CloudySkies
AH senior member
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2025
- Messages
- 65
- Reaction score
- 87
- Member of
- RMEF, NAPF, SCI
- Hunted
- USA (MT, WY, MI, ND), Australia
It Begins
This will be a journal of my first trip to Africa, and reflects on my experiences hunting with Matwetwe Safaris in the Limpopo Region of RSA. For those of you who prefer a shorter read I'm going to provide a set of cliff notes, but as is my preference, I'll provide a more detailed report.
Summary:
A summary of what happens when a transplant Australian decides to hunt Africa, buys an auction hunt (had met the outfitter), second guesses himself and eventually decides to go ahead despite work doing its best to interfere with the trip timing.
Day -1:
Its a day before I fly to Johannesburg, so thought I'd lay down some preliminary thoughts. I wasn’t an early onset hunter, though fished throughout my childhood and had the occasional hunt back in Australia (rabbits and pigs mostly). I’ve dreamed of hunting in Africa since I was a lad, reading Wilbur Smith and later many of the classic safari authors, and was closing quickly on booking a hunt in early 2025 for 2026. I was split over the thought of taking the easier route in RSA, or going a little more ambitious with somewhere like Namibia, inspired by the journals of WMU05 among others (as I'd been reading this site), but I have a tendency to overthink my decisions, so makes me slow to move.
Attempting to do my due diligence and wanting to meet a PH in person to discuss potential concerns I visited an SCI Convention which is held close – I researched each of the outfits that were going to be there and noted there would be an auction but was reluctant to take that route. There I talked with several companies, and immediately got along with two of them (and definitely didn’t with 3 others), and one of them was Matwetwe Safaris. Harm, the PH (and son of the owner) was fantastic, and helped walk me through the basics, and was able to answer a bunch of more challenging questions I had as my wife has dietary limitations and needs the right type of guide, which it turned out Harm actually fit nicely (learned from experience on prior North American adventures). I talked about an interest going for a Kudu, talked through the package pricing, and knew what the trophy fee looked like, which while somewhat on the higher side was consistent with what else I was seeing.
I walked away with an information packet, and with the plan to contact them after the convention after I’d done some more research to start making comparisons. Their prices were slightly on the higher side, but still within the bounds of reasonable (2025 pricing). Then came the auction, and so I watched curiously as they worked through the list, noting which outfits had packages that went unsold (no surprises the ones I didn’t gel with weren’t popular), and seeing one of the other Matwetwe hunts raise a good amount of money along with the other outfitter I was looking at. Then an item came up that attracted no bids, a hunt from Matwetwe for night critters, something that my wife had expressed interest in our prior discussions. At $500 I felt that it wasn’t reasonable for someone not to make at least a bid at the donated hunt, and while I got bid up a few hundred more, I walked away with a week hunt for two, a few included animals that my wife had expressed interest in and having made a decent donation to SCI, which would offset the higher trophy fees in balance. Harm excitedly came to me afterward and we sorted out the required deposit, and I felt good about it all. A brief email exchange and we had dates for August 2026.
I then afterwards had a slight panic that maybe I had made a mistake and read horror stories of auctions (not recommended to look at after auction purchases). I looked up everything about Matwetwe that I could find, contacted references, and read widely including prior posts here by toyotatundra and MarkinMI and felt somewhat reassured that I'd picked a good outfitter until I started to plan last August about what I might be interested in taking and posted here. It was then that I ran down the slippery slope of comparing to other companies prices, and comparing the 2026 prices to outfitters here on AH, I got quite the sticker shock as they had risen substantively. I reached out to the outfitter to discuss potentially working something out for my species of interest, but the reply left me thinking that a Kudu had slipped off to a future trip. In some ways I prefer that, as I'd like that hunt to be more focused and a challenge, and I'm working with some of the outfitters here on AH to plan that next year.
Eventually, after a lot of umming and ahhing, I decided to go ahead with the trip, and just curtailing my plans to some of the reasonably priced animals while balancing the donated hunt price (as I understand the PHs position). And then we had someone in the family be diagnosed with cancer, and it looked like I’d be traveling alone…fortunately that resolved for the best, and the wife is able to join me for the trip. We’ve decided to the trip will be a ‘first taste of Africa’ and put a lot less pressure on the hunting aspect of the trip, do a couple of side trips and enjoy ourselves staying at some really nice accommodation. For me the hunt has a lot to do with the environment and experience, so moving away from focusing solely on the hunt will make the trip more enjoyable.
Work of course then decided to schedule a conference that I can't avoid right smack bang at the start of my trip, and thereby shortened my plans by a couple of days (while also adding some crazy flight logistics), and with no way to push the trip backwards (outfitter conflict) and another work trip cropping up, it meant that we'd be in RSA for a week. Flights for this summer were somewhat painful, but we managed to land some decent premium economy seats via United and secured the business upgrade on points. Inbound is GRR-EWR-JNB and we leave tomorrow!
Species that we will be targeting include a Steenbuck, Common Duiker, Genet, Jackal, Impala, but beyond that I've got a priority list - a Bushbuck or Nyala, Wilderbeest or a Springbok might be potential targets - we'll see what the bush provides.
This will be a journal of my first trip to Africa, and reflects on my experiences hunting with Matwetwe Safaris in the Limpopo Region of RSA. For those of you who prefer a shorter read I'm going to provide a set of cliff notes, but as is my preference, I'll provide a more detailed report.
Summary:
A summary of what happens when a transplant Australian decides to hunt Africa, buys an auction hunt (had met the outfitter), second guesses himself and eventually decides to go ahead despite work doing its best to interfere with the trip timing.
Day -1:
Its a day before I fly to Johannesburg, so thought I'd lay down some preliminary thoughts. I wasn’t an early onset hunter, though fished throughout my childhood and had the occasional hunt back in Australia (rabbits and pigs mostly). I’ve dreamed of hunting in Africa since I was a lad, reading Wilbur Smith and later many of the classic safari authors, and was closing quickly on booking a hunt in early 2025 for 2026. I was split over the thought of taking the easier route in RSA, or going a little more ambitious with somewhere like Namibia, inspired by the journals of WMU05 among others (as I'd been reading this site), but I have a tendency to overthink my decisions, so makes me slow to move.
Attempting to do my due diligence and wanting to meet a PH in person to discuss potential concerns I visited an SCI Convention which is held close – I researched each of the outfits that were going to be there and noted there would be an auction but was reluctant to take that route. There I talked with several companies, and immediately got along with two of them (and definitely didn’t with 3 others), and one of them was Matwetwe Safaris. Harm, the PH (and son of the owner) was fantastic, and helped walk me through the basics, and was able to answer a bunch of more challenging questions I had as my wife has dietary limitations and needs the right type of guide, which it turned out Harm actually fit nicely (learned from experience on prior North American adventures). I talked about an interest going for a Kudu, talked through the package pricing, and knew what the trophy fee looked like, which while somewhat on the higher side was consistent with what else I was seeing.
I walked away with an information packet, and with the plan to contact them after the convention after I’d done some more research to start making comparisons. Their prices were slightly on the higher side, but still within the bounds of reasonable (2025 pricing). Then came the auction, and so I watched curiously as they worked through the list, noting which outfits had packages that went unsold (no surprises the ones I didn’t gel with weren’t popular), and seeing one of the other Matwetwe hunts raise a good amount of money along with the other outfitter I was looking at. Then an item came up that attracted no bids, a hunt from Matwetwe for night critters, something that my wife had expressed interest in our prior discussions. At $500 I felt that it wasn’t reasonable for someone not to make at least a bid at the donated hunt, and while I got bid up a few hundred more, I walked away with a week hunt for two, a few included animals that my wife had expressed interest in and having made a decent donation to SCI, which would offset the higher trophy fees in balance. Harm excitedly came to me afterward and we sorted out the required deposit, and I felt good about it all. A brief email exchange and we had dates for August 2026.
I then afterwards had a slight panic that maybe I had made a mistake and read horror stories of auctions (not recommended to look at after auction purchases). I looked up everything about Matwetwe that I could find, contacted references, and read widely including prior posts here by toyotatundra and MarkinMI and felt somewhat reassured that I'd picked a good outfitter until I started to plan last August about what I might be interested in taking and posted here. It was then that I ran down the slippery slope of comparing to other companies prices, and comparing the 2026 prices to outfitters here on AH, I got quite the sticker shock as they had risen substantively. I reached out to the outfitter to discuss potentially working something out for my species of interest, but the reply left me thinking that a Kudu had slipped off to a future trip. In some ways I prefer that, as I'd like that hunt to be more focused and a challenge, and I'm working with some of the outfitters here on AH to plan that next year.
Eventually, after a lot of umming and ahhing, I decided to go ahead with the trip, and just curtailing my plans to some of the reasonably priced animals while balancing the donated hunt price (as I understand the PHs position). And then we had someone in the family be diagnosed with cancer, and it looked like I’d be traveling alone…fortunately that resolved for the best, and the wife is able to join me for the trip. We’ve decided to the trip will be a ‘first taste of Africa’ and put a lot less pressure on the hunting aspect of the trip, do a couple of side trips and enjoy ourselves staying at some really nice accommodation. For me the hunt has a lot to do with the environment and experience, so moving away from focusing solely on the hunt will make the trip more enjoyable.
Work of course then decided to schedule a conference that I can't avoid right smack bang at the start of my trip, and thereby shortened my plans by a couple of days (while also adding some crazy flight logistics), and with no way to push the trip backwards (outfitter conflict) and another work trip cropping up, it meant that we'd be in RSA for a week. Flights for this summer were somewhat painful, but we managed to land some decent premium economy seats via United and secured the business upgrade on points. Inbound is GRR-EWR-JNB and we leave tomorrow!
Species that we will be targeting include a Steenbuck, Common Duiker, Genet, Jackal, Impala, but beyond that I've got a priority list - a Bushbuck or Nyala, Wilderbeest or a Springbok might be potential targets - we'll see what the bush provides.
