Leopard Hunts being Advertised

[Flutterby]

Seen on Facebook:

This is an advert by a Johannesburg attorney offering dog hunted leopard hunts in the Baviaanskloof area in the Eastern Cape – a World Heritage Site. This is in an area where research has demonstrated that a mere 35 territorial leopards remain in almost 350 000 ha. This is almost certainly unlawful, decidedly barbaric and ecologically ruinous.





N.H.GELLMAN
BACHELOR OF LAW (UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA)
ATTORNEY/PROKUREUR
BOX 751501
GARDENVIEW
2047

221 RAILWAY ST, GERMISTON

TEL 011-8733167 OR 011--8730443
CELL 079-3203120
FAX 0866-893940
EMAIL: NGELLMAN@MWEBBIZ.CO.ZA

DEAR SIR,

LEOPARD HUNTING

Thank you for the interest which you have a shown in our leopard hunting project. What follows will explain the project to you in more detail and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me at any time.

BACKGROUND
I am a semi retired attorney in the Johannesburg area.
I spent all my school holidays 50+ years ago on a large farm in the Baviaanskloof area of the Karoo. The family is still well known in the area.
I shot my first leopard, at the age of 15 years , with the assistance of a pack of hunting dogs in the Baviaanskloof ,just over 50 years ago.
In those days the government used to pay farmers £30 for every leopard they killed and £10 for every rooikat and five pounds for every rooijakkals.
About 20 years ago, leopards were classified under the CITES legislation, to which South Africa is a signatory, as an endangered species and hunting was strictly prohibited. The legislation provides for a term of imprisonment of 16 years for illegal hunting of leopards in South Africa.
This is well known today and farmers and landowners(and myself) will not take any risks of illegally shooting a leopard in South Africa.
If a leopard is shown to be a so-called "problem animal" which has demonstrably killed sheep or goats or calves the Department of Environmental Affairs will investigate and send an inspector to the farm to investigate and confirm that there is in fact a problem animal on the farm and then ,if satisfied, will issue a permit to shoot the leopard.
The permit can be issued to the farmer himself or alternatively any person chosen by the farmer--------- which in this case would be yourself, assuming that you decide to participate in the project.
The permit is typically valid for about 10 days.
The hunter must be a South African citizen or permanent resident. If you do decide to participate you will have to provide proof at the outset and before the permit is issued that you are a South African citizen or permanent resident of South Africa, A South African ID book or similar documentation will be acceptable.
If you do decide to participate you will have to be available to travel to the relevant farm, which will usually be in the Baviaanskloof/ Langkloof area .The reason why I concentrate on this area is that I am very familiar with the area and today, it is teeming with leopards, because of the prohibition on hunting mentioned above.
A typical large farm in the area, say a farm of approximately 10,000 hectares, will typically have on any day of the week, approximately 6 leopards traversing the farm.
Your permit to shoot a leopard does not necessarily mean that you have to shoot the leopard which killed the sheep or whatever. You can shoot any leopard you come across on the farm.
Based on my personal experience ,walking reasonably energetically you can traverse a 10,000 hectare farm in about three days. With a pack of dogs you should be able to kill a leopard in three days.
If you fail to kill a leopard neither the farmer or the owner of the pack of dogs or myself make anything worth mentioning. This is discussed in more detail below.
About two- three permits are issued every year to shoot problem leopards in the Baviaanskloof---- Langkloof area of the Eastern Cape.
And about the same number are issued throughout the rest of the country mostly in Limpopo and KZN and the Northern Cape.
In other words, the greater Baviaanskloof/Langkloof area is the primary and by far the most important leopard hunting area in South Africa and is becoming ever more so ,as the leopards increase in numbers in this area.
I have been in contact with most of the farmers ,in fact all the farmers, in the Baviaanskloof/Langkloof area and they have agreed to work with me, because my proposal makes business sense to them.
I have also been in contact with certain farmers in Limpopo and the Northern Cape and KZN with my proposals and they too have agreed to participate . However,as mentioned above the numbers of problem leopards in these areas, available for shooting are very limited.
The Baviaanskloof is approximately 60 km from the small town of Willowmore. And Willowmore is approximately 280 km from Port Elizabeth and about 150km from George.
There are two aircraft flights from Johannesburg to George every day- South African Airways and 1 Time.
It is usually not difficult to secure a seat shortly before departure of the aeroplane. If you intend taking rifles or ammunition with you you must book in approximately 2-3 hours before departure, as you have to sign in the rifles.
We can make arrangements with the farmer to collect you at the George airport. This would be cheaper than hiring a motor vehicle. You would have to pay the farmer an agreed fee which would normally be based on current A A rates . We do not want the farmer to make a profit from transporting you. The farmer must make his profit from you successfully shooting a leopard.
Problem leopards may only be shot by a South African citizen or a South African permanent resident. Before we will book you for a shoot you will have to forward me a copy of your ID book .If you are concerned about this being used for ulterior purposes, you can draw two lines through the photo copy and write cancelled between the lines and you'll be perfectly safe.
My fees for shooting a leopard are currently R120,000=00
The current going rate elsewhere is $18,000 or approximately R144000-00-------- which is substantially more than I charge. In addition, if you hunt the leopard elsewhere, you will have to pay many thousands of Rand a day for accommodation in the hunting Lodge.
My usual agreement with the farmer is that if you choose to stay at his farmhouse ,with the family, he will charge you a nominal fee of R50-00 a day, which includes breakfast and supper and sandwiches"padkos" for lunch and a bed. The farmer(unlike the conventional exhorbitantly priced hunting lodge ) will not make any profit out of this - and he's not meant to make a profit from the provision of a few meals and accommodation . He must make his profit out of the R 120,000-00, when you shoot the leopard.
The conventional hunting lodges will tell you that you have an 80% chance of shooting a leopard . In practice, your chances of shooting a leopard at one of the conventional hunting lodges is minimal. They do not worry about this, because the lodge owner is receiving substantial fees (thousands of Rand) per day for board and lodging. We are getting R 50-00 a day which is absolutely nothing.
What are your chances of shooting a leopard with me.
The answer is close on hundred percent.
The area is teeming with leopards. I know that some years ago they were capturing leopards in traps and fitting them with electronic devices, which recorded precisely where each leopard was at any time. One farmer, who has a very small farm of approximately 2000 ha ,told me that he captured and tagged 14 leopards over 16 months. Once tagged the leopards were released again.
The tagging was for some conservation project, which has now gone bankrupt. Be that as it may, if you can catch in traps, without dogs, almost 1 leopard every month on the 2000 ha farm, then on a larger farm of say 10,000 hectares you should catch one leopard a week. With dogs, you would probably not take a week to shoot a leopard--------- probably a few days.

According to Environmental Affairs, several years ago in the Baviaanskloof alone, there were 36 leopards. The number has almost certainly increased substantially since then.
I do not only cover the Baviaanskloof I cover the entire Langkloof which is substantially bigger than the Baviaanskloof and the leopard density is about the same in the Langkloof, as it is in the Baviaanskloof. So, in the Langkloof, which is adjacent to the Baviaanskloof, there will also probably be far more than 36 leopards.
I have made arrangements with several people who own trained packs of hunting dogs. Once you have arrived at George airport, they will travel with the dogs to the farm and you will accompany the dogs, who will be under the control of an experienced employee(of the dog pack owner)a coloured hunter who will accompany you for the duration of the hunt.
The area is broken veldt , kloofs and very large hills.
Remember that if you wish to shoot a rooikat the fee is R5000-00. There are more leopards in the area than rooikat.

PROCEDURE

If you do decide that you wish to shoot a leopard the following will be the procedure;
You must notify me, as soon as possible, that you are interested in participating.
When a farmer notifies me that a permit is available to shoot a problem leopard , which in practice means any leopard found on the farm, I will contact you immediately. The leopard will have been killing sheep or goats or calves on the farm so the farmer will be anxious to have the leopard shot as quickly as possible, which means that you would have to be available to travel to the relevant farm as quickly as possible.
You would have to pay the full R120,000 into my trust account as quickly as possible.
I WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU IN MORE DETAIL BELOW HOW AN ATTORNEY'S TRUST ACCOUNT OPERATES. At this stage, just accept that if you pay money into an attorney's trust account your money is completely safe and if the money has to be refunded, because you did not shoot the leopard ,you will be refunded.
After I have notified you that a permit is available to shoot a problem leopard you pay the R120,000 into my(attorneys) trust account .The payment must be by electronic funds transfer. A payment by cheque will not usually be acceptable ,because it can take many days for the cheque to be cleared., Once the payment reflects on my account as unconditional I will then notify you of the farmer's contact details and you must immediately make contact with him and arrange with him ,if necessary, that he meet you at George airport or wherever.
If you do not wish to stay at the farmer's house, there are a number of guest lodges in the Baviaanskloof / Langkloof area, some of which have a four-star rating, where you can stay for the duration of the hunt
if you do not have a motor vehicle with you, arrangements can be made for the farmer to collect and return you to the guest lodge daily and the transportation charges will be based on AA rates .The dogs will be waiting for you together with the coloured dog handler who will accompany you. The coloured dog handler who will accompany you is a very experienced hunter and is an employee of the owner of the pack of trained dogs,
As mentioned above if you walk for two or three days you should in all likelihood shoot a leopard.
There are taxidermists in the area at Humansdorp and elsewhere should you require their services.

Once you have shot the leopard, you will send me an e-mail or fax confirming that you have shot the leopard and that I may pay the farmer the R120000-00 less my commission.
If you failed to shoot the leopard the R120,000 will be refunded into your bank account by me.

Now, here we come to the first potential problem. In the overwhelming majority of cases ,I have never met you or the farmer personally. I have only spoken to you and the farmers telephonically. Where there is money involved, one has to be ultra-cautious. Otherwise, things can go wrong. It is possible, and I'm certainly not implying that it will happen, that the farmer desperately needs money and he sends me an e-mail or fax or gets his brother-in-law to do so,informing me that you have shot the leopard and the money can be paid to the farmer`s bank account. I then pay the money to the farmer in good faith and a week later you phone up and say you never shot the leopard and you want your money back.
Then all hell breaks loose.

To avoid any possibility of this type of situation arising and to set your mind at ease, if you show interest in this proposal I will e-mail you a list of 25 questions such as, w
hat is your wife's maiden name, what are the names of your children, what school does each child attend, what school did you attend and what year did you finish your schooling, what are your sisters and brothers names etc etc. When you send me a fax or e-mail confirming that you have shot the leopard ,I will reply to you asking you some of the above questions which you have already answered and provided your answer now tallies with the answers you provided previously I will accept that the e-mail or fax is genuine, because nobody apart from you (and certainly not the farmer) would know the answers to these types of questions.
I mentioned above that I will explain in more detail how an attorney's trust account works. I have been on the roll of practising attorneys continuously since April 1973. You can verify this with the Law Society of the Northern Provinces whose offices are in Pretoria (tel 012-3385800). My practice registration number is F1103 and my Law Society membership number is 2278 (N.H.Gellman) . Every attorney is required by law to be a member of the Law Society and to have a trust account.
If any money is paid to an attorney then if the money is misappropriated by anyone or misused or stolen by anyone then the Attorneys Fidelity Fund will refund anyone who has suffered loss as a result of the misappropriation or theft or misuse of the trust money. That is why, if you have a claim against someone and you hand this claim over to your attorney to collect the money and the money is stolen by a thief after being handed to the attorney or stolen by the attorney himself or misused by the attorney you have nothing to worry about, because you will lodge a claim with the Fidelity Fund and they will pay you out in full for any loss which you may have suffered. The Fidelity Fund has hundreds of millions of Rand available for such purposes.
If you want confirmation of the above you can phone the Fidelity Fund , their offices are in Cape Town or alternatively you can phone the Law Society of the Northern Provinces, whose offices are in Pretoria and they can confirm that I am a practising attorney and what I have told you about the Fidelity Fund.
So you can accept that the money that you paid to me will be safe and be refunded to you, if you do not shoot a leopard.
Now, in theory, you could yourself approach all the farmers in the greater Baviaanskloof /Langkloof area and elsewhere eg. Limpopo, KZN, Mpumulanga , Northern Cape and ask them to advise you directly, if they obtain a permit to shoot a problem leopard.

I very much doubt that you will have much success or any success with such an approach .
There are over 100 farmers in the Baviaanskloof/Langkloof area and there are two---three permits issued a year to shoot problem leopards.
To get hold of the farmers is a major mission, because most of them are out and about the farm and are not contactable by cellphone, because there is not adequate cellphone coverage in these areas.
Secondly, I obtain, if necessary, by means of the Freedom of Information Act, details of whom leopard hunting permits have been issued to. If I see that a farmer has been issued a permit and another person, other than the farmer, shot the leopard I will blacklist that farmer from my database and will not refer future hunters to him. I have made this absolutely clear to all the farmers that I cannot be expected to go to all the expense and hassles of obtaining hunters and then the farmer goes behind my back and makes his own arrangements with a hunter so as to avoid paying me my commission.
The farmers will abide by this agreement(or be blacklisted by me) and will not deal directly with you.
Furthermore, the farmer knows very well that if I have advised him that I have the R120000-00 he will be paid if the leopard is shot . Whereas if he deals directly with you(which is unlikely taking into account what has been stated above) he is never certain that he will, in fact, be paid by you.
From your perspective, if you pay money over to the farmer directly there is no guarantee that you will ever receive the money back, if you fail to shoot the leopard . Once you have paid the money to the farmer, the money no longer belongs to you. You may have a claim against the farmer for the money, but the money is not yours, it forms part of the farmer's estate.
The farmer`s creditors can instruct the sheriff to attach the money in the farmer`s bank account and pay it over to the creditor or the bank itself could freeze the farmer`s bank account because he is not paying, for example, the instalments on a vehicle or tractor or his bond , overdraft or whatever. In which event you will not recover the money paid to the farmer.
The money paid into an attorney`s trust account ,as explained above, is completely safe, even if the attorney goes bankrupt or misappropriates the money, the attorneys Fidelity Fund will ensure that you suffer no loss.
Of course, you can always go the conventional route and shoot a NONPROBLEM leopard. You will have to obtain a conventional permit to do so and will have to
utilise the services of a Professional Hunter and a Hunting Outfitter. You will pay far more for this than I charge . The current going rate for a leopard kill is $18,000-00(approximately $ 144,000-00 PLUS lodge accommodation fees which will run into thousands of Rand per day. You will have to pay up front and despite their promises there is no guarantee that the hunting outfitter will repay you the R144,000-00 if you fail to shoot the leopard. You probably will fail to shoot the leopard.
There is no way on this planet that a hunting outfitter or game lodge can have a guaranteed statutory trust fund underwritten by a statutory body such as the Attorneys Fidelity Fund which, as I have explained above, guarantees you repayment of any money which you have lost after it was paid to an attorney.
If the hunting outfitter or the game lodge decides not to pay you your money back when you fail to shoot the leopard or if the Hunting Outfitter or Professional Hunter goes bankrupt or simply disappears that to all practical purposes is the end of your R144000-00.
Speak to a few Environmental Affairs officials and Nature Conservation officials and they will tell you that they have received numerous complaints about certain Hunting Outfitters and Professional Hunters.
You must not simply take my word for it that I am an attorney and that the Fidelity Fund will compensate you for any loss which you may suffer, because your money was not refunded to you, if you failed to shoot a leopard. My Law Society membership number is 2278 and my practice registration number is F1103(N.H.GELLMAN). Verify this with the Law Society of the Northern Provinces (tel 012-3385800) as well as what I told you about the Fidelity Fund and attorney`s trust accounts
After having studied this document and asked me any questions you wish to raise, if you are still interested in participating in a leopard hunt you must notify me. I will then send you a contract which will be signed by three parties – yourself, myself and the farmer. At this stage, it is not necessary for you to sign the contract. This can be done immediately I notify you that a leopard permit is available and you wish to proceed.
The reason for sending you by e-mail the contract now , is simply to enable you to study the contract and satisfy yourself with the terms and conditions of the contract. Because once a leopard permit is available one has to move very quickly and there will not be time to study and discuss contracts and make alterations to them etc.

There will almost certainly be a number of prospective hunters who are interested in shooting the leopard and the permit can only be issued to one hunter. So it will be a matter of first come, first served.
Whoever pays the money first, will be given first opportunity to shoot the problem leopard, provided he is available to travel almost immediately.
You will not be required to pay any money until I notify you that the leopard permit is available and for this reason I shall not at this stage provide you with my trust account bank details.
I believe that I have explained everything relevant to the hunt.
If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kindest regards,

Neil Gellman

[Sprocky]

I think we should all flood Neil's inbox with complaints!!

[Penga Ndlovu]

Have already done so when I saw the add on Facebook.

[Flutterby]

According to RP this is legal, and if the farmers didn't offer hunts, they would just set traps to kill the leopards.

[Bushcraft]

Legal or not, it’s still sickening and there are many alternatives which wouldn’t involve hunting or poisoning

Floods Neil’s inbox please

[iNdlovu]

I'm sure Neal and his customers only hunt leopards because they can't buy food in the normal shops, surely they can't do this for fun, they do eat them don't they? or am I being naive

Who put in the rule that we can't use profane language on this forum?

[H. erectus]

Who put in the rule that we can't use profane language on this forum?

Nuff' said about the bonehead!!!

[H. erectus]

He wastes little time with conservation so why waste
time with him????

[Dewi]

[quote="iNdlovu"
Who put in the rule that we can't use profane language on this forum?[/quote]

Here you go iNdy. Try it in this format......