Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Feb 24 2008 | By: admin

Howzit everyone, this is Mike here (currently posting under Peter’s name until I can work out how to add myself as an administrator).
We’ve had a very frustrating few days, over two hundred kilometres of driving, hours of tracking and still no sighting of the dogs. Well, for me anyway. The other evening Peter bumped in to what we think is the ‘Jacana’ pack about 200 metres from our house and one of our scouts almost rode his bike into the same bunch the next night. All attempts to find this pack during the day have failed and so too has the search for the only radio-collared pack in the north of the conservancy, the ‘Maera’ pack (the elusive Wild Maera Dogs, or WMDs).

On the plus side, while on one of our fruitless forays into the bush, we were extremely privileged to see a snow white waterbuck cow, which is probably rarer than anything else I’ll see this year.

It was also pleasant to spend an hour of my Sunday morning watching five elephant bulls, without a care in the world, slowly and gracefully demolishing the maize fields of the nearby illegal squatters. Good work lads!

The new vehicle has been put through it’s paces and is going well. So far, it has managed to avoid the inevitable dents, deep scratches, flat tyres and damaged windscreen. All this in spite of my best efforts.

Peter will be away for a few days while he brushes up on his immobilising drugs handling and wildlife capture, in preparation for the darting and collaring we hope to do this denning season. I am also disappearing for a day or four, searching for dogs further north in the conservancy. Hopefully, I’ll return to the blog with stories of success and the pictures to prove it.

Sarai zvakanaka,

Mike

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