Price wise:
For perspective, I started researching early, 24 months in advance.
I figured out how many outfitters there were in RSA and Namibia. I decided to contact a particular percentage of the total number of outfits;
1% of the total number.
I also focused my internet search very narrowly, using all the tools at my discretion and gathered basic information on every one of them.
I started my search by
bouncing every outfit that did not post their rates.
After the first round, I contacted many places (email) that looked good and asked for price lists and references.
I created a spread sheet and compared prices on everything. Welcome to Excel.
I created my wish list of trophies and I ranked every last Outfit.
All costs in. Soup to nuts. NOT just trophy fees and day rates.
After doing all this it was simple to avoid any outfit that was so out of line that they were ridiculous. Either way.
Type of facilities I was looking for at a price within the expected range for the quality.
$3500.00 per night or $110 does not matter if the facility and service do not meet with the price.
Qualities I was after:
They had the game species I wanted and a good history of trophies.
The hunted
species had to be Endemic to the area
I wanted everyone in the group to experience/interact with Elephant, B&W Rhino, Hippo, Crocodiles and Buffalo.
Large contiguous properties, which are required if you have these species running and were an excellent example of
conservation efforts. eg. Reintroduction of Black Rhino.
Family Farm and Large Reserve. I chose one of each to get a feel for the range of hunting opportunities.
Communication - Business model
- Cancellation Refund policy- open to re-dating the hunt. Not a zero refund policy.
- Deposit policy- negotiable, small, etc.
- Payment method accepted. Cash Credit Card, etc.
- Responsive to questions while providing factual replies.
- They were not averse to a .270Win.
- When I looked at the web sites, I looked for openness and good, current information. For interests sake I returned to the net a year later and quite a few of the outfits had disappeared off the internet!!! Time is a good screening tool.
References were just a good confirmation of what I already knew.
I still contacted every last one, but many had not hunted the same species.
I had done all this research and through my restrictive search had never encountered AH.
In my secondary "background" research I found out that one of the final contenders was an active member of AH and had donated a hunt recently to a very satisfied customer. The hunt report was honest and showed personality.
The last straw that tipped the cart for me was this participation in the community.