Great report and congratulations on your bull. What more would you have done had you stayed the full days? What would you plan if you went back again?
@375Fox contacted me directly and asked me to clarify my answer to the above question as to what other animals I could have hunted in NG41 had I stayed the whole 14 days. The short answer for me is none. I didn't reserve any other quota for other species upfront and they sold out quickly. I already have taken most of the other species available and other safaris booked elsewhere. The gemsbok was an exception but I had to leave NG41 to get one.
When I first booked ele, I was also offered buffalo and some plains game. Leopard is also available. All the species are on strict quotas. Although Johan in NG41 has a quota of 20 buffalo, the other species quotas are quite low and you have to reserve them when you book. This is the first year of hunting being open again in Botswana and Johan hopes that more species will be added and some quotas increased. Although possibly not a complete list (confirm with Johan), I believe the species available this year were, elephant, buffalo, leopard, kudu, impala, zebra, tsessebe and wildebeest. Unfortunately, roan, waterbuck, lion, jackal, hyena, etc.. were not offered although populations are robust. Ronnie told me that some of the quota numbers were ridiculously low while others were more reasonable. The government is still influenced a lot by the anti-hunting sentiment of the photo safari operators and is therefore being quite conservative on quotas to start. I don't remember the exact quota numbers for some of the PG species but they were unreasonably low like - 2 or 4 or 6 for species that are really common. Lots of politics and not biology going on there! The operators are hoping things loosen up as time goes along. Right now, they are just grateful to get anything.
Johan and Ronnie are thinking they will have at least seven more years of hunting due to the current president and the vice president being pro hunting. It is sort of the norm in Bots that the vice president is the next president. Therefore, they just finished building a really nice new main camp in NG41. If you want to go, you better get booked.
When hunting ended 7-8 years ago, they tore down all their camps in all their concessions and thought hunting would never return. Johan was forced convert NG32 in the Okavango Delta to a photo safari operation and his son runs it still. Believe me, his son would rather be hunting! They are actively working to be able to reopen some of the other concessions that do not have either hunting or photo at the moment.
Neither Johan or Ronnie think that hunting will ever return to the concessions in the heart of the Okavango Delta that are now photo concessions. It cannot be overstated what a huge loss this is/was to safari hunting. Unfortunately, the photo safari operators in the Delta are very well entrenched. It is one of the few areas in Africa where photo safaris work fairly well, especially with Maun being so close as a hub for incoming tourists and supplies. It is pretty economical to get the photo tourists out to the camps. It's a large volume business. COVID really hurt the photo businesses but it is thought that they have weathered most of the COVID downturn.