The term Game ranching is pretty grey. Let me explain a couple things I have tons of experience with as I have been doing this in South Africa for a long time now.
Game ranching in South Africa or Namibia for that matter can be as sick and poor quality as hunting African game in Texas and calling it hunting! However there is hunting on private lands which are game managed for trophy qualtiy which is not the same at all.
This is not all inclusive but for the majority of hunting in South Africa's eastern cape the hunting is game ranching as you have stated and much like Texas. Game purchased at auction and released for hunters to shoot in a non native habitat. It's why the eastern cape hunts are so much less money and usuallu state some sort of guaranteed animals. Pretty easy to find them in the open grassland. Many of these hunts can be for more animals then days of hunting! Get an African game guide and look at the shaded areas of natural habitat for game your interested in shooting. Very few are in the eastern cape yet you can go and shoot anything you want there. Much like shooting an Ibex in Texas!
The Northern Province of South Africa has the most indiginous species of big game of anyplace in the world. Again look in the book to see the shaded ares and you will see northern South Africa has all the big game you want. It's the premier hunting location in the world today. Noplace else has as many natural indiginous big game animals to hunt in the whole world!
Many of the properties are so big you will not hunt them completely from a vehicle in the whole ten days or two weeks you are there. If on foot you won't even make a dent in them. Our property for example consists of just over 100,000 acres of private game managed land. We don't import any game for hunters to shoot. Everything is naturally occuring, born wild and lives there until it dies of old age or is killed by predators. This property has been game managed longer then Kruger park has been a park! Almost 80 years now. The primary use of the land was cattle and White Rhino farming. The wild game on the property was just a bonus. which was hunted by professional hunters until 1995 striclty for the meat industry.
We opened it up to sport hunting in 1995 and only take 24 hunters per year so that the populations of game can rebound each year from the harvest. Last season we had only 19 hunters and 7 non-hunters in the lodge. The 19 hunters took 117 big game animals in the two months we hunted. After that 2 month hunting period we were finished hunting for the season and the game went back to normal live cycles. Nothing is stocked for hunters to shoot period! This is common in the northern province. Many of the consessions work the same way we do.
Consider some of these silly bulk hunting operations you see and read about. 5 animals 5 days for 2995.00 and they take 50-60 hunters a year. Do the math and you can see they must be bringing in game to the area or they would run out in a couple years! Maybe only one season!
Our typical hunt is ten days for 5 animals. You must hunt with us the bush is thick and the game is wild. it does not travel the perimeter fence trying to find a way out like stocked game does. It's so wild infact we only usually hunt the rut to give us an advantage. Without the rut and the low water season the game would be so difficult to find it would make hunting near impossible at times.
Believe me, I have worked for both kinds of operations here and I know exactly what your fear or concern is. It's why I am a business partner with this operation now. I finally found the kind of hunting both me and my clients will be proud of when it's over. I will not work with a Put and take hunting operation again in Africa!
One important thing to say here to be certain I'm clear on this. All operations will from time to time introduce new blood to the populations they have. This is no different then the state of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington releasing big horn sheep from Alberta to boost the gene pool. We do the same thing. But how e do this is the "fair chase" part. We have a couple 500 and 1000 acre fenced sections of land which we release the new animals into. This keeps them quarintened from the others. As they breed and populate this smaller area the young are released into the main consession. The big breeding bulls are not hunted nor are the cows. These are strictly for the breding program. By the time the 5 years of growth makes the released game full grown it will have lived it's whole life on the property.
We started this with Sable in 1996 and last year we had the first sable killed. We had existing sable on the land but in low numbers. Now the population will be good enough to hunt this year for the first time as a common animal. I expect we will take 5-7 bulls this year. All were born to the property and are living 100% wild and free to roam the entire property. We have done this with Roan, Rhino, Tssessebe, Nyala, and Gemsbok. This is a true trophy game managed property for wild indiginous game. The whole of the northern Transvaal is made up of exactly this kind of operation. Most of us are the ones selling game to the easern cape for the put and take hunting they provide.
I know this because it's how I eventually met the landowner I am now a partner with!
