In the myriad of “What I Did This Summer” essays, not many students can say they had a warthog chase them up a tree in Africa. But that’s one of many things college junior Jake Hollis experienced during the seven weeks he spent in South Africa during a big game hunting apprenticeship.
A New Hope native now studying business and marketing at the University of Mobile in Alabama, his apprenticeship training is the first step to his dream of becoming a licensed guide for big game hunters on African safaris. His adventures this summer, he said, reaffirmed that dream.
“It’s a big thrill because you never know really what’s behind the next tree,” he said. “It could be something that’s going to eat you or it could be something that’s two feet tall.”
The 20-year-old has been hunting since age 6. The trophy room in his home is full of animals he and his father, Brian Hollis, have taken during hunting trips all over the world. A moose from the Yukon territories is mounted in one corner of the room and an entire wall features the heads of game from Africa.
The Hollises killed the African animals in summer 2014 when the entire family took a safari with The Safaris of Graham Jones, a business run by South African couple Graham and Ananda Jones who pride themselves on creating traditional safari experiences for clients who want to hunt southern Africa’s big game. The Jones family and the Hollis family became friends, and the Hollises hosted their South African friends in New Hope recently when they traveled to the United States.
That’s when Jake Hollis approached them about working for them as a professional hunter (PH).
A long process
Individuals wanting to become professional hunters guiding safaris in South Africa have to become certified and licensed. There’s a lot to learn, Hollis said, everything from knowing which permits he needs to hunt what animal to how to lay out campsites for clients, he explained.
“Next July, I’ll go through what’s called a PH Course, or professional hunting course,” he said. “That’s where I’ll get my qualifications and actual license. I just kind of learn the ropes now, learn about the animals, about the laws.”
There is more to guiding safaris than scouting and killing game, Jake explained. Professional hunters in South Africa are heavily involved in conservation efforts, managing wildlife so that the populations are stable and working with anti-poaching groups.
“You get an idea of what your population of animals is on your property,” Jake said. “And you figure out what would be a good number of each species to take. We’re more worried about conservation than anything.”
It’s something many people don’t know about hunters, Brian Hollis said. Hunters provide incentives for landowners in southern Africa to protect their animals from poachers. To outlaw hunting is to take away an animal’s value and leave them unprotected. Brian Hollis called it “saving the animals to death.”
There are a huge variety of animals in Africa now, Jake said, far more than in North America. And most of them are huge. There are the “Big Five” of dangerous game — lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino — plus warthogs, birds and all kinds of antelope — such as the kudu, known as “the gray ghost of Africa.”
Jake’s favorite, at least of the Big Five, is the cape buffalo, also called the Black Death because it can charge and easily kill humans it sees as a threat.
Jake and the Joneses didn’t take clients hunting for all of these animals. Rhinos, in particular, are often off-limits to hunters because they’re still endangered from poaching. On private property, Jake added, there are more rhinos than many people think. Landowners can’t advertise that they have them, even to the South African government, because poachers will find out.
‘I love being in the middle of nowhere’
Still, he said he saw a plethora of animals he didn’t hunt. He heard a leopard come through the campsite one night. He saw crocodiles, hippos, giraffes, hyenas and an elephant. He killed a black mamba by stepping on its head — not realizing what kind of snake it was, he admitted with a grin. Black mambas are the deadliest snakes in the world, and if he had known that’s what it was, he said would not have gotten that close to it.
Jake plans to go to work for The Safaris of Graham Jones after he graduates from college. He said he wants to live in South Africa five to seven months out of the year.
“I love just being out in the bush,” he said. “I love being in the middle of nowhere. Just the animals and the whole wild aspect of it. It’s a lot different than here. That’s old country. That’s land that’s been like that since the beginning of time.”
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