Since 1990, and one way of doing things

Where it started

Nhoro Safaris began in Zimbabwe in 1990, running hunts in the Zambezi Valley with a Land Cruiser, two trackers and a great deal more enthusiasm than capital.

Gordon Stark grew up on a farm outside Pittsburgh, and it was a hunting trip to Africa in his early twenties that changed the direction of his life. The professional hunter he travelled with became his business partner, and Gordon has spent most of his adult life in Africa since — over thirty-five years now, and counting.

The early years were less about growing the business than about earning the trust of the people who make it work: landowners willing to lease a concession to an unproven outfitter, and trackers willing to teach a young American which tracks mattered and which did not. That trust took years to build, and it is still what the business runs on. Nhoro Safaris has never been about how many safaris we can run in a season — it has always been about knowing the ground and the people on it well enough that a client can trust us with something as serious as a fourteen-day elephant hunt.

Over the following three decades the operation grew across borders — into South Africa for plains game, into Mozambique for the Delta buffalo, and over the years into Botswana and Tanzania as well. What did not change was the size. We still run a small number of safaris a year and we still know every client by name.

Where we hunt now

Today we hunt three countries: South Africa for plains game and buffalo on a single property in Limpopo, Zimbabwe for free-range elephant and the cats, and Mozambique for Zambezi Delta buffalo. We have hunted Botswana and Tanzania in previous years and may again, but we would rather offer three countries we know intimately than five we know only in passing.

The next generation

Gordon is moving toward retirement, and the day-to-day running of the hunting is passing to the professional hunters who have been doing it alongside him for years. This is a handover rather than a handoff. The same concessions, the same trackers, the same standards, and the same phone number.

We mention it openly because clients booking a safari eighteen months out are entitled to know who will be standing next to them, and because over thirty-five years of accumulated knowledge about particular valleys and particular animals is exactly the thing that gets lost when a business does not plan for it. We have planned for it.

What we believe about hunting

We hunt free-range animals in unfenced country wherever the law and the ground allow it. Zimbabwe and Mozambique are completely unfenced. Our South African property is high-fenced on the perimeter, as almost all South African ground is, but there is not a single internal fence or camp inside its 20,000 acres — animals range across the whole of it. We describe the ground plainly rather than leaving you to guess.

We hunt old animals. On dangerous game that means bulls past breeding age, and on plains game it means mature males that have already passed on their genetics. This is not a marketing position, it is how sustainable hunting works, and it is also how you end up with a better trophy.

We would rather you passed on three animals and took the right one on the second-last day. A safari where you walk away from good bulls because they were not quite old enough is a better safari, and every client who has done it has told us the same thing afterwards.

How the days actually run

In all three of our countries the camp or lodge sits on the hunting ground itself. There is no long drive out to a separate concession each morning, which changes the shape of a hunting day considerably.

You wake just before sunrise rather than in the dark, have coffee and something light to eat without rushing, and head out as the sun breaks — which is when the game is moving anyway. If a particular hunt calls for an earlier start we will make one, but that is the exception rather than the routine. See a full day in camp.

The people

The professional hunters who guide our safaris are licensed in the countries they operate in and most of them have been with us for a long time. Our trackers, several of whom have worked with this outfit for more than twenty years, are the reason the hunting works at all.

Meet the team — the people who will actually be standing next to you.

Conservation is not a footnote

Regulated hunting funds anti-poaching, employs people in places with very few other employers, and gives wildlife a measurable value to the communities that live alongside it. We think that argument holds up, and we think it is worth making honestly rather than defensively.

Read our position on conservation and ethics.