Dear Editor
Sir, - I read with interest and surprise your editorial on income generated from trophy hunting. Trophy hunting is regarded as a huge income and maybe some professional hunters make it really big, but they offer elephants, lions etc. something which perhaps 80 % of the hunting outfits do not offer. I have come across some professional hunters who spin yarns which make a fisherman’s tale look modest.

I once heard one of the professional hunters (one of the most well-known in the country) say, they poached a kudu and an Oryx in one week, so that means the annual poaching amounts to 2 animals per week, times 52 weeks and times the trophy value. So now you can see how immense the damage from poaching is. (sic) He forgot that in total they poached perhaps three in that year on his farm.
On the same basis runs the argument of big money in hunting.
A trophy of a local species, which are 60 to 80 % (???) of the trophies taken, do not cost 30,000 US$, but a measly 700 Euro or perhaps 800 to 900 US $. You talk about the average trophy costing US $ 10000!!! A trophy of US$80000 is the extreme exception and I doubt whether there are many in one year. Makes quite I a different calculation. Just get the figures from NAPHA which show the average prices per trophy in the country as a whole. I do not argue that there a hunting outfits that have high prices, but that is not the normal hunting outfit. Some outfits have especially high prices to give the very rich American hunter the idea this outfit must be good. If it is cheap it cannot be good. But these are a very, very few.
Let us take another look. I have on my farm a very small scale hunting outfit for indigenous species, and the normal hunter leaves per trip about N$20000 to N$30000, (confirmed with other honest hunting farmers) not 700,000 as stated by you. If that were the case, all hunting outfits would be millionaires and nobody would be in the cattle business anymore. And I do think that my terrain and the number of species as well as numbers themselves put my hunting farm in the top section of hunting farms. I can mention you a few names of hunters, who gave up cattle to replace it with hunting, you know what, you can buy their farms, as they are bankrupt. You do not get hunting outfits which grow and grow and grow. No hunting outfit expands, increasing their land etc., they just keep going and some of the bigger ones have financial problems. Whatever impressive figure they dish up, thru the grapevine you hear about bonds being registered. This will be confirmed by honest and down to earth hunters. As I said, stories can be made up easily.
You say high prices are paid on auctions?? Where? Prices are completely down and most animals can be had at low prices. Maybe, again, the one special exotic species here or there brings a high price. The majority hardly gets an offer.