Finally got bit. 6 moths ago I put a post on here asking for outfitter recommendations for a SA bow hunt, several people recommended Dare To Bow Hunt so I figured that would be a good place to start.
I did some more research on the outfit and couldn’t find a bad word about it so I contacted the owner of the outfit (Lammie). Lammie and I spoke on the phone for several minutes in regards to what animals I wanted to hunt and he informed me that he had two areas to hunt one of which being in Zululand and the other further north in Kimberly. Lammie felt strongly that the zululand location would be the one for us so that’s the one we booked. Pictures on the website and ones he sent of the lodging, property, and animals were beautiful and I couldn’t have been more happy at that time.
Fast forward to last month a couple weeks prior to us leaving and I get a call from Lammie wanting to meet up in person. This was convenient as he lives in Texas so we decided to meet in college station.
Our hunting group and myself walk into the meeting with Lammie and he handed some paperwork out to each one of us outlining the hunt and what it would intel. I start reading the paperwork and notice that the hunt package is now for the Kimberly location. Obviously I thought he had just handed us the wrong paperwork so I stopped and brought that up. Lammie than proceeds to tell us that it would be better if we went to the Kimberly location as the animals are bigger and there are more options..... funny as it’s the exact opposite of what he told me in our original conversation when he sold me on the Zululand location.
We hear his side of the story and run some numbers, for the animals we wanted to shoot it was going to nearly double in cost by going to the Kimberly location so we decided we would just rather stick to the original hunt that we paid for. Immediately I could tell Lammie was put off by this and his attitude changed negative very quickly. We left the meeting and he sent me a text on the way home basically scolding me for wanting to go against his wishes and assured us that he was only trying to do what is best for us. At this point the price change alone didn’t make it an option as a couple of the guys going were on a tight budget.
Fast forward again, we step off the plane in Africa and a stranger meets us, he said he would be our PH and would be taking care of us for the week (red flags everywhere at this point) we go ahead and play along and hop in the car with him and ride to the location. Couple hours of talking to the PH and I knew he was a good guy, very nice and actually enjoyed his company more than Lammie’s.
We roll into the hunting property and I’m trying to pick his brain about the situation without him knowing what I was doing. Asking about the property size, animals, lodging etc. First thing he tells me is the size of the property, it’s less than 1/2 of what we booked in the original package(again red flags all over). Secondly are the animals, animals we had paid for in our package didn’t even exist in these ranches!! Not even an option to hunt them as they don’t have any!
I’m extremely unhappy at this point as I have been lied to directly to my face several times. We roll into the lodge and I kid you not it is under construction, contractors setting trusses when we drive up. Our PH hops out and says here it is and points to two very small cabins down the hill a ways. These cabins are a far stretch from what was pictured on the website.
Trying to make the best out of a bad situation we play along not wanting something small like living quarters ruin our trip. At this point we are on our 3rd day without a shower as we flew for two days. I go into the room and turn on the water..... none. No water for the next two days as we wait for plumbers to fix the issues. Turns out we were the first people to stay in those cabins and they just finished them up hours prior to us driving up. Literally fresh paint on the walls. The lodge literally has no roof and is just open trusses, no kitchen to cook, washer or dryer, or WiFi as promised by lammie. (WiFi is a big deal to me as I have to be able to respond to business emails)
Trying to make the best of it we get our hunting stuff on and head to the blinds. On the way out to the blinds the PH spills the beans and tells me that Lammie SOLD his Zululand location last year!!!! Now it is all making sense and it’s becoming clear that we were intentionally lied to and sold something that no longer existed! A real FYRE fest situation. We hunt for a couple days and each kill a few animals, still unhappy with the situation, but doing our best to not let it ruin the experience. Our original hunt package stated that cull animal (female warthogs and impalas) could be shot at $75 each. Awesome, we are all shooting a bunch of them, about 4 days into the hunt our PH informs us that the cull animals are actually $160 in this area..... I express to him that lammie said they were $75 and he responds that he can’t do it for that price because those prices were for Lammie’s area.... again, another lie and frankly an issue he needs to take up with lammie.
We get through the week and make it back to Texas. I step off the plane in Austin and send lammie a text outlining the hunt and expressing my disappointment with him and his communication of the situation. Lammie responds with a final invoice for the animals, all the prices have changed from the original list.
***Now it’s important to understand that the lodging situation as well as the price increases would not have big deal had he just come out and told us about the actual situation “hey guys I sold that location so if y’all still wanna go there here is what that will look like and here is the new pricing for the animals” that is all he had to say and we would have been more than understanding of the situation. Unfortunately that’s not what happened.
At this point I’m more ****** at the principle of the issues than the actual issues themselves. I send him a text and tell him that I would like to see the cull animals be priced as originally agreed upon and would also like him to think about what an acceptable discount for the lack of lodging would be. He reply’s and goes straight to lawyers.... in a nutshell he said If you don’t pay I’ll take you to court and you will never see your animals....
I’m dumbfounded at this point and reply trying to ease the tensions and assure him that I’m wanting to pay, but I don’t feel as if we should be paying full price. Again, he plays hard ball and throws the lawsuit out there. This goes back and forth for a day or so and we have finally reached a dead end road. He won’t budge and I refuse to be screwed over more than I already have by this man. I don’t want to get lawyers involved, just wanna handle it like men, unfortunately he isn’t giving me an option. Am I out of line here?
I did some more research on the outfit and couldn’t find a bad word about it so I contacted the owner of the outfit (Lammie). Lammie and I spoke on the phone for several minutes in regards to what animals I wanted to hunt and he informed me that he had two areas to hunt one of which being in Zululand and the other further north in Kimberly. Lammie felt strongly that the zululand location would be the one for us so that’s the one we booked. Pictures on the website and ones he sent of the lodging, property, and animals were beautiful and I couldn’t have been more happy at that time.
Fast forward to last month a couple weeks prior to us leaving and I get a call from Lammie wanting to meet up in person. This was convenient as he lives in Texas so we decided to meet in college station.
Our hunting group and myself walk into the meeting with Lammie and he handed some paperwork out to each one of us outlining the hunt and what it would intel. I start reading the paperwork and notice that the hunt package is now for the Kimberly location. Obviously I thought he had just handed us the wrong paperwork so I stopped and brought that up. Lammie than proceeds to tell us that it would be better if we went to the Kimberly location as the animals are bigger and there are more options..... funny as it’s the exact opposite of what he told me in our original conversation when he sold me on the Zululand location.
We hear his side of the story and run some numbers, for the animals we wanted to shoot it was going to nearly double in cost by going to the Kimberly location so we decided we would just rather stick to the original hunt that we paid for. Immediately I could tell Lammie was put off by this and his attitude changed negative very quickly. We left the meeting and he sent me a text on the way home basically scolding me for wanting to go against his wishes and assured us that he was only trying to do what is best for us. At this point the price change alone didn’t make it an option as a couple of the guys going were on a tight budget.
Fast forward again, we step off the plane in Africa and a stranger meets us, he said he would be our PH and would be taking care of us for the week (red flags everywhere at this point) we go ahead and play along and hop in the car with him and ride to the location. Couple hours of talking to the PH and I knew he was a good guy, very nice and actually enjoyed his company more than Lammie’s.
We roll into the hunting property and I’m trying to pick his brain about the situation without him knowing what I was doing. Asking about the property size, animals, lodging etc. First thing he tells me is the size of the property, it’s less than 1/2 of what we booked in the original package(again red flags all over). Secondly are the animals, animals we had paid for in our package didn’t even exist in these ranches!! Not even an option to hunt them as they don’t have any!
I’m extremely unhappy at this point as I have been lied to directly to my face several times. We roll into the lodge and I kid you not it is under construction, contractors setting trusses when we drive up. Our PH hops out and says here it is and points to two very small cabins down the hill a ways. These cabins are a far stretch from what was pictured on the website.
Trying to make the best out of a bad situation we play along not wanting something small like living quarters ruin our trip. At this point we are on our 3rd day without a shower as we flew for two days. I go into the room and turn on the water..... none. No water for the next two days as we wait for plumbers to fix the issues. Turns out we were the first people to stay in those cabins and they just finished them up hours prior to us driving up. Literally fresh paint on the walls. The lodge literally has no roof and is just open trusses, no kitchen to cook, washer or dryer, or WiFi as promised by lammie. (WiFi is a big deal to me as I have to be able to respond to business emails)
Trying to make the best of it we get our hunting stuff on and head to the blinds. On the way out to the blinds the PH spills the beans and tells me that Lammie SOLD his Zululand location last year!!!! Now it is all making sense and it’s becoming clear that we were intentionally lied to and sold something that no longer existed! A real FYRE fest situation. We hunt for a couple days and each kill a few animals, still unhappy with the situation, but doing our best to not let it ruin the experience. Our original hunt package stated that cull animal (female warthogs and impalas) could be shot at $75 each. Awesome, we are all shooting a bunch of them, about 4 days into the hunt our PH informs us that the cull animals are actually $160 in this area..... I express to him that lammie said they were $75 and he responds that he can’t do it for that price because those prices were for Lammie’s area.... again, another lie and frankly an issue he needs to take up with lammie.
We get through the week and make it back to Texas. I step off the plane in Austin and send lammie a text outlining the hunt and expressing my disappointment with him and his communication of the situation. Lammie responds with a final invoice for the animals, all the prices have changed from the original list.
***Now it’s important to understand that the lodging situation as well as the price increases would not have big deal had he just come out and told us about the actual situation “hey guys I sold that location so if y’all still wanna go there here is what that will look like and here is the new pricing for the animals” that is all he had to say and we would have been more than understanding of the situation. Unfortunately that’s not what happened.
At this point I’m more ****** at the principle of the issues than the actual issues themselves. I send him a text and tell him that I would like to see the cull animals be priced as originally agreed upon and would also like him to think about what an acceptable discount for the lack of lodging would be. He reply’s and goes straight to lawyers.... in a nutshell he said If you don’t pay I’ll take you to court and you will never see your animals....
I’m dumbfounded at this point and reply trying to ease the tensions and assure him that I’m wanting to pay, but I don’t feel as if we should be paying full price. Again, he plays hard ball and throws the lawsuit out there. This goes back and forth for a day or so and we have finally reached a dead end road. He won’t budge and I refuse to be screwed over more than I already have by this man. I don’t want to get lawyers involved, just wanna handle it like men, unfortunately he isn’t giving me an option. Am I out of line here?
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