Folks - I need to extend a huge THANK YOU to both Tinie Kok & Lin Stanton in Zim!!!

In January of this year at the DSC convention I booked a father / son on a 15 - Day, 2x2 elephant bull/buffalo bull safari with these gentlemen. It was an expensive safari when considering all-in expenses (roughly $80k) and the hunt was booked for Aug. 1st, 2016.

The father is 85 years old, a retired Air Force veteran from Idaho, and one hell of a nice man!!! Recently he was injured badly in a fall, temporarily lost 80% use of his right hand (shooting hand) and needed to cancel the hunt just last week. I told the client he would most likely lose his initial $22K deposit, and extended my fullest apologies. He completely understood, was a total gentleman about it - and thanked me for all my efforts in helping him arrange his one last hoorah!!!

Well, to my surprise - the Zim boys suggested we roll over the FULL deposit to 2017, and extend to the clients the exact same hunt / exact same dates with no penalties! Considering the circumstances in Zim, and Africa as a whole - this is an incredibly kind gesture and I wanted to publicly thank both Tinie and Lin here on AR. The father is expected to be fully recovered by December - so hopefully he's good to go next year at 86 years old.

Shortly I will be posting the available hunt cancellations - any help you all can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all,

I can vouch for Tinie being a great guy after hunting with him in the Omay,would expect anything less. I would expect any of his partners to be cut from the same cloth. Great offer from them. Just my opinion.

I've hunted with Lin twice before and have found him to
be an outstanding person, great knowledgable PH, with some
very good hunting areas.

Glad to hear some good news. The good guys need to be patted on the back more and supported.

Most outfitters are good guys, its those slippery agents you worry about!!!

I met Tinie at the Bulawayo Rugby Club back in 2011, heck of a nice guy.

thanks Aaron for the head up.

Phil

This is the way things should be!

Congrats to all involved.

A class act on the outfitters part.

quote:

Originally posted by dogcat:
Most outfitters are good guys, its those slippery agents you worry about!!!

Very true Ross!! I'll let Greg and Jeff know how you feel.

quote:

Originally posted by Bama15:
Glad to hear some good news. The good guys need to be patted on the back more and supported.

Very true.

And as I keep saying, we have far too many good guys to support the shady one.

I will be hunting with Lin in September, and this thread certainly reinforces my sense of the man's character when I met him in Denver this past January.

I truly hope the client returns to full health and is able to enjoy his hunt next year.

BH63

Both are great guys. Lin can find buffalo when no one else can, too.

Very Honourable and what i call old school Zim operator ethics. Great ambassadors to ZHGA,SOAZ and Zimbabwe.

Aaron........... thank you for posting this. Given who you are talking about I am not surprised as they have a stellar reputation. Good on them.

Beyond that, I routinely watch outfitters from all over the globe get tarred and feathered on AR, sometimes deserved, often not. Many times I have seen posts that are completely designed to slice and dice the operator by someone who came on here specifically to achieve that.

I always here the same old tired rhetoric by the same crew on here as to how it sorts things out and in the end benefits hunters on who to go with, as well as good operators will be shown to have done nothing wrong. That is not the case in many instances and damage is done that cannot be repaired, even after the operator has been cleared by the kangaroo court on here.

It is VERY good of you to post this and it should be done more often. You never see the instances where an outfitter has refunded money or made allowances and changes for guys when they DID NOT HAVE TO. Instances where the outfitter is simply going to be OUT OF POCKET for doing "the right thing".

This past few years I have refunded deposits to guys for things that were questionable and there was no way to verify really........ oh like wife having a baby unexpectedly, someone claiming they lost their job, etc. Many outfitters send deposits back when they do not have to and invariably do not get any sort of attaboy for it all!!!! You never hear about that do you??

So thanks for posting this and a job well done to all of you.