Sustainable Hunting Practices in South Africa

[PeteG]

So this topic of sustainable hunting comes up often, to which i am always a listener and not a poster as i believe that there are so many "grey" areas, as Royal put it earlier, that very few people will ever agree with others and no one can really be wrong when applying their own conditions and reasoning.
In my eyes, a self sustaining herd is as simple as unassisted. That would include, no feeding, watering, supplementing populations with added numbers etc.
Is this real... very few places left can be called self sustaining.
Even fewer game ranches can be called self sustaining.
Almost no game farms that sell trophies can be self sustaining. However (more grey area) a particular species within a specific habitat on a particular farm may be self sustaining, but are they able to be sustainably utilized? Doubtful.

In terms of property yield and stocking density, there are a few factors to consider. Taking the numbers from the post above as an example there may be some differing perspective based on the realistic numbers we have used in the past for sustainable herd calculations.

If there are 15,000 animals on the property, at best 25% reproductive rate. say a mid rate for mixed species 15%
That gives about 2,250 newborns per year.
Of the typical newborns, max trophy density will be 10% therefore potential trophy harvest of 225 animals per year.

If at a reasonable stocking density, there are only 8,000 animals which is more likely, you are looking at a potential of 120 trophies per year.
Someone much more experienced than i reinforced this years ago with an overly simplified example of a sustainable trophy offtake for buffalo being 2% of the population. Not including the animals that would wander in and out of the area from the neighbouring gma, neighbouring unfenced ranches and nearby national park.

As i said at the beginning, every person has their own conditions and "grey"areas.

 

[TokkieM]

When I say (summarized):
- 120,000 contiguous acres (188 square miles);
- typical density at Huntershill in good habitat devoid of top predators (Lions, Hyenas, Leopard, Cheetah, etc.) of 2 to 3 animals per 10 hectares (25 acres);
- game population in the range of 10,000 to 15,000 animals;
- annual recruitment of 80 fawns per 100 does in good habitat devoid of top predators;
- annual population growth at Huntershill in the range of 4,000 to 6,000 animals per year;
- annual hunting season of about 8 months, 34 weeks, 240 days;
- 200 hunters/year;
- 10 animals per hunter in average

@One Day... I admire your loyalty to HH, but they had better get someone in charge and with a clear understanding of what their doing to comment here instead of feeding you information that cannot be substantiated. Once again I admire your loyalty.
First off, the top predators for lambs in that area has always been Lynx, Jackal, Baboon and large birds of prey, check that with the sheep farmers in the area who are 6 and 7th generation.
The particular area of Queenstown in SA does not have the best carrying capacity compared to areas lying closer to the coast.
HH is in fact 55000 acres as stated by themselves and not 120 000. If they have the hunting rights to bordering properties, they are not managing it, they are merely using it and have very little say in what is done on them. This clearly skews the game figures and ratios you have been given.
Further more the EC has been going through one hell of a drought the past couple of years which means carrying capacity is even lower than normal. This also means that your older animals die first, trophies that is.
If you are having a 80% Lamb rate it would mean you have a female population that is all more or less of breeding age, strange herd dynamics unless this is for breeding pens.
I am attaching a Arial photo so you can see what HH looks like from the air, then tell me again about 2-3 animals per 10HA, as far as I understand the LSU for that area is going to land around 15-35 in a good year.
Now once again, I say this politely and understand this is not directed at you, there is no way they can do what they do without dropping animals into their property each year. Get someone from HH to reply and prove me wrong with the correct and realistic facts.

 

[slad68]

Is this real... very few places left can be called self sustaining.
Even fewer game ranches can be called self sustaining.
Almost no game farms that sell trophies can be self sustaining.

PeteG, you are 100% correct as I quote you.

I am in South Africa, people might fool others but I sure as hell know what is going on in this country.

Each and every game farm in this country brings in some kind of species at some point or another. Some have been put in years ago and some are on a yearly base, but I don't let someone tell me that animals are self sustainable and not "Put and Take" when the animals are offloaded by the truckloads each week.

My own Concessions where I hunt as an example.
1. At Mattanja; the owner brought Eland and Buffalo....that was 6 years ago. "We consider them self sustainable"

2. At Balla-Balla; the owner brought Red Hartebeest, Eland, Gemsbuck, Impala, Nyala, Blue Wildbeest and Buffalo...that was 18 years ago. " We consider them self sustainable"

3. At Amathola; the owner's late Father brought Hartman's Mountain Zebra, Nyala, Gemsbuck and Eland...that was about 45 years ago. "We consider them self sustainable"

4. At Zarco Ranch; the owner often bring new trophy animals to the farm, I very seldom hunt there, only Sharp'e Grysbok and Mountain Reedbuck that are natural in the area.

5. At Kingsgate Game Lodge the owner often bring new trophy animals to the farm, I hunt Bushbuck and Mountain Reedbuck that are natural in the area.

6. One of my land owners decided to breed more intensively and cut the farm into small breeding camps of 600 acres each. I simply can not hunt there besides Nocturnal animals that are naturally there.

Bottom line, DO NOT PISS ON ME AND TELL ME IT IS RAINING.

There is no "take & put" at Huntershill. There is no reason for it.

Huntershill offers to their hunters 120,000 acres (188 square miles) to hunt. There is no "canned hunt" at Huntershill. There is no need for it.

 

[spike.t]

Fell asleep reading this thread.....same as the one it was ejaculated from.......

 

[Wheels]

never provided water other than from natural sources, .

Under the strictest standards, this starts eliminating much of what we call natural wild areas.

(An example off the top of my head. My facts may be a little muddled since this is old information of what I remember. Please correct me if I am wrong.)

In the 1920's, Wankie became a national park. There was very little surface water. Rhodesia made it a national park since it wasn't a great piece of land. The San lived there. It was determined that the carrying capacity of elephant in the park was 2,500. Bore holes were drilled. If I remember correct, water was found at 3-5 meters. The carrying capacity of elephant was raised a couple of times hitting a peak of 14,000, prior to majority rule.

Over the years more and more holes were drilled and water is now found 30-70 meters deep. Now the Zimbabwe side of greater Hwange has over 50,000 elephants. The Botswana side has 10,000's more that water in the park.

Hwange is certainly not self sustaining according to the above definition. When the aquifer dries up, the area will be self-sustaining again. The cost...........

 

[Royal27]

Under the strictest standards, this starts eliminating much of what we call natural wild areas.

(An example off the top of my head. My facts may be a little muddled since this is old information of what I remember. Please correct me if I am wrong.)

In the 1920's, Wankie became a national park. There was very little surface water. Rhodesia made it a national park since it wasn't a great piece of land. The San lived there. It was determined that the carrying capacity of elephant in the park was 2,500. Bore holes were drilled. If I remember correct, water was found at 3-5 meters. The carrying capacity of elephant was raised a couple of times hitting a peak of 14,000, prior to majority rule.

Over the years more and more holes were drilled and water is now found 30-70 meters deep. Now the Zimbabwe side of greater Hwange has over 50,000 elephants. The Botswana side has 10,000's more that water in the park.


Hwange is certainly not self sustaining according to the above definition. When the aquifer dries up, the area will be self-sustaining again. The cost...........

As I recall elephant weren't present year round due to the lack of water. I think it was somewhere around 9 months out of the year?

 

[Wheels]

That could be. I think more than 2,500 used the park in the rains, but left in the dry season. The 2,500 was the year round carrying capacity. But I could be wrong and you may be right.

 

[Royal27]

Either way the point is the same.

 

[buck wild]

Just in case someone is so inclined to actually do some measuring I don't know where HH is located but someone here does. Just use the tool to set the points and it will spit out the acreage in hectors or acres.
https://acme.com/planimeter/

 

[Hank2211]

I would argue that the definition of "self sustaining", if it ever excluded supplementary water, should no longer. At one point, game, but especially elephants, would migrate significant distances to follow the water. These days game can generally (there are some exceptions) no longer migrate as they once did. Once you interrupt migration patterns, even if only for national borders, you can either supplement the water or watch the "free range" animals die of thirst.

I can tell you that if I was ever allowed to hunt elephant in Hwange, I would take all comers in a "free ranging" or "self-sustaining" argument.

Perhaps we need a new definition of self-sustaining which recognizes that F C Selous is no longer with us.

 

[JPbowhunter]

What a lot of people are arguing is purely semantics.

Similarly a lack of understanding of conservation doesn't make an opinion more correct than another.

In these types of projects I've worked in a self sustaining population is one that doesn't require supplementary introductions to maintain population numbers/density.

Supplementary feeding and water is generally associated with drought, which is increasingly common and almost certainly due to human causes.

I don't mean this in a negative way, but I do feel some people that have hunted these high fence supplemented animal places are more likely to argue the definition because they don't like the idea of acknowledging they haven't really hunted free range/self sustaining populations. I think rather than wanting to change or argue definitions people need to just accept it for what it is and if you can't, don't do it. Doesn't have to be emotional, just matter of fact.

 

[One Day...]

PeteG, you are 100% correct as I quote you.

I am in South Africa, people might fool others but I sure as hell know what is going on in this country.

Each and every game farm in this country brings in some kind of species at some point or another. Some have been put in years ago and some are on a yearly base, but I don't let someone tell me that animals are self sustainable and not "Put and Take" when the animals are offloaded by the truckloads each week.

My own Concessions where I hunt as an example.
1. At Mattanja; the owner brought Eland and Buffalo....that was 6 years ago. "We consider them self sustainable"

2. At Balla-Balla; the owner brought Red Hartebeest, Eland, Gemsbuck, Impala, Nyala, Blue Wildbeest and Buffalo...that was 18 years ago. " We consider them self sustainable"

3. At Amathola; the owner's late Father brought Hartman's Mountain Zebra, Nyala, Gemsbuck and Eland...that was about 45 years ago. "We consider them self sustainable"

4. At Zarco Ranch; the owner often bring new trophy animals to the farm, I very seldom hunt there, only Sharp'e Grysbok and Mountain Reedbuck that are natural in the area.

5. At Kingsgate Game Lodge the owner often bring new trophy animals to the farm, I hunt Bushbuck and Mountain Reedbuck that are natural in the area.

6. One of my land owners decided to breed more intensively and cut the farm into small breeding camps of 600 acres each. I simply can not hunt there besides Nocturnal animals that are naturally there.

I totally agree with Bossie (Limpopo Big Game Safaris), he is 100% right when he says "Each and every game farm in this country brings in some kind of species at some point or another."

This is entirely correct. The fact is that wild game had been literally wiped out of South Africa by WW II in order to clear the land for agriculture and cattle ranching. Anyone hunting in South Africa today can be pretty certain that whether the species hunted is a historically native species or not, the animals on the land today (aside from Kruger National Park or equivalent) have been re-introduced or introduced over the last 20 to 50 years. Actually South Africa is one of the great conservation success stories of wild game re-introduction and preservation.

So, just like the discussion about what "sustainable" means, this discussion of "put & take" is also a relative discussion depending on how you define "put & take." For example any Lechwe collected in South Africa is, by definition, "put & take" because the species is not native to South Africa and someone put it there sometime. And to simplify the discussion, with probably some exceptions here of there, and as Bossie says, "each and every game farm in this country brings in some kind of species at some point or another" and is therefore "put & take" if we define as "put & take" an animal that was at one point in time moved there by a human, five or ten years ago, or a species that may have been moved by a human, as Bossie says, 45 years ago.

And I think we all agree that a species that has been on a piece of uncultivated and undeveloped land for 45 years, or even an animal that has been on a piece of uncultivated and undeveloped land for 5 years, is not the same as an animal that was uncrated 'yesterday' to be shot 'tomorrow.'

So, depending on definition, Huntershill, Limpopo Big Game Safaris, and anyone else in RSA are either 100% "put & take" is you set the threshold far enough in time (10 years? 50 years? 100 years?) down to whatever percentage based on what threshold we decide to use (20 hours? 2 days? 20 days? 200 days? 2 years? etc.). My understanding was that the lingo "put & take" referred to animals put 'yesterday' to be taken 'tomorrow.' If that is the definition, I stand by my affirmation: Huntershill has zero "put & take." If the definition is 45 years, or even 20 years, Huntershill, like most, if not virtually all, South African operations is 100% "put & take" because it was started "only" 17 years ago.

What I can say for a fact is that there is not a daily, weekly, monthly, or even annual endless procession of trucks delivering thousands of animals to Huntershill. The same way I am sure it does not happen either with Limpopo Big Game Safaris.

It actually could be interesting to develop some consensus on what that threshold should be, just as it would be interesting to develop consensus on how we measure sustainability in relation to hunting.

@One Day... I admire your loyalty to HH

Thanks TokkieM, I appreciate, because I believe you are not saying it sarcastically. Truth be told, I will add a slight nuance: I am not so much loyal to a company as I am loyal to my friends, a nuance I think everyone can appreciate.

@One Day... they had better get someone in charge and with a clear understanding of what their doing to comment here

I am happy to share how I received the data I am sharing. Last year, in August 2018, I went hunting for 12 days at Huntershill. Had never met them, did not know them, and as I reported in my hunt report (https://www.africahunting.com/threa...faris-august-2018-plains-game-paradise.45017/) I took a a gamble. The gamble worked. I fell in love, and I made what I think will be (time will tell) friends for life (hence the loyalty).
Now, it just happen that I am serving as local governments (about one third of the State of Arizona) representative on the Executive Team of the US Fish & Wildlife Mexican Wolf Recovery Project and I have been working extensively with the Arizona Game & Fish Department in all matters of game management for the last 7 years balancing recovery with its impact on both wild game and private stock. Therefore, even though I am NOT a wildlife biologist, I have been in the midst of many land and game management decisions and I was personally interested in having technical discussions with folks at Huntershill, and I ended up developing a personal friendship with one of their PH who also happens to have an advanced degree in wildlife management and wrote his dissertation on Vaal Rhebok. It is possible that he lied to me then and continues to lie to me now. I may be naive, but I do not think that he lies. The data comes from him and I do believe that as Head PH and wildlife management scientist, he does have a clear understanding of what they are doing. There is a possibility that I get it wrong, but as I said, this is not exactly my first game management discussion...

@One Day... First off, the top predators for lambs in that area has always been Lynx, Jackal, Baboon and large birds of prey, check that with the sheep farmers in the area who are 6 and 7th generation.

Entirely agreed: I wrote: " there is natural mortality (old age) and some depredation mortality (for example, baboons prey on fawns, Caracal and Jackal prey on small antelopes), etc. "
Note: I have not noted a large number of large birds of prey at Huntershill but there may be some indeed.

@One Day... The particular area of Queenstown in SA does not have the best carrying capacity compared to areas lying closer to the coast.

It makes sense intuitively. I do not know the exact numbers closer to the coast. What I said: "typical density at Huntershill in good habitat devoid of top predators (Lions, Hyenas, Leopard, Cheetah, etc.) is 2 to 3 animals per 10 hectares (25 acres)" comes straight from this PH/wildlife management scientist. I do not really have a good reason to doubt it, but I am certainly interested in looking at published science that would provide something more scientifically quotable than a 12 days discussion in a hunting truck, if you have some.

@One Day... feeding you information that cannot be substantiated ... HH is in fact 55000 acres as stated by themselves and not 120 000.

As I stated in the post that you replied to and that started this discussion: "Huntershill directly own ~55,000 acres and has acquired exclusive hunting rights on ~65,000 adjacent acres. This means that Huntershill's clients hunt 120,000 contiguous acres (188 square miles)." Maybe I should have written something like "greater Huntershill" but I believe that I was pretty clear that Huntershill does not "own" all 120,000 acres. I have no real reason to believe that data is false. Having been on the greater Huntershill land for 12 days, and working daily on landscape scale projects in Arizona (I am also co-Chair of the US Forest Service largest forest restoration project in the entire country) , the 120,000 acres number is entirely plausible to me.

@One Day... If they have the hunting rights to bordering properties, they are not managing it, they are merely using it and have very little say in what is done on them. This clearly skews the game figures and ratios you have been given.

I do not know what you are basing this statement on. What I can tell you is that Huntershill is actually co-managing this land to the point for example, that this year they invested a significant amount of resources (dozer & man hours) to create a number of 4x4 trails in this land. One would think that if the owner allows them to create 4x4 trails, there is indeed co-management.

@One Day... Further more the EC has been going through one hell of a drought the past couple of years which means carrying capacity is even lower than normal. This also means that your older animals die first, trophies that is.

I did not look at the recent Eastern Cape drought data, and I do not doubt your words. What I observed was numerous watering points distributed all over the property that I am reasonably certain have been man-made (1/2 acre ponds typically) but that appear to be fed from natural springs coming from the mountain. Does that input some context to the notion of "sustainable" as discussed in other posts? Absolutely! Is it favorable to carrying capacity? Absolutely. Here again, where are the thresholds?

@One Day... If you are having a 80% Lamb rate it would mean you have a female population that is all more or less of breeding age, strange herd dynamics unless this is for breeding pens.

The numbers did not shock me because in the course my professional involvement with AZ Game & Fish management of Pronghorn Antelope population in Arizona, I came across an interesting paper: Pronghorn Management Plan for South Dakota (https://gfp.sd.gov/UserDocs/nav/antelope-plan.pdf) that states: "10-year average of 85 fawns per 100 does" (p. 11). This plan is not referring to breeding pens but a wild animals sample of "7,167 does and fawns in August and September" (p. 10). I did not dig further in the recruitment rate given to me for Huntershill because it did not seem out of line, although admittedly on a different continent I will inquire further into it and report...

@One Day... I am attaching a Arial photo so you can see what HH looks like from the air, then tell me again about 2-3 animals per 10 HA, as far as I understand the LSU for that area is going to land around 15-35 in a good year.

I do not know what the LSU (Live Stock Unit for our reading friends) is in average at Huntershill. What I can say is that I am always impressed by how green the place is in the hunting pictures shot in May/June, and the precipitation data is actually pretty favorable.

https://weatherspark.com/y/92839/Average-Weather-in-Queenstown-South-Africa-Year-Round

The LSU might be higher than expected. I will try to get science based data and report...

@One Day... Now once again, I say this politely and understand this is not directed at you, there is no way they can do what they do without dropping animals into their property each year. Get someone from HH to reply and prove me wrong with the correct and realistic facts.

I appreciate the politeness, this makes it a much more interesting discussion, and I hope that I am reciprocating as I am trying to answer your questions factually and honestly.

I may be naive and I may have been preemptively fooled a year ago by this Huntershill PH/wildlife management scientist at a time when there was not even a thought of a relation developing between Huntershill and myself, but I honestly did not hear or see anything that shocked me as compared to many similar field discussions with wildlife scientists in Arizona.

This is why I believe that what Huntershill are saying is true. From a data perspective, I do not see a gap. I hope you will appreciate the effort to respond fully, precisely and honestly to your questions

 

[Newboomer]

One Day,
Thank you for your candid responses to the myriad questions and grilling from AH members. You handle the hot seat remarkably well. I must say Huntershill must be doing something right if they have such a high returning number of hunters. For one who claims to be "naive" you have an excellent handle on the workings of the business. Carry on.

 

[One Day...]

So this topic of sustainable hunting comes up often, to which i am always a listener and not a poster as i believe that there are so many "grey" areas, as Royal put it earlier, that very few people will ever agree with others and no one can really be wrong when applying their own conditions and reasoning.
In my eyes, a self sustaining herd is as simple as unassisted. That would include, no feeding, watering, supplementing populations with added numbers etc.
Is this real... very few places left can be called self sustaining.
Even fewer game ranches can be called self sustaining.
Almost no game farms that sell trophies can be self sustaining. However (more grey area) a particular species within a specific habitat on a particular farm may be self sustaining, but are they able to be sustainably utilized? Doubtful.

In terms of property yield and stocking density, there are a few factors to consider. Taking the numbers from the post above as an example there may be some differing perspective based on the realistic numbers we have used in the past for sustainable herd calculations.

If there are 15,000 animals on the property, at best 25% reproductive rate. say a mid rate for mixed species 15%
That gives about 2,250 newborns per year.
Of the typical newborns, max trophy density will be 10% therefore potential trophy harvest of 225 animals per year.

If at a reasonable stocking density, there are only 8,000 animals which is more likely, you are looking at a potential of 120 trophies per year.
Someone much more experienced than i reinforced this years ago with an overly simplified example of a sustainable trophy offtake for buffalo being 2% of the population. Not including the animals that would wander in and out of the area from the neighbouring gma, neighbouring unfenced ranches and nearby national park.

As i said at the beginning, every person has their own conditions and "grey"areas.

I totally agree with you PeteG, there is a need to come to consensus as to what "sustainable" and/or "self sustainable" means.

Maybe we could start by agreeing that "sustainable" and/or "self sustainable" is not an intrinsic characteristic as related to hunted game populations, but a characteristic of the outcome of management AND collection actions. In so many words, a population of hunted animals will be sustainable if the impact of collection (hunting) does not exceed the sustaining effect of management actions, including sustenance (water & food).

As to self-sustaining, if defined as you offer, I will also wholly agree that it is indeed a very rare population of any wildlife anywhere on earth (a few exceptions apply) that has a future considering the continually growing impact of human population growth.

One of the perspectives you raise, that I totally agree with, is another issue of threshold: how do we define "trophy"? I think I touched on that a bit in my previous post, and I am not sure that the word means the same things (read: I am pretty sure it does not ;-) to all hunters heading to Africa...

 

[mark-hunter]

I do not have my books handy, so I will write numbers from memory, so pls correct me if I am wrong:
From book "New game rancher", by P&P Oberen:
When game ranching in RSA started (after total devastation of wildlife, after world war 2) - there was overall census of all wild animals estimated at 500.000 heads. In the time when book was printed (recently), the overall animals census was 20.000.000 heads, of various species in South Africa. (40 times increase in numbers)
This is direct result of game farming, supported by international hunters.
Namibia is closely following.

Now lets consider the trends and models:
1) Non-hunting country (such as Kenya), keeping wild animals in national parks, facing challenges of poaching, encroachment, uncontrolled traditional hunting (now poaching again), cattle grazing on open lands... etc

2) Hunting country - as Tanzania, free space, free roaming, facing same challenges as Kenya, but at least with various hunting blocks under concession, with remaining herds and habitats, in recession, due to poaching, encroachment, traditional hunting (now poaching again), cattle grazing on open lands... etc, but also protected by various actions to protect herds with anti-poaching patrols, guards etc, financed by international hunting community, so negative pace of Kenya slowed down

3) South African model as described above. Thriving. Numbers increasing

Which model has the brightest future for conservation of species and long term hunting for future generations?
Which model (Or Country) has the biggest international financial income per country in Africa, due to wildlife related tourism?
Or I am wrong?

So, in my view things last as long as they last, but also with changing time the ethics and morality that we discuss here will gradually change. It has to.
Wild Africa of Ruark and Hemingway is disappearing, disappearing fast, and what is left is also very expensive.

And for hunting to survive, it simply can not be that only expensive hunt is ethical hunt.
So, hunting ethics will have to change as well. Game ranchers have realized that, hunters not entirely. So, basically this is what we are discussing here.

 

[One Day...]

I would argue that the definition of "self sustaining", if it ever excluded supplementary water, should no longer. At one point, game, but especially elephants, would migrate significant distances to follow the water. These days game can generally (there are some exceptions) no longer migrate as they once did. Once you interrupt migration patterns, even if only for national borders, you can either supplement the water or watch the "free range" animals die of thirst.

I can tell you that if I was ever allowed to hunt elephant in Hwange, I would take all comers in a "free ranging" or "self-sustaining" argument.

Perhaps we need a new definition of self-sustaining which recognizes that F C Selous is no longer with us.

As Royal said elsewhere I wish I could quintuple like ...........
.

 

[One Day...]

One more thought

Just before heading toward Jury Duty again today (I will be signing off for the day in a few minutes), it came to mind to add the following, continuing the agreement with what Bossie (Limpopo Big Game Safaris,) was saying: "each and every game farm in this country brings in some kind of species at some point or another."

Referencing the research of Peet van der Merwe, professor at the School for Tourism Management at the North-West University at Potchefstroom, there were three game ranches in South Africa in the 1960's. There were 12,000 in 2018. As a result, despite an almost doubling of international hunting revenues in South Africa over the last few years (from $78 million in 2014 to $130 million in 2016) there is now more wildlife in South Africa than at any time since the 1900's, and the numbers keep growing. Sable increased from 3,000 in 2001 to 40,000 in 2018, Roan increased from 1,000 to 7,000, etc. Van der Merwe estimates that South Africa had around 20 million game animals in 2018. Obviously, the single driver for this incredible recovery and conservation success is game farming/ranching. In addition, game farms create three times more jobs than livestock farms and workers salaries are on five and a half times higher.

So, let us be 100% clear, South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, etc. conservation success stories and safari opportunities ARE based on game ranching, and everyone heading to these countries should know it, to avoid the disillusion of not being the next Hemingway, Robert Ruark or Peter Hathaway Capstick, unless they can afford the Selous, the Caprivi, the Okawango, Tanzania's northern blocks, and a few other places. There should be great clarity that $20,000 or $40,000 safari expectations in terms of wilderness (land and animals) cannot be realistically shoe-horned in a $6,000 budget. But these are still great South African, Namibian, Zambian etc. safaris.

Just like about any Turkey hunting in the US today owes to a massive recovery and re-introduction effort, about any hunting safari in South Africa, Namibia, Zambia, owes to a similar massive recovery and re-introduction effort.

Take Huntershill as an example. It started in 2002 from virtually nothing in terms of game and hunting territory. 17 years later it hosts 70 species over its own 55,000 acres and its hunts - pick a number, they estimate 10,000 to 15,000 animals, others say it may be 8,000, so what! it is still enormous - over 120,000 contiguous acres. Of course, thousands of animals were brought in to create or re-create breeding herds! When domesticated livestock farms are converted to game ranching, they start from scratch, there is nothing left on the land. I do not know the exact number, but I am certain, as Bossie discussed for Limpopo Big Game Safaris concessions, that literally thousand of animals were brought over the last two decades to Huntershill to recreate breeding populations, and to this day Huntershill adds a couple hundred every year to create additional breeding herds of different species, improve the genetics of existing herds, replace aging breeding animals, etc. There needs to be great clarity about this, and there is no shame in it. Far from it. This is how South Africa, Namibia, etc, game populations have been recreated, and those who accomplished this remarkable conservation success are rightfully proud of it.

But this is not "put & take canned hunting" as in: 'truck it in tonight, uncrated it tomorrow morning and shoot it in a pen tomorrow afternoon' and we should not let people get confused about that

Just my morning $0.02
Have a great day everyone.
Thx
P
.

 

[buck wild]

Maybe we can start with-are any animals brought in and shot within 6 months- basically animals brought in in say March in order to have stock for the next 6 month hunting season. That would be my first prong of a put and take operation. My second prong would be the absence of females. Even if the animals were brought in 3 years earlier as juveniles there was never an expectation of the outfit that they would be anything more than hunt able males. I see this a lot with the more "prized" animals such as sable, roan etc
I have seen reference of "put today, take tomorrow"- if that is literal, I consider that basically a canned hunt.

 

[slad68]

Maybe we can start with-are any animals brought in and shot within 6 months- basically animals brought in in say March in order to have stock for the next 6 month hunting season. That would be my first prong of a put and take operation. My second prong would be the absence of females. Even if the animals were brought in 3 years earlier as juveniles there was never an expectation of the outfit that they would be anything more than hunt able males. I see this a lot with the more "prized" animals such as sable, roan etc
I have seen reference of "put today, take tomorrow"- if that is literal, I consider that basically a canned hunt.

Sweet and short answer.......Yes; many Land Owners do, Many Outfitters are aware of it and many Outfitters take advantage of it. Especially those who have high volume hunts at a less than average price.

 

[buck wild]

Sweet and short answer.......Yes; many Land Owners do, Many Outfitters are aware of it and many Outfitters take advantage of it. Especially those who have high volume hunts at a less than average price.

Yes I'm aware these things happen. I just wonder how many Outfits will admit to it.
That being said, it doesn't bother me personally as I'm sure I have been on a few farms where my definition of "put and take" happened. As long as I wasn't in the canned situation I cited (either small enclosures or released very recently) and the animals were well adjusted to their environment with adequate opportunities to escape and/or avoid detection.