African Safari 2012 - The update thread

[Rob]

Glad you liked the journal.  Happy to send the journal to anyone who would like it.   I just need an e-mail address.  I found a site that allows me to send large files easily.    I need to sit down and type up all the info on the taxidermy so I can call it done!

I seem to recall that mailing ammo is not kosher.  I'll have to check that out again as I'd rather do that than carry it.  Was thinking the same thing regarding the thermocell butane cartridges.  I am betting I cannot carry those on a plane either but I sure would like to have them while there!

[halflife65]

Rob, would you be able to mail your ammo to your outfitter in advance of the hunt? Then you could get confirmation of it's arrival before you leave. Just a thought, don't know much about mailing ammo overseas.

I thought that I read somewhere that you could mail the ammo but it had to be in some special carton (not the original), HAD to be the caliber of the rifle you plan on using (so no mailing your PH ammo - apparently that's been a problem in the past) and there is some limit to the number of rounds you can send - something like 80.  I might be confused with some other locale - I was also looking at Russia lately (not very seriously, just seeing what was available) - but I think that there are some rules around it.

[Rob]

I think those rules pertain to transport of ammo on the plane, not so much shipping.  (how for example would the verify the ammo you mail is for what you will be hunting with?)

I am pretty sure mailing ammo to most if not all African countries is a no-no.  That is something to check out at SCI in Reno end of the month!

[Rob]

Updated list of interview questions based on feedback from the hutning party.  I leave for Reno on Thuursday!

Contact:
Booth #
Concession name
Contact e-mail
Contact name
Contact phone
Contact web site
PH company name
PH name
Trip coordinator company name

DG rates:
How many days are minimum for a buffalo hunt?
Daily rate for Buffalo/PG
Daily Rate for a Buffalo/Sable/PG hunt
Daily rate for a Buffalo/Crocodile /PG hunt

DG Scope:
Do you have Crocodile?
Do you have Hippo?
PH to hunter ratio
What is the minimum # of days for a Buffalo/PG hunt?
What is the minimum # of days for a Buffalo/Sable/PG hunt?
What sort of vehicles are used when hunting DG?
What type of hunting do you do for Buffalo (stand/Car/Spot and stalk?)
What type of hunting do you do for Crocodile (stand/Car/Spot and stalk?)
What type of hunting do you do for Sable (stand/Car/Spot and stalk?)
How far are the shots for Leopard?
How far are the shots for Buffalo
What are the physical requirements for a Buffalo hunt?
What is the minimum # of days for a Buffalo/Crocodile/PG hunt?

Finance:
Are the rates quoted good for the 2012 year?
Are there any other fees we should know about not included in the daily rate?
Are there any Taxes to consider outside of the Daily rate?
Are there any transport fees of trophies post hunt?
Are there camp transfer fees?
Are arrival and departure days counted as hunting days?
How are arrival and departure days charged?

General Scope:
Accommodations Description
Camp perks
Can you support both buffalo hunters and PG hunters
Daily rates include PH, food, lodging, trackers, skinners, laundry, beverages, etc, correct?
General comments
How do you get from the airport to the camp?
How many hunters can you support?
What are the Firearms requirements for PG?
What are the sleeping arrangements?
What differentiates you from other outfitters in the area?
What is the best time of year to go?
What is your deposit process?
What kind of sleeping structures are we in?
When do hunts start?
Will we be the only party at camp?
Do you have space for 2DG & 4PG hunters in 2012?

Land:
How big is your concession?
Is it fenced?

PG Rates:
Daily rate for PG
How many days are minimum for a PG hunt?

PG Scope:
Common PG animals in abundance
Do you have Sable
Do you offer PG packages (if so, what?)
If you offer a package, can you substitute animals?
If you offer packages and I don't get a shot at an animal, do I pay a trophy fee?
PG animals not in abundance
PH to hunter ratio
How far are the shots for plains game
How far are the shots for Sable?
Do you have a minimum caliber for Plains game?
What are the physical requirements for a PG hunt?
What sort of vehicles are used when hunting PG?
What type of hunting do you do for Plaines game (stand/Car/Spot and stalk?)

Spouse:
Cost for extra curricular activities
Observer fee
What activities are there for a non hunter to do?

Transport:
Are Customs services provided?
What is the nearest airport to the camp that has scheduled flights to JoBurg?
How far from camp to airport (Miles or Time)?
Do you have to charter a private plane to get to camp?

Post Hunt Scope:
Do Daily rates include boiling skulls and salting hides?
How does the dip/ship of horns/hides only work?
Do you have a taxidermist you work with in Africa.  If so, who?

[Kuduman]

Rob:
 Great point about meeting the outfitters face to face. The down side of that is that with all the cost of attending the Reno show those packages are not generally the most budget friendly. I attended a show a couple of years ago and there was one other outfitter from SA there as well,  about three hours into the show on Friday he headed over to my booth and almost had a heart attack when the package I was offering was about half of the price he was offering.
I know there are competitive price wars to win over customers especially at large conventions and sportsmans shows but generally you'll pay more for a hunt there than anywhere else.
As I tell my clients it about trust or budget. If they want the peace of mind that goes with meeting the outfitter than they have to be willing to pay for it. My experience is that most people that are budget minded are willing to trust a booking agent based on their experience with that outfitter.

Another great point is the political atmosphere in Zimbabwe. A good friend of mine until just recently refuse to send anyone there until things cooled down. I hunted with one friend from Spain that lost a huge deposit on a dangerous game hunt because of the raise in taxes from the government that almost doubled the cost of his hunt.

The down side is that Zimbabwe is the best place to hunt big buffs so your going to have to be willing to take some calculated risks. That's why I book plains game hunts to South Africa.

I will be doing a seminar in Tri-Cities on the 26th of Feb at wholesale sports and I'll be talking about these issues and more. I'll have examples of what outfitters typically offer and how to hunt South Africa on a budget I hope you can make it I would like to meet you in person.

Thanks

Jeff
A.K.A. Kuduman


 

[no1waterdog]

Please let me know the time  that you will be at warehouse sports as I am very interested in that hunt. You can email me at redwine@yakimariverwinery.com Thank you John

[Rob]

Not much time to do a full update, that will come later.  But I am back from SCI.  Great trip and what a place...

My dad and I are booked for a Buffalo hunt from 10/1 to 10/10 in 2012 with the option to add 4 or so more Plains game hunters to our party in the future.  We are hunting with Savuli Safaris on the Save Conservatory in Zimbabwe.  Dad will also be trying to get an Nyala.  We had to book for Buffalo a couple months earlier than I had planned as the 2012 Buffalo permits were going fast.

I will provide full pricing scenarios when I have time to print it up in a forum friendly format. 

For now, enjoy some photos of the spectacular taxidermy SCI had to offer!

[Rob]

more photos.  Note the elk...  He is scratching...

[Rob]

First, Jeff, I want to thank you for the insights offered.  What time is your presentation over in the tri cities?  I am not sure if I can make it over there, but I’d love to meet you and hear what you have to say.  It is always fun to gain insights from folks who have a passion for Africa.

As I said before, SCI was great.  Nothing like spending a few days with like minded folks with a common obsession.  I regret that I was not able to spend time in the many seminars they held but I was on the show floor all day both days gathering information.

As I went through the show and talked with folks, I narrowed my selection to three outfits – all of which hunted different portions of the Save in Zimbabwe.  That seemed to be the common consensus for a place that would meet all our needs (good buff, good PG, no fences, stuff for the spouse).  The three I looked at in detail were:
-Zambezi
-Savuli
-Mokore

I spoke with the 3 outfitters and liked all of them.  They all had similar quality of game (not surprising) with a couple exceptions on Croc, Sable, Nyala, and Warthog. 

After chatting the the various outfitters at the show, it became apparent that all the 2011 buff tags on quota were either already gone, or if any were available, they were single tags.  The 2012 tags were disappearing rather quickly and the odds of getting a “first choice” outfitter with two 2012 buff tags were slipping with each weekend that passed.   It became clear that we would need to make a booking commit on our buff hunts at this show to ensure that we could get two buff tags held for us with the outfitter we wanted to go with. 

The challenge was to figure out how to do an apples to apples comparison between the different outfits.  The primary variables that were different between outfitters were:
-Daily rate
-Transport fees to camp
-Minimum # of days to hunt
-Trophy fees (for PG this is complicated further by the combination of trophies desired)

Some costs that applied more or elss equally to all of them also existed:
-MARS (emergency medical evac insurance)
-daily rate tax of 2%
-Trophy fee tax of 4%
-Dip and pack fees (pretty much the same for all)
-Rifle permit and hunting license fees (I later found out that these were not applicable to hunts in Zim-only Mozambique so I pulled thes #’s out of subsequent pricing models)

With some places having a min 7 day PG hunt, and others an 8 day, not to mention differing daily rates, trophy fees, and vastly differing camp transfer fees, it was impossible to eyeball which camp had the better deal.  Additionally, 3 of us are interested in 1x1 hunts (i.e. we each get our own PH) and 2 of the hunters want to hunt 2x1 (on PH for the two of them)  which alters the rates further.

On Friday night after walking the show floor, I took the data back to my room and spent a couple hours building a model.  I am going to post the model in chunks so you can follow what I did. 

First I put all the trophy fees into a table.  I highlighted the animals that were present in good populations in green, and those that were in good populations but required a nighttime hunt in blue.  I was having trouble seeing which outfitter had the best prices by glancing at the rates so I applied conditional formatting to the cells so that circles would show up to the right of each rate.  Hollow circles mean it is the lowest price, solid circles are the highest price, and partially filed in circles are the middle price.  Note that if there was a 3way  tie, all three circles are solid.   In general, Savuli had the lowest rates.

Next, decided I needed to pick a common package of Plains Game across all three outfitters so I could get an apples to apples comparison.  I selected a package of 6 animals that I thought would be a quality group to hunt:  Eland, Kudu, Duiker, Impala, Warthog, Wildebeest.  I built the table such that if you put an “x” into the sample package column for the animal, it subtotals the package cost for each outfitter.

[Rob]

Lastly, I built a pricing scenario that added the whole package up for each outfitter for the different scenarios we were looking at (Buff/PG hunt, PG hunt 1x1, and PG hunt 2X1).  I added in the taxes, MARS, dip & pack, sample PG package (PG hunts only), and (erroneously) added in the rifle permit fees and licenses.  I put in the different daily rates for the outfitters, and minimum # of days, or desired days (whichever was longer) for each hunt scenario.  The table below is what came out.
  
-The buff hunt varied from between 14K and 18K
-the 2x1 PG hunt (10 day) varied between 8 and 13 K,
-The 1x1 PG hunt (7 or 8 day depending on the minimum) varied between 8-11.5K.

[Rob]

It was pretty obvious that, assuming the quality of the outfitter and quality of the game was the same, the choice needed to be Savuli.  A real bonus to Savuli was that once we booked our hunt, the camp would be limited to our party only for the dates of our hunt.  This meant that assuming no one in our party had heart burn with our selection, we could commit to our buff hunts, lock the camp, and then give the PG hunters more time to make sure they really want to go and add them on later.

I asked around regarding the price difference, and from what I could tell, the differences were driven by two items
1.   Quality of camp.  Zambezi is considered a 5 star camp.  Very high end, excellent service
2.  Reputation of outfitter.  While Savuli comes highly recommended, the PH had only run his own camp for 3 years so he was not quite as well known as his peers.

I passed this info by everyone, and then I got a follow up question from my dad that complicated the model.   The Save is not really known as a Sable location, however Savuli indicated they had some prime Sable on their portion of the concession.  Dad was interested in getting one of the Sable they had on Quota so I worked up a scenario for this.  Of course this changed the minimum # of days from 10 to 14, upped the daily rate by 150, and added a 4K dollar trophy fee.  Total impact of adding a Sable to the Savuli hunt was about 10K.  He decided to pass.

[Rob]

After about 3 hours on the phone with the different members of the parties several long interviews with the outfitter and broker, our party decided a 25 to 60% increase in price was not justifiable for Mokore and Zambezi.  Savuli camp was not as nice at Zambezi, but still very nice, and while the PH at Savuli did not have quite the established reputation as the other two, the research I did on line showed me nothing but accolades for his integrity and quality of hunt.  (in addition to running Savuli Camp for 3 years, he has over a decade of experience in guiding for other outfits).  Based on this dad and I booked our buff hunts with Savuli for 10/1-10/10 2012.

While dad decided to pass on the Sable hunt, he became enamored with Nyala and decided to target Nyala.  This had a 3,100 trophy fee, and raised the daily rate 100 per day (but did not raise the minimum number of days past 10).  So adding Nyala to his package tacked on an additional  4,100 dollars plus the 4% trophy fee tax.

I spend some time this week refining and customizing the packages.  I removed the price comparisons from the model as they were no longer relevant.  I also created a unique model for each of the hunting party members to use to change the customizable packages.  I wanted to provide an all up “doorstep to doorstep” price estimate for each of us.  So I built out some extra variables such as airfare, rifle expediting services, spending money, shots, camp transport, observer fees, etc. 

I added in the ability for my dad and I to add in plains game animals to our buff hunts too.

Here is the most current version of the model and should represent a "doorstep to doorstep" cost that is will be pretty close to reality.  it is kinda small, but if you click on it and zoom in you can read it.

[Rob]

Savuli has two main camps, one is a permanent camp and is in the original 20K acre hunting area.  The second is a mobile camp that is set up in the adjacent 40K acre hunting area.  They are about 45 min apart, and we can put our group in one or both of these camps depending on space, and # of hunters.  Both parties will be hunting in all 60K acres and the 60 K acres is non fenced and part of the larger one million acre Save reserve.

Here are some photos of the permanent camp.

[Kuduman]

Rob:
 Looks like a great time in Reno. The taxidermy alone would have been overwhelming let alone comparing the different outfitters.
I'll be in Tri-cities on the 26th at 6:30 PM at the wholesale sports on Canal Ave. Hope to see you

Thanks

[engelwood]

Pretty awesome stuff. You are no doubt putting a ton of time not only getting prepared for this trip, but also with posting all the info for us all to learn from. One question I had, that I may have missed earlier on, is why Kirk's trip is as much as it is. I looked at the detail you have listed and it doesn't add up to the total at the bottom so I was wondering what is missing from the listing? Just curious is all. Also, his flights are $6,000 so I was just wondering if he had more people going with him or??? I just want to be able to follow this through your trip and see how you all come out in the end. Sounds like one hell of a trip, I'm jealous.