Dinner By Sunset

A few nights ago myself and Richard had a group of guests that had just come in from a few nights stay up at Ngala. At tea we chatted to them to see what they had seen and to try and get an idea of what they maybe wanted to see at Exeter. It was clear from the get go that these guys meant business and action was high on the agenda. They proceeded to tell us that they had seen lions fighting around a Rhino carcass with growling and roaring, they had seen leopard and a whole bunch more. Richard and I were dumb struck and though – HOW ON EARTH are we going to even come close to topping that? One of the things that we had heard that they had not seen was a kill, and wild dogs. I knew we had wild dogs on the property and I jokingly said: “what about a wild dog kill?” Richard snarled at me as if to say – are you crazy? What are you saying? We sheepishly set off, slightly panicked, but very hopeful. We raced up into the north to get into the area where the dogs were last seen to try and make use of as much light as possible and get as much tracking time in. I was blown away to hear on our way there that fortunately someone had already found them and that we could both go strait there. It took us 40 minutes or so to get, and as we arrived they started to get moving. The best was that there were no other vehicles interested in following them and that meant that we had the sighting all to ourselves. It was not long before the dogs started hunting, they ran up and down and all over the show. We saw them chase at least 5 herds of Impala, there were lambs scattered everywhere! At one point we were driving down the road next to one of the dogs as he dashed strait towards an Impala ram that was completely oblivious to what was going on. Typically, none of the Impala were alarm snorting which they normally do for other predators because of the fact that dogs are endurance hunters and will chase their prey down until they are too physically exhausted to run anymore. Dogs do not rely on a stalk and pounce technique which would require an element of surprise, therefore alarm snorting is likely to draw attention to ones self. Impala rather scatter and keep very quiet. We saw the dogs regroup one last time just before sunset and then make one last dash for a large group of Impala on an small clearing, we lost view of them as they ran down the road, we struggled to keep up with them when all of a sudden, we spotted them just through the tree line excitedly gathering around a fresh Impala kill. They killed an adult female Impala and shared it between 6 of them. My group of guests were completely overwhelmed with excitement. They were speechless, as was I; I could not believe our luck!!

Posted: Exeter Lodges by Craig Paulsen, Date: 23 December 2009