Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Any experience with EAI Outdoors?

I am planning my first trip to Africa for the summer of 2012 and this place looks like the best deal out there. I can get all of my top trophies-a gemsbok, kudu, impala, blesbok, zebra, and warthog for around 5 grand and its all low fence. I havn't found hardly any reviews online, does anybody know anything about this outfit, good or bad?

I haven't heard of them and didn't find anything on them in the Hunt Report on-line. None of that means a thing, but I was curious so I took a few minutes to search. Good luck on your safari.

I'm booked with them for September 2011. Tracker49 here on the fire has also hunted with them. EAI is just the booking agent. The actual safari outfitter is Kubusi Safari's, owned by James Williamson. Here's a link to Tracker49's hunt report that he did over on AccurateReloading.com. I will say I contacted alot of references before booking and was impressed with what all of them had to say.

Craig

Tracker 49 here.
I went with them as CraigP said.
Ed with EAI Outdoors handled all the booking arangements for us and the hunt was with Kubusi Safaris.
We found the entire trip to be up to all of our expectations and them some.
We had weather delays here in the states and Delta rescheduled us for the following day, but could not do anything for the overnight change (hotel) and SAA connection. We called Ed's travel people and they had everything rescheduled for us within an hour, couldn't ask for better service than that.
I was not big into numbers, but I had the animals scored (James is an official scorer) and 6 of the 7 animal made the SCI minimums. James also has his own taxidermy or will ship to yours, either way. I had James do ours and they all turned out great.
So, bottom line. Everything from start to finish, including delivery of the completed trophy's to the door was excellent.

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.