Beulah was a great place. We and the friends I've taken over took a LOT of game off that place. Trouble was it's so close to town the owner (Helmke Von Bach) started having a huge poaching problem. He tried a lot of nighttime anti-poaching patrols etc. They did catch a couple of guys and shot a few dogs (legal to shoot the dogs but not the poachers), but he local police/courts just gave them wrist slaps or dropped the charges. So, about 2016/2017 he started culling everything starting on the areas closet to Kamanjab. When my wife and I took our personal trip to Nam in 2017, he had organized cull permits for I don't know how many head of black w/b, red h/b, zebra and gemsbok and since he "knew" us, he asked us if we'd come and shoot "all you can shoot - everything. And we spent two weeks doing just that. Jan, my wife and I were in one truck and Helmke had organized his workers to be in another one picking them up and hauling back to the skinning shed for processing.
Bud, if you hunted his property on the N side of C40, you likely sat in the blind next to the big boulder at the main water hole. Just to give an idea of the numbers game we culled during that time, in just one morning and just one herd of red h/b that came to drink, with the three of us shooting, we dropped an entire small herd of 9 red h/b right there in under 60 sec., literally. Wife and I were in the blind and Jan was sitting behind some bushes maybe 20m to our right. With the shots echoing off the rocks from different directions, when the first shots went off, they had no idea which way to run and just kind of milled about. Jan was trying to get the workers on the phone as they were late and I had 7 of the 9 field dressed before they finally showed up.
One of the coolest things I've seen is during that trip, Helmke had organized a live game capture and sold a LOT of zebra, gemsbok and blue w/b. The crew came in and located a natural choke point between two large kopjes. They ran heavy cables about 10-12 ft high for over nearly a kilometer or more thru the mopane trees and hung heavy canvas on the cables and created this huge funnel. Then, every couple of hundred meters they hung more cables across the "funnel" with sliding canvas hung from these cables. As the game was driven into the funnel, as the passed these cross cabled areas, workers would close the curtains behind them. The wide open end of the funnel was nearly half to three quarters of a kilometer across. The end with the loading shoot didn't really have a holding pen. The narrowing funnel with the sequentially closing curtains behind the entering game was intended to keep them moving. The chute was camouflaged over so that to the game, it looked like an avenue for escape that ended up in the semi-truck. It took them several days to get the entire thing set up. In the mean time, we were busy "making meat".
The day they started capturing game the capture company owner flies in with a souped up Robinson R22 helicopter. We talk to him for a bit and then we head for a kopje outside the funnel and about halfway between the opening and the loading chute. From that vantage point we could see the entire valley. For the next several hours I witnessed the most amazing flying I have ever seen. He'd circle way out to one side of the valley on the other side of the kopjes, just high enough above to see over them and spot a small herd of whatever. He'd then continue well out past them and would start zig zagging back and forth driving them into the funnel. A LOT of this time was at or sometimes even BELOW the treetops. What he could get that little chopper to do was absolutely astonishing. I almost thought he could actually try to fly it inverted. When he made a fuel stop, I mentioned that to him. He, said that was how he ended up with this new one! (LOL)
The "trick" was not to get too large of a group. If the plan was for a load of gemsbok, he would only try to get maybe a 15-20 at a time so they wouldn't over crowd the loading shoot and the key was to keep them moving toward it but not so fast they were in panic mode. When they were getting a truck load of gemsbok, as they went up the chute, workers would shove lengths of rubber tubing over their horns to keep them from spearing/injuring themselves and each other fighting the truck. This would repeat itself until the truck was full of one specific species and off it would go immediately to the buyers farm, wherever, and up would pull another truck. This went on for nearly two full days. We only watched for that one morning, but could hear the chopper working most of the time. I think Helmke said they took a total of 5-6 semi loads of zebra, gemsbok and blue w/b. He said that red h/b have a very low survival rate due primarily to the stress and weren't worth the time/expense to sell/move. This was in 2017 and he did this several more times in different areas of his property over the next two years.
When he found out we were coming back in 2019, he asked if we'd come and cull some more. We could "shoot everything we see" and he'd just have to organize the culling permit from the govt. In Namibia, the land owners own all the game that is on their property. They can shoot all the game they want for personal consumption for themselves and their workers, BUT they can't transport it, sell it live or as meat to the butchery without a govt permit. Unfortunately, in 2019 the drought was at it's worst pretty much nation wide. The farmers were dumping any and all of their barely surviving cattle. Even the couple of dairy operations up in the NE near the Caprivi Strip were selling dairy cows as there was just nothing for them to eat and the cost of buying in feed from other countries was just too expensive. So, the govt was limited/restricting the number of culled game that could be allowed to market for meat as it would drive down the already tanked beef prices. So, in the end, he was only able to get a permit for six zebra.
As it turned out, between the drought, Helmke's live game sales and the previous several years of culling, it took us two full days on his property to get just those six. I think in those two full days, we maybe saw half a dozen gemsbok, a couple of steinbok and maybe a dozen zebra and not even many fresh game tracks.
In one way, Helmke's experience kind of proves the old African saying, "If it pays, it stays".
The other farm "Orpheus" was hit hard too. Nice property and Danie and his family run a great operation too. Like Beulah, Orpheus is all high fence and like all high and low fence places, had water for the animals to drink, just not enough rain to provide forage to eat.
While all this info I've posted on NW Namibia may sound like all doom and gloom it isn't. The endemic/native game species to the western and north western Kalahari desert are still there and they are available but you will have to work for them. Most of the farms all over the NW region that operate as some or entirely high fence and buy in non-native species have been hit hardest while those low fence/free range farms, like Jan's and others, were impacted, they still do have native/endemic western Kalahari species. I'm simply trying to prove a fare and accurate assessment. I'm not going to tell prospective clients to go and have an expectation of taking 10 trophy species in 10-days if any of those species are only found on bought in (put and take) high fence farms RIGHT NOW.
Again, as I've said, multiple times. I LOVE Namibia and especially those mountains in the NW. Jan and Mariesje are like extended family to me, but I'm not going to paint a rosier picture than reality has on the ground right now. Even the warthog and baboon have just about vanished. If someone goes with the idea of targeting specific regional/endemic/native species, like leopard, spotted hyena, mountain zebra, gemsbok, steinbok, duiker, damara dik-dik, klipspringer and maybe even a cheetah (shootable but not exportable/importable), they will have a good, hard hunt with a very reasonable expectation of success.
I'm very hopeful the recent rains will help turn the corner. Jan said that after that rain came thru in the pics above the temps have been low enough to require a coat which is very unusual for "mid summer". Could mean more rain on the way. I'm keeping everything crossable crossed and even some things not normally crossable.
