Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Why Do Some African Outfitters Run Down Hunting in the Eastern Cape?

While attending various hunting shows, or even on this forum, outfitters from the Limpopo or other northern provinces have said "You don't want to hunt the Eastern Cape because they have stocked species that aren't native to that area. I only have native species in my area."

While that may be true, why run one area down? That isn't the way to promote your operation in the Limpopo, Namibia, or where ever.

I avidly read BMD's recent post about his trip to Namibia with his daughter. What a great trip! I hope to be able to take my own daughters to Africa some day.

I was surprised to see that a black wildebeest was harvested in Namibia. When I was recently in South Africa (May), I was advised that South Africa was the only country where black wildebeest were available. I guess that is no longer true.

My point is that it seems that many outfitters in many areas are stocking none native species. It is a business. More product attracts more customers equals more sales.

Perhaps it is time to stop running down hunting in the Eastern Cape and start promoting each area on its own merits?

I know I chose my African outfitter based on how we got along and the type of operation he ran. Through our communications, I considered him my friend before I even hunted there. Having completed my safari, I know I made the right choice, even though I originally struggled with the concept of hunting in the Eastern Cape. I went with the Outfitter who was also my PH.

I made a great choice. My wife and I had the time of our lives.

I will go to the Eastern Cape again and I will again hunt with Patrick Fletcher of Hotfire Hunting and Fishing Safaris.

Some people can't sell their product without running down their competitors. I see it all the time in industries unrelated to hunting.

Nothing native here, still had fun!

Kansas




Texas

I think it comes down to simple philosophical difference amongst the parties involved. The northern areas still are a more traditional approach to safari as opposed to areas where virtually everything has been introduced or reintroduced. That said, I enjoy the Eastern Cape and have taken my family many times. However, I prefer to hunt Springbok, blesbok, gemsbok up in the Karoo which is more of their natural range. Hunting Eastern Cape kudu in that thick thorny bush can be as challenging as any hunting you'll do. I'll say that the many of the South Africans I know trek up north when they want to do a hunting trip, rather than the Eastern Cape.

JJ likes the northern area and that's where he operates. Marius is down south, and likes it. My buddy is a big Ohio State football fan. I'm for Auburn. All of that makes for interesting conversation around the campfire. It's all beautiful country.

I think it's because virtually all of the species are "imported".

Yeah but that is a silly argument. If you want to stand by this you shouldn't hunt pheasants in NA, anything in NZ, stag in SA.
If we all didn't hunt any introduced game, we would do a hell of a lot less hunting.

Why Do Some African Outfitters Run Down Hunting in the Eastern Cape?

Because the safari outfits down there are kicking butt -- lots of business. Toyota salesmen sell against Nissan, etc. Nothing new...

Agreed

Hunting Cape kudu and Cape bushbuck is as good as it gets, and they're both native. Yeah, there are a bunch of planted animals, but so what? The first time I went to Africa was in what was then called the Transvaal. The first animal I shot was a blesbuck, hardly native to the area.

About the only places you'll find all-native game anymore are in "wild" Africa. There isn't much left, and it's all expensive.

Addo Elephant National Park is in the Eastern Cape. RSA National Parks only allow animals that are proven to be historically native to the Eastern Cape. Everything else have been removed.

These are the large mammals we saw in the park: elephant, kudu, red hartebeest, zebra, eland, buffalo, lion, warthog. http://www.sanparks.org/parks/addo/conservation/ff/mammals.php

Not a bad list. The link shows that the northern area of the park has/will have gemsbok etc.

Anyways, I just find it annoying that there is an elitism with some of the northern outfitters who instead of promoting why you should hunt with them, instead begin to bleat about why you shouldn't hunt somewhere else. I also found that the few I talked to would present a quote, but there was an inherent inflexibility and no accommodation on pricing. I guess if you are close to Kruger, you can demand and obtain your price?

On the other hand, in Eastern Cape, the outfitters listened to what I was interested in, and even though I didn't expect them to, modified their packages to fit my wants and also adjusted rates (I don't drink) and fees based on the quantity and type of game I was interested in.

As I said in the OP, I went with who I related to the best. However, compare the two areas as presented:

North: "This is my package, this in my rate, these are my fees, take it or leave it and by the way you don't want to hunt in the Eastern Cape. They aren't hunting native game (and the insinuation is that the game are penned in small pastures)".

Eastern Cape: "This my package. What are you interested in? OK. Let's make a personal package. You don't drink, so I can charge less on the rates. You're hunting larger animals, so I can give some reductions on the fees. Come hunt with me. We'll have a good time together." And we did.

Who would you go with?

I'm going to tag this for future reference

I looked over you posts and may have missed it but have you put up a thread and some pics from you trip?

My safari was up north, but they were more like what you described for the Eastern Cape. Totally flexible on game, schedules, everything. It was my safari and they wanted to do whatever they could to suit my desires.

Couldn't agree more.

I also can identify with the regions formerly known as Transvaal and Eastern Transvaal.

I'd be hard pressed to tell you where Mpumalanga, Limpopo, or Gauteng lie. Guess I'm still living in the past.

Thanks, I'll take a look.

So long as the hunters are aware that the game they are hunting is not indigenous I"m not sure anyone cares. There is still this feeling of the old days of luring in hunters to areas which never had the animals that are being hunted.

Imagine if you will, a South African hunter coming to the USA to hunt. He goes to a hunting area in Some Southern state, and shoots Moose, Cariboo, Dall sheep, Pronghorn and Mule Deer.

Then he returns to Africa and his family and friends see his magnificent collection of trophies. None of them are aware that those animals where not in the natural habitat or geography that they would normally live in. The hunter himself may not even know! Is this a good idea? A good representation of the hunting for those animals?

If in a conversation that involved a hunter telling you that he shot his record book Moose in Florida or Texas would it have the same impact as if he said he shot it in Alaska or British Columbia?

There is a difference in the this hunting for many people. For others it's just price and convenience driven. The ability to shoot lots of animals in one place on a short visit, for a low cost is the higher priority. Rather than traveling to the areas that they actually live while harvesting an animal or two at each location. This is a much higher expense, potentially.

There was a comment earlier that Black Wildebeest were only in RSA. Lets be more specific, they are only from the Drakensburg or Central African mountains of RSA. They can be found all over the world now. They can be hunted in many places. Heck you can hunt Zebra and Kudu in several states in America too. However they are only natural in one very small geography. I'm proud to say that I have never had a hunter shoot one outside of this area. 100% of the hunters I take shoot the game in the area it is natural. That's just my view, not everyones. I explain this straight up with all my hunters. My experience in RSA was not always this way. We did hunt the Eastern Cape area plenty. It's how I came to understand this and the way many geographical operations work in RSA and even Southern Botswana

I get calls and possible bookings monthly with guys that want to shoot springbok and black wildebeest and blue wildebeest and nyala along with a handful of other species. I explain to them we will be traveling quite a bit during the trip to get to those locations which have these species. Hunting Black Wildebeest in the mountains while it's snowing a few days before you were in Natal hunting Nyala in the rainforest at 95 deg, and a few days before hunting Kudu and Wildebeest in the dry dusty bush veldt is how this is done for indigenous species. Shooting all these in the same area living together in the same weather is not the way it would be done when they are imported to one location.

A week later I am questioned by the same guys saying why can we hunt all these on one place at "XYZ" outfitters place. We don't lose three days of travel to do it? Because I don't stock these non-indiginous species for you to shoot. We only have the natural occurring species from this geography here. We can travel to get the others where they occur natural. I lose those hunters most of the time. Probably 90% of the time. Because it's totally cost and time driven for them. They want a certain collection of game in the window of time they have. I won't be able to accommodate that. It's a financial loss to my business. However, it's a better standard for me to manage. I lose plenty of hunters to this situation. Having worked in the Eastern Cape for the first 5 years of my career, and now running my own business this way. I'll take this business model I have now every time without regret.

Does anyone really care where another person hunts? I sure don't. I do think that it's ethical and prudent for a business to present the facts for the hunters coming. I know that probably 1/3 of my hunters over the 20 plus years I've done this,...simply don't understand the African distribution of game at all. They assume that all the animals of Africa live in all of Africa. They never ask and don't care.

If folks know this going in and accept that it's being done this way then nobody else should care. If on the other hand they learn later, as I have seen many times,...... that the big trophy they shot was not naturally occurring and often pre-released prior to arrival. Well then that is heartbreaking to them. This process has been going on for decades. Many 30-40 year old PH's there have hunted these animals their whole lives and don't even know of a time then they were not there. Many also do not understand the difference between indigenous and " born there" A Zebra is not indigenous to Florida but Busch gardens has baby zebra's every year! It's a very long way to travel to hunt African game. If the natural habitat of the species is irrelevant, a fella could save a lot of time and travel expense to hunt most of them in Texas. Then keep all the meat as well! Somehow, shooting a blue wildebeest in Texas is not the same as shooting one in the Eastern cape, yet they are no more indigenous to the Eastern Cape then they are to Texas.

I hunt Pheasants with a passion here in the USA, they are not indigenous, I know this going in and I don't care. I hunt Turkeys relentlessly in Wa. State, They are not indigenous here either. I don't care. I fish for Channel catfish in the river every week. They are not natural in the snake river either. I don't care. So I get that lots of folks simply don't care. The point is, they should know this before they spend their money and understand it's not a naturally occurring species where they are hunting. Whose responsibility is that? The hunter or the outfitter, or should it just be ignored and "who cares"? I've spoken to several maybe dozens of guys in my career that cared a lot, but did not know. That bait and switch made them very angry.

We all need to be more educated when we shop for everything. regardless of a cell phone, camera, car, whatever it is. When we buy things without due diligence we open ourselves to disappointment later.

The more people coming to Africa to hunt the better, I do not care which operation is chosen and which outfitter is used. More folks coming helps everyone here. Just be sure that the hunt you desire is what you are getting, do your homework!

The movement of animals happens all over Africa. Heck, the first trip I made, the very first morning, I helped load some nyala females that were bound for the Limpopo. About half way thru my safari, I helped load two nyala bulls, too. The last day I was there, I helped dart two nyala bulls. You might have guessed I was hunting in KZN.

Look at some of the species available on Namibia Outfitter's website and you'll see colored springbuck, white blesbok, etc. so, these type of things are not limited to the Eastern Cape.

JJ,

Are you saying black wildebeest were ONLY originally from the Drakensburg or Central African mountains? Or those are the only populations that remained after the great slaughter of much of RSA�s game?

Jonathan Kingdon says their original range was �over a large part of the Karoo and Highveld.� Obviously, they were wiped out from almost all their original range, but would restored populations in the original range not qualify as native? Or do �native� African game animals have to be descendants of animals with a direct lineage to that area?

Springbok and gemsbok were wiped out in the Karoo, but are abundant there today�and often free-range. Does hunting them there not qualify as hunting indigenous game, because the genetics may be slightly different than that of the original animals? Obviously the different colors of springbok weren�t there, except perhaps in very tiny numbers (I�ve never been able to care about shooting any of them), but perhaps the largest original springbok population was centered around the Karoo. At the other extreme, have seen red lechwe stumping around in the Namibian desert on far smaller hooves than they grow in their native watery habitat.

I�m not bringing this up to argue, but to discuss. There�s obviously is a difference between hunting animals that were always in a certain area and descendants of the original population, and trucked-in animals that aren�t native. But there are a lot of areas in RSA (and other countries, including Namibia) where formerly native animals have been restored. Are they not natives? If not, then the present elk population of Arizona isn�t native, since they were wiped out and replaced by Yellowstone elk, and the whitetail of several states aren�t native either.

The problem with hunting non-indigenous game in South Africa is that the hunter can unwittingly be involved in a put-and-take shoot.

I once tagged along with a friend on his hunt on a place along the Limpopo River. He had given the outfitter a list of the species he wanted to take, and that list included a nyala, which is not indigenous to northwestern South Africa.

After he shot his nyala, I got one of the trackers who spoke excellent English aside and asked him how many nyala were on the farm and if my friend's bull had been raised there. According to him, the farm had none until three trophy-size bulls were purchased at a game auction and trucked there a couple of weeks before we arrived.

Bill Quimby

How long ago was that Bill? Just wondering if conditions have changed? Or, was I just fortunate that the three Eastern Cape Farms I hunted on did not practice that behavior?