Thanks. I understand Tanzania is much more expensive and my understanding it typically is dangerous game or more advanced safari. I am trying to get the sense of whether you get what you pay for and would get better hunting or hunting experience in Tanzania. If you won the powerball and could go anywhere for plains game hunting (cost be damned) where would people go.
If cost were not an option, my hunt would not be behind a fence in South Africa. That is not meant to be critical of the game farm experience or the South African model. They are great places for one stop shopping for everything on a list. On the larger game ranches, the hunt can indeed be challenging. I had a very satisfying hunt in the Limpopo a couple of years ago.
However, they can also be about through-put of clients, and many are adopting the European model of charging extra by the inch for glamour species. You need to do your research and ask direct questions.
What has proven important to me, is hunting indigenous species in the environment where they have traditionally existed for thousands of years. Such destinations do not have to be in a wilderness area. For instance, you can book a hunt in Namibia or the Eastern Cape where you may see low cattle fences, but these do not generally hinder game movement any more than they do on a ranch in the US. Those ranches, tribal areas, and conservancies in those countries offer opportunities for an array of species that would be high on anyone's list (i.e. oryx, kudu, eland, etc.) Moreover, you will also have a PH trying to get you the best representative species he can find in the time allotted.
I have been to the Zambezi Delta of coastal Mozambique twice (still an absolutely safe destination) where buffalo was the primary target, but also a location where I could hunt sable and nyala in their free-range natural environment. When buffalo is included in such a hunt, total costs are not so very different than a game ranch. My two sable from there didn't reach forty-inches, but they lived unhindered in their natural environment.
I just returned from Zambia, which has been a destination for sable for a century and took the most magnificent animal I may have ever hunted (thank you
@spike.t Mike Taylor and Takeri!) That said, I could have gone to a game ranch in South Africa, and perhaps shot a larger one that was the product of selective breeding and supplemental feeding. That too is fine for the many hunters who have taken great sable or red lechwe or nyala from those farms. But not something I have been interested in doing.
You can compare it a bit to a free range deer hunt in the Big Bend of Texas where you work hard and bring home a 170 class whitetail that is biggest thing you have ever seen. Or you can go to a game ranch in the Hill country, look over dozens of bucks, and decorate the trophy room with the biggest animal you can afford. To be fair most game on a South African game farms are not managed that way for the more common plains game. But ever more of the glamour species are.
If important to you, like it was me, then I would book a free range hunt in either Namibia or the Eastern Cape - there are several other areas of South Africa that can offer the same. Hunt those indigenous species (which will include kudu), and then decide how you want to send your time hunting Africa in the future.
