Africa

on his hunt in 2017. In 2018, he took a Cape Buffalo so his hunt was probably closer to $20,000. Two of my guys went in 2017 and they each spent around $7500 plus airfare. Airfare is between $1200 and $1500. Two of my guys this past April spent well over $20,000 each. I took 4 animals, including the largest free range Cape Buffalo ever taken with a handgun, plus 3 other hard to find animals like Lechwe, Bontebok, and a Tsessebe and my hunt was a lot higher than any of my previous safaris. So your hunt is whatever you want to spend, Each animal is priced separately. Some animals are as low as $550, some like Elephant or Rhino as high as $150,000. In the packet I send out to the guys going on the hunt, the prices are all listed. The daily rates are just the basis of a hunt. In other words if you didn't shoot anything, you don't owe anything except your daily rates. The daily rate is $400 per day which includes your PH, your trackers, your skinners, your room and food, pretty much everything. That works out to a bit over $3000, half of it is due on signing up, the rest several months later. On our next April hunt the half of the daily rate was due when they signed up, the last half in February.

The taxidermy is up to you. You don't have to have regular mounts. My guys each had European mounts, just the skull and horns on a plaque. Plus if you decide to go with the taxidermy, they will e-mail you about a month after we get back for a deposit and the rest is due when the mounts are done, usually 8 months or so later.

When we get back from the hunt about 2 or 3 weeks later, we get a bill for the animals we took. So it is not due when we are over there.

If you sign up for this next hunt next April you owe half of the daily rate now and the other half in February.

Spending more than they think. You may never get there again and if you are seeing a lot of good animals you may want to not pinch pennies with your budget so much. I found it unrealistic to be overly disciplined. Yeah, you may want a cheap blesbok, but what if there aren’t many great ones but the eland are huge? Give yourself some flexibility or you may worry away your trip instead of enjoying it.

That the trophy fee list is just a list. Most but not all the animals on it are available in every area. There are lots of game but it’s not a supermarket. That’s probably why Gary asks what animals you are interested in. Warthogs were hard to come by in our area as one example. That may change your calculations. When in doubt ask first.