![]()
![]()
My name is Jens Ulrik Høgh. I am a Scandinavian outdoor writer based in Sweden. I have been a hunter all my life and for the last decade, I have focused more and more on the important relationship between hunting and nature conservation. This has resulted in many articles on the subject in main stream newspapers as well as hunting magazines and I am regularly called upon to explain trophy hunting on national TV (See a recent clip here).
![]()
![]()
Why is this project necessary?
Hunters know it. Hunting is nature conservation! We know that the influx of money from hunting tourism is one of the major reasons for the huge success of nature conservation in southern Africa. The actual results achieved in just a few decades are mind blowing. More than ten thousand private nature reserves are now covering an area bigger than most US states. Practically all of these areas are re-wilded livestock farms – this is probably the largest re-wilding project in the history of man! Roughly 25 million large wild animals now thrive in these areas – four decades ago there were less than two million.
The facts are very much in favor of hunting tourism. There is plenty of peer-reviewed science supporting that claim. Respected international organizations like IUCN fully acknowledge the value of hunting tourism in relation to nature conservation. Nevertheless, hunting tourism - some call it “trophy hunting” - is under constant attack on all fronts. Politicians, celebrities, and millions of “internet experts” are working hard to ban “trophy hunting” on moral grounds. Sadly the facts of the matter are largely ignored in the debate. Few reporters in main stream media are hunters and they are typically more interested in causing moral outrage than providing in-depth information to their audience. We live in a post-factual era and we need to get our side of the story out there!
![]()
Teddy said it more than a century ago. Let's raise the voice of the hunters again!
A simple idea!
Since hunters cannot rely on mainstream media reporters or independent movie directors to tell our story, we believe we have to do it ourselves. That is why we want to produce an honest TV documentary specifically for an audience of non-hunters about hunting tourism and nature conservation from a practical point of view. We need that input in the debate!
We are going to illustrate all the facts with clear case studies on the ground in the African bush. We will show what a hunting area looks like and we are going to show the depressing agricultural alternative. We will let the people involved tell their story. Trackers, camp staff, rangers, professional hunters, outfitters and government officials alike will put human faces and destinies on the numbers. Facts are going to weigh much heavier than emotions in this documentary! There will be no assumptions. Nobody else has ever really done this.
The nature of hunting will be a 50 minute TV documentary in English. It will be filmed on location in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and possibly Mozambique and/or Botswana.
This project will be produced in collaboration with Pace Productions and Byron Pace, who has specialized in producing documentaries on controversial subjects. With an in depth knowledge, his team is ideally placed to present this complex narrative in a way people can relate
The nature of hunting is endorsed by the Danish Hunting Association and F.A.C.E.
![]()
Production costs and administration
Producing quality film is extremely expensive. We are able to produce this documentary on a comparatively small budget because everybody involved in the production pitches in. We have a very strong and passionate network of professionals within the hunting community to help us out. Nobody is working with this project to become rich and famous – we do it because we are passionate conservationists. Every cent collected from this campaign will be put to work to reach the end goal of this project, and that is to produce the best possible TV documentary and reach as many non-hunters through mainstream media as possible.
The funds, being raised from two fundraising campaigns, THIS international IndieGoGo campaign and one national Danish Campaign under the administration of the Danish Hunting Association are being monitored and controlled closely by an appointed steering committee. All funds collected will eventually end up in the campaign account currently held by the Danish Hunting Association for the project. The appointed committee has the following members:
Ulf Scheibye. Head of the Danish CIC delegation.
Henrik Frost. Deputy chairman of the Danish Hunting Association.
Jesper Rørbæk. Member of the Endangered Species Protection Agency senior management team
Every payment released by the steering committee for the production will be properly accounted for
![]()
Step by step
The production crew is ready and so are the locations of the planned case stories.
As soon as the funding is in place we start filming on location in Africa. We plan to wrap everything up by the end of November 2017 and start post production immediately.
The film will be ready to launch in April 2018 and hopefully be shown on a lot of mainstream TV stations all over the world during the rest of the year and into 2019. After that, the film will be made available to the public for free online on one of the major video sharing platforms.
![]()
Stay tuned
We will keep everybody with an interest in our project updated through four different channels:
Newsletters - sign up here!
Facebook - go directly to our page!
Instagram - follow the project here!
![]()
More money = even better results!
We can produce a very good TV documentary if we reach our fundraising goals. But we can make a much bigger impact if we get more money to work with. It’s not rocket science. The more we get, the better the final results can be. With more money, we will have more production time, more sophisticated equipment, better soundtrack, sharper consultants, improved marketing capabilities, language editions, better follow-up etc. etc. We only have one chance and we want to make the best of it. In comparison, the recent films focusing mainly on the emotional side of hunting have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce… Simply put, we need as much as we can get!
When the initial part of this crowdfunding campaign is over it will still be possible to donate funds to this project until the launch of the film.
