Eddie Koch
IF you want to be Hemingway but support the animal rights movement, there is a solution. It’s called eco-hunting and involves shooting elephants in the Zambezi Valley with splatballs made of luminous environment-friendly paint.
A company in Johannesburg conducted market research in Europe and found that many modern-day hunters shoulder a contradiction. They are addicts of stalking and shooting wild animals in the bush but are sensitive to campaigns by environmental organisations opposed to the sport.
The solution is a safari that solves the stresses of hunting in the green age. For a fee, you can be fetched from a luxury hotel at Victoria Falls by a seasoned tracker and taken in a 4×4 to the nearby Matetsi Safari Area on the banks of the Zambezi.
When you arrive, you will be given a gun resembling an M16 assault rifle loaded with splatballs of luminous paint. Colours range from pink and orange to purple. Then you set out into the bush backed up by a professional hunter and rangers armed with the real thing — a 475-elephant gun — and begin tracking your prey.
“This expedition includes the stalking of elephants or buffaloes, getting into position and then shooting at them with a weapon that fires a ball of paint and leaves a mark on the animal without hurting it,” says the advertising brochure. “It is exactly the same experience as hunting and shooting an animal without actually killing it.”
Included in the trip are many opportunities for the hunter to be photographed in the bush, shouldering the M16 look-alike, and getting into a variety of shooting positions before firing the “lethal” shot. Dress is optional but khaki or camouflage outfits are likely to produce the best results. The entire outing takes a day, including the return trip from Vic Falls.
Tour operator Amanda Rhynhoud says her office in Germany has received much interest from hunters who want to make their safari environmentally correct. One party sent her a fax that read:
“We are interested in your safaris but can you answer the following queries. Is the paint water soluble water or will it pollute the waterholes in the area? Is there a possibility that the animals of Africa will be walking around with paint splattered all of them?”
No problem. The splat balls are made of vegetable dye which will not contaminate or colour the waterholes in Matetsi. And the paint, which does not irritate the skin of a buffalo or an elephant, dissipates in less than half an hour.
In addition, there is no noise pollution; the paintball rifle makes less noise than a pellet gun. This is useful because elephants shot often are likely to suffer nervous stress if the splat is accompanied by a loud bang. And buffaloes — respected by big-game hunters as the most dangerous animals in Africa — will become increasingly aggressive if they are exposed to excessive noise.
“Our experience shows that the impact on the animals is less than that of a bee sting. You can give an elephant a shot in the heart with a pink paintball without hurting it. When they have been hit the animals wander around as if nothing has happened.”
The safaris are supervised by a professional who also offers his clients real trophy hunts and field walks. The idea of eco-hunting emanated from training programmes for his apprentice rangers.
‘We didn’t want kill an animal every time we taught a guy to track and shoot. So we started using paint balls. Then we developed this into the idea of providing unique eco-hunting trips for foreign clients.”
Splatball safaris cost the same as trophy-hunting trips because an elephant or a buffalo may be shot with the real elephant gun if any dangers arise during the expedition — and the hunter also has to pay normal trophy fees.
The fees must be paid whether you manage to splat an animal or not. But the agency guarantees you will see elephant and buffalo and claims to have an 80 percent success rate during previous expeditions.
* Another form of green hunting is available in South Africa. Management of the Pilanesberg Park in the North-West province offers safaris that involve darting a rhino with a sedative.
This expedition gives the client an opportunity to have his or her photograph taken standing next to the trophy before it wakes up and wanders of into the bush.