The dogs have continued for the last few days on their travels east all the way to the boundary and then this morning did the long trek west again.
Although they’ve fed every day, conditions for hunting impala aren’t the best in the east and numbers too aren’t that great.
But when they headed west this morning, Jiggy leading the way, he seemed to know they were in bad impala country and kept up his steady pace west.
On arriving at the airstrip the dogs were already tired and collapsed in the first shade they found. But Jiggy kept moving. He didn’t have to move far and soon saw the most pleasing sight to his keen eyes. Piles of impala!
The chase was on, impala scattering everywhere. When I did eventually catch up with them, they’d killed an adult male impala. This was a great feast for all.
Knowing this kill would take them a while to finish I was out the car walking around the kill filming them. They hardly seemed concerned. Amazing that they can accept me like this. It really is exciting times as I feel myself slowly making my way into the pack.
And as I do this I become so much more involved with them that seeing Nike today with her front paw injury, makes me just want to help. I know I can’t and I won’t but she is suffering a bit. She hurt her foot yesterday on the hunt and will put pressure on it when walking but not when running. So it can’t be that bad. But she also didn’t feed much on the kill today. I wonder if she finds it a bit hard to compete with the others with her sore foot?
The dogs have been up to a few other tricks the last few days.
They targeted a herd of buffalo but were soon sent packing. Of course it was always the pups playing the game. The adults were beyond wasting their energy on these ‘no brainer’ situations.
Having killed an impala yesterday morning the dogs moved off to rest up in some shade when one of them found the dried out remains of a Grysbok. It was just skin and bone. But that didn’t stop the pups fighting over it and actually eating the whole carcass of dry skin and bone. So much for the literature that says wild dogs don’t scavenge and will only feed on freshly killed carcasses. And this was just after they’d already killed too.
Today we also had to replace the collar on Tanga the leopard as his had become faulty. All went really well and he was soon on his way again.
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