Hunting adventures in Tanzania with
Natasha Illum Berg
I have worked as a professional hunter in Tanzania for over 25 years. I offer hunting safaris in some of the absolute top areas here. The vastness of these remote, completely wild and unfenced areas, are the key to a spectacular adventure. We only target carefully selected old males, which makes for a fair and sustainable hunt.
We walk and track a lot. While the midday sun burns, we eat our lunch and rest under a tree or by a river. By nightfall we are back in camp for a hot shower, cold drinks and a delicious dinner.
My style of hunting is for the hunter who is looking for an adventurous hunting experience of a lifetime.
The Hunting Experience
Setting off as soon as daylight arrives, we start our hunting adventure.
Depending on the set up of the particular safari often we start the day in a landcruiser, to get us out there. The hunt itself is always on foot. Not only is this a law in Tanzania, but it is my desire and pleasure to share with my clients the amazing experience that comes from truly connecting with nature through proper tracking and stalking.
Lunch will mostly be enjoyed in the middle of the bush under a tree, or with our feet in a river, as it is often too far to drive back to camp in the middle of the day. Anyway, there is no better place for a midday rest than under a tree with a hat over your eyes.
Far away from civilisation certainly does not mean that things aren’t civilised. At the end of a hard and exiting day of hunting we will arrive back in our comfortable old style canvas tented camp, where you can always find a hot shower, a campfire, a dry martini, and a three course supper with wine. Then, while the lions roar or the hyenas laugh outside your comfortable tent, you sleep and restore and renew, for tomorrows adventure.
The Hunting Areas
The completely natural areas that we hunt in coves several thousand square kilometres and are far away from the beaten track. Untamed wilderness, with no fences, no tarmac, and no big permanent lodges. Just miles and miles of natural savanna, miombo, rain forests, swamps and rivers.
With access to these carefully protected and sustainably used areas, that offer everything from the dusty planes of the great rift valley to lush mountains clad in misty rainforest, the game variety is hugely abundant.
There will be no other guests in the areas or the old styled tented camps when you are there at any time.
With some of the areas being very remote it is often a good choice to fly into the area in a small plane, to save time and instead just get hunting.
Hunting Information
With me you can hunt plains game and buffalo. My passion as a professional hunter in Tanzania is to take a hunting guest on to the tracks of an old and gnarled buffalo bull. Hunting for buffalo in our western Miombo forested areas means walking whilst following tracks. And when it comes to hunting buffalos in the northern Tanzanian mountains, you will need to get your meanest walking shoes on, for here we cannot access anything but base camp with a vehicle.
The hunting season runs from 1st of July to 31st of december. The driest months are July through October, when you can hunt throughout Tanzania. My recommended best time for hunting buffalo is between end of July and mid November.
A hunting experience like this starts at 30.000 USD
Unique hunting on foot
I also offer tailor made hunting safaris entirely on foot. This in the same areas, but routes change at the will of the game. Here we our accommodation is old style East africa fly camping and much in the simple and fancy-free style of the early explorers.
In Russia discussing the possibilities of Mammoth ivory replacing the use of elephant ivory to help curb poaching
Conservationist
Hunting in a country like Tanzania, when done selectively and conscientiously, is a conservation effort. By giving some of the most important wilderness outside national parks an economic value, the idea of hunting one to protect ten becomes a sustainable way to give these areas a future. Anti-poaching is a relevant part of the work any serious hunting company does in Tanzania.
I am a hunter by nature and an author and conservationist by soul. To a hunting conservationist the aim is balance and sustainability. The driving force is adventure as much as it is respect, protection and love for nature. It is to be the eyes and ears of the forest or the bush. It is about being part of nature, part of the food chain. It is about being someone who takes responsibility in the nature you live in and off.
Needless to say, I do not only work for conservation through being a hunter.
It is very important to me to be involved in conservation as a whole and not just that which is connected to hunting or hunting areas.Through all of my work as writer and a speaker one of my key subjects is to try to reconnect urbanised man back to nature and encourage people to take a more balanced and conscious place in nature. It is my belief that modern man has become so destructive to the environment, because his connection to nature has been damaged, and in turn loosing your connection to nature, is to loose a connection the the very core of yourself as a creature on this earth.
This is a very sad place to be and nobody has to be there, no matter where they live.
Collaborating partner
For many years I have had a working relationship with Robin Hurt safaris, Tanzania, and I exclusively bring my hunting clients to their areas and old style canvassed camps. These camps are of a style that has not changed much since the early 1900s. Here, a smooth organisation, clear ethics, completely wild areas and warm staff blend into an ideal safari, for the intrepid hunter who loves nature and crave true hunting adventures.
