Hunting closures

So what is the state of africa right now.

2012 botswana admits to the world that they are officially ignorant and are shutting down the concessions within 20km of their parks which in essence is the same as banning most hunting with the exception of high fence area.

2013. this year it appears that zambia, for the most part, is about to ban hunting all together except for communal or highfenced properties? In addition lion and leopard hunting will be ban throught the entire country????

Finally, zimbabwe will not be allowing hounds to be used on leopards for any reason after this year????


I'm usually not one to jump straight to buying an assault rifle when obama tries to ban them but when were talking about the price of lions and leopards going through the roof from lack of tags and opportunity and the fact I may never be able to hunt cats with hounds again, I do get a little jumpy.

For this reason I did purchase a leopard hunt with hounds for this year and now Im thinking a lion hunt is either now or never.

For all you africans out there where do we stand? I know we don't have facts, as the african leadership is more vague than obama is when it comes to killing his own people in bengazi, but what can you tell us to your best knowledg? where are we at in refrence to loosing or gaining serious hunting rights in these and other african countries?

Tony,

I'm not african but from what i'm seeing and hearing....i'd take your lion now.

It's not the PH's faults, they have no control over the government, the animal rights or "greenies" are running wild. The days of hunting the Big 5 are in the final days. I'm sure rhino hunting and lion hunting will be done, with leopard next on the list.

Tony the only thing anyone knows for sure at this time is that no one knows for sure at this time. Per your last sentence, we never had "hunting rights" anywhere in Africa. Its a privelege and opportunity for us.

Hi Tap,
I'm afraid that this whole African hunting closure push is nothing more than a matter of perspective. We, as the traveling international sportsman are not a large demographic. We number about 10,000 souls per year. I do not pretend to know how many photographic, tourist's there are. If these governments think that they can produce more income by photo safari's, then their perception is their reality and we have a problem.

Conservation is a whole secondary issue, if they plan on producing anti poaching dollars with tourism dollars, that will need to be seen for me to believe it. Remember, who we are dealing with.

For example, I hunted elephant in the Bots in NG41. After the Jumbo was dead, we went to Ivory camp in the Okavango delta for Lechwe and Tsessebe (sp). The camp manager, a beautiful young South African woman, was telling me what kind of money people pay to stay in these camp as tourist's. Some of these daily rates are 2,500. We can't compete with that. If a camp has one hunter in it, for ten days and his entire hunt is 50K, including everything and a photo camp has say just 4 tourist in it at 2,500 per day, you do the math.

The other side of our argument, the Green's, tourist's, whatever are well funded, well organized and most importantly the are cohesive in their efforts. We as sportsmen tend to fracture into smaller groups and there is way too much infighting. Just look at forum's, I left one of the "others" because of all the pissing match's, infighting and cliques. If all that energy went into one finely pinpointed effort, we would stand a fighting chance.

But yeah, I would go now.

Just my thoughts.

Tap, do all you can today, we never know what s in store tomorrow !

tap

you should have been at the SCI banquet last night.

a female lion or hippo hunt went for $500...
You had to pay the daily fees of 500 a day for 10 days.

a person at our table purchased 2 hunts one to Africa and one to Argentina.

Interesting a new twist is that i saw for the first time is that hunts could not be piggy backed together...as we have seen some parties do in the past.

thanks for the heads up. You know I only live 3 hours from you. I coulda done that hunt after my leopard hunt in may. You really need to pm me next time theres gonna be a sci banquet near me with actual hunts going for sale. Our sci banquet in roswell nm sucks. Its the same ol garbage we get every year. 5 to 7 day hunts are donated and all you get are daily rates for plains game. No trophy fees other than a warthog or impala and definitely nothing worth writing home about. I'd flip to bid on a lioness that wasn't in reno or vegas. let me know next year when your banquet is an I will come visit you.

Tony
I sat in various meetings with parks etc in Zimbabwe and they have NOT made a firm decision on hound hunting in Zimbabwe, from the sources in parks, we can still offer hound hunting for leopard for the foreseeable future. No date on a ban has been set despite discussions about a possible closure.

Cheers

Mart