SA PH's and Outitters- How does the game breeding affect your hunting business?

This question might have been asked before but I would like to hear some comment from our Outfitters in SA.

The game breeding situation in South Africa seems to spin everything out of control.
How are you affected by this, I am loosing the one concession after the other, land owners are calling me and telling me they are not going to hunt this year as they have decided to sell live game to the capturing companies.
What is happening in your area.
Things are out of control.


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Bossie,

This is a very good topic.

The way things are going now - the breeding industry is slowly but surely busy tying a noose around the neck of the hunting industry and in the long run this is not going to benefit anyone - not the Client, not us as Outfitters and not the Game Breeders.

Who is at the end of the day going to be the end user of all these animals that are being bred and sold on auction? In theory it should be us hunters but no Hunter in his right mind will pay these insane amounts of money...

And then I'm not even talking about the "freaks" that are being bred... Golden Wildebeest... Black Impala... Etc, etc...

I've had a few landowners pull that crap of "stopping hunting and concentrating on breeding" on me. And I've had one or two telling me that I'm welcome to continue hunting their properties but I had to pay auction prices for animals harvested... Interestingly enough; some of these very same landowners contacted me a year later and begged me to start hunting their properties again...

I do believe they both have there place but it is getting crazy with all the colored animals. I just know the game breeders better realize when prices get to high the market will fail . After all without hunters who can afford to hunt the animals the value will not be the same.

I hate the whole game breeding stuff..................in the end I agree with Chris no one is going to win.

I can't speak from a PH / Outfitters point of view, but I can as a paying client. Would I pay a bit extra for a copper springbok, maybe if the trophy quality was also there. Would I pay 4 or 5 times, maybe even more for one of these color variants? No I wouldn't and heck no if it's of poor trophy quality.

would love to be down there with some of our animals coining it, or if we were based there i would be involved in the breeding business , as it would be rude not to relieve some of these people of their loot at the auctions. give it 4 or so years when the market is saturated, and the players with the money have all the coloured stock they need and cant find any more people in the market , then it will go pop, bang ooohhhhhhh shit...........

I think Phil is right on. At the end of the day I'm not paying say $4000 to shoot any impala regardless of trophy quality or color. And that goes for many of the color variant animals. On my last trip I heard my PH and one of the property owners discussing this very issue. The property owner has hunting but is also raising a big herd of Sable as well. With nearly 100 sable in the bush he is now ready to sell the excess off to other farms or for the hunt. Not sure how long it took to get to that place where he can now sell excess animals but he has still hunted the property all along for other animals. I'm sure this process will work out in the long run based on demand. The farmers should be careful as I see this as the classic bubble! At some point we will all find out the demand is not as great as thought and the numbers of people in the business thus supply will be higher the demand and the the price fall follows in short order. I just hope a lot of the property owners don't get hurt in the process by putting everything in one basket so yo speak!

This monster will ruin SA hunting and the only way to stop this is for the hunter to refuse to shoot these freaks and for SCI and R W to not put entries of this nature in the record book..I'm sure RW will not ,SCI I'm not sure of ,a money making racket IMO . the breeders of these freaks will lose money in the end and with it ,our reputation which unfortunately is already a bit shaky .

This whole issue has already started cutting out many local biltong hunters in SA and unfortunately, the Outfitters and international client market will be close on their heels if something drastic isn't done soon.

I receive numerous inquiries from locals looking for hunts because owners are moving away from hunting to either supply the breeders with new blood or breed these color variant or scarce animals themselves. The owners seem to have forgotten that the Locals are the guys that have been their bread and Butter in the past and are now only seeing $$$$ for an animal that has no "real value" in the market.

WHO WANTS TO HUNT A BLACK IMPALA, GOLDEN WILDEBEEST OR ANY OTHER WEAK LINK IN THE CHAIN FOR THE CURRENT ASKING PRICE???

Regards

Loodt I could not agree less.......
I believe that it will have a extremely negative effect on our biodiversity in the long run which inturn will affect the hunting industry badly

The hunting industry is but a small part out wildlife heritage is my major concern.

Intensive breeding (which is the current system) has very little to virtually zero conservation value, it is about making the money.
We can not pawn it of as conservation when sterile land scapes are created, (de bushed, de warthoged, de jackal'ed, de hyena'd, de any other game'd, ) so that one specie can flourish in an artificial environment. In many cases these species are not even native to South Africa, Zambian sable (sorry spike! ) East African buffalo, Livingston Eland, and these stupid color variants (including spring buck).

Active operational Eco systems are broken up and converted into "sterile"camps (average of 5 - 20 acres in 90 % + cases). Animals in such camps lose their natural resiliance to ticks and other diseases and become domesticated. Hence the constant darting and involvement of "wild life vets" (but a pet vet)

It is a major issue which we need to confront otherwise I see serious problems down the line.

My best always

Arc Africa Hunting Safaris said:

This whole issue has already started cutting out many local biltong hunters in SA and unfortunately, the Outfitters and international client market will be close on their heels if something drastic isn't done soon.

I receive numerous inquiries from locals looking for hunts because owners are moving away from hunting to either supply the breeders with new blood or breed these color variant or scarce animals themselves. The owners seem to have forgotten that the Locals are the guys that have been their bread and Butter in the past and are now only seeing $$$$ for an animal that has no "real value" in the market.

WHO WANTS TO HUNT A BLACK IMPALA, GOLDEN WILDEBEEST OR ANY OTHER WEAK LINK IN THE CHAIN FOR THE CURRENT ASKING PRICE???

Regards

Click to expand...

Are you then saying if they were less expensive you would offer them on your price list?
Just as an aside what do you think of the lion hunting offered here the only place I haven't seen offering lion is Cape Town. Cradock seems to produce lion like droewors

JJ Cale said:

This whole issue has already started cutting out many local biltong hunters in SA and unfortunately, the Outfitters and international client market will be close on their heels if something drastic isn't done soon.

I receive numerous inquiries from locals looking for hunts because owners are moving away from hunting to either supply the breeders with new blood or breed these color variant or scarce animals themselves. The owners seem to have forgotten that the Locals are the guys that have been their bread and Butter in the past and are now only seeing $$$$ for an animal that has no "real value" in the market.

WHO WANTS TO HUNT A BLACK IMPALA, GOLDEN WILDEBEEST OR ANY OTHER WEAK LINK IN THE CHAIN FOR THE CURRENT ASKING PRICE???

Regards
Are you then saying if they were less expensive you would offer them on your price list?
Just as an aside what do you think of the lion hunting offered here the only place I haven't seen offering lion is Cape Town. Cradock seems to produce lion like droewors

Click to expand...

The simple answer is NO, I wouldn't and I don't!

Please can you elaborate on your comment regarding the Lion - Do you think that Lion aren't native to all areas of SA?

Regards

Tootabi Hunting Safaris said:

Bottom line, have your own land and shoot your own animals as far as possible available.

The game breeding business is one of the best things that has ever hit South Africa. I am in the Outfitting and Breeding industries, and I absolutely bank roll because of the breeding of animals. Currently breeding of animals is also more profitable than Trophy Hunting - however all my surplus are available for hunting.

Click to expand...

Loodt all I am saying and I will say it tomorrow and the day after.
If it wasn't for hunters national and international game farmers would not have been where they are today.

It might be a good market for you now but what are breeders going to do when the market collapse??
Offer the animals to the hunters they refused to help just because they had a better market at the time???

You well know the answer to your question ,but they were not enclosed In 4000 /0 acres,
Where there lechwe and waterbuck in Bedford in years gone bye or sable for that matter

JJ Cale said:

You well know the answer to your question ,but they were not enclosed In 4000 /0 acres,
Where there lechwe and waterbuck in Bedford in years gone bye or sable for that matter

Click to expand...

This issue is a lot more complicated than that but it boils down to us, Mankind and the pressure we put on the environment with the rapid growth and demand for food etc.

After all is said and done, we are responsible for the conservation of our natural resources and if that means that some alien animals are found where never previously or that Lions must be in a controlled environment (for their ultimate preservation) for the safety of others then who are we to judge. We can only work with the guidelines that are given to us and try to and preserve the natural resources we have been blessed with (not in a zoo) .

This thread is about the cost of certain species, the availability of species and species that are being breed for their abnormalities and not a Waterbuck in Bedford or Black Wildebeest in Ellisras.

If an animal is recognized by nature conservation as a game animal, protected specie, specially protected specie or alien specie then there is a place for them. Where are these others classified? I think RW and SCI acknowledge Black Spring buck but I'm not sure of the rest. Maybe you or somebody else can help with this?

Regards

Greed has a way bring everyone down. I'm not against breeding native animals to the area...but the color freaks I have a big problem with............

It's just a zoo.

The ultimate answers on the color variants is going to end up being somewhere in the middle. They are going to be here but the ridiculous prices and all the emphasis on them will wane over time.

I took the opening question to be more related to game breeding and prices getting out of hand in general than specific to color variants.

Every bubble bursts when over inflated.. And that has to happen to this. Those who have pointed out that there must ultimately be an end user market are right on with that conclusion. Ask yourself who is paying these high auction prices? I assume it is game breeders wanting that stock to breed and sell to other game breeders... There is no long term sensible market plan there.

Ultimately that market will be saturated and the market left will be to hunters and for the meat. Then the shoe will be on the other foot and I hope all you Outfitters remember which farmers/breeders kept working with you and which ones left you hanging.

As a customer of your industry, I will only pay so much.... I have a whole World of opportunity out there to go to. I am sure I will enjoy hunting other parts of the World. I am already considering Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, and Alaska with it's current over population of bears and other predators. There is also Canada and a whole lot of opportunity in the good old USA.

RSA has to realize there is a lot of competition in other African Countries as well. It quickly becomes more attractive to pay the high daily fees of some places like Zimbabwe and even Tanzenia to be able to offset that with relatively low trophy fees.

All the above will work to lower demand for the base product, the hunt... At the same time that RSA is increasing the supply of animals.

I see the hunting and game breeding industries in RSA as being prime examples of Capitalism at work, and in a Capitalist system, when profits get too high, the market will always find a way to supply it to the point of oversupply and bring about a lowering of prices. In the end the consumer always wins and the business' with the best combination of the lowest cost of production and highest service will survive and even thrive. Many will not.