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Conservation and Hunting

 

Hunting with Natasha in Tanzania

I work as a professional hunter in Tanzania and offer safaris in some of the wildest areas here since over twenty years.

For many years I have had a working relationship with Robin Hurt safaris in Tanzania and exclusively bring my hunting clients to their areas and their luxury camps.

 

I come from a background of many generations of hunting conservationists.
My grandfather, Bengt Berg, saved many species of birds in Sweden. Amongst them were the Swedish sea eagle, the golden eagle, the mute swan and the greylag goose. He was also very much involved in Tiger and Rhino conservation in India. He was also deeply involved in red deer breeding in Sweden and created a nature area (Eriksberg vilt och natur) in Blekinge, in the aim of making this an eden of conservation and hunting. When my father took over, he managed to make Eriksberg the gazetted wildlife conservation and hunting reserve it is today. The biggest in Scandinavia.

I  too am a hunter by nature and a conservationist by soul.
I grew up on Eriksberg, constantly surrounded by my familys teachings of hunting and conservation and the humble and balanced place we must take in the middle of the two.
To a hunting conservationist the aim is balance, the aim is sustainability. The driving force is adventure as much as it is respect and love for nature, and 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 a natural honest being who takes personal responsibility for by far most of the food they eat, at the same time with a sense of longterm thinking.

In a world where urbanisation is pulling man more and more away from his own natural core, and the fact that life cannot be without death and death cannot be without life, being a natural and conscienscious part of the wilds as a hunting conservationist is not easily understood. But the day the true hunter is no longer here, the bond that keeps man firmly earthed will finally be broken entirely and man has made himself the island he works so hard at becoming.
 
In places that would otherwise, had it not been for hunting, been poached out indiscriminately long ago and changed into ricefields or other environmental disasters, hunting can sometimes offer the sustainability that will keep these areas wild and teeming with life, when done with care, and selective moderation.


My passion as a Professional hunter in Tanzania is to hunt old and gnarled buffalo bulls and I have done so for almost a quarter of a century. 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 with me, well then you really need to get your walking shoes on, for here we cannot access anything but base camp with a vehicle.


On a hunting trip with me I offer the true adventure of a lifetime, while only hunting a few carefully selected old males - animals which are beyond their prime and therefore their best breeding capacities. I hunt in the absolute top areas of Tanzania. Operating through Robin Hurt safaris, I offer luxury tented camps 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 a properly intrepid safari for the intrepid hunter who loves and protects nature and true adventures.


I also offer 16 day trips hunting on foot, with a fly camp. Much in the style of the early explorers. Much as hunting has been done for hundreds of years in Africa.......adding gin tonic and other small but adamant things...like a canvas bathtub.

The hunting season in Tanzania is from 1st  July to the end of December.  My recommended top time for hunting buffalo is between the end of July and mid November.


Quieries on a safari with Natasha

 

".. How does he see the image of loneliness that he presents, hiding there in the shadows of concrete landscapes, fearing life when he is living, and fearing death when he is dying. Fearing not only his own immortality, but the flesh that his body craves, and the frightening truth that it prove - That life comes from death and death comes from life. Urbanised man portrays a lonely creature, standing on top of a high-rise shouting that the world is his oyster, and nothing but other men clamber to try to steal its cultivated pearl.”
 

 



Ivory Black Foundation.

Ivory Black Foundation grew out of two peoples experience in 2012 after coming across whole herds of elephants indisciminately slaughtered by poachers in western Tanzania. We saw calves lying next to their mothers dead from starvation because they had not been worth a bullet, many others wandering around aimlessly. Torben Wind and I were in the bush together and what we saw was enough for us to start our journey towards creating ivory black foundation.

A year later one of my collegues was shot by poachers.

The slaughter continues across Africa.

 

Ivory black foundation

"From the beginning and to the end we are wrapped inside a place, that is so undivided from our possibility of existing, that we will never be able to see it from the outside. Like a nut, granted a certain piece of space, you hear your own little heart beat, you taste your own breath, as it bounces back into your face. It is too much, to think that your rattle can be heard beyond your own shell.
There is only space for one in there. Still the fear of loneliness resounds as a perpetual song of man, when shells clonk against each other, in the hope of one eventually communicating with an other, through the cracks won in the battle.
Outside is merely a stoic, soundless all, from where we spring. A quiet, emanating something, which so perfectly rests in itself, that it needs not justify anything with an obvious presence. How ever wantonly cruel, ingenious or childishly generous, it simply is. Is with such unsurpassed dignity that obnoxiously loud man, confuse its openness with naivety, and think it can be made a fool of."

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