What Does an African Hunting Safari Actually Cost?

Nobody will give you a straight answer to this, and there is a reason for that: the honest answer is a structure rather than a number. Two hunters can book the same seven days with the same outfitter and go home having paid amounts that differ by a factor of three, entirely legitimately.

So rather than quote you a figure that would be wrong for most people reading this, here is how the bill is actually built. Once you understand the structure you can read anybody’s proposal properly, including ours.

The five parts of the bill

1. The daily rate. What you pay per day for the hunt itself — your professional hunter, trackers and skinners, the vehicle and fuel, accommodation, all meals, standard drinks and laundry. It is quoted per hunter per day and it is the one number most outfitters lead with.

Daily rates vary enormously by what you are hunting, not by how luxurious the camp is. A plains game day in South Africa and an elephant day in Zimbabwe are different products with different costs behind them — quota, concession fees, the size of the team and the length of the hunt all scale up.

2. Trophy fees. Charged per animal, and this is where the total actually moves. You pay for what you take. Take four animals and your bill is four trophy fees; take nine and it is nine.

Two things to check in any proposal. First, that every fee is itemised in writing before you travel, so you can decide in the field with the number in your head. Second, the wounding policy. On almost all African safaris a wounded animal counts as taken and the full fee applies whether it is recovered or not. That is standard and it is correct — it is what stops anyone treating a wounded animal as a free shot — but you should see it written down rather than discover it afterwards.

3. Dip, pack and shipping. Treating, crating and freighting your trophies home. This is paid to the dip-and-pack facility and the shipping agent, not to the outfitter, and it is routinely the cost people forget entirely.

It is not optional. Untreated raw skins will not clear customs anywhere in the world. Budget for it from the start — our trophy shipping page sets out the whole process and the realistic timeline.

4. Travel. International flights, any charter into the concession, and firearm permit fees. Charters matter in Mozambique in particular, where the Delta camp is reached by light aircraft from Beira. Ask whether a charter is required before you compare one quote against another, because it is a real cost that some proposals bury and others leave out.

5. Taxidermy and tips. Mounting happens after everything above and is a separate decision months later. Gratuities are never included and never expected, but they are customary — ask your outfitter for sensible amounts rather than guessing. Ours are in the FAQ.

Why two hunters pay such different totals

Because trophy fees dominate, and because species are not priced alike.

A first safari built around common plains game — impala, warthog, blesbok, blue wildebeest, kudu — stacks up a number of modest fees. A single dangerous game animal can cost more than that entire list put together. Elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and buffalo are in a different bracket, and within that bracket a free-range elephant on unfenced ground is not priced like a plains game kudu for sound reasons: quota, concession cost, hunt length and the number of people in the field.

This is why “how much is a safari” cannot be answered honestly without knowing what you want to hunt.

The costs people forget

In rough order of how often they catch people out:

• Dip, pack and shipping. The big one. Budget for it at the time you book, not when the invoice arrives four months later.
• Taxidermy. Months later, and frequently more than the shipping.
• Charter flights where the concession needs one.
• Gratuities for the PH, the trackers, the skinners and the camp staff.
• Rifle rental if you decide not to travel with your own.
• Observer or non-hunting partner rates, which are usually a reduced daily rate but not nil.
• Extra days either side for travel, and a night in Johannesburg on the way out.
• Customs broker at your end, which is a real fee for clearing the shipment.

How to compare two quotes properly

Do not compare daily rates. Compare the whole thing.

Ask every outfitter for the same four things in writing:

1. The daily rate, and exactly what it covers.
2. An itemised trophy fee list for the species you are actually interested in.
3. Whether a charter is needed, and what it costs.
4. The wounding policy and the observer rate.

A quote that is cheap on the daily rate and vague on trophy fees is not a cheap safari. It is an unfinished quote. The reverse happens too: a higher daily rate that includes things another outfitter bills separately can be the lower total.

And be suspicious of a quote that is far below everything else you have seen. Concession fees, quota and staff cost what they cost. Somebody undercutting the market by half is economising somewhere, and it is usually on the quota, the ground or the wages.

What we do

We quote in writing, itemised, before you commit to anything. Daily rate, every trophy fee for the species on your list, what is included, what is not, and whether a charter applies. If a cheaper hunt would suit you better we will say so — we routinely point first-time buffalo hunters at our South African ground rather than the Zambezi Delta, because for a first buffalo it is the sensible route and the Delta is the premium hunt.

What we will not do is give you a headline number on a web page and adjust it upwards once you are interested.

Tell us what you want to hunt and roughly when, and we will come back with the real figures for that hunt. See also what’s included for the full line-by-line.