Ettiene Larson
New member
Hi Mike
Eastern Cape is one of the big hunting areas in South Africa and there are many operators.
We have one operator that has hunting rights on the land and some direct clients, but we only remove 4-8 trophy animals per species off the land every year. The rest of the excess game we remove thru culling. With the minimum take off every year, we make sure that the quality and quantity of animals stay high. I have 300 cape eland on the property and we only remove 4 trophy bulls every year. 20 eland I remove thru selective culling like old bulls, skew horn animals and old females. Having this quality and quantity there are many many operators that are trying to get into this rights to hunt here.
Black Wildebees/Blesbuck Common and white/Burchells Zebra/ Mountain Zebra/Duiker Common/Eland Cape/Gemsbuck/Hartebeest Red/Klipspringer/Kudu Eastern Cape/Mountain Reedbuck/Ostrich/Springbuck Common/Steenbuck/Vaal Rhebuck/Warthog/Waterbuck/Sable and Buffalo Cape.
I do not travel to hunt animals on different properties/land, I am also different from other operators because I don't do it trying to make a living, I do it to manage our game numbers. If there is a direct client that wants to come and hunt here and happy with the species we have on the property, then I will assist him. We also cull about 100 animals a year, we just culled 33 zebra because they were overstocked. With this said, I don't really do any marketing because its not our main income. Who ever finds us and books with us is a bonus. The amount we remove every year does not justify to do any major marketing. I don't work thru a website, I only have a face book page and the average of 6 trophy animals per species and 100 culling animals, people find us. I had an operator here with a client last year and now the client found our details and wants to come directly to us for his next hunt....this must say something.
Our area is based in the eastern cape, great karoo in the mountains. The area is 7500 ha and we have 19 antelope species.
The only dangerous game we do are Cape buffalo of which we only take 2 off a year. All hunts take place thru walk and stalk, even the culling hunts, we do not drive or herd the animals. Here it's about prey versus hunter, not about just to see how many animals a person can hunt a day. At this stage all hunts take place using a rifle because the mountain terrain makes bow hunting to difficult. 2017 I have two sable we are culling that has skew horns at more than half the price than any other outfitter. Some outfitters/operators will call us a "fly by night" because we do not market like they do or hunt the volume they do, but why must I if I only do it as a management tool and not as a business? If I don't get clients for the animals that needs taking off, then we cull and the meat gets exported or used local.
