put the experience before the "trophy, will come away with a true hunting experience regardless of the Country/State they are hunting.
BUT THAT'S JUST IMHO!!

[Jamie]

Honestly I have no practical experience in Africa.
But as was put to me by a legendary Outdoorsmen when discussing my first Alaska Bear hunt.
"Did you want to hunt or did you want to kill?"
I wanted to hunt, and that's what I got. Sure I don't bring home anything but I had my chances and lived a experience that will never be forgotten.

After a few years to look back, my first hunt was perhaps a bit more memorable than my 2. (I connected on my 2nd)
All my "Goto" memories are about the first one.

Go hunt.

Jamie

[African Hunting Events]

Come and check out some outfitters from across Southern Africa, at one of our 3 African Hunting Events shows coming up soon.

Here you can meet different outfitters and PH's face to face in a relax environment, with all the time to discuss the various opportunities available to you.

We also have many free presentations about various hunting topics related to a hunting in Africa.

Edmonton 18 & 19 Jan - Edmonton Hotel & Convention Centre
Calgary - 24-26 Jan - Carriage House Inn
Toronto - 1 2 Feb - Delta Meadowvale Resort & Conference Centre

You can find details on www.AfricanHuntingEvents.ca

Hope to see many of you there
Birgit
(Show organizer)