Imvula Trails Update

4 August 2016

by Dylan uBhejane

Good day walking trails today. It started with us finding tracks of an elephant herd, and whilst assessing how fresh the tracks were, we found the track of a white rhino bull on top of the elephant tracks. The Rhino tracks were fresh and he was clearly on a mission, leaving scraping and urine along his trail.

Warwick, took the trail as our tracker, with Quintin his lead rifle, watching ahead. I followed as second rifle, giving them space to work. We soon found the bull at a midden and could see that he was very excited. His head was down sniffing close to the ground and his tail was curled. We soon found more rhino tracks leading away from the midden, and this is why the bull was so excited. We decided to let him lead us to the other Rhino, so followed his tracks, but gave him enough distance in order not to disturb him.

Quintin leading the group.

Lisa took over the tracking, and walked head up, looking well ahead as she trailed the Rhino bull. It was great to see what the bull was doing by looking at the evidence left in his tracks. Good lessons were learnt and students for the first time saw the Rhino lips leaving scuff marks on the trail, as he followed the other rhino tracks.

He caught up to the two rhino's he was following, and we could see that it was a cow, and a sub-adult calf. The cow was not too happy and ran into the thick bush with the bull following. We decided not to follow them.

En route back to camp, Whitney and Brian took over as 1st and 2nd RIfle and we encountered a herd of buffalo. We all had a great day learning and doing what we love!