There is a difference between asking how long an African hunt can take and deciding how many days you should book.
A plains game hunter looking for kudu, impala and wildebeest may have plenty of time in seven hunting days. Someone travelling specifically for an old Dagga Boy could hunt for the same seven days and spend most of them following tracks without ever finding the bull he wants. Leopard, lion and elephant can change the calculation again.
The primary animal should therefore come first. Once that is decided, the hunting area, number of secondary species, time of year and way the hunt will be conducted all help determine how many days make sense.
This is important when comparing Hunting Trips in Africa. A seven-day package and a ten-day package are not automatically three hunting days apart. Arrival days, road transfers, charter flights and departure arrangements can reduce the amount of time available in the field.
There is also no guarantee that more hunting days will be needed. A buffalo can be taken on the first morning. The kudu you expected to spend days looking for may appear on the second afternoon. That is hunting. The problem is that nobody knows this before the safari begins.
The better way to plan an African hunting trip is to give the main objective enough time if things do not happen quickly.
That does not mean automatically booking 14 or 21 days for every safari. It means understanding what can consume hunting time before deciding whether five, seven, ten or considerably more days is realistic.
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The Animal You Came to Hunt Should Decide the Number of Days
Once the actual number of hunting days is clear, the next question is simple: what animal would make the trip worthwhile?
That answer should have more influence on safari length than almost anything else.
A plains game safari built around several common species can provide hunting opportunities from the first day. If one area is quiet, the PH may change direction, look for another species or move into a different country. A seven-day hunt can therefore provide plenty of opportunity, particularly when the species list is realistic and the hunting area holds good populations of the animals being targeted.
That flexibility becomes one of the advantages of Plains Game Hunts. The hunter may begin the morning looking for kudu, find fresh wildebeest tracks instead and spend the next few hours following them. The original plan can change without necessarily losing the day.
A buffalo hunt is different.
Seven hunting days may be enough to take a good Cape buffalo bull, and plenty are hunted in less time. But finding buffalo does not mean finding the bull you came for. A morning can disappear following tracks that lead to cows and young bulls. Another day may be spent working around a herd without getting the wind, visibility or opportunity needed to properly judge an old bull.
The question should not simply be whether buffalo can be hunted in seven days. It is whether seven days gives you enough time if the first few days do not go your way.
Lion, leopard and elephant introduce their own problems. Leopard hunting can involve establishing and checking baits, studying trail-camera activity and waiting for the right cat to settle into a pattern. Lion hunts may depend heavily on locating a suitable mature male and working with whatever movement is taking place in the hunting area. Elephant can require covering enormous amounts of country before suitable tracks are found, followed by hours on foot with no guarantee that the bull at the end is one the PH wants to hunt.
This uncertainty is part of Dangerous Game Hunts. More days do not guarantee success. They simply give the hunting team more time to solve the problem when the animal does not cooperate.
There is another day worth considering before any of this begins.
Someone arriving in Africa after a long series of flights may prefer to spend a night near the arrival airport before travelling into camp. Crossing several time zones, sleeping badly on aircraft and arriving tired is not always the best preparation for climbing into a hunting vehicle before daylight the following morning. Hunters bringing their own rifles may also prefer some breathing room should travel or firearm arrangements take longer than expected.
That rest day should not be counted as a hunting day. It is simply part of planning the trip properly. Someone flying from North America may decide he wants a night to sleep, adjust to the time difference and reach camp rested. Another hunter may arrive feeling fine and want to get moving immediately.
The important thing is to plan for it rather than discover after booking that the first hunting morning follows immediately after two days of airports and aircraft.
The Hunting Area Can Change How Many Days You Need
The animal is only part of the calculation. The size and nature of the hunting area can change how much time should realistically be allowed.
A Cape buffalo hunt is a good example. In an area with strong buffalo numbers, good road access and relatively predictable movement around water, a hunting team may be able to locate fresh sign quickly and spend much of the safari following and judging bulls.
Move the same hunt into a large concession and the problem changes.
Several hours may be spent in the hunting vehicle simply covering enough country to find fresh tracks. In some of Africa's largest hunting areas, the day can begin at 3:00 a.m. because the PH wants to reach a distant part of the concession around first light. If promising tracks are found and followed, the hunting party may only return to camp well after dark.
Those can be very long days.
Buffalo or elephant seen near a river yesterday may have moved miles overnight. Tracks followed for most of the morning may eventually cross a boundary, join a larger herd or lead to animals the PH decides are not suitable. The following morning the process begins again.
None of that time is wasted. It is part of hunting animals that have enough country to move.
Terrain can slow things down further. Thick woodland makes judging animals difficult even after they have been found. Mountainous country reduces how much ground can realistically be covered on foot. Rivers, flooded areas, poor roads or heavy rain can turn what looks like a short distance on a map into several hours of travel.
The opposite can also be true. Some hunting areas allow the PH to move efficiently between productive parts of the property, giving the hunter more opportunities within a shorter safari. That is why assigning a fixed number of days to a species without considering where it will be hunted can be misleading.
There is another consideration on longer safaris that is easily overlooked: the hunter himself.
Ten or fourteen hunting days do not necessarily need to mean ten or fourteen consecutive days of pushing from before daylight until dark. After several long days of tracking, early starts and late returns to camp, taking an easier afternoon or even a rest day can make sense.
Leopard hunting is a good example. Long days checking baits, moving between distant locations and sitting late into the night can become mentally as well as physically tiring. Sometimes a hunter benefits more from getting some sleep, checking his rifle, sorting his gear and starting the following morning properly rested than from forcing another exhausted day simply because it appears on the itinerary as a hunting day.
The same applies after several days on buffalo or elephant tracks. Fatigue affects concentration, decision-making and shooting. There is little value in giving yourself enough days to find the right animal if, when the opportunity finally comes, you are too exhausted to make the most of it.
This is another reason a seven-day buffalo hunt may be perfectly sensible in one area and unnecessarily tight in another. Before deciding how long to book, ask the outfitter a better question than simply, “How many days does a buffalo hunt take?”
Ask:
“How many days would you recommend for this animal in this particular hunting area?”
What Can You Realistically Hunt in Five, Seven or Ten Days?
There is no perfect safari length, but five, seven and ten hunting days provide different amounts of room to work with.
Five hunting days can be enough for a focused plains game trip or a hunt built around a small number of species in the right area. If kudu is the priority and impala, warthog or wildebeest are secondary, five good days can provide plenty of opportunity. What it does not provide is margin. Two difficult days, poor weather or an unexpectedly elusive primary animal can quickly put pressure on the remaining time.
Seven hunting days gives the PH considerably more flexibility. It is long enough for many plains game safaris and can also work for focused hunts such as Cape buffalo where the area and circumstances are suitable. There is more time to pass animals, change tactics or spend several days concentrating on one difficult species without immediately worrying about the calendar.
Seven days can still disappear quickly. Follow buffalo for two mornings without finding the right bull, lose another afternoon to weather and suddenly the safari looks different from the one imagined before arrival.
Ten hunting days provides a useful amount of breathing room when the primary animal matters more than simply filling a species list. An unsuccessful day becomes less important. The PH can spend longer working a particular area, pass an animal that is not quite right or continue hunting the main species without feeling pressure to abandon it for secondary game.
Those extra three days can make a bigger difference than they appear to on paper.
They do not guarantee a better trophy or a successful hunt. They give the hunter and PH more options when things take longer than expected.
Trips of 14 days or longer begin to make sense when the hunting method itself demands time, when several important dangerous game species are involved or when the primary animal may require a much longer search. Leopard, lion and elephant are obvious examples, although the appropriate length still depends heavily on the hunting area and circumstances.
The useful question is therefore not:
“Is seven days enough?”
It is:
“What happens to my hunt if the animal I came for takes five of those seven days?”
If the answer is that everything else can wait, seven days may be reasonable.
If the answer is that you also want several other animals, need to cover a huge hunting area and would be disappointed to leave without them, the safari probably needs more time.
Is Adding One or Two Hunting Days Worth It?
Adding hunting days costs money, and there is little reason to pay for time that the safari does not realistically require. But the additional daily rate should not always be considered on its own.
Look at the cost of the entire trip.
International flights, transfers or charter flights, permits, trophy fees, accommodation, gratuities, taxidermy and eventually getting trophies home can make an African hunt a substantial investment before another day or two is added. When viewed against the total African hunting safari cost, extending a trip slightly can sometimes represent a relatively small part of the overall budget.
That does not mean a seven-day hunt should automatically become ten days. If seven days is appropriate for the animal and hunting area, additional time may achieve very little.
The calculation changes when the safari has been squeezed into the shortest possible period purely to reduce the daily-rate portion of the bill.
If Cape buffalo is the reason you travelled to Africa, saving the cost of two hunting days may look less attractive when the first four days are spent following buffalo without finding the bull you want. The flights, transfers and other costs have already been paid. What cannot be bought once the safari is nearly over is the two days you decided not to book.
This is worth considering on expensive or difficult hunts where one animal determines whether the trip achieved its main objective.
The cheapest number of hunting days is not necessarily the best value.
Every Additional Animal Uses Hunting Time
Adding secondary species to an African hunting trip can make a safari considerably more interesting, but every animal added to the list also competes for hunting time.
That does not mean each species requires its own day. Plains game is often taken opportunistically while pursuing something else. A good warthog may appear while looking for kudu, or a mature impala may be encountered while driving to another part of the hunting area.
The problem begins when too many secondary species become priorities.
If Cape buffalo is the reason for the trip, fresh buffalo tracks on the fourth morning should probably matter more than the fact that sable, kudu and bushbuck are still on the list. Spending half the day somewhere else looking specifically for plains game may improve the trophy list while reducing the time available for the animal that brought the hunter to Africa.
The same applies to longer dangerous game safaris. A hunter may want leopard and buffalo, with several plains game species added if time allows. If the leopard takes longer than expected to settle onto bait, or the buffalo require several days of tracking, those secondary opportunities may need to wait. It helps to divide a wish list before the safari begins.
Decide which animal is the main objective, which species genuinely matter after that, and which would simply be welcome opportunities if encountered.
A PH can then plan the hunt around those priorities rather than trying to chase every animal on the list from the first morning.
The length of the species list matters less than the number of animals on it that you are unwilling to go home without.
Frequently Asked Questions About African Hunting Trip Length
How many days is a typical African hunting trip?
Many African hunting trips are built around roughly five to ten hunting days, although the right length depends heavily on the species and hunting area. Plains game can often be hunted successfully within a shorter safari, while difficult dangerous game hunts may justify considerably more time. The number of days should follow the hunt rather than determine it.
Is seven days enough for an African hunting trip?
Seven hunting days can be plenty for a focused plains game safari and can also work for species such as Cape buffalo in the right area. Seven days becomes tighter when several animals are priorities or when the hunt takes place across very large country. The important question is what happens if the first two or three days do not produce the opportunity you expected.
How many days should I allow for a Cape buffalo hunt?
Seven to ten hunting days is a useful starting point for many Cape buffalo hunts, but the hunting area matters enormously. Some hunts provide regular opportunities to locate and judge bulls, while others require considerably more time covering country and following tracks. Our own buffalo listings show this variation, with hunts ranging from five hunting days through seven and ten-day combinations.
Do travel days count as hunting days?
They should not be assumed to. International arrival, road transfers, charter flights and the journey into camp can all consume time without providing a full day in the field. Before comparing two hunting packages, confirm the number of full hunting days, not simply the number of days or nights shown on the itinerary.
Is it worth adding an extra day or two to an African hunting trip?
Sometimes. If the safari is already long enough for its main objective, additional days may achieve very little. But when flights, trophy fees, transfers, permits and eventually shipping trophies are considered, another hunting day or two may represent a relatively small part of the total African hunting safari cost. The extra time can be worthwhile when one difficult animal is the main reason for making the trip.