The African Hunting Magazine is now the African Expedition Magazine.

In addition to hunting, we will now cover many more aspects of adventure in Africa: scuba diving, fishing, overlanding, climbing and many others. But mainly hunting - and whatever else is fun and dangerous in Africa.

Here in Africa, if the game can pay the game can stay. Unlike our many of our friends in the USA and Europe, we Africans are concerned with survival. There are a great many of us, and if the game holds no benefit for us, we will eat them and that will be that.

It is ecotourism that pays for the survival of animals in our National parks - but it is hunting that foots the bill on the outside. If a farmer can not sell his Impala and Kudu, he will farm with goats.

That will be extremely bad news for our indigenous species. It will stop the hunting (not the killing) of animals, but it will also drastically reduce the gene pool in our great Africa and wildlife outside of our national parks will disappear.

So, we remain unapologetically convinced that hunting drives conservation in Africa. Many adventure/outdoors magazines do not openly deny it, but most keep quiet - and it is about time that someone laid it on the line.

There are some hunters that are unthinking killers, and we do not associate with them. Most hunters want their children’s children to enjoy the wilds like they do, so they hunt wisely. Game farmers are paid for their animals, so they farm wisely and allow hunting only as long as the animal populations on their farms can continue and numbers can grow.

That sounds like a winning recipe - and it is.

Anyway, those that are so maniacally set against hunting do not bat an eyelid when eating a good steak - a steak that was part of an ox a few days before. Here the same rules govern: the farmers farm beef because it sells. If no one ate steak he would plant wheat instead. Some vegetarians are paranoid about meat (because an animal has been killed) but have no problem wearing leather shoes and belts - and you know where leather comes from.

At least we hunters do not use hired assassins (abattoirs) to do our killing for us: we are there when the animal dies - and we appreciate the meat all the more for it. We know it is the way of nature and life: the one dies and nourishes the other.

That’s how it has been since Adam.

Anyway, if evolution is true, then how could we be blamed for surviving because we are fitter?