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From my experiences, charges are a lot less common than the books and movies would have you believe......As far as I'm concerned part of the PHs job is to avoid putting the client in danger, so once an animal is wounded and running a "professional", Professional Hunter will wait for a while rather than go charging in after the him.

If you chase the animal immediatly after the shot he'll just keep moving (the same way as everywhere else in the world) and get increasingly pissed off, (and that's when accidents happen) if you wait for a while he'll generally move off a ways and then lie down somewhere. All the while he's doing that he's bleeding out and stiffening up............then a "professional" Professional Hunter will take up the spoor quietly and slowly and that's when a good hunting team will come into it's own.......it's never just the PH who is successful or otherwise at these times, it's the entire hunting team, working as just that......a team.

Once the animal is spotted it's always a good idea to approach the animal from behind if at all possible, even it it means circling round to do so. If he's facing away from you when you put in the next shot it means he'll either run away from you or if he turns to cme at you he'll give you more time for an additional shot or shots.

There's plenty of dangers out there without increasing them by acting stupidly......and all this grandstanding you see on the videos is (IMO) just stupidity. After all, only a stupid person would stand directly in front of the dangerous end of a wounded animal and chat to the client or the camera?........it's like looking down to barrel of a loaded rifle to see what you can see.

They're the rules I use and by using them, I doubt I get more that one or two really serious charge a year.......and I've only ever lost one wounded Buffalo and he was not much more than scratched across the withers.

Having said all that, there are occasional times when you get charged for no reason at all and from my experience this happens most with Rhino and Elephants.

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

Edited by shakari (08/01/05 05:33 PM)

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