Dear Colleagues,
I couldn't find similar topic on the forum although this was occasionally mentioned in "deals and offers", and other places.
Sometimes it looks they are exportable, and sometimes not.
So, what are the rules for trophy export for: managment hunts, cull, reduction hunts, meat hunts, etc
For South Africa & for Namibia?
- Exportable?
- Non - exportable?
- Conditionally exportable, under what conditions?
- VAT payable for non-exportable, or VAT payable for exportable trophies?
- any other usable info?
I can perhaps help on some of this.
The answers will generally depend on two things: the species in question and the contract with the outfitter. In South Africa and Nambia, that contract will generally mirror the arrangements the outfitter has in place with the landowner (and thus the animal owner).
1. Species. If you are talking about an animal regulated by CITES, it may be that there is no CITES quota available for the export of non-trophy animals. This is generally the case for tuskless elephant for example. CITES issues no permits, to my knowledge, for female or non-trophy elephant. In the absence of a CITES quota, there can be no export permit issued (and of course no import permit, if one is required), so nothing of the animal can be exported.
2. Other animals. The position with respect to non-CITES species depends entirely on the arrnagments you have with your outfitter. These can generally be exported without difficulty. There may be one exception and here I would have to defer to those with more knowledge. If you have "culled" a ToPS (Threatened or Protected Species) animal in South Africa, you would need a special permit (permits are easy or harder to get, depending on the species and the area. Black wildebeest I believe are easy permits to get; oribi are not). But if it is legal to shoot the animal, it is legal to export it, but again, this would need to be confirmed.
With respect to "normal" animals, I have taken nyala and sable in South Africa just for the skins - old, broken horn examples - and got a good price from the outfitter in lieu of the "trophy fee." No issue with keeping and exporting the hides.
On the other hand, when culling springbok for example, a friend and I once took about 100 in a day, some of which would have been record book specimens. But the arrangements with the landowner were that he kept the entire animal. I have no doubt if we had wanted to, we could have approached the owner with an offer for certain of the trophies, but we did not. This was culling pure and simple - we were not differentiating between size or sex.
So in these cases, it depends entirely on the arrangements you have made. This means that if you see an old broken horned animal you would like to take for whatever reason, the first question should be "how much." The answer is a matter of negotiation. If the animal is what would be called a "managment" animal in the US, then you should bargain hard, since the landowner presumably wants it gone in any event, and no one will pay a trophy fee to shoot it. He would either have to shoot it himself to take it out of the gene pool, or pay a professional to do it.
Stalking and hunting these types of animals is just as exciting as hunting trophy versions, generally at a fraction of the cost. This can be important for people who have already, for example, taken a good specimen of a certain animal. For example, I have taken a number of nice buffalo, and have no more room for another similar head. But I love hunting buffalo, so the answer is to find buffalo that someone wants gone, or which have so worn down or broken their horns that no one would take them as a trophy animal. That's the one I want these days, at a fraction of the cost of a trophy specimen.
