I chose a part of CAR that has no PH's operating in it, and I was surprisingly successful, given the reports coming out of CAR about widespread poaching and the place being shot out. Although I will agree that the poaching is out of control, the country is not yet shot out. If you are willing to walk away from the network of roads and spend a bit of time in the bush with native trackers and porters, there is still good hunting to be had in CAR. This is true, incidentally, in Cameroon and Congo as well, where I have hunted on a chasse libre basis in the last 12 months. The hurdles are significant, but so is the satisfaction when you are successful.
I took a friend with me, and we only walked in one day before we started to hunt. As luck would have it, we hit giant eland tracks the first afternoon out. They were from that morning, however, so we chose to pass on tracking them. In retrospect, this was a bad decision, as local hunters found the herd before we did the next day and shot three of them. We heard the shots, and I later saw the horns, but we never saw the live animals. This is a distinct disadvantage to chasse libre hunting, in that you are "competing" with local hunters.
The other species of game in the area were a........(continued)
