My wife and I booked with EAI for a RSA hunt at Kubusi Safari in July 2010. We talked with Ed (EAI) at the Indy Sport Travel show and got a DVD that he made showing some hunting that he & his wife had done with Kubusi. He does promote this as mostly low fence hunting, which is somewhat misleading as we never actually hunted totally free range animals. This kind of freeked me out at first because I am not at all into canned hunting. All of the hunting ranches that I saw did have high fences - there may be areas there that are not that way - but I did not see them. In RSA the landowners actually own the wildlife that reside on their properties, so the landowners are protective of the wildlife. These properties are managed for wildlife production and trophy quality, so the property owners don't want the animals to leave their grounds if they can help it since they sell the hunting, as well as sell the meat(landowner keeps the meat for resale to local markets). Now these properties are very large - generally several thousands of acres - the habitat is managed for wildlife and the animals are wild and naturally reproducing, so this is far from a canned hunt... but it is not like we hunt critters in the US where the wildlife is publicly owned. I talked with some property owners there about the fencing and they have a few reasons why they do this besides the obvious reason of helping to keep the trophy animals on property for hunting. Poaching can be a real problem because many of the residents are very poor. Some of the wild animals are dangerous, so landowner liability can be an issue as well.
Anyway, after seeing that the animals were very wild and how large the properties were and that it was indeed fair chase, I was ok with the fences. But, I wish that Ed would have been a little more forthright about this issue.
We stayed at two different camps, Kubusi and Glen Boyd XXL Reserve. The Kubusi camp was more like the traditional african bush huts and tent cabins. It was fairly comfortable, but looked as if it could use a little updating. The sauna that was in the DVD was no longer operational. We were there in July which is there winter and several of the nights were fairly cold (30's). The chalets did have a small fireplace to help take the chill off, but we did have a couple of very chilly mornings. The Glen Boyd XXL property had more modern chalets and situated around a historic old plantation house. It was a very nice place. The hunting and the guides were very good. They catered to what ever you wanted to do or hunt. We enjoyed our time there and were able to harvest some fine critters, my wife killed an impala, warthog, and nice zebra, while I bagged a springbuck, bushbuck, and a very nice kudu. We booked the couples package ($4000) - we could share 5 animals - and added the zebra for the trophy fee. I would say that if you are looking for a real fancy safari, then you may be disappointed with this hunt. If you are looking to be comfortable (you won't have to pack fine clothing for diner), want good food, and good hunting with excellent guides, then you will like this safari. EAI outfitter did a good job of covering the bases and getting the air travel lined up. The DVD gave us a decent idea of what we could expect, but thought he may have misrepresented the low fence issue. All in all though, he did a good job and we did really enjoy the trip. PM if you want additional info and I can give you my phone number - easier for me to talk than type.
