Jan Dams was born in Herentals, Belgium, on 28 January 1954. He is married to Dominique, and they have twin 25-year-old daughters: Camille and Valentine. Jan and his family live in a listed monastery that is over 600 years old.
Jan left school at the age of 19 when his father passed away in a car accident, and then at age 30 he started his own business focusing on supermarkets in Belgium. This business continued until he sold it in 2023, and he still sits on its board of directors. From 1994 until 2001, Jan was a co-partner in a supermarket chain in South Africa. It was forced to close due to new government-imposed regulations.
Jan began hunting with his maternal grandfather, who gave him his first rifle (a .22) when he was seven years old. Hunting was forever imprinted on his mind, but youth is full of vitality and Jan’s youth also saw him piloting planes through the skies, driving cars in rallies all over Europe, and playing high-speed polo. And then, over fifty years ago, Jan was baptized with a chamois in the mountains. After that initial chamois hunt, he met Dennis Campbell, who taught him to never leave the summits.
He has traveled five continents, rifle in hand, with the awakened curiosity of a child, interested in the different people and their cultures, art, and landscapes. Jan has hunted and obtained more than seventy different varieties of mountain game, from the European Alps to the American Rockies, from the African hills to the very distant New Zealand peaks, and of course in the great Asian chains. And yet he never forgot the partridge hunts in Spain and the British lagopodes, because, after all, variety is the spice of life. Over time, Jan has hunted more than 2,000 big game animals, including over 30 from the African Big Five. The rest were mainly in Europe — wild boar, roe deer, and red deer — and in Africa during driven hunts for population management. He has also hunted over 40,000 small game animals.
Jan is currently active on several boards of directors, mostly focused on protecting landowners against the socialist green wave that wants to claim even our private gardens. He also enjoys golf, cooking, and spending time with his family. One of Jan’s most distinguishing hunting traditions is seen in how he defends himself from the rain and protects himself from the sun: he wears a red beret.
