Licensing

What Documentation It Takes to Run a Safari

To do any hunting in South Africa, foreigners are required to go through a licensed outfitter. No trophies can be exported from the country unless they have the signature of an outfitter with them. This means that for Angus Brown Safaris to exist someone in the company must hold an outfitter’s license. In order to obtain an outfitter license, the applicant must have a camp with certain facilities mainly bedrooms and bathrooms that meet inspection standards for having clients. Vehicles also must pass an inspection. Furthermore, in order for an employee of the outfitter to make money from guiding the hunting, they are required to be a licensed professional hunter (PH). This is to ensure that the people guiding the hunters are qualified and knowledgeable both about hunting in general and about the specific game they are hunting. To become a PH, one must attend a Professional Hunters’ course and pass the exam at the end of the course. The entire PH course lasts ten days assuming the applicants already have the required knowledge. There are two exams in the course, with one covering the ordinances and laws governing the hunting industry, and the other testing general knowledge of hunting, including tracking, shooting, identifying animals, identifying flora, signs, and weapons maintenance. After completing this course, a new PH is qualified to hunt plains game, or non dangerous game. It is also not required but strongly recommended that they join the Professional Hunters Association, which requires that they hunt a certain number of days annually to retain membership. A PH license is good for five years, and after that time, the PH must renew it by proving that he has hunted at least 60 days annually over that five year period. This licensing is sufficient to work as a PH, assuming the PH does not want to conduct dangerous game hunts by himself. This precludes him from hunting lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros. If he does want to hunt dangerous game, he must go on 60 days of dangerous game hunts including at least three of the “big six” dangerous game (buffalo, rhinoceros, lion, leopard, elephant, and hippopotamus) with another PH who is qualified for dangerous game, and after that, he will be certified to hunt dangerous game.

On the landowner side, less licensing is required, but there is still some if the landowner does not want to be subjected to harsh restrictions on the timing of the hunting, the number of animals hunted, and the types of animals allowed on the farm. To lift all these restrictions, an exemption permit must be granted to the landowner. In order to receive an exemption permit, a landowner must have their land fenced with an eight and a half foot, 22-strand high wire fence. This keeps the animals from entering and exiting their land. On top of this, they must have in excess of 400 hectares, or 1000 acres. The exemption permit will be granted for some or all of the animals within the area, and this essentially allows the landowner to do all of their own management of the game on their land. They are then allowed to hunt the land year round and hunt whatever number they see fit, as they cannot affect the areas outside their property by overshooting, as their property is isolated from the rest of the area. The exemption permit along with the strong market for game farming has lead to an enormous outburst of high fencing in the northern parts of South Africa known as the bush veld.

In addition to the standard licensing required of the outfitters and PHs, it is now required that every firearm owned by a South African must be individually licensed by the firearms registry commission which is part of the police department. In order to obtain a permit for a firearm, a hunter must fill out countless pages of paperwork and then go in for an interview in which they prove to the government that they actually need the new firearm that they are hoping to get licensed. Four weapons are allowed per person: a pistol for self defense and three bolt action rifles or pump action shotguns of non-similar calibers. A person cannot own two rifles of even remotely similar caliber, i.e. a .308 and a .300 Win Mag. The official explanation of this given by the government is that it is unnecessary to own two similar rifles.