Trophy hunting constitutes globally a major part of the wildlife tourism industry and is connected through the export of kills to international wildlife trade. Inconsistencies found between kills and exports can contribute to identify illegal trophy hunting that constitutes a major threat to biodiversity conservation. This paper quantitatively analysis in how far data of trophy hunting kills and of trophy exports are consistent on the example of South Africa and what are potential reasons for inconsistencies found. Data was extracted from two different sources for the year 2018. These were the South African Professional Hunting statistics(SAPHs) containing trophy kills information for each species and the country of origin of the hunter on the one side and trade data reported under the CITES Trade Database on export of trophy items from South Africa on the other side. The findings show on the one hand in both data bases the same 28 trophy-hunted endangered taxa reported. On the other hand the same data reports hunters with in total 64 nationalities from abroad participated in a total of 4,726 trophy kills were reported while a total of 3,131 hunting trophy items were exported out of South Africa to 37 countries as the final destination. The data of trophy hunting kills and data of trophy hunting export was found to differ to varying degrees across the countries contributing to trophy hunting and CITES-listed trophy-hunted species. Possible reasons for this inconsistency are identified and also recommendations for improving the CITES reporting system are made.