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Will,

I think the difference between the areas bordering SA Parks and places like TZ etc is that the SA park animals are incredibly habituated to vehicles as they probably see dozens if not hundreds of vehicles every day.......in the more remote parks they probably don't see that many in a week or a month. I've had plenty of experiences in the KNP for example where you park the car and the animal will come and sniff at the door/window in the hope it's going to fed.......that must mean that some tourists (regularly?) slip food out of a slightly open window.......I've never seen that behaviour in the more remote parks such as Serengeti etc.

I won't go into the SA Elephant hunting situation too much, as it's too complicated a subject, but it's nothing like most other places in Africa. You can almost walk up to a KNP Elephant (for example) with a brass band playing and slap it on the ass with a cricket bat.......and you know how different that is to a truly wild Elephant, or a Selous Elephant that's come across from a photographic area.

.........But you're dead right when you say that the amount you spend on a hunt often has a direct affect on the rate of success........ I appreciate that there's a lot of guys out there who really have to stretch their finances to get here at all, but at the end of the day if you don't spend enough money, you won't get anything like the same results as you would get if you spent a few dollars more......as I've said before, you pay peanuts - you get monkeys.......and there's at least as many predators in the African hunting industry as there are in the bush!

John,

I guess it all depends on the outfitter and on the country the hunt takes place in.

We wouldn't accept that deal, and have never been asked to do so, but the vast majority of DG hunts we offer are in True Wilderness Areas and we're fortunate enough to have been in the business for enough years (and worked hard enough) to have built up a good enough reputation for clients to trust us.......But I don't think it's an unreasonable request for a Leopard hunt in SA.

I get so pissed off at the DG hunting situation here it's not true!........and yet so many people are dumb enough to believe they're actually getting a wild hunt. Like I said, one should try not to take too much at face value in Africa.

--------------------
Steve "Shakari" Robinson
Kuduland Safaris (Africa) Ltd
info@kuduland.com
www.kuduland.com

Edited by shakari (02/02/05 04:45 AM)