Cull Hunting Safaris in Africa

Cull Hunting Safaris in Africa

Cull hunting safaris in Africa serve a prominent role in Africa’s game management and conservation.  Cull hunting serves many purposes, including balancing animal populations to maintain habitat, inter species population balancing, food production for indigenous populations and others.  Cull hunting also provides income opportunities for land owners and encourages them to maintain healthy populations of wild game.  The increased opportunities for income derived from game ranching has caused a lot of former sheep and cattle ranches to convert to game ranches, thereby preserving large amounts of land for wild game.

South Africa and Namibia are the main destinations for cull hunting safaris in Southern Africa.  South Africa has the most game ranches and concessions (greater than 10,000), so therefore offers the most cull hunting opportunities in Africa.  Some game ranches hire professional cull hunters to come in and reduce game populations.  Others, sell the opportunity to hunters that want to harvest a large number of animals.  These hunters pay a reduced trophy fee to take selected animals out of the herds.  The meat and skins from these culled animals is then sold commercially.  Only select species that have the ability to rapidly increase their numbers are typically offered on these hunts.

Namibia has the second most number of game ranches in Africa, so logically it has the second largest amount of cull hunting in Africa.  The structure of these cull hunts is similar to that of South Africa.  The Namibian cull hunts are primarily marketed to European hunters, while the South African cull hunts are primarily sold to hunters from the United States.

Other countries also use cull hunting to maintain healthy plains game populations.  Botswana and Zambia are two notable countries that also offer some good cull hunting opportunities.  Even big game quotas are used to maintain predators and other highly sought after trophies.  Cull hunting safaris in Africa offer great opportunities for those on a budget to experience an African safari while not breaking the bank.