Journal – Dangerous Animal Stalk – South Africa
“Someone is going to do this,’ said Les our guide. “It is the most dangerous of dangerous animal stalks.” We were watching a mother rhino and a 5-week old calf from the safety of our game viewer. I chuckled. I had done enough over the last few days. Someone’s in for an interesting experience! At least they will get a dangerous animal stalk ticked off. “Pablo!”said Les jumping out of the vehicle. “You’re it!” The colour drained from my face. I could see eight other faces looking at me – mostly in pity.
Right. Ummm… After an initial panic, I set to planning what I was going to do. I’m not particularly forward in coming forward – but once I am forced into that position I tend to tackle it with a military mindset that has served me well in the armed forces.
Wind direction, natural cover, placement of ‘clients’, safety, safety, fieldcraft, knowledge of the quarry, environment, climate, safety… Let’s go for it!
I took a long looping stalk downwind and kept to cover. I couldn’t see the rhino 90% of the time. For all I knew she had gone. I stalked confidently and quickly following a pre-planned route I had set n my mind to come up behind her. The crew followed at a pre-set distance. After a while I was where I wanted to be. I sneaked out of the cover. Yes! She was still there – 25 meters away. I looked at Les behind me. He gave me the thumbs up. I signalled I wanted to move closer. He shook his head. I then signalled for the rest of the crew to close up to my location. I was elated as I heard their cameras quietly clicking away. Then I saw something quite remarkable. The rhino hadn’t noticed me approach – I was convinced of that. They are very short-sighted. She was still grazing. The wind was perfectly in my favour. There was no noise from us. But, slowly and deliberately she moved so that her whole body was between the calf and us. She was shielding the calf! She looked over to us – but I swear she couldn’t see us. There was no threat behaviour – no danger signals.
Later during the debrief I mentioned this to Les. He just smiled. “Yes,” he said. “She knew – but there was no threat – and that’s why you did a good job.” He signed me off in my notebook.
extracted from “Master Tracker” – published by Apple Books
