I was visiting some non hunting friends of mine this weekend in Alabama, and the question came up

“Ivan you are so passionate about elephants , how can you hunt them “ the answer is , I don’t know , and I am going to make a clumsy attempt , not to justify this , but simply to try and explain ..

Have you ever sat next to a campfire deep in the bush , your back cold , your legs and front hot , its day six , you have walked at least 6 hours a day for the last week , you have seen and been among wild elephants every day , some have mock charged , some have smelt you and you haven’t been able to catch them again, some, everything has been perfect bit they have been too young , or broken tusked or whatever the case may be … the point is , most people who hunt Africa have had these experiences , its not uncommon to see the camp in daylight for the first time after day 7!! You are out at first light, back after dark and go to bed dog tired and satisfied …

Its hard to find this anywhere else …and I will truly say , its not about the killing , its about the hunting its about getting all the many moving parts to come together perfectly …the wind , the footsteps , the trackers , the terrain , where the boundaries are , the herd size , the water points and spring lines …its all there to be worked and pieced together… you get to know an animal so well , as an individual , or as a species when you pursue that animal…

One of my best buddies in the world , Keith Holcomb and I have spent countless hours in the bush together , both simply game viewing in places like Manna Pools in Zimbabwe , the Serengeti in Tanzania , and hunting , we have hunted a lot together, be it turkeys with bow and arrow on his ranch in Florida, or Kudu in Zimbabwe, guinea fowl with pointers in south Africa or snipe in the everglades …we have had many hunting days where we don’t see what we were after , or saw what we wanted and couldn’t get to it , or had the birds get up and simply missed !!!! Yet I can’t say we have had a single unsuccessful day …

For my whole working life I have been in the bush, either guiding game viewing or hunting …. Without a great appreciation for the birds and trees and “non target species” you lose some of the experience of the hunt, and likewise hunting a particular animal setting out with a specific goal, not just a general game drive or walk where its purely chance if you see what you are after adds a certain spice to the day...

Some of my dearest memories have been in non hunting environments , sitting for hours in a herd of elephants in a park watching them and trailing them , writing while a cheetah makes up its mind which gazelle to target as we watch …all great experiences ..

It’s hard not to ramble on and on … I guess for me personally, one is nothing without the other …I need both hunting and simply looking …

I work hard in the field to locate highly reputable people who have high ethics and we work hard to provide our clientele with the real hunting experience…the miles of walking , the uncertainties and the adventure .

I cant justify a hunter and I am not going to try however I can justify hunting ..

Many parts of Africa where gameviewing is marginal , from the perspective of lack of species …take Botswana for example , some of the hunting concessions there are 2 million acres , flat mopane scrub with hundreds of elephants …12 bulls a year are taken ,in areas wher at any time there can be over 2000 individual animals . raising 600 000 dollars …with the Okavango nearby nobody would be in these areas gameviewing and so without the economics of hunting , they would soon be home to villages and cattle ….

The carcass is used in its entirety…an elephant bull will provide villagers with 4000 pounds of protein , that’s just in good meat …add to that the organs and bones boiled for soup and you can feed several hundred people !

Click here to download a .pdf document on Florida from 2006.

Lets look at ducks unlimited …millions of dollars are spent each year preserving and reclaiming wetlands …so that people can hunt ducks …in the end millions of acres of wetland that were formerly destroyed or unusable are recreated …and the ducks thrive …

Getting back to Africa …40% of the wild populations of elephant are currently living outside of protected areas … animals in conflict with people always lose and so if there is no value to this population, they have no future …I marginal areas it’s the hunters that give these animals value.

In south Africa , thanks to hunters , hundreds of thousands of sheep farms and cropping areas have been “high fenced”, game that was formerly naturally occurring there has been reintroduced and as a whole the country has more surface dedicated to wildlife today thanks to hunting than ten years ago …

Thanks to hunting , in South Africa , they have the only viable white rhino population in the world …last year (2007) several hundred were shot by sport hunters and with each one generating up to 100 000 dollars , this makes them highly valuable and many many ranchers have extensive breeding programmes … a mature rhino who is past his prime , past breeding and whose income will greatly enhance the quality of the breeding program.

The examples are numerous….

In closing let me say that I am passionate about Africa , about all things wild and remote and I work hard to maintain a high degree of ethics and in activities that I am part of in Africa …both hunting and photographic ….