Hi,

I aksed this on another thread but haven´t received any answers: Are cheetah endangered or not? Peter Falck has written that they are more or less overrunning Namibia and the tree huggers claim that they are on the verge of extinction.

I give more credit to PF whom I respect as a knowledgable hunter.

But what is the truth? Has anyone here hunted cheetah -with or without dogs?

cewe,

We offer cheetah with a couple of people in Namibia and your chances of getting one are pretty good if you can spend some time looking for one. As Americans we can't legally import cheetah trophies into the USA. In Finland it might be a totally different case. Check it out and get back to me and I'll talk to some folks in Namibia.

Regards,

Mark

It does not appear Cheetah are importable to the US. Here's one site's report (there are others):

http://www.africanhuntingsafaris.com/africa_hunting_safari.htm

It appears the US bans import of certain animals from some countries but not others... It doesn't appear that the US allows imports of cheetah though.

Dan

When in Namibia a couple of years ago, they were not importable into the USA, which the PH thought was nuts since their European hunters could shoot them and they were actually quite common. I saw one from long range, it was eating a dead calf as the old cow looked on from 30 yards.

Thanks for the input. I don´t think importing them to Finland is a problem, my main point is ethical -are they huntable as a species and/or population?

Everything seems to say that they are huntable in Namibia but that they are quite scarce in SA.

Thanks Mark for the offer but I have a contact that I can use if I decide to hunt a cheetah.

Any more experience out there?

My outfitter in Zimbabwe absolutely hated the things but still offered them up for a trophy fee of $2500 which was the same as the trophy fee he was charging for a leopard or a sable.

His opinion is it was either feast or famine with them population wise. So yes they are huntable but threatened but then so are bontebok and mountain zebra.

As a further note we once bounced one off its kill (young kudu). It ran about 75 yards into some cover but not enough to obscure it or prevent me from killing it if I wanted. I got the outfitter that evening to admit that they are "not much of a trophy". Even if you wound one as long as you can see where it ran you can merely walk up to them and finish them off as they can't even get up and run away as they'll sprint until they drop.

I saw seven Cheetahs in Zimbabwe this past Jun/Jul on Lemco ranch. I was hunting with HHK Safaris and there was no shortage of Cheetahs or Leopards there.

Cheetahs are certainly huntable in Namibia. The farmers shoot them on sight. They take the hide to town and sell it for $200. They really raise hell with the goats and sheep they raise. The PH we hunted with took 3 after we left. One European got 2 in one day!
If we could import them, I'd try for one. They have the prettiest fur I've ever seen.

Teddy Roosevelt wrote about hunting them in his book - basically sounded like they were not much of a challenge. He road them down on horseback, the get winded and lay down.

The short answer- yes they are huntable- ethically

The long answer...

in 1984, Garry sharp, the ecologist in charge of such things carried out a well thought out population cencus in Zimbabwe, and came up with an estimated 2500 animals- but with numbers rising quickly. At that time, Lemco was still a cattle ranch and were offering a US$1000 bounty per cheetah tail.

Cheetah numbers continued to rise- fast and were seen, and started killing stock in areas where they had been locally extinct for decades.

The reason for the rapid rise in numbers was a key change in behaviour. In his 1984 survey, Garry found that half the cheetah population occured in a relatively small area of the country where pack hunting of larger prey species (cows) was occuring. Where cheetah subsisted on their natural diet of spring hares, duiker etc, population densities remained low.

By the early 1990's cheetah were being regarded as problem animals and one of the main cattle ranches took parks (and the government) to court for compensation for losses. If cheetah are specially protected game belonging to the state then the losses they cause are the states.

Panic in the parks ranks and a massive cheetah capture excersise was put in place, with cheetah being taken from the ranches in the midlands and SE lowveld and re-introduced to marginal habitat in the national parks in the north.

Cannot call the translocation a sucess, but we did learn alot about Cheetah!

In 1996, with CITES looming, Parks re-conducted the survery that Garry sharp had conducted a decade earlier. Same methodology etc and came up with a figure of 5000 cheetah. (See CITES Document "Cheetah in Zimbabwe" by D. Heath 1997). At the same time a very cleaver girl from the University (Netty Duncan, Nee Purchace- I think most of her work is in her maiden name) came up with a better system of counting cheetah- Tail Identification. The markings on every cheetah's tail are unique and quite easy to spot...so, I issued little books to 250 big ranches who were claiming stock problems, and 250 ranchers in areas where they were seen but not yet a problem. Each book contained pages with pre drawn tails. The rancher drew in the tail markings when he saw a cheetah and recorded the date etc. Next time he saw the same cheetah he recorded that again.

I was fortunate that the bunny hugger community, Led by viv wilson, were still claiming cheetah were endangered and what ranches were seeing was a few individuals with very large home ranges - seen in Que Que today and seen 50 miles away in Gweru next week etc. This had riled the ranchers and I got very good and enthusiastic support from them on identifying the individual animals on their ranches.

The beauty of the tail marking system is that it allowed ranchers to compare notes- "Oh that pack has been on your place too" and gave us accurate measurements of home range.

Long and the short of it - we revised our population estimate to 7000 animals, and were able to convince CITES to give us an export quota (50 animals). And I got a big pat on the back and Netty got an M.Sc. and and...

Then came Zimbabwe's land reform. Bad for cheetah. Cheetah fare very poorly in any area where there are Elephants, Lion or dogs. The Parks estate in Zimbabwe is home to just 50 cheetah. We have too many elephants and lion. Similarly, there are no known resident cheetah populations in the tribal lands.

The cattle ranches had few elephant, no lion (if they could help it) and kept domestic dogs down to reduce poaching. Once farms were invaded, the "war vets" very quickly bought in dogs - a) to help with their own hunting and b) to wipe out the cheetah and control leopards. Stock losses that a comercial farmer could tollerate in the name of conservation, small scale peasants and thieves were not prepared to accept. Cheetah got hammered. Official estimate is that we have lost half our cheetah population. Looking at the data -which is thin, since the economic melt down which got into high gear in 1999 has meant that there is absolutely no budget for any field research - I would put Zimbabwe's Cheetah population down to the 2500 mark.

That is still high enough to sustain hunting, and where their range is protected from "war vets" and their @!&! dogs they are still "over abundant" and problem animals.

My dream is to persuade the authorities to alow cheetah to be fully domesticated and people can routinely keep them as pets. Had one as a kid and one for most of my parks career. I love them.

While hunting in Namibia some years ago, we spotted several cheetah. The farm owner was having a big problem with them as they kill a lot of game. Alas, except for one, they were all too far away to shoot, even though they were offered to us for free! The closest one was also a bit far away when we spotted it from the top of a kopie, and then began to run when it saw us. The owner opened fire, and asked me to join in, which I did. By then it was a couple of hundred meters away, running full out. Both our shots were hitting the ground just behind it, and it was just too fast for us. Finally, at a measured 550 meters, the cheetah stopped up, and sat on a termite hill, looking towards us. I tried one more shot with my 375H&H, but it unfortunalty went a meter low and half a meter to the side. Close but no cigar!

A couple of years later, while driving thru africa, we saw numerous cheetah again in Namibia. And were informed by many locals that quite a few areas still have a problem with far too many of these canine footed felines (their feet are not like other cats, but like a dog, with non retractable claws on their paws). So I wouldn't hesitate shooting one if you are worried about cheetah population numbers. There seemed to be more then enough.

Thank you Ganyana, ErikD et al.

I think I now have some relevant knowledge on cheetah. I asked about cheetah hunting about a year ago and heard that they aren´t a challenge.
Then I read an article by Peter Falch in Magnum (?) where he hunted cheetah with dogs and found it to be none to easy!

I guess I´ll just decide when and if (or if and when) I´m confronted with a cheetah. I´ll be hunting the Kalahari fringe in October and it seems to hold some cheetah.

Hey GANYANA,

Forgett hunting the chetah, you guys need to put "war vets" and their dogs on hunting quota.
I suggest they should be right next to baboon and likewise unlimited.

Honkey

Honkey..."Vengence is mine sayth the Lord" and driving arround looking at hungry AIDS ridden "war vets" sitting on the side of the roads begging because the police have burned their huts down - they are no longer needed by the state and are a liability rather than a tool- brings true inner joy to my heart!

Cewe- Two ways to sucessfully hunt cheetah. Dogs- a decent pair of leopard hounds will deliver your cheetah to you within the hour of finding fresh tracks. When we started off capturing problem animals to restock prvate parks and state safari areas, we used a chopper with net guns. cost arround US$9k per cheetah caught. Then we used dogs. Cost about us$500 per cheetah caught - and less man hours as well.

The other method is just to ambush a "scratch tree" Each male cheetah has a tree that he goes to every day to sharpen his claws on. One tree per male. no brainer from there. It is also a good way for a farmer to count the number of mature males on his property!

Actually we drove round looking for scratch trees, and then released the dogs for the captures.

Theodore Roosevelt felt that hunting from horseback was the proper way to hunt. In many ways, he was the epitome of the Victorian gentleman, and had significant impact during a time that the American hunting ethic embracing conservation and sportsmanship was being formulated. These days, museums are uncomfortable with phrases such as "specimen collection" that some hunters participated in for museums. Many of the trophies Roosevelt's safari following his presidency produced were donated to the Smithsonian, and are doubtless on display. Yet, they don't seem to want to reveal where they came from, who shot them, even if the collector was an ex-president of the US!

There are all sorts of reasons that someone might like to go to Africa. For me, a chance to capture some of the wonder -- and the memory of the freedom of the era -- is ONE of the attractions that grabs me. Even though there's licenses, permits, the immediacacy of modern sweat, aching muscles that didn't exist in those old days, and even though those old ivory hunters are sometimes considered to be poachers and scoundrels by today's standards -- there was a time when things weren't so regulated -- and sometimes in the night, whether it is a lion, or owls, loons, and coyotes one hears through the tent walls lit by the moon, the distance to those years seems as thin as through a filmy veil.

Hmmmph you should have seen the expression on the information booth attendant when I asked who had collected the specimins on display... they looked at me like something that had crawled out from under a rock. I wonder whose ghosts *they* would like to see through that veil on those moonlit nights...

Dan

Ganyana: The scratch tree routine sounds a bit simple and dogs are dogs..what makes hunting are the unexpected things that happen and I guess it´s just best to see what Diana has in store for me!

Since cheetahs are not allowed to be brought into the US it is kind of a mute point for American hunters. Europeans however can shoot them and have them mounted in their trophy rooms. I have seen several on various hunts, they seem about as threatening as a big dog. Hunting them is probably like hunting a musk ox. Gun, bow, handgun, whatever, you could probably walk up and hit them over the head with a baseball bat.

I told my family that Ganyana said they can be domesticated and that really got my younger son going! I guess you´d need to get a kitten (or whatever they´re called) and I wonder how it would do in the snow? Could it be trained as an elkhound?

quote:

Originally posted by cewe:
I told my family that Ganyana said they can be domesticated and that really got my younger son going! I guess you´d need to get a kitten (or whatever they´re called) and I wonder how it would do in the snow? Could it be trained as an elkhound?

Years ago I was working a gun show in Saskatoon in January during a cold snap. Night time lows of -40 type of weather. Some conservation outfit had a cheetah at their booth. We got talking to the handler after hours and naturally asked how it handled the cold. Apparently cheetahs love the cold, at least to run in. The handler would take the cheetah out to the race track and turn it loose whenever he got the chance. The colder the weather, the longer and faster the cheetah would run. Of course this was a house cheetah and lived indoors, just playing outside.

On a break during the show, I wandered over to have another look at the cat. It was sitting on a table being patted on the head by some kids and enjoying the attention. With the front half of the cat occupied, I took the opportunity to examine the claws on the back half. I let the cat know I was there and then started touching its back feet. After a few seconds, the cheetah's head slowly rotated around and two cold predator's eyes fixed on mine. At a distance of 18", they just transfixed me. The cat then let out a short, very quiet, growl to let me know it had had enough. I abandonned my search for dew claws. When the front half of the cat became free a minute later, I let the cat smell my hand and scratched it behind the ear. We were friends again, with no hard feelings for my having taken too many liberties. But those eyes had cut right through me! Very cool.

I left with the impression that the cheetah was a giant house cat that wouldn't claw the couch and that reacted to people much like a dog would.

Cheers,
Dean

quote:

Originally posted by Ganyana:
Honkey..."Vengence is mine sayth the Lord" and driving arround looking at hungry AIDS ridden "war vets" sitting on the side of the roads begging because the police have burned their huts down - they are no longer needed by the state and are a liability rather than a tool- brings true inner joy to my heart!

The state could go one better by authorizing the use of axe handles to drive the warvets off of the properties that they have occupied (and spoiled).

quote:

Originally posted by cewe:
I told my family that Ganyana said they can be domesticated and that really got my younger son going! I guess you´d need to get a kitten (or whatever they´re called) and I wonder how it would do in the snow? Could it be trained as an elkhound?

Saeed posted some pictures of his a while back on this thread.

The cheetah sounds like a very cool house pet. I wonder how the neighborhood dogs would react?

Importing a live cheetah might not be easy though, and exercising it could be a hassle as I´m a very lazy guy...