Namibia and Mozambique may be the best hunting future in Southern Africa for plains game and Mozambique may be the new Zimbabwe down the road. Right now there are only a few safari operations that have credibility and the likely hood of what you should expect. Mozambique has minimal infrastructure and no functional process for safari hunting where rules and regulations are concerned. Neither country has a functional dip pack process which leads to problems now and then when the trophies arrive in the USA. Poor paperwork becomes a huge problem for the import process.
I'm not one for rules and regulations, however Namibia and Mozambique really need to have a base line of minimum standards for hunters the way Zimbabwe and RSA do. Although Namibia has much less expensive hunting, aside from Gemsbok most trophies are going to be smaller on Average then Zimbabwe, Zambia, and RSA. The habitat is simply not as lush. It's desert habitat which is a far more harsh and difficult to survive in, and will never have the carrying capacity of the Zambesie valley habitat. There are a number of huge trophies taken from Namibia, and every one of them seems to be the in the headlines. When you look at the average trophy the story is much different. The quality of PH's is not regulated either. Many are a son or neighbor of a landowner who allows hunting. Your not actually using a skilled educated PH the way you would have to in Zimbabwe, Zambia, or RSA. Some will have had a PH, or wildlife managment education in Namibia but there again government regulation is lacking, which means you could end up with a "Bubba" who has limited skills and wildlife/ hunting education. This is not to say that RSA and Zimbabwe have flawless experts as PH's. But they do weed out the bad ones at a rate of 50% of those who go through the testing process. Imagine all of those who failed still taking hunters out!
When Namibia sets a legal base line for what to expect for visiting hunters ( and actually enforces it), and corrects the dip pack and, paperwork issues they will become one of the premier PG destinations in the whole of Southern Africa. Aside from these changes, hunting with a very reputable outfitter who handles the paperwork for the trophies properly, or will see to it by doing the needed followup, is critical. It's also critical to have references from somebody who has hunted with the outfitter and seen the accommodations in person. Since these things are not regulated in any way at the moment you could end up in less functional accommodations then what you expected.
Namibia and Mozambique could be the best future in all of southern Africa with some better organization and management from the government, until that happens be sure you book a hunt with somebody that has a flawless reputation.
