Jack's Camp

Northern end of Ntwetwe Pan, Makgadikgadi, Botswana. Nine tents in a one-million-acre private reserve, operated by Ralph Bousfield’s Uncharted Africa within Natural Selection, on the site where his father Jack Bousfield — a crocodile hunter holding a Guinness record for over 53,000 animals — made camp in 1962. Rebuilt through 2020 and reopened in January 2021. It is the Library’s clearest case of a camp whose principal asset is a registered museum rather than a view.

The house

Ralph Bousfield says his family “had lived in Tanzania since the 1860s” and that he “was born there in 1962, but just six weeks later, my father moved our family to Francistown in Botswana”. Jack Bousfield, who holds “a Guinness World Record of shooting the most crocodiles – over 53,000”, “set up camp at the northern end of Ntwetwe Pan” and, by his son’s account, started Botswana’s first photographic safari camp in 1962. He stopped hunting in 1965 and ran his last hunting safari in 1966. He died in a plane crash in 1992, after which Natural Selection says the camp “was refurbished in the nostalgic 1940s style we know today”.

Ralph Bousfield owns and operates Uncharted Africa, now part of Natural Selection, which also holds Camp Kalahari, San Camp and Mapula Lodge. He oversaw a full rebuild through 2020: nine tents, seven twins and two doubles, each of 270 square metres, more than double the former size, with solar power across the camp and 1.5 per cent of revenue directed to conservation projects in the area. The mess tent keeps a 36-seater table described as an officer’s mess table of the 1820s. The Jack’s Camp museum “is registered as part of the network of National Museums of Botswana” and took its present form in the same rebuild.

What distinguishes it

The site is thirty years older than the company that runs it Ralph Bousfield dates his father’s camp to 1962, the end of hunting to 1965 and the last hunting safari to 1966. Uncharted Africa was formed only after Jack Bousfield died in 1992, and Natural Selection later still. What carries through is the ground and the family, not the business.

Two founding dates, both from the operator Natural Selection’s page on Ralph Bousfield says Jack started Botswana’s first photographic safari camp in 1962; its camp page puts the first incarnation in “the 1960s”. Luxury Travel Advisor, reporting the company’s own announcement, says the camp would “reopen with a new look in January 2021 to celebrate the camp’s 25th anniversary”, which dates it to 1996. The register records both figures and averages neither.

The 2020 rebuild doubled the tents and kept the colour The rebuild produced nine tents, “seven twins and two doubles”, each of 270 square metres, which Luxury Travel Advisor reports as 1,400 square feet of interior floor area in tents keeping the same dark green exterior canvas and lining. Ralph Bousfield oversaw the work and says “all the tented structures have been redesigned with a purpose”. No outside architect is named in anything fetched for this entry.

A registered museum with a named curator The collection in the mess tent “is registered as part of the network of National Museums of Botswana”. Dewald du Plessis, known as Kwagga, joined Uncharted Africa in 2016 and says “I catalogued every single specimen both on display and in storage”. The museum was set up in its current iteration during the 2020 rebuild and holds stone tools the camp describes as made over 3 million years ago.

One camp, three in all, on a million acres Natural Selection states that “Jack’s Camp is one of just three camps in a one million-acre private wildlife reserve”. The camp reports a meerkat habituation project run “with some of the world’s pre-eminent researchers” and gives 30,000 zebra and wildebeest arriving on the pans between November and March. Published rates run from US$2,095 to US$3,895 per night.

Signature rooms and dates

Competitive landscape