Dart hunting Rhino & Elephant and indeed other species is nothing new ------but don't knock it till you've tried it. It's very exciting indeed and in my opinion a more sporting hunt in areas such as mentioned in the article.

It's never a good idea to generalise about anything in Africa but at the risk of doing just that:-

These are basically park Elephants & they're very habituated to vehicles and to a lesser extent to people on foot. If you hunt them with a rifle they'll obviously stand and look at you until you get close to their flight zone (which is small because they're park Elephants) and at that range they're easily shootable. To dart them you have to cross their sight zone & their flight zone unnoticed and then get into their fight zone which is not so easy and not so safe.....There's a BIG difference between the normal behaviour of a park Elephant compared to an Elephant that lives in a True Wilderness Area.

As to cost, you can about double the price mentioned for a good quality camp and area and a properly managed dart hunt. A large part of that cost goes to insurance policies, having a chopper on standby for the duration of the hunt in case you lose track of the darted animal (for example if an Elephant goes down on his chest he dies very quickly) and having the animal monitored for about 3 days or so after the hunt, in case of any problems........