The Region
Shaun Keeny Safaris offers hunting concessions in each of South Africa’s nine provinces, however our primary camp is located outside of Rustenburg, one and a half hours northwest of Johannesburg. We operate lodges and hunting concessions from the Eastern Cape to the Northern most provinces giving our clients the opportunity to hunt over 30 species of big game while enjoying a diversity of habitat and geographical locations few Safari companies can provide.
South Africa’s North West Province, home to our base camp, lies in the north of South Africa on the Botswana border, fringed by the Kalahari desert in the west, Gauteng province to the east, and the Free State to the south. It is known as the Platinum Province for the wealth of the metal it has underground. With a total area of 106,512 square kilometres, the North West Province is slightly smaller than the US state of Pennsylvania. It’s the country’s fourth-smallest province, taking up 8.7% of South Africa’s land area and with a population of 3.5-million people. The landscape is largely flat regions of scattered trees and grassland. The Magaliesberg mountain range in the northeast extends about 130 kilometres from Pretoria to Rustenburg, while the Vaal River forms the province’s southern border.
The North West Province has a number of major tourist attractions, including the internationally famous Sun City, the Pilanesberg National Park, the Madikwe Game Reserve and the Rustenburg Nature Reserve. The province’s most famous attraction is the Sun City complex, which lies next to the Pilanesburg National Park. Sun City is one of the world’s biggest entertainment centres, with a casino, an 18-hole golf course, theatres and concert halls, beaches and a wave pool at the Valley of the Waves, a meticulously reconstructed tropical rainforest, and a number of world-class hotels that include the remarkable Palace of the Lost City.
The North West Province is sometimes referred to as ‘The Texas of South Africa‘, with an abundance of hunting opportunities, some of the largest cattle herds in the world, and successful mixed-crop farming operations that make the province the bread basket of the country. In addition to farming and agriculture, many landowners in the North West Province have been successful in managing their land for hunting operations through sustainable utilization. In 1970, South Africa had an estimated population of 500,000 game animals, today the country has in excess of 20 million due to the economic opportunity created by managing populations for trophy hunting. Hunters are the true stewards of the land and are single-handily responsible for maintaining healthy and sustainable numbers of wild game in South Africa.
