4. October 2024
In South Africa, as in other countries, it is mandatory that a professional hunter must be present during trophy hunting. Of course, we also hunt on NGIRI for conservation or to provide our employees with meat – but we do not need our professional hunter training for that purpose. As land owner you are allowed to hunt only with a hunting licence on your own property.
Many people keep asking us what it actually needs to become a PH in South Africa? Basically, anyone who has the necessary knowledge and skills could register for a course and take the exam. However, you can only get a license as a professional hunter if you either have the South African citizenship or a permanent residency permit together with a work permit. The training itself is comparable to that of a professional hunter in Germany, but requires practical experience in the areas of tracking, wildlife science, fauna, game processing and weapon handling.
Training is provided in the following fields: hunting guidance, legal knowledge/hunting law, first aid in the bush, bore sighting, tracking, skinning and guest care. The last point in particular is crucial, because the guest is in our hands and we have two tasks to fulfill: to give them an unforgettable time and, above all, to ensure their safety. Another very important point is weapon handling. Since hunting is usually done while stalking, it is the job of the professional hunter to prepare the hunting guest for this type of hunting, including by zeroing in with the shooting stick, and to point out the importance of precise shot placement. When dangerous game takes the shot, the hits must be accurate. To be prepared for that, in one part of the PH shooting exams, a 15×15 centimeter moving target must be shot and hit three times within 30 seconds from the following distances: 30, 20 and 10 meters. Other parts of the exam are about precise sheet placement at 100 m, 200 m and 300 m. The candidate must adjust the optics themselves so that the grouping of the exam result is accurate – at all 3 distances.
A lot of it revolves around game, of course. The approach and behavior of the game are taught, as well as it´s anatomy – in order to clearly identify if you have a trophy animal in front of you. This can be difficult, especially when it comes to addressing age or gender. With springbok, for example, the females also have horns, which makes it difficult to distinguish them in large herds. But these are all things that you have to master in order to do justice to the game on the one hand, but also to do a good job in guiding your hunting clients to a successfull trophy hunt. And hunting at NGIRI Wildlife Reserve rests on these two pillars.
For me, this meant that although I had official permission to lead hunts after passing the Professional Hunter exam, my real learning time only began after that. I kept going out, out and out again to learn in the bush and from the native trackers & skinners. You also have to learn how to set up a hide, how to stalk effectively, how to read tracks and much more and, above all, how to master it. What many people don’t know is that shot is also on the curriculum, as is shooting with a rear sight and front sight, because if you can’t use the scope, you have to be able to do it. At the end of the training there is a test that is quite challenging. You have to complete a variety of tasks within a strict time limit, such as leading a guest to a strong kudu bull within shooting distance, confirming certain game, recognizing tracks, skilfully knocking the killed game out of the cover and salting it thoroughly, and much more. But you are all the prouder when you are one of the professional hunters in South Africa. For me as a German and also a hunter, it was a very special experience that I would not want to miss. Since then, I can say with a clear conscience from my own experience: If you have a South African professional hunter at your side, you can feel that you are in good hands.
