Let me start by saying that Moody will try to discredit me as a disgruntled client for whatever reason. I also booked an Ecotour through him with my wife, and we are furious about it, but that is a different matter. In a nutshell, he booked us on a five day adventure to Pilanesburg for $5800. It was a family resort with screaming kids everywhere. Who would ever book an adult couple in a non-adult only resort without asking? The resort normally costs $350 per night for 2, all inclusive. How the heck can he charge us over $1000 per night. Horrible. Unethical. Back to the hunt. 2 of us booked in 2018 with plans to hunt 2020. Covid delays that year and 2021. We arrived in 2022. In 2021 we added an additional hunting buddy. In early 2022 we added a fourth guy. Gravy for Moody. The 4 of us spent over $50,000. Here is the description of the hunt: "This is a newly acquired reserve on the boundary of the Kruger, others similar to this you may have heard of are the Balule, Kalserie, Mthimkulu, Timbavati, etc. The fence between the 5 million acre park and this reserve will be permanently removed in July 2018 - thus hunting will commence in 2019. This will allow the grossly over grown population (in the park) of buffalo, elephant and other game to have more area to roam - and I assure you they will. This reserve is 35,000 acres, full safari accommodations will be provided, along with your PH / vehicle and RT pickup from Hoesdpruit airport - which is a short 45 min commercial flight from Joberg. There are some magnificent bulls in the Kruger! Hunt price is $8,900 / 7 day hunt - we require a 25% deposit to secure your booking. " From Global Hunting Resources and cc'd to Moody. So we arrive in Johannesburg and spend the night. Our driver is staying with us. We ask her about the property and how long drive, etc. Suddenly it becomes apparent that it is not near Kruger. So then i ask her is the ranch fenced and she said yes. So I email Moody who is at the property, and mention that we hear the ranch is fenced and that is not what we booked. He doesn't admit it is fenced, but says that the buffalo are self propagating and that we would be totally satisfied with it. So what are we to do? We go. I bring it up immediately upon arrival in camp and he says that he lost rights to that original property. This was never divulged. None of us would have booked this hunt had we known. The first 6 days of hunting were on properties with fences everywhere. He mentioned that they were 15,000 + acres but that is bull. They were much small fenced areas that were connected by some gates that were left open so technically the animals could venture into adjacent caged areas. 3/4 of the PHs were fantastic. Mine was bad. He was so addicted to nicotine he had to stop every 45 min to roll a cigarette and smoke. In 5 days we went on 3 stalks for buffalo that were 2-400 yards before Johnny (PH) would get frustrated and stop it. During daytime sits at waterholes for plains game he would put me with the tracker because he could'nt sit there without smoking. Only PH that wasn't with their clients for this. On day 6 a mid day big bull buff came in and i shot it from the blind because i had no confidence in my PH. We actually saw this bull from the truck the afternoon before near that water, but Johnny refused to track it more than 150-200 yards. Turns out there was a live camera on that water hole and he knew this bull was coming in every day and he didn't want to spook it because he wanted me to shoot it from the blind. So bad! Who wants to shoot a dangerous game animal from a safe blind? Not me. I want it to be dangerous. Then there was the $4550 sable I shot that was quartering away and my arrow hit where i aimed, but it didn't penetrate and skidded along the ribs to the back of the front leg. We tracked it and got near it and Johnny suddenly sprinted up ahead and shot it. I was pissed. Then there was my red Lechwe. Great stalk. Quartering to hit a little back because it stepped forward but clearly lethal shot. We had it on video. Lung liver hit. Good blood. We kept bumping it. It hit an opening and you could see it was really hurt and Johnny shoots it 3 times. I was pissed and he says "I'm not going to track this thing all afternoon." Are you kidding me? I told Moody about this PH and he agrees totally inappropriate. When I get back to the states he sends me an email that although it is not an acceptable excuse, the reason Johnny was so lazy was that he just didn't like me at all. Who would ever say that to a client? And in actuality, when Johnny wasn't smoking or shooting the crap out of my animals we got along great. He was hugging me on the final stalk. I think i would know if a guy detests me. There were a lot more bad things. Bad, unethical outfitter.
Was the outfitter notified of problems? - YES
One word…HOGWASH. Absolutely the worst client we’ve ever had in any of my camps in 28 years. Despised by the staff and even the guest house where he overnighted dubbed him “Mr. Special Needs.” Wounded nearly everything he shot and would rather have it die needlessly in the bush than have the PH do what he’s trained to do, recover it. If you’re an operator of a hunting company, place this guy’s name at the top of the list of who not to book!
Weather was good when we were there, but rain hit before we got there so the shrubs and grasses were still quite green. Made it a little be more difficult to locate game.
