Trails Guide Course

November to December 2015

It has been a month of unexpected experiences on our trails guide month- finding fresh carcasses, observing leopards, bumping into elephants on a walk—read more to see how it all unfolded!

The temperatures have been hovering in the upper 30’s and lower 40’s and the drought conditions have been difficult on the wildlife. Fortunately, our camp is situated right on the Olifants river, a perennial water source, that draws in the elephants, buffalo and other game. On this course the main objective is to do walks in the bush and encounter dangerous game.

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Students also get a chance to assess their man-trailing skills, following a signs of footsteps, broken branches, and scuff marks left behind people. The skill acquired through man trailing, can be translated directly to detection of poachers in the reserve and to following animal trails to finally find the animal. The skills involve, being able to identify the right foot prints (sometimes one would cross an old trail or the trail of the anti-poaching unit), being aware of one’s surroundings (picking up on tell-tale alarm calls, oxpeckers calls indicating large herbivores), and safety of the group (with regards to sign of dangerous game, wind direction that can make your presence known to other animals). On the trail we would try to do some fun signs such as leave messages in the dirt, run along a small section, take detours along awkward obstacles of overhanging branches and up a sheer sandy bank of a donga. All to force the student to look up, look ahead, and look around.

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On one man-trailing exercise, we were flowing a trail on the western side of camp along the river. From high up on the embankment, one of the students spotted a slinking figure moving in the bush on the other side of the river – the animal emerged from the bushes, it was a big male leopard coming down to the river for a drink! With the safety of the river between us we watched as the leopard drank his fill, he looked at us once, but he too felt secure with his position, and carried on with his day as he walked up the bank and disappeared into the thicket. Now that’s an ideal on-foot sighting of one of the most elusive animals in the bush.

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The students have been practicing their trailing skills, each student turns following elephant or rhino footsteps or dung through dongas, rocky hills and bushveld. Through trailing has only resulted in finding the animal a few times, the trailing has always taught us more about the behaviour of animals and little surprises We decided to follow a relatively fresh trail of a rhino bull from a well-established midden, early into the trail We came across an impala carcass that was so fresh the blood was still wet. We had just stumbled upon a fresh leopard kill! There were no tracks leading up to the kill, and we cautiously proceeded along the game path but did not see any sign of the leopard. Chances are that we scared the leopard off the kill. We made our way out of the area and picked up the trail afterwards, in hopes that the leopard would return to the kill. A few days later the students decided to follow their own footsteps on the rhino trail as a man trailing exercise (even kowing where you have been does not make finding each footstep easy!). The impala kill vanished, with hyena tracks around the site which told part of the story. Oddly enough on this trail, the students did bump into the rhino bull that came back on the trail towards the midden from the other side of the trail!

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Here in the Balule, you never know what you are going to see around the corner. We were on a bush walk when we encountered a herd of elephant feeding in a thicket about 200 m away. We decided to approach, but had a donga in the way and could only get to 50-60 m away from them without giving our position away. So we decided to leave the area, when on the way out we bumped into a bull elephant following the herd. Luckily we had adequate cover and was able to quickly move with cover and favourable wind to get a safer and then a closer view of him. As we were approaching we inadvertently startled a civet that was resting under a bush. Though it was a lovely surprise to see a civet in its diurnal resting spot, the running civet alerted the bull to our location. The bull stopped feeding and approached in our direction out of curiosity. We decided to back out quickly away from the spot so we did not get caught out by the bull. A fun encounter with an elephant with a surprise at the end.

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The lack of rain and food have made the elephants especially on edge and sometimes downright grumpy, and understandably so. We have had herds with really young calves and protective mothers that have to ensure that the young ones have enough nutrition to get them through this difficult cycle of nature. Some elephants are vocal with each other, not tolerating other herds in this low-resource condition of the veld. And some elephants transfer their frustration to us – giving a head shake or a trumpet that lets us know that they do not like our proximity adding to their stress. We give them their space and observe their behaviour. In a way, this period of drought is a treasured learning experience giving us a view into wildlife (both animals and plant life) and how they cope and adapt to adverse conditions. It is an insight to the plasticity of nature — following old trails to faithful water sources (elephants from all over the Balule have are congregating by the river), or changing shape to protect the body from water loss (rolling up of silver raisin leaves), or even switching food sources (typical grazers like buffalo are switching to browsing leaves). Evolution is a memory bank of adaptation and animals that can tap into that bank and adapt will survive and live on for another generation. We hope for some big rains to make the bush thrive again.

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During the last phase of the course, the rhino sightings have been amazing. On one encounter Bjorn was leading with Stuart as back up as we approached a Rhino cow and calf. We spotted her with the young one off to the side copying its mothers indolent graze. We had enough good wind conditions to follow them and decide to view them from atop a termite mound. She, unfortunately, changed direction and moved off into a thicket of bushes. We went closer to the area where we though she was but it was too thick to follow, and then suddenly we heard this noise like sand paper rubbing stone. We paused and listened to it again and soon figured that it was the rhino scratching herself again a rubbing post. So we decided to wait till they emerged, not knowing which way they would come we waited by a fallen corkwood tree. When they came out, the sun was at our backs, which made us even more invisible to her, we sat and watched as she walked past us a mere 20 m away. It was an amazing experience and an invaluable lesson in recognising the sounds, even non-vocal ones, a rhino can make in the bush.

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All the students attained a level 1 trailing qualification and passed their trails guide exams, congratulations to them. Well done on the students who passed their ARH and Back-up trails guide assessments, Bjorn, Dino, Sebastian, and Stuart. Job Well done and good luck with your future guiding experiences!

Update: Our South African trails guide backups have all found guiding jobs and are well into being experienced guides and getting their own guiding stories—Congratulations Stuart, Bjorn, and Dino! The adventure continues!

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