I hunted Dande North this year. It is a fantastic area. Good game populations lots of buff, elephant, lions, and thickly populated with kudu, impala, leopard, bushbuck, and assorted ther critters.

There was very little sign of poacing though it does occur in the area. The villages are widely dispersed but they do border the area. We saw few locals in the hunting areas.

There is one thing negative I can say about Dande North. The area is about 300,000 acres. There were to many hunters in the area at one time in my opinon, and they sublet the area to foreign PH's and other non-company PH's who are less than concrened with long term management.

With that being said I would hunt the Dande North again.

I hunted the Binga Communal Lands last year and although there were villages in the area, they were widely dispersed. While hunting, we walked for hours and never saw any of the locals. We did not see much evidence of poaching. However, we did not see much in the way of plains game. Whether that is due to the presence of locals in the area or it is just the nature of that part of the Zambezi Valley, I don't know. The PH said that the large hyena population had a negative effect on the plains game. We did see lots of elephant and buffalo.



If you look at HHK Website they have very good descriptions of the availabilty of the game in each of their concessions.



Regards,



Terry

Clue to what?



Some of the big elephant come across the Moz border or come out of the parks to raid crops, and are not around in the daylight. As such, many big (crop raiding) elephant are shot at night.



I suppose there are accomplishments to shooting a big elephant, but at night? It is one thing to shoot crop-raiders but only big tusked crop-raiders?



So what does it cost to shoot a big elephant in communal lands? In some communal areas, maybe a few lions and elephant around and hardly any other wildlife of any sort? And poaching out of control?



Again, there are many good communal areas, but some are the pits, a depressing display of poaching and land destruction gone amuck.

Communal lands are "tribal" lands "owned" (rather optimistically) by the community. Some areas have a high population density and others a very few people. "Safari Areas" in the Zimbabwe context are National Parks estate, managed in conjunction with adjacent national parks. They have no people resident in them (except for a few parks staff)

Half of Dande North "communal" concession is actually the Dande Safari Area, which is leased by parks to the Guruve Distict council. If you are hunting in Dande, to have a swathe of huts etc, then a band of hills with no people and then huts and fields again as you near the Zambezi.

Often - but not always - communal lands give the best oportunities for elephant and lion. Both are regarded as problems and both are attracted to what the villagers have available (corn and cattle). The "best three elephant in the year" award (ie not one fluke but a consistent high average) has gone to communal lands concessions for the last 9 years straight.

mho

I hunted the OMAY with HHK in June this year. I wanted to hunt in a tribal area as I wanted to experience contact with people living in an African Village. It was a great Safari and a great experience. The people came to my 3 elephant kills to get the meat. They were very nice and friendly. We did see evidence of poaching, we found snares in 3 different locations, which we took down and confiscated. The OMAY is not a great plains game area, but I was very happy with the plains game trophies I took.

You can see a picture of some of my animals and my Bull Elephant at www.safarivideos.com

I suggest you talk to the people at HHK. Tell them what type of Safari you want and they will advise you.

I have been very happy with ALL of my dealings with HHK.

Let me know what you think of my Bull Elephant.

I very highly recommend Ian as a videographer, and as a great guy to have on the hunt. Wayne Edwards was my PH, he is a very good hunter and a lot of fun to be around. The 3 of us will hunt together again for sure.

Some communal areas are okay and some are not. It is a tough call to assure anyone else as to the prospects, as the situation can change rapidly. I hunted Omay last year with HHK and it was fine. I hunted Dande South (Guruve communal area) this year and it is full of people, donkeys, dogs, cattle, goats, etc. The place really sucked, as they were chopping down every tree in sight, including a tree that must have been there at least a hundred years for a handful of honey. It was depressing.

There were snares everywhere. Within a kilometer of any village there were not even any song birds. They were killing everything.

Good luck in your search.

mho
Oops, sorry my initals are TB.