I am confused by PAC hunts. I am under the impression that these hunts are for animals that are causing problems and consequently must be eliminated. If this is true how can they be sold ahead of time? If the aminal is causing problems wouldn't the authorities want it taken care of now not in a couple of months? I can understand someone having an opportunity to shoot a PAC animal while he was there, but I don't see how an outfitter could know that there will be an animal causing trouble in two months. It seems that over the past 18 months I have heard more about PAC hunts than I did before, am I reading better or are there more of these hunts being sold now? I guess my real question is: "are these legit?".

TerryR

The animals know where the maize fields are and raid those fields every year as the crops are nearing maturity. Due to the overpopulation of elephants, the parks department knows it is going to happen this year just as it happens every year, and they know when it will happen. So the hunt can be arranged in advance. Further, the elephants are tracked from the field and shot, so there is no question of whether the elephant is guilty of eating maize or not.

I wonder whether the parks dept. uses PAC hunts as some effort to control the elephant overpopulation problem since culling may be politically unsupportable.

With the government "reforms" maize production is at an all time low. That means PAC is going to be at an all time high.

From what I have been told, in Zim, they cannot be sold ahead of time. How these problem animals are identified and anything beyond this I do not know, but would like to.

500grains

Your last point was exactly what I was thinking. It may be far easier politically to declare a certain number of elephants to be "problem elephants" than to cull them. It seems that most PAC hunts are for elephant.

TerryR

500 grains is correct. Some tribal areas experience crop depredations every year. These are usually the ones that border a National Park or a National Parks safari area wirh a substantial elephant population. There are no guarantees that crop raiding will occur while you are there but the Safari Company will not book you there unless the probability is very high at least a reputable one won't. The biggest problem could be if the rains don't come and the crops don't grow. In the past most PAC bulls were killed at night with a spotlight and that still occurs. I haven't done that but from what I have heard it is very dangerous and quite an adrenalin rush. Just not my type of hunting. It seems that in at least some cases NP will allow the hunters to track raiding bulls out of the crops during the day light hours.

As far as National Parks using PAC hunting as a population control method, not likely as crop raiders are almost exclusively bulls. As we all should know by now, you can't control mammal population growth by shooting the males. Population control culls are for females. A lot of professionals are opposed to the hunting of cow elephants because of a perceived affect on the social structure of the cow herds. I and others have our own take on that and I will lay that point of view out in another thread.

See you all when I get back!

465H&H

"Landa enne!"

TerryR,

I had a similar post/question a few months back (do a search for some interesting dialogue). I posed the question about how can you pre-book a PAC hunt months (years) in advance to a ph who offers these hunts in Mozambique. His response: "Any elephant not in the pot is a problem elephant"!. The hunting laws in Mozambique that Terry Carr provided (thanks again) seem to be rather specific (at least in mhy simple Southern boy interpretation) as to defining PAC elephants. At the same time, their is a proliferation of these hunts being offered by several outfitters (many with strong reputations (Buzz Charlton, Piet Hougaard..).

really it isn't to hard to figure, When you have an elephant population that is 4 times larger than the carrying capacity of the land, and the native people have gardens along the border of this population what do thing the ele's are going to do?? starve??

A good example of a true PAC hunt is the news story put up about four elephants raiding a village and killing villagers. Another member here posted one of the outfitters/PHs was going to kill those four elephants. If he had a client at the time one might be very very lucky.

My guess is if you visit the border villages you will easily find enough complaints about "problem" elephants. 1) Any elephant raiding the shambas is a problem elephant according to the farmer and 2) A dead elephant means meat for the village.

The outfitter would have a mental quota from past experience that maybe he could get eg 6 PAC elephants from an area easily plus any true killer elephants where public opinion must be molified.

BTT