Wildcast

At last we did it!
It was a cold, overcast, drizzly day. One where you wish you had stayed in bed. And I can tell you, when working for oneself it is so tempting. But I’m pretty hard on myself, and always pushing it so I don’t end up doing nothing.
I was out there before dawn to follow up on the lions. They were disappointing, a few chewing on the carcass and others lying around the pan. I must say, I don’t know what else I was expecting.
With nothing happening there and together with the soft drizzle, it was so tempting to head back to base.
I kept up the search for the wild dogs and got lucky. The whole pack was on the move in the north. Although they were obviously out hunting, they weren’t moving at much of a pace as the pups just had to investigate everything and anything they came across. This suited me, as I was able to keep up with them for some time.

But that was only until they really did get hunting and I couldn’t keep up in the thick bush. I lost and found them several times.
Having lost them again I thought of checking out an old dried out dam, as it’s nice and open there and probably a place the pups would like to play. Just as I arrived the Alpha female, I’ve decided to call her “Puzzles”, had pulled down an adult male impala. It was still alive as she tore away at its rear end. The impala was on its haunches but just didn’t have the energy to get up, obviously totally exhausted from the run.
Puzzles fed for about 5mins and left, the impala still alive and still on its haunches. But a few minutes later it collapsed and died.
Puzzles had obviously gone off to call the pups. While waiting for them, a young male impala came tearing past me with the Alpha male in pursuit. And then I heard it, the impala’s only death cry. The dogs had killed 2 impala not even a hundred meters apart. (This is just proof again that wild dogs often kill on their own and in this case team work had nothing to do with either kill.)

Puzzles arrived back with the pups and the Alpha male joined them. Both adults regurgitated food for the pups and then moved on to feed on the first kill. The pups weren’t even aware of the impala carcass, almost running over it. But when mom and dad started pulling at the carcass the pups took off.
This must have been the first kill the pups had been to. Their food up to now had always arrived with mom and dad and been regurgitated for them. Now they were finding out where that all came from. (Much like most people don’t even know where meat comes from. Maybe only as adults do they discover it comes from cows. And very few ever actually get to see a slaughtered animal.)

Once the pups realised this was meat, they tucked in and for the next couple of hours busied themselves nibbling at the carcass.
The cool overcast weather provided ideal conditions for the dogs to hang around and for the pups to discover and play with the kill.
Realising this, I too took advantage and called the vet in to dart the male and get a collar on him. All went by the book. The male was darted and went down. And then my car wouldn’t start. It wasn’t even turning over. It just wouldn’t do anything. Why did it have to give up the ghost right then? Well it wasn’t too much of a crisis. We got the collar on, gave him the antidote and he was off.

We managed to pull start the car afterwards and later had to repair the starter motor that had packed in.
And so at last the wild dogs will now hopefully be more accessible to me and I can start the habituation process to get them all inoculated against rabies.