SA biltong hunters tracked down
28/03/2007 23:27 - (SA)

Leané du Plessis, Beeld


Potchefstroom - The first official portrait has been released of the typical South African biltong hunter.

He drives a Toyota bakkie, is married, is between 40 and 64 years old, and speaks Afrikaans.

Researchers at North West University's Potchefstroom campus compiled this profile in a study of the economic impact of biltong hunting in South Africa.

According to Professor Melville Saayman and Dr Peet van der Merwe, about 200 000 local hunters set off each year with biltong as their target, which is far greater than the number of trophy hunters who visit this country.

As part of their research, they sent questionnaires to the 23 000 subscribers to SA Jagter (SA Hunter) to compile a profile of the typical biltong hunter and his habits.

The biltong hunter prefers to hunt in groups. Other choices were:


Vehicle:
Toyota (32%);

Isuzu (18%); and

Nissan (12%).


Place:
Limpopo (37%);

North Cape (15%); and

North West (14%).


Favourite read:
SA Jagter (38%);

Magnum (28%); and

Game and Hunt (18%).

The researchers say this information's important because the three provinces of choice aren't seen as major tourist destinations.

The hunters mostly have some form of tertiary qualification and are most likely to live in Gauteng.

Saayman said few people realised the impact of hunting and its associated expenditure, which totals a whopping R3bn a year.

"To hunt, you must have a rifle and ammunition, a vehicle, food supplies, petrol and so forth. The economic trail is much more extensive than just a buck that's being shot."

quote:

40 and 64 years old, and speaks Afrikaans

True, but far from the whole truth....

Cool research and good for painting a credible picture of the worth of local hunters....

This report was published last year. It do give a lot of valueable information. The members of SAHGCA are predominantly Afrikaans speaking and as far as I know there is only 1 English speaking branch. All the other amateur hunting assosiations falls under the umbralla body, CHASA. I guess approximately 40000 hunters belong to an amateur hunting assosiation. The membership of the organisations did grow quite dramatically in the last few years because of the firearm regulations.

All the organisations are doing a lot of work with regards to training and negotiations on the firearms act and the new nature conservation act. If it were not for them we would have been in a far worse situation.

I know a lot of English speaking hunters that do not belong to one of the organisations. Even though the demografic distribution was not 100% correct as far as the issuing of the questionaires, a lot of valueable information came forth, which will help the hunting industry a lot in future.

I believe SA Jagter is an Afrikaans publication, would this not skew the results considerably?

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How would the economic impact of the trophy vs biltong hunters compare?

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Consider the beer consumption!

To be honest, I can't remember the figures but the last ones I saw were indeed very comparable.

Of course the nature of the local hunter economy is different and differently spread. It does also share many economic features and then of course it has a qualitative aspect that is less easy to quantify (i.e. being able to get out and be in the bush, hunt, partake in outdoor sports, eat venison and biltong and talk kak with friends and family, learn about the countries geography, ecology etc - of course in differeing amounts for different people).

Both are equally valuable, but with some unique values for each....