There is big excitement in my hometown of Makhanda this week because the Kwandwe Game Lodge will host its annual game auction on Saturday. This is one of the highlights of the year even for those who have no intention of bidding on any animals.
Three game lodges and breeding farms from the region join Kwandwe Signature Wildlife for the auction with their lots of animals up for sale. Buyers come from all over the country and sometimes from overseas.
The auction is conducted ‘live’ in person, telephonically as well as online – so bids come in from all over the place and on various platforms. A specialist auctioneer, Wildswinkel, manages the event on all its platforms including its own app. Bidding has already gone ‘live’ online at 08:00 am South African time on Thursday, March 10 and it will close, one lot at a time, on Saturday.
There are altogether 112 lots and you can download the professionally compiled catalogue here.
The physical auction is held in a large marquee near one of the main lodges on the Kwandwe reserve. Not all the animals up for auction are actually brought to Kwandwe as the cost and additional trauma of capturing them is deemed unnecessary.
For example, Lot 73 is described as ten impala ewes and it is presumed that everyone knows what impala ewes look like so there is no point in capturing them just to show them off to potential bidders.
Visitors curious about what Kwandwe has brought to the party can take a look near the big marquee where a few bomas (holding pens) keep a small number of ready-for-auction specimens. The buffalo are the big attractions, especially the thoroughbred bulls with enormous horns. They have widely recognised names and pedigree certificates proving that they really were sired from that incredible bull out of that equally well-bred dam.
Recently captured wild animals, especially buffalo, are understandably very skittish so the organisers ask visitors to keep noise down to a minimum in the bomas.
Now if you really want to see some of the prospects at the other reserves, this is no problem if you are a high roller. There are always a couple of helicopters outside the marquee that are ready for a quick flip to take you to inspect the wildlife in situ.
Beyond the marquee and the children’s play area there is a large, make-shift parking lot for visitors and bidders. About half the vehicles parked in rough rows on the grass are bakkies (pick-up trucks) or Toyota Fortuners which seem to be the required mode of transport in the area. The remainder of the cars are a mixed bag of SUVs and 4X4s.
I fit in because I have a compact SUV (Renault Kiger).
A price on their heads
There are various criteria to measure a lot of bull, but the critical number for buffalo and most antelope is the size of their horns. This is a tricky issue as there are different methods of measuring horn length but it seems that Rowland Ward or Safari Club International (SCI) are the leading arbiters of records etc.
It also seems that everyone appraising horns only has tapes marked in inches, so having gone through the catalogue, I can tell you that a well-bred, prize buffalo with a Rowland Ward of over 50 (inches) will probably sell for over a million rand (about 67,000 US dollars).
The awkward part (for some) stems from the purpose of assessing an animal based largely on its horn size. The obvious explanation for this obsession about horn length is that hunters compete with each other for record sized trophies. I will avoid crass wisecracks about “mine is longer than yours”. Breeders will more likely tell you that it is a profitable business breeding antelope with unusually large horns.
This argument is no doubt true because a dead buffalo is unlikely to sire many prize winners. But breeders are usually reluctant to talk to the media because, well, who needs bad press?
Breeders, hunters and taxidermists are always careful to tell the world how hunting is good for conservation.
The first line of the Mission Statement on the Rowland Ward website says:
“The mission of Rowland Ward is to help preserve and increase wildlife and its habitat worldwide by supporting sustainable, fair-chase hunting, which, in turn, directly benefits the local indigenous people of the areas involved”.
This might seem counterintuitive, but it makes sense when you consider that professional hunters want to have animals for their clients to hunt. It would be bad for business to exterminate them.
You might have thought that trophy hunting of wild animals was some barbaric distraction of medieval times when they didn’t have the internet. Unfortunately that is not the case, there are still some people who believe that sticking a stuffed head of an animal on their walls is somehow proof of their virility.
The are several perspectives on hunting that we have discussed in a previous Real Safari Newsletter – and I admit that I feel somewhat hypocritical because I am uncomfortable with the idea of hunting as a sport, but at the same time I really enjoy venison and kudu biltong.
So, maybe I am OK with hunting for meat and culling to reduce numbers when the population of a species has passed the carrying capacity of a reserve or nature park.
Trophy hunting in South Africa returned to centre stage at the end of last month when the Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, announced the trophy-hunting quotas for 2022. The list referred to only three species – and I am not sure why because many other species are hunted.
The quotas are for the hunting and export of 10 leopards, 10 black rhinos and 150 elephants. Conditions for the hunting of these animals are rigorously enforced. Creecy said, “Leopard hunts will only be allowed in areas where leopard populations are stable or increasing, and only male leopards seven years of age or older may be hunted”.
There are also strict rules applied to the hunting of black rhinos. She said that only adult male black rhinos may be hunted, and only on conservation management grounds in accordance with a set of strict criteria to ensure that demographic and/or genetic conservation is enhanced.
Only male leopards over the age of seven years may be hunted and only in certain specific areas. This is tragic because many more leopards are killed when they attack livestock so the limit of ten is quite farcical.
Why anyone would ever want to shoot a leopard, have it stuffed and then place it in their living room is beyond me. Leopards look incredibly beautiful in the wild, in a tree or in a photograph – anything else is quite sick.
Next week, Real Safari Newsletter will have all the results from the auction.
This particular newsletter might be controversial to some people, if you have strong views on any issues raised above, please leave your comments below.