I have been taking Bongo hunters to Community areas of Cameroon and was surprise to find that some of the areas reported in the litterature as "not good" for Bongo hunt were very rich. I work with communities in Cameroon to implement community-based multiple use of natural resources and Self-guided hunting is really taking off in those areas.
Come and experiment a real hunt at low cost with us. We have a team on the ground that will organise everything for you: permits, meet you at airport, translator(s), be with you from arrival to departure, etc. (check "Self-guided hunting in Cameroon" on this forum).

Armand
Camnares
Cameroon Natural Resources.
Email: bikooa@yahoo.fr

BTTT

John,
You think this could be a version of one of those "Nigerian" scams??????? You send a deposit and you never hear from these cats again? Highly suspicious posts!

bwanamrm & NitroX

regarding the post about self-guided hunting in Cameroon by Armand Biko’o and low price hunts in Burkina faso by Yaya Quattara

No it is not a scam, both posters are students of the Pretoria, or how is called now TSWANE University and studding wildlife / nature conservation.
Andre DeGeorges is running a program African initiative and both participating in this, the program wants to create opportunities for indigenous people to open safari hunting in their respective country’s. Giving local people a change to enter the safari market and working in there own areas with the local communities IMO a better way than campfire the programs in use today.

I meet both students and their intentions are sincere.
However I cannot comment on the quality of the service or areas.
Contact Andre DeGorgers he will give you all the information.

Cheers

Freischuetz

Thanks for the comments.

Armand

What sort of "low cost" are you talking about? There might be people interested. One of the key problems I have seen with Cameroon is not being able to speak French. If translators are available, a big plus.

Well if it not a scam, then I wish these fellows all the luck in the world in opening up low cost options for hunting in western and central Africa!

Bwanamrm, This is not a scam. Andre DeGeorges is a good friend of mine and he teaches at,what use to be, Technicon Pretoria. These gentlemen are students there. Andre and I have both done self guided hunting in Cameroon. Andre is trying to get some of his students promoting hunting in Cameroon and other West African countries.

Mike

Just posted on Armand's other thread:

"After Armand's first post early this month (which no one replied for a while), I did some research and have signed up for a Bongo hunt (hopefully with my long bow) in March 2007.

So assuming that all goes well (and I'm still posting on AR then), I may be able to say something about how it goes. Also hoping to bring along a cameraman to document what this is all about.

This is my research so far (I'm as "dumb" as anybody about this so please don't think I'm trying to promote something until after I have first hand experience with it):

What Armand and Yaya from Burkino Faso have in common is that both studied or graduated from Tshwane Univerity of Technology's Nature Conservation program). Tshwane University was formed a few years ago from the merger of three technology institutes, and is now South Africa's largest residential University. A project manager in the Department named Dr. Andres DeGeorge has worked with both Armand, Yaya and other students now studying with the Department in Pretoria. Andres has been on the self guided hunt with Armand and wrote about it in a SA hunting magazine. Andres was formerly the head of SCI's Africa office (hired by former SCI President, John Jackson, who now is leading Conservation Force - a very significant hunting conservation advocacy group in the US). Andres was involved with Project Noah - the project funded by the charitable Shikar Safari Club from Chicago (entirely different from the commerical Shikar Safaris outfitter run by a Mr. Khan from Turkey). Project Noah sought to provide educations for native Africans in conservation in an effort to involve a future generation in wildlife management and conservation.

Armand's NGO only formed in Dec 2004 and has only gone through one season. They've had 3 successful bongo hunters.

The idea of Armand's NGOs is to attempt to involve local villagers/hunters directly in arranging hunts for overseas hunters (the standard model till now is that a concession is bought usualy by someone overseas and hunts are run on it with employed local staff). The intention is that if local villagers, hunters, poachers? see that wildlife is highly valuable to overseas hunters, there will be a strong incentive to conserve it rather than using it for meat, skins, etc. A similar idea has worked extremely well in Pakistan in bringing the Markhor back from the brink of extinction).

The post of Yaya and Armand probably sound the same because they both studied at the same place, under the same teachers, and are trying to do the same thing in their respective countries. From what I can gather, both of them are also recent graduates in conservation who have little experience in the commerical trophy hunting world, espeically in marketing and managing the expectations of overseas hunters.

(and in a side note to the deleted debate about Marco Polo sheep on the Afghan-Pakistan border: I didn't see any Macro Polo there either. Maybe someone should throw a fleece on a Markhor and tried to convince SCI/ GSOC / FNAWS that a new sheep species has been found? ha! ha!)

Anyway, I am in communication with Armand about my upcoming hunt. I have not been in communication with Yaya (though I have heard of him in my research). I won't have seen first hand what they are trying to do. But hopefully by April, I will have and could tell you more.

There are a lot of hunting scams out there (as many of you know first hand . . . . maybe from both sides?). But shouldn't we try to give these guys some benefit of the doubt? If they are a con, I will probably be their first victim. So there's no need to throw too much flack around AR this early on.

Hope this helps."