I am sure you guys are tired of these types of posts, but would appreciate any suggestions.

Here is my scoop: I am graduating from college this Dec, and plan on applying for grad school in the Fall of 2010. That leaves me all next spring and summer to have some fun. I saved up some dough while in the military for a trip such as this. I would love a plains game trip. (A week to 10 days kind of thing) I will more than likely be going by myself. I have never looked into this type of thing before so I apologize for my ignorance.

Is it too late to book a hunt for anywhere between Jan and Aug of 2010?

Any PH suggestions or PHs to avoid?

Any countries to avoid?

I am a huge bowhunter, but for a trip like this I will just take a rifle (25-06, 300 Savage or 300 Win Mag) I have a 340 Wby and 375 H&H but can't afford anything those rifles would be useful for in Africa. I would love to just take my 300 Savage and straight 4X scope. I know it is ready for anything up to elk size game, but are there any legal restrictions on rifles for plains game I need to know?

I don't know much about plains game, except for what I have read here and in magazines. My budget is 7 grand or so.

Would it be worthwhile to bring a shotgun along for birds?

Thanks in advance

Drop JJHack, the moderator on this forum, a line. He hunts in the Limpopo area of RSA and runs a top flight outfit. I've hunted with him twice and believe me he'll do everything he can to get you your animals. Plenty of folks from the campfire have hunted with him and I've never heard anything but positive recommendations from them.

A big plus is JJ will be onsite with you working as a PH while you're there.

JJHACK Hunting Adventures...Great PH, lots of previous hunters and great recommendations..If you like, pm me with your address and I'll send you a DVD of our 2007 hunt and another of a 2009 hunt that my friends [they also hunted in 2007] just returned from.

Thanks guys, I'll talk to him.

I'll certainly endorse Hack's recommendation for RSA. Another great PH who posts here is Karl Stumpfe and Steve Robinson as well. RSA is a great place for a first safari, but I prefer Zimbabwe as it's more akin to the "wild Africa." Ray Atkinson can also help you in that regard. Seven grand will cover shat you want to do as far as the safari is concerned, but you are cutting it close. As to rifles, you are just fine with all your choices. One of our most experienced members here, Hatari has hunted Africa extensively with the 300 Savage. Personally I like the 300s for PG, and your 340 is just about perfect for eland. Good luck & Semper Fi! jorge

Oh,and how I love the .300 Savage! That has become my favorite the last bunch of years ever since the family heirloom 99 got passed down to me.

I can endorse Ray, JJ, and Karle, I'm sure these guys can fix you up.

I went to RSA for the first time some 20 years ago by the strong armed tactics of one of my patients. He is smooth talking, leathernecked, jarhead, retired Gunny named Fred Slater. Some of the old SCI hands here I'm sure know Fred. Big Freddie is going to be 80 this year, God bless him.

Fred told me "Boy, get off your azz and come along and have some fun." Fred hooked me on Africa, and also convinced me that an official 5 point USMC Cover is the proper thing to have on your head when you have a rifle in your hand.

I hunt RSA with John X Safaris

http://www.johnxsafaris.co.za/

I can't say enough superlative things about them, and they have become my lifelong friends. They can fix you up for $7K, and you will be hooked like the rest of us.

(PS-You might want to know that Jorge was a Jarhead before he got wings!)

sent you a pm.

Restrictions? If you miss a shot, they strip you naked and brand you with a red hot Zulu Assagai.

Seriously, the only restrictions are that you need to shoot well. It keeps the PH and the trackers happy. Your .300 Savage is enough gun for anything including kudu and eland, but the .340 is better for eland, so take them both!

Hi Dog Hunter,

I�ve been working with JJHACK in camp in RSA for the past 5 years and I can assure you that he will bend his back backwards for you and for every hunter who went with him. You will have the time of your life if you go on an African safari with JJHACK!!

I'll add 2 cents...

June/July next year is World Cup soccer in SA.I understand many outfitters are fairly booked with European hunters.Would be best to avoid this timeframe.

On hunting;

Try to decide on what type of animals to hunt.Then go where they occur as the best representative trophy.

Your budget can have you taking few very good trophies or many so-so.

Do you want an wild experience or is a game ranch OK?

Zim,SA,and Namibia can meet your budget if you can balance trophy fee's and day rates to your liking.



Cost;

To me,the "cost" is door to door AND getting trophies home.Taxidermy is a seperate luxury.At $7000 you can have a good
hunt,but you'll need to nail down some particulars.You have enough for one glamour animal(Eland,Kudu,Nyala if in Natal)and some others (Impala,Blesbok,Springbok,etc).

Get your skulls,capes,and backskins sent home.Have the hides tanned,and you can mount them when ever you want(and have the money)Tanned hides last many years.You can display the beached skulls meanwhile.Most taxidermy work(not all)done in Africa is weak and of poor value if you figure in shipping.



I will always argue Namibia still has the best hunting for Plains Game for the balance of trophy fees to day rates,for the average means hunter(that's me...LOL)


No question is stupid,and many here have a wealth of knowledge to share;so fire away.

Dinsdale

Dog_Hunter;
You might check this site for Limcroma safaris.
http://www.limcroma.com/

I hunted plains game and shot birds for 10 days with Hannes Els and had a blast ( pun intended). Since then, he has added a top flight archery hunting operation and as you will see on the web site, the Ted Nugent recommendation says Limcroma is the best in RSA.
http://www.limcroma.com/references.htm

We hunted with Pieter Kriel (http://www.huntinginafrica.co.za/index.htm) and can not praise him enough as a very educated guide, game spotter, PH, and hunting buddy. If I ever can afford to go again Pieter is at the top of my list.

Pieter is one of my best PH's and will always show people a great hunt. He just hunted with Lloyd and the hunt ended a couple days ago. Even with the horrible Rain, they took the game they were after. In the last week the weather changed from hot and sunny to freezing and rainy, very odd for this time of year. Anyone wanting to hunt with Pieter can get booked with him through me, or book with me and request him. Either way, Pieter is a top PH and a weatlh of knowledge!

agree on Namibia, I would also suggest you check out www.accuratereloading.com they have a discounted hunt section. I would think you could line up a real nice hunt with 7,000.

Thanks for the response people. I have been looking at all the websites. I wouldn't mind hunting a private ranch, but not a high fence. It just doesn't interest me. Looking at the websites of outfitters in Nambia, it looks like most are done on fenced ranches. Thanks but no thanks.

I would like either a gemsbok or a kudu plus a few smaller things. It seems everyone offers warthogs and blesbok, so I assume those are like whitetails here. I just want to go to Africa and hunt for 4-5 animals. I really couldn't care what, and am not after huge horns.

Thanks again.

Go with JJ. You will enjoy the experience!!!

Dog Hunter,
You indicate that you are a bowhunter. I would seriously consider a bowhunt safari, if I were you- I have done it both ways, and can truthfully say that the bowhunting experience can't be equalled.

I did a bowhunt safari for plains game in SA last September, and would gladly go back for species I didn't hunt on that trip.

I booked thru JJ twice and PH Pieter Kriel. Fantastic, couldn't have asked for more. I will again next year.

for 2010 I have a specific area that will be bow hunting only. There are ground blinds made of cement so they are dead silent, and about 50% is below ground level.

I will have a culling option for bowhunters as well. All Female animals and nontrophy warthogs for about 4000 bucks the package will include more then you will probably be able to shoot in a 7 day hunt and then you can always add the trophy fee for the other animals you choose. I don't have the logistics on this final right now, but check the website in mid july and it will be finished.

The area for bowhunthing is very quiet and peaceful, we don't have any firearms allowed there and there are too many female animals right now. So this needs to be culled without a lot of noise or chasing and game capture. We have decided to just offer the culling option for archery including crossbow use.

You will have to ask alot of questions to find an unfenced hunt in SA.I know of a few in Natal,but even then there is some cattle fence around.

If you want no fences there are areas but your budget ,if you are trying for all in at $7000,will be tight.Zim is a better bet for that;but add in road transfers/2% gov tax/MARS and airfare and you'll be tight.IMO

Good luck and ask lots of questions....

Dinsdale

I can certainly respect the no high fence desire, but, if you ask the right questions about the area size, hunting methods etc. You can have a very nice hunt on a fenced area and other than going in/out probably never see the fence, especially bowhunting where you sit instead of walk or drive. Everything in SA is fenced. SA is easy to get to and in your budget. Its the place to go. I just returned from SA and the smallest place we hunted was 7000 acres, yeah it was fenced, but it didn't feel like it.

Thanks for all the responses. I have no problem with regular cattle fences, I just don't want a high fence kind of thing with animals managed more like cattle than game.

Thanks again.

The Fence issue is so badly misunderstood and so over played by folks. An area of 10,000 acres is what..... somthing like 50 square miles? About four times the natural habiat used by a Kudu, impala, warthogs, etc. etc.

The Law is in place not to force exempt properties from having game escape, but to prevent the animals owned by the government/people of South Africa from getting onto that exempt property and to be hunted out of season.

I had two hunters with me this year that watched as 5 Kudus jumped the high fence on another Property as easy as a domestic cat jumping from the floor to a table top.

I watched a few weeks earlier as 5 big Adult Kudu bulls jumped over a 8 foot fence when some hunters in a vehicle were trying to race ahead in a truck and get in front of them for a shot. The Kudu's blew them off and just kept running at a comfortable pace coming to the fence and just launching right up and over it. One or two of them hit the top wire of the fence with a trailing back hoof, but they all went over the fence and made it very clear that the "high fence" is no deterent to many of the species.

I have not met anyone that has hunted on a well managed property of effective size that ever felt that it was like shooting livestock, or pen raised game. These animals are wild and natural and born in the bush. This habitat is well in excess of a normal home range.

I would challenge anyone to walk on foot in the fall or winter and stalk and shoot a mature wild Kudu bull alone on any well run High Fence operation. Sure the odd lucky guy might manage it, but odds are you would never even see one of these big bulls on any of the "high fence" properties.

Even out west where we often have private lands in the thousands of acres, you can hunt season after season and never leave the property anyway. The game on that land is not leaving whether its fenced or not, it's their total home range.

In Namibia there is so little water that landowners with water don't need to fence anything to maintain good animal populations. Nothing will wander from very far from the water anyway. So you have this magic "magnetic like" field keeping them in orbit near the water supply.

SE Alaska is not much different with all the islands and the animals fenced on equal sized properties by the ocean. Who would question shooting a bear on Mitkov Island? Nobody I know, but that population of game is not gonna leave anytime soon. How about the Elk F&W stocked on Wrangle? It's fenced by the ocean, non-indiginous, and not natural. Yet there never seems to be any question about hunting these elk. Some of the elk have swam across the open ocean to other islands. It's not frequent but happens, kinda like game jumping a high fence in Africa.

It's everyones own desire and opinion to make this choice. I'm good with whichever a person chooses. I only write this to try to help you understand this so that you can be better informed about the conditions.

Ask any guy that has hunted Kudu with me, how successful would the averdage hunter be on foot on their own and try to shoot a big 50" plus 8 year old trophy bull regardless of Property size. One other thing that is somewhat important is the efforts put into management by the landowners. We don't shoot more Kudu bulls then we can allow from any managed land. No different then the limited draw hunts each state allow for various species. When we take off the amount we can allow with comfortable remaining populations we hunt other properties for those species. Each landowner is responsible for his own management. Each allows what he believes is a reasonable harvest level.

Anyway this could go on, it's your call, just make the decision with all the information you can get!

Very well said,and explained.

Dinsdale

JJHACK.

You sure do have a great way of explaining things. I appreciate reading your responses to me as well as to others. I have no problem with fences, especially after reading your explanation.

I guess I am sore on them because of the canned elk hunts we have around here. I have nothing against them, and I know they are tailored towards people who are older or disabled. The elk all have lip tattoos and get veternarian treatments, just like cows. It's just not my thing. After reading some of the responses here, I am sure that is not the case in most operations in Africa.

Thanks for all the suggestions people.

There are plenty of those operations in RSA, but most are in the Eastern Cape. As you say, they may have a value to some limited mobility folks, or those who simply want cheap and easy.

I'm not picking on the eastern cape becuase I don't like the area, there are beautiful places and some of the best although limited natural species. What is a problemn for me is the dirt cheap game stocked prior to the hunters arrival, and the amount of game that is Farm Raised for hunters to shoot.

Just get a book on SOuthern African Wildlife and look at the shaded areas of where animals are found in the wild. That should easily clear up the question about what you're hunting natual and what has been planted. If memory serves me right there are about 6-7 natual big game species in the area. But most Eastern Cape operation offer 20 plus African aniamls plus Fallow deer, wild boar, and some even have red deer.

For my money I would save the airfare and just hunt in Texas! However there are countless folks who can return home and tell any story they wish to friends and family. When ever you see a springbok and a Blue Wildebeest on the same Property, or hear a guy shoot a Blue and Black Wildebeest on the same place it was "put and take" those do not live anyplace near each other and will interbreed, so they almost never to my knowledge "stock" females.

Actually I had a hunter a few years ago ask me about my game management skills when he said we had so many hundreds of Female animals on our property. I asked him why that was a concern. HE replied that the other place he was at in the Eastern Cape had mostly Bulls and Rams, no ewes or cows.

My Reply was "why do you think that is, Because they don't want to feed the animals all winter they only stock what they shoot".

So to be fair you can have problem hunting operations anyplace, America, Africa, no matter. Hunt with somebody that has a good reputation and plenty of refrences. Take the fence out of the picture and enjoy the experience. Remember that the operation with a secure high fence, is also the one with strong ethics and game management with how they care for animals and how they manage the populations. They don't want any contamination of their animals from outside that fence, and they don't want to lose the genetic control over what they have been working towards. Culling and limiting the harvest is critical to the future.

Also know that South Africa alone exports just over 60,000 salted skins/horns through the dip pack process on average per year. How good is the wildlife management on a country wide level to have that kind of export of trophies every year. This does not include those who take nothing home which is a gorwing number (+-25%)or those who have the taxidermy done in RSA. I've been doing this for 17 years now, and these numbers have been pretty consistant. That is a mountain of trophies from one country! That is typical when you privatize managment and remove the responsibility from the government with most things.

I just returned from a hunt in South Africa that Jim (JJHack) booked for me. My PH was named Christo Carsten. I am still sorting out the work that pilled up and the several hundred pictures, but will post a full report soon.

When I got to the hunting areas, I felt horrible at first. Every place was fenced. I had never hunted a fenced area, except for a National Wildlife Refuge that was once a 50,000 acre munitions testing facility. I went with it and tried to keep an open mind. The smallest place I hunted was 2,500 acres. Another area had only cattle fencing on one side near a large water whole and was really not fenced in.

My best hunt of the trip was on the 2,500 acre farm. We spent 3 days spotting and stalking a herd of wildebeest. Christo knew the biggest bull had been on the property for 8 years. The first two days were tough stalking. Christo�s property is very sandy, which makes following spoor difficult and saps your energy very quickly. We only managed to bump them several times and were never able to sort out the big one. We took a break for a few days and went back after a night of hard rain. Tracking spoor was much easier. We finally tracked the herd down but they had bedded down with zebra, impala and eland. We �leopard crawled�, creeped, glassed, jogged and walked just about every inch of that property after them. We were busted by the impala, zebra and eland several times. Christo kept saying we needed to stay in contact with them because they get �stupid� at dusk. About half an hour before sunset, Christo spotted him in a small clearing watching some gemsbok slowly move off. Long story to make a small point, we hunted the herd for 3 days before getting a good shot. I think the wildebeest had all of the advantages they would have had any where else and it was every bit as hard as any hunt I�ve done here in the states



The easiest hunt was for my gemsbok. The property was larger than 2,500 acres but I don�t know exactly how big. It was divided up into smaller areas with sable and other costly exotics in separate areas. As we rounded the corner a cow gemsbok was just standing there. I shot her from the truck � another first for me. She didn�t respond much to the first shot and I fired again. The legs got wobbly and she went down. Both shots were less than an inch and a half apart. She was malnourished and had some kind diarrheal illness. If she had been in the wild a lion, leopard, jackal or hyena would have killed her. She was alone, so we thought the herd had already pushed her out or she couldn�t keep up. The hunt amounted to taking two bench rest shots, not much to it. Since she was so old, her horns were long! I�m 6�6� and sitting on my heels with my knee touching her shoulder.



I had two hunts that were completely different and both behind fences. In the end the fence did not bother me that much but I always had guilty feeling when it was insight. I will go back to RSA some day and hunt behind a fence again and I doubt it will bother me. I will also go back and hunt another country where fences aren�t there too. My suggestion is to go and enjoy the hunting and admit some of it was just shooting. You will have a great time and start planning your return as you fly back to the states.

Scott

Hidy Scott. I really enjoyed your article. I trust your trip home was uneventful as our's was. We are all caught up on things here and writing about Africa. I'll get you off a CD this week and please share with Bill. We had a great time and are glad to have new friends in Indiana. I hope your gemsbok is in the book when I figure out to access it! Jack Cross

Jack,

Welcome to the campfire. Yes our trip home was fine except for a minor equimpment failure that put us an hour behind and made us miss our connection in D.C.

I was testing my skills with photobucket. A proper report will come, just now. I have to make sure the Dino and the impala story makes it into the ether of the internet. Enough for now, I don't want to hijack this fine thread.

Scott