A PLACE OF DREAMS
Hunting Overview
Hunting in Zambia stands apart from the most other African destinations because it remains one of the last truly wild frontiers on the continent. Far from crowds and commercialization, Zambia offers an experience that is raw, authentic, and unchanged by time—where vast, unfenced wilderness still stretches for hundreds of miles. It’s an under-rated gem known for its untamed beauty and abundance of game, yet it feels as though you’ve stepped back into the golden age of safari.
Here, hunters don’t simply hunt out of vehicles; they engage in the landscape—tracking on foot, reading the wind and land, and pursuing game in an active, adrenaline-fueled style that echoes the spirit of the early to mid-1900s. In Zambia, the wilderness is as wild as it ever was, and the hunt as real as it gets.
The video above describes exactly what a hunt with Epic Safaris is all about.
Chifunda Concession
The Luangwa Valley
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The Luangwa Valley is David Livingstone’s Africa. The great explorer traversed this valley in the mid-nineteenth century, and the landscape he encountered — the broad Luangwa River winding through dense riverine forest, the open woodland and floodplain beyond, the extraordinary concentrations of wildlife — is not dramatically different from what a visitor finds today. Known as the Valley of the Leopard, the Luangwa has resisted the transformation that has overtaken much of the continent.
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Two forces have kept it this way. The annual floods that fill the valley floor with silt have made permanent settlement and large-scale agriculture difficult in ways that geography alone rarely achieves. And Zambia’s conservation stewards — through the national park system and the buffer areas surrounding it — have made a sustained commitment to keeping the valley intact. The result is one of the last places in Africa where the wilderness genuinely feels continuous rather than managed.
The valley holds four of the Big Five in huntable numbers: Cape Buffalo in large concentrations, Leopard at some of the highest densities per square kilometer on the continent, Lion, and Elephant. Quotas on dangerous game are deliberately limited in line with conservation objectives — which is part of what keeps the quality here what it is. Plains game populations in the hunting areas of the Luangwa Valley remain among the largest found outside national parks anywhere in Africa.
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The Luangwa Valley is a remarkable place worth preserving. That it has been is not accidental — and it is why hunting here carries a responsibility that serious clients understand and embrace.
KAFUE NATIONAL PARK AREA
Mumbwa West Concession
Mumbwa West sits on the eastern flank of Kafue National Park — one of the largest national parks in Africa — with the park forming the northern and western boundaries of the concession and the Kafue River flowing along its western edge. The terrain runs from dense riverine forest and open floodplain through miombo woodland, granite outcrops, and long-grass dambos as you move east into the interior. It is a varied, beautiful landscape covering approximately 3,370 square kilometers of central Zambia.
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The area is best known for large leopard, quality lion, and outstanding sable. The Kafue riverine corridor — connected directly to the national park — produces cats of exceptional size, genetics the Kafue system is known for. Buffalo, kudu, hartebeest, waterbuck, puku, and a full range of other plains game round out a strong and varied trophy list.
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The dry season runs June through October, with cold mornings and clear skies that favor spot-and-stalk across open woodland and dambo country.
NON-OPERATED HUNTING AREAS THAT THE ZAMBIAN GOVERNMENT OFFERS
Unique Species Safaris
Bangweulu Swamp – Zambezi Sitatunga and Black Lechwe Safaris
The Bangweulu Wetlands cover nearly 10,000 square kilometers of northeastern Zambia — an immense inland water system of floodplain, papyrus swamp, and open grassland that supports wildlife found nowhere else on earth. It is one of Africa’s most distinctive landscapes, and for a specific category of serious hunter, one of the most compelling destinations on the continent.
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Bangweulu is the only place in the world where the Black Lechwe exists as a truly wild, free-ranging population — numbering in the thousands across the open floodplain. It is also one of the premier destinations anywhere for Zambezi Sitatunga, hunted from elevated blinds at the papyrus edge at first and last light. Tsessebe from this area have produced some of the finest record book heads taken in Zambia, and Oribi and Reedbuck are present in good numbers throughout. For a hunter with any of these species on the list, there is no better place to look.
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Epic Safaris can arrange hunting in the Bangweulu area upon request. Contact us to discuss availability and how this area might fit into a broader Zambian safari itinerary.
Kafue Flats – Kafue Lechwe Safaris
The Kafue Flats are the only place on earth where the endemic Kafue Lechwe is found — a wary, open-country animal hunted by spot-and-stalk across a vast seasonal floodplain where herds number in the thousands. It is a focused, one-of-a-kind hunt for a species that exists nowhere else, accessible as a day hunt from Lusaka.
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Epic Safaris can arrange hunting in the Kafue Flats upon request. Contact us to discuss availability and how this hunt might fit into your safari.
WHY EPIC SAFARIS
We provide experiences to treasure forever.
Intimate experiences with nature through spot and stalks. Sundowners in serene wilderness settings. Authentic contact with local villagers. Bedtime sounds that can never be replicated. Adrenaline rushes.
Our passion for conservation and care for the local communities we support is making a difference.
Our love and respect for sustainable, ethical conservation runs deep. We make a substantial investment into community development, support and wildlife protection every year. This investment is what ultimately protects the wilderness that creates these treasured experiences for our clients.
Zambia offers a large variety of wildlife trophies to hunt across vast open range areas.
Zambia is one of the best places in Africa to hunt dangerous game such as lion, leopard, buffalo and elephant, as well as a great variety of plains game. The finest sable in Africa are found in Zambia along with Black Lechwe and other plains game species found nowhere else.
Combine this dangerous game and other wildlife diversity with the highest percentage area coverage of protected areas in Africa (national parks and the buffer zones around the parks) and you have an open-range wilderness safari experience unrivaled across the African continent.
WHY HUNT ZAMBIA?
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Zambia has set aside 38 percent of its total land mass as protected area — one of the highest proportions of any country in Africa. Twenty national parks anchor that system, covering the most ecologically sensitive landscapes in the country. Surrounding them, a network of Game Management Areas serves as the working buffer zones that make the parks viable over the long term. These are not empty designations. They are the mechanism by which wildlife corridors stay open, seasonal migration routes remain intact, and the genetic health of populations across vast landscapes is maintained.
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The GMA system was designed around a straightforward premise: that the communities living alongside wildlife must have a tangible economic stake in its survival. Where wildlife generates real, consistent value for the people who live with it — through employment, revenue sharing, infrastructure, and protein — those communities protect it. Where it does not, alternative land uses take over, and the buffer zones that give the national parks their depth begin to fragment. Zambia built regulated hunting into this model deliberately, as one of the primary economic engines capable of generating that value across remote, unfenced landscapes at the scale required.
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The result is a wildlife system of extraordinary scale and integrity. Over 40 mammal species available to hunt, including several found nowhere else on earth — Puku, Crawshay’s zebra, Cookson’s wildebeest, Defassa waterbuck. Four of the Big Five in huntable numbers across multiple ecosystems. Zambia remains one of a shrinking number of countries where CITES import permits for elephant and cats can still be obtained, making a genuine Big Five safari on open, unfenced land still possible here when it is no longer possible in most of Africa.
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Hunting in Zambia means daily contact with remote communities whose relationship with wildlife is direct and practical. In the areas where our hunts take place, local communities are partners in the management of the land — employed by the safari operator, benefiting from the revenue it generates, receiving valuable protein to feed children, using infrastructure provided by community stakeholders, present at the governance table, and invested in outcomes that extend well beyond any single season. That dimension of a Zambian safari is not a side note. For many clients, it becomes one of the most enduring parts of the experience.
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Epic Safaris participates in this landscape not simply as an outfitter marketing safaris but as an active player in its stewardship. In both regulated game management areas that our safaris take place, we work closely with our licensed concession partners and alongside conservation organizations, government, and community leadership to ensure that what makes these landscapes extraordinary today is still here tomorrow.
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Come join us on safari and play a role in protecting one of the last truly wild places on earth.
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