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Writer's pictureGeorgie Hall

Seeing spots!

After our first off week, saying we were thrown back in at the deep end is an understatement. When you’ve got out of the routine of using your brain and getting up early, going back to long and intensive days can be a struggle. This week we were split into our two groups doing either track and sign or rifle competency. I was in the track and sign group, with Ryan doing rifle handling.


We started Monday morning off with a lecture, before we met Colin Patrick and his gorgeous working dog Annie. Colin was to be our trainer for the week and boy did we underestimate how much we would learn. He is a Senior Tracker with over 20 years’ experience in the field and actively works with Anti-poaching teams. Over the course of the week, he took us from clueless to clued in, which was no mean feat!


Colin, Annie, and Trevor

Every day we saw something new and learned so much. Who could imagine that we’d learn how to identify beetle and grasshopper tracks as well as the big stuff?! Birds are still some of the tricky ones, but amazingly you can identify a lot of individual species just based on their tracks and the way they walk.


Lion tracks - photo credit Jelle

On Wednesday afternoon the rain started, and what a downpour it was! Little did we know it was a sign of things to come. It meant we spent the afternoon doing a classroom session on tracks instead of out on the reserve, but we definitely needed to talk through the multitude of different tracks and how to compare them.


A river starting to form outside the dining room!

Thursday was Valentine’s Day, and us girls were treated like royalty all day. Ryan had organised a secret Valentine’s gift giving, where all the boys bought little presents for the girls and we weren’t allowed to do any of our team duties that day – the boys did it all! We all got lots of chocolate and fun gifts, and Ryan bought a red rose for each of us and the staff. I definitely am a lucky one to have him, especially when he bought me my own big box of chocolates (which were devoured by the end of the day!).


Lucky girls getting treated on Valentine's Day by the pirate himself

We went out for an early drive on Thursday afternoon to try and beat yet more rain that was forecast, and boy were we happy we did. Whilst driving we saw numerous trees FULL of vultures – I’ve never seen anything like it! We knew this was a sign of something interesting, so we moved in for a closer look. What we found was a fresh impala kill by a bush, but we couldn’t see any predator. From the kill we guessed it was likely a leopard kill and that it must still be nearby as the vultures had not yet descended on the carcass. Only minutes after arriving and discussing the kill, we hear a low growl before seeing a beautiful young leopard female dart out from behind the bush next to us and run off. She must have been right in front of us the whole time by the carcass and we couldn’t even see her! What an incredible predator. We sat there stunned for a while and caught our breath, we were all blown away by such an amazing sighting. We moved off to allow her space to come back to her kill, but got stuck trying to find the road, so had to turn around and pass the kill again. Luckily, she was still hanging around and the vultures hadn’t yet scoffed the impala, so we hope she got enough to eat. We all agreed that was the best Valentine’s Day present we could wish for, and continued our drive for yet more amazing sightings, feeling on top of the world.


Check out how close we were to the kill! The leopard was hiding just behind the bush on the right

Friday was Vaughan’s birthday (one of the trainers), and we almost ignored this fact during our morning tracking session with him and Colin, as we knew the rifle group were getting everything ready for our return. Once we were back, Vaughan returned to caterpillar balloons in the dining room (appropriate for an Entomologist), a hot-wheels car and track (as he loves his racing), and best of all – cake. Maybe not best of all though was getting a pink cupcake smushed into his eye, as poor Megan couldn’t reach high enough for her ambush. Luckily he took it well, but he was wiping icing out of his eye all day! Sharin did take the advantage to play a prank on Megan saying that Vaughan’s eye was bleeding and he was going blind… poor Megan! Thankfully, Vaughan is fine and still has two working eyes.


Another meaning of 'pink eye'

In the afternoon, we started the first part of our tracking test. We drove onto the reserve and started identifying the tracks and signs that Colin had given us. When doing the assessment, the results determine what level you achieve. If you get 70-79% you get a Level 1 Track & Sign. If you get 80-89% it’s Level 2, 90-99% it’s Level 3, and 100% is Level 4 – Professional. So far only one Bushwise student has got 100% on their first assessment, which is definitely difficult when you have 50-70 tracks to identify!


Megan looking for tracks

In total on Friday afternoon we had 29 tracks and signs to identify. When we were at number 24 I was still on 100%, so I was starting to get nervous about what result I could potentially get. But as anyone who has seen me compete knows, nerves can get the better of me when I’m in a good position, and a simple guinea fowl track cost me the Professional level. I didn’t really mind though as I had never expected to be the second student to achieve 100% first time, and I would be happy just getting a Level 1. I then got another two questions wrong that day, one of which was an elephant’s tail print when it was lying down in the mud! This is how amazing tracking can be when you can read your surroundings and I hope to one day be able to notice these small details.


Colin sharing his wisdom

We were meant to finish the assessment on Saturday morning, but we woke up to yet more torrential downpour, which may be inconvenient for tracking but is just what the bush needs before the dry winter months. It was therefore a very quiet and relaxed day getting work done before karaoke night at Mahlahla. Saturday nights are normally awesome there, but this was another level. It was absolutely packed with locals from nearby reserves, anti-poaching teams, managers, and volunteers. There was dancing and singing all night, just what we needed to end the week.


A rainy Saturday. We had over 80ml in one day!

Inevitably, Sunday morning was a difficult one for many of us, but finally we had a beautiful sunny day again. Due to this, we had a message from Trevor at about 9:30am to say that we would be finishing our tracking assessments at 11. This sparked absolute panic from a very hungover group of trackers, and our incredible camp mates in the rifle group started making us breakfast to help us recover and prepare for the test (massive shout out to Marko and Caro for all the hard work!). Just as we were about to eat, we get another message from Trevor saying it was all a prank and we would be doing the test on Monday morning instead. I think stunned silence may be accurate, before everyone started laughing and insulting Trevor for being so mean. Thankfully we still had an amazing breakfast and a relaxed rest of the day to prepare for our test, but I’ve declared this a prank war now so they better sleep with one eye open!


This week has been absolutely incredible, seeing a beautiful leopard and learning more than I thought was possible with tracking, even though it’s just scratching the surface. I know it’s definitely something I’m interested in and will hopefully continue doing in the future. I’m sure next week will bring just as many amazing experiences!


Trackers!

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