Poachers Update

Poachers Update: 25/07 Lower Sabie rangers made contact with a group of three suspected rhino poachers close to the Mozambique border. During contact, one suspect was wounded and arrested. A rifle, ammo and equipment were recovered at the scene. The remaining two suspects managed to escape arrest.

In another successful counter poaching operation (25/07), Shangoni rangers made contact with a group of three suspected poachers deep in the section. During contact, one suspect was fatally wounded and the remaining two suspects escaped arrest and are currently being followed up. A rifle, ammo and equipment were recovered at the scene

Media Release

Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs welcomes some of the provisions contained in the London Declaration on Illegal Wildlife Trade.. Follow the link to view http://www.sanparks.org/about/news/default.php?id=56001

Safari Starting 2nd February 2013

 2nd February 2013
Mark collected guests from Nelspruit at 11h00am and then made his way to Pretoriuskop for lunch before departing on an afternoon drive.

Route: Napi - H3 - Napi

Sightings for the afternoon were 3 x Elephant bulls at voortrekker link 1 x elephant bull in altercation with a dazzle of zebra. He chased them around for approximately 20min until the zebra's gave up and moved off. 2 x lioness and 3 x males lying on the road on the H3 300m from S113 Herd of buffalo near boulders exit on Napi.  He then made his way to Nkambeni for the night.

3rd February 2013
After breakfast Mark made his way back down Albasini. Below is the route that he took.  He met up with Verity at 11h30am to collect another four guests that joined the safari.

Route: Albaseni - Doispan - S114 - S112 - Napi

Sighting for the day were 1 x Musth elephant bull just before mestal dam 2 x Lioness at Stevenson hamilton in the shade 5m off the road. Distance visual of herd of buffalo just before transport dam. General game viewing (kudu, waterbuck, giraffe, zebra, warthog and birding) was good over the past two days. No Rhino or leopard as yet.

Dean enters the park with 6 guests who were picked up at the Life Hotel. After entering the Kruger at Numbi Gate his route wwas as follows:

Route:  Numbi gate, up Napi to about seven kilometres past the boulders exit,  Pretoriuskop and then onto Nkambeni.

Sightings on the drive were elephant, impala, kudu, buffalo and cheetah seven kilometres past the Napi boulders where we had a great sighting of a female cheetah with her two juvenile cheetah cubs. After a toilet stop at Pretoriuskop we headed out for the camp of Nkambeni.

 4^th February 2013

Route:  Nkambeni,  Numbi tar, Napi, H3, Afsaal, S112 , Stevenson Hamilton, S114, Skukuza, Paul Kruger gate road, Doispane , Albasini and into Nkambeni.

After lunch at Skukuza we headed out. Animals spotted were loads of elephant, impala, kudu and giraffe. As well as rhino and buffalo. A very slow days game viewing. Lets see what the next few days bring........

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 26)( Page 5 ) Our Various Ways

Hours had gone by in hopeless effort; but the oxen stood out at all angles, and no two would pull together in answer to the feeble efforts of the fainting men.  Then there came a lull in the shouts from the waggon and in answer to the little voorlooper's warning shout, "Pas op, Baas!"  (Look out, Master!), the white men looked round and saw the Zulu driver up on his knees freeing himself from the reims.  In another moment he was standing up full height--a magnificent but most unwelcome sight: there was a thin line of froth along the half-opened mouth; the deep-set eyes glared out under eyebrows and forehead bunched into frowning wrinkles, as for a few seconds he leaned forward like a lion about to spring and scanned the men and oxen before him; and then as they watched him in breathless silence, he sprang lightly off the waggon, picked up a small dry stick as he landed, and ran up along the span. He spoke to the after-ox by name as he passed; called to another, and touched it into place; thrust his way between the next one and the dazed white man standing near it, tossing him aside with a brush of his arm, as a ploughshare spurns a sod; and then they saw how the boy's madness had taken him.  His work and his span had called to him in his delirium; and he had answered.  With low mutterings, short words hissed out, and all the sounds and terms the cattle knew shot at them--low-pitched and with intense repression--he ran along the span, crouching low all the time like a savage stealing up for murderous attack. The two white men stood back and watched. Reaching the front oxen, he grasped the leading reim and pulled them round until they stood level for the straight pull out; then down the other side of the span he ran with cat-like tread and activity, talking to each and straightening them up as he had done with the others; and when he reached the waggon again, he turned sharply and overlooked the span.  One ox had swung round and stood out of line; there was a pause of seconds, and then the big Zulu called to the ox by name--not loudly but in a deep low tone, husky with intensity--and the animal swung back into line again. Then out of the silence that followed came an electrifying yell to the span: every bullock leaned to its yoke, and the waggon went out with a rush. And he drove them at a half-trot all the way to the store: without water; without help; without consciousness; the little dry twig still in his hand, and only his masterful intensity and knowledge of his work and span to see him through. "A mad troublesome savage," said Harry Williams, "but one of the very best.  Anyhow, we thought so; he saved us!" There was something very familiar in this, and it was with a queer feeling of pride and excitement that I asked: "Did he ever say to you `My catchum lion 'live'?" "By gum!  You know him?  Jim: Jim Makokel'!" "Indeed I do.  Good old Jim!" Years afterwards Jim was still a driver, working when necessary, fighting when possible, and enjoying intervals of lordly ease at his kraal where the wives and cattle stayed and prospered.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 25)( Page 6 ) Our Last Hunt

In a little while he seemed satisfied that all was well, and with head thrown slightly forward and the sure clean tread of his kind, he took his line unhesitatingly down the hill.  As he neared the thicker bush twenty yards away a sudden impulse made me give a shout.  In a single bound he was lost among the trees, and the clattering of loose stones and the crackle of sticks in his path had ceased before the cold shiver-down-the-back, which my spell breaking shout provoked, had passed away.  When I turned round Jock was still asleep: little incidents like that brought his deafness home. It was our last day's hunting together; and I went back to the dreary round of hard, hopeless, useless struggle and daily loss. One day, a calm cloudless day, there came without warning a tremendous booming roar that left the air vibrating and seemed to shake the very earth, as a thousand echoes called and answered from hill to hill down the long valley.  There was nothing to explain it; the kaffirs turned a sickly grey, and appealed to me; but I could give them no explanation-- it was something beyond my ken--and they seemed to think it an evil omen of still greater ill-luck.  But, as it turned out, the luck was not all bad: some days passed before the mystery was solved, and then we came to where Coombes, with whom a week earlier I had tried--and failed--to keep pace, had been blown to pieces with his boys, waggon, oxen, and three tons of dynamite: there was no fragment of waggon bigger than one's hand; and the trees all around were barked on one side.  We turned out to avoid the huge hole in the drift, and passed on. There were only twenty oxen left when we reached the drift below Fig Tree.  The water was nearly breast-high and we carried three-fourths of the loads through on our heads, case by case, to make the pull as easy as possible for the oxen, as they could only crawl then.  We got one waggon through with some difficulty, but at nightfall the second was still in the river; we had carried out everything removable, even to the buck-sails, but the weakened bullocks could not move the empty waggon. The thunder-clouds were piling up ahead, and distant lightning gave warning of a storm away up river; so we wound the trek-chain round a big tree on the bank, to anchor the waggon in case of flood, and reeling from work and weariness, too tired to think of food, I flung myself down in my blankets under the other waggon which was outspanned where we had stopped it in the double-rutted veld road, and settling comfortably into the sandy furrow cut by many wheels, was `dead to the world' in a few minutes.  Near midnight the storm awoke me and a curious coldness about the neck and shoulders made me turn over to pull the blankets up.  The road had served as a storm-water drain, converting the two wheel furrows into running streams, and I, rolled in my blankets, had dammed up one of them.  The prompt flow of the released water as soon as I turned over, told plainly what had happened.  I looked out at the driving rain and the glistening earth, as shown up by constant flashes of lightning: it was a world of rain and spray and  running water.  It seemed that there was neither hope nor mercy anywhere; I was too tired to care, and dropping back into the trough, slept the night out in water.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 22)( Page 2 ) The Old Crocodile

Such was the cynical advice given many years ago by one who had bought his experience in childhood and could not forget it.  Sent home as a small boy from a mission station in Zululand to be educated by his grandparents, he found the demand for marvels among his simple country relatives so great that his small experience of snakes and wild animals was soon used up; but the eager suggestive questions of the good people, old and young, led him on, and he shyly crossed the border.  The Fields of Fancy were fair and free; there were no fences there; and he stepped out gaily into the Little People's country--The Land of Let's Pretendia! He became very popular. One day, however, whilst looking at the cows, he remarked that in Zululand a cow would not yield her milk unless the calf stood by. The old farmer stopped in his walk, gave him one suspicious look, and asked coldly, "What do they do when a calf is killed or dies?" "They never kill the calves there;" the boy answered, "but once when one died father stuffed the skin, with grass and showed it to the cow; because they said that would do." The old man, red with anger, took the boy to his room, saying that as long as he spoke of the lions, tigers and snakes that he knew about, they believed him; but when it came to farming!  No!  Downright lying he would not have; and there was nothing for it but larruping. "It was the only piece of solid truth they had allowed me to tell for months," he added thoughtfully, "and I got a first-class hiding for it." And was there no one who doubted Du Chaillu and Stanley and others?  Did no one question Gordon Cumming's story of the herd of elephants caught and killed in a little kloof? and did not we of Barberton many years later locate the spot by the enormous pile of bones, and name it "Elephants' Kloof?" There are two crocodile incidents well-known to those whom time has now made old hands, but believed by no one else; even in the day of their happening they divided men into believers and unbelievers.  The one was of `Mad' Owen--only mad, because utterly reckless- riding through Komati Drift one moonlight night alone and unarmed, who, riding, found his horse brought to a stop, plunging, kicking and struggling on the sand bank in mid-stream where the water was not waist deep.  Owen looking back saw that a crocodile had his horse by the leg.  All he had was a leaded hunting-crop, but, jumping into the water he laid on so vigorously that the crocodile made off, and Owen remounted and rode out. There are many who say that it is not true--that it cannot be true; for no man would do it.  But there are others who have an open mind, because they knew Owen--Mad Owen, who for a wager bandaged his horse's eyes and galloped him over a twenty foot bank headlong into the Jew's Hole in Lydenburg; Owen, who when driving four young horses in a Cape cart flung the reins away and whipped up the team, bellowing with laughter, because his nervous companion said he had never been upset and did not want to be; Owen, who--But too many things rise up that earned him his title and blow the `impossible' to the winds. Mad Owen deserves a book to himself; but here is my little testimony on his behalf, given shamefaced at the thought of how he would roar to think it needed. I crossed that same drift one evening and on riding up the bank to Furley's store saw a horse standing in a dejected attitude with one hind leg clothed in `trowsers' made of sacking and held up by a suspender ingeniously fastened across his back.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 20)( Page 5 ) Jantje

He laughed almost hysterically, his eyes disappearing altogether and every tooth showing, as I lifted his arm to investigate; and then in high-pitched falsetto tones he shouted in a sort of ecstasy of delight, "Die ouw buffels, Baas!  Die buffels bull, Baas!" "Buffalo!  Did he toss you?"  I asked.  Jantje seemed to think it the best joke in the world and with constant squeals of laughter and graphic gestures gabbled off his account. His master, it appears, had shot at and slightly wounded the buffalo, and Jantje had been placed at one exit from the bush to prevent the herd from breaking away.  As they came towards him he fired at the foremost one; but before he could reload the wounded bull made for him and he ran for dear life to the only tree near--one of the flat-topped thorns.  He heard the thundering hoofs and the snorting breath behind, but raced on hoping to reach the tree and dodge behind it; a few yards short, however, the bull caught him, in spite of a jump aside, and flung him with one toss right on top of the thorn-tree. When he recovered consciousness he was lying face upwards in the sun, with nothing to rest his head on and only sticks and thorns around him. He did not know where he was or what had happened; he tried to move, but one arm was useless and the effort made him slip and sag, and he thought he was falling through the earth.  Presently he heard regular tramping underneath him and the breath of a big animal: and the whole incident came back to him.  By feeling about cautiously he at last located the biggest branch under him, and getting a grip on this he managed to turn over and ease his right side.  He could then see the buffalo: it had tramped a circle round the tree and was doing sentry over him.  Now and again the huge creature stopped to sniff, snort and stamp, and then resumed the round, perhaps the reverse way.  The buffalo could not see him and never once looked up, but glared about at its own accustomed level; and, relying entirely on its sense of smell, it kept up the relentless vengeful watch for hours, always stopping in the same place, to leeward, to satisfy itself that the enemy had not escaped. Late in the afternoon the buffalo, for the first time, suddenly came to a stand on the windward side of the tree, and after a good minute's silence turned its tail on Jantje and with angry sniffs and tosses stepped swiftly and resolutely forward some paces.  There was nothing to be seen; but Jantje judged the position and yelled out a warning to his master whom he guessed to be coming through the bush to look for him, and at the same time he made what noise he could in the tree top to make the buffalo think he was coming down.  The animal looked round from time to time with swings and tosses of the head and threatening angry sneezes, much as one sees a cow do when standing between her young calf and threatened danger: it was defending Jantje, for his own purposes, and facing the danger. For many minutes there was dead silence: no answer came to Jantje's call, and the bull stood its ground glaring and sniffing towards the bush.  At last there was a heavy thud below, instantly followed by the report of the rifle--the bullet came faster than the sound; the buffalo gave a heavy plunge and with a grunting sob slid forward on its chest. Round the camp fire at night Jantje used to tell tales in which fact, fancy, and superstition were curiously mingled; and Jantje when not out of humour was free with his stories.  The boys, for whose benefit they were told, listened open mouthed; and I often stood outside the ring of gaping boys at their fire, an interested listener. The tale of his experiences with the honey-bird which he had cheated of its share was the first I heard him tell.  Who could say how much was fact, how much fancy, and how much the superstitions of his race?  Not even Jantje knew that!  He believed it all. The Honey-bird met him one day with cheery cheep-cheep, and as he whistled in reply it led him to an old tree where the beehive was: it was a small hive, and Jantje was hungry; so he ate it all.  All the time he was eating, the bird kept fluttering about, calling anxiously, and expecting some honey or fat young bees to be thrown out for it; and when he had finished, the bird came down and searched in vain for its share. As he walked away the guilty Jantje noticed that the indignant bird followed him with angry cries and threats. All day long he failed to find game; whenever there seemed to be a chance an angry honey-bird would appear ahead of him and cry a warning to the game; and that night as he came back, empty handed and hungry, all the portents of bad luck came to him in turn.  An owl screeched three times over his head; a goat-sucker with its long wavy wings and tail flitted before him in swoops and rings in most ghostly silence--and there is nothing more ghostly than that flappy wavy soundless flitting of the goat-sucker; a jackal trotted persistently in front looking back at him; and a striped hyena, humpbacked, savage, and solitary, stalked by in silence, and glared.

Kruger National Park Safari with Erwin Doornspleet from the 29th - 2nd December 2009

Hi There to all from the Kruger National Park,

This is a report received from one of our guides Mark while on safari in the Kruger National
Park with Erwin doorenspleet from the 29th November to the 2nd December 2009.

Now this had to be a wacka of a trip as the first animal we came across on
entering the Kruger Park was a massive White Rino bull. This chap was big
and I estimate him at approximately 1.8 Ton easily. Massive main horn, honed
to perfection. Rather placid while the vehicle was next to him, approximately
3 - 5m away from us on the left hand side. We proceeded to Pretoriuskop to
have a quick bite to eat and to book in to the rest camp for the duration of our stay.

As you know me, I couldn't wait to get back into the bush. Fortunately as it

was my guests first day in the Kruger, they to were happy to get out there.
After a quick bite to eat we left Pretoriuskop camp, my route planned for the
afternoon was Shebeni Koppies, Albesini north to doispan Road East to River Rd
Link. Turn around and follow exactly the same route back. Later this worked in
our favor as by the time we got back to camp many animal species were seen.
On the Doispan road 1,8kms before the River link road at approx 16h15 we got sight
of a female Leopard lying in an African wattle tree facing eastwards.
Typical postcard photo). further on down the road a herd (20 plus) of elephants
crossing from south to east.
Back to Albasini, we found a herd of buffalo crossing over towards Mestal dam.
It felt good to be in the park and within 2.5 hrs we had see 4 of the "big 5".
With this in mind it was time to head back to camp.

As you all know, early rise with a cup of coffee we left camp heading North.
My idea was to head along the main road between Pretoriuskop and Skakuza.
Something that stood out for me, was our sighting of 2 Sable antelope approximately
10 - 15m off the road facing us (What a sight as I thought back to when last
I saw one so close.) We continued North and approx 1kilometer from Matekanyane
view point we had a sighting of a Black Rino bull moving eastwards.
Approx 2.2kms past the H3 junction which goes down to the Malalane gate, we spotted
2 Female Lion sleeping in the open. Not the best sighting as I would estimate them
to be approx 30m of the road. As we crossed over the Sand River, I decided to take
the Marula Loop road and 500m down came across 2 humongous black mained male Lions.
Both were lying on the edge of the road and brilliant photos were taken.
Up to the Tshokwane picnic spot we saw lots of general game and fabulous amounts of
birds were encountered. After eating a brunch (very late breakfast - due to the
amount of animal sightings we had enjoyed) we moved Eastwards on the H10 to Lower
Sabie. While on this road a number of good sightings were encountered of rhino,
buffalo, elephant and general game.
At the junction to Mlondozi Dam off the H10, we came across a pair of mating Lions.
Good to see nature is still on the go and the Lion is still king.
Looking up into the east, I could see a cloud build up and decided to head back
to Pretoriuskop. After a visit to the camp of Lower Sabie, we made our way back to
Skukuza, stopping off at various sightings of elephant and buffalo as well as
general game along the way. After a short stop at the camp of Skukuza, we made our
way back to camp for the night and the potential of some heavy rain.

The night sounded like a battle field in the sky's as the thunder roared. This was
confirmed the next day with little animal movement and sightings. What also played
a major role was the sudden drop in temperatures. Even the new Impala lambs where
aware of the change in weather.
We decided that we would take advantage of the weather and visited many different
historical sites  during the course of the day. Always enjoying the general game
viewing as we spent our time in the African bushveld.

The night was cold and the next morning after our last game drive before leaving
the park, we had breakfast at Pretoriukop. On leaving the park its always
interesting to see what is the last specie of animal is, to come out and say
goodbye. Strange to this we had a sighting of 8 Sable antelope,
wishing our guests

" Goodnight, God bless and Goodbye".

Till next time and we meet again,

Mark
Senior Guide Nhongo Safaris