Going to the dogs…

For more than 2 years I have been contributing back page articles to this magazine and I have also completed a couple of online courses with them.

My biggest Wildlife Campus achievement to date?

Probably the fact that I started a course with them about 20 years ago…and I have yet to complete it!

That being said, I have never missed the monthly deadline for my articles.

This article first appeared in The Wildlife Campus magazine in August 2022.

Our Field Guide was alerted to a disturbance a short distance off our chosen route by an unexpected dust cloud hanging in the still morning air. “Let’s go and investigate” were Kevin’s words as we turned left and headed towards the yelps and bellowing that we could now hear emanating from the cloud.

The first inkling of what could be happening was when we found a distressed female buffalo. Standing just off the small gravel road, she was wide-eyed and lowing frantically, it was her that alerted us to what we were about to experience.

I believe that it was for that reason that the female still waited off to one side. Perhaps at some visceral level, she thought that there was still a chance of survival for her offspring? However, she eventually realized the inevitability of the outcome and moved off to rejoin the herd that had kept walking during this interaction.

What we discovered as we came around a corner was a pack of Wild Dog pups, that had brought down a 4-month-old buffalo calf…right in the middle of a side road. This was the pack’s first kill and although the adults were standing close by, none of them stepped in to help the youngsters complete the kill successfully.

Although the buffalo remained close by, she never tried to rescue the calf. Neither did the large herd of which she was a part come back to help out. Post the event, two scenarios were proposed. As the pair were walking at the back of the herd, the calf could have either been injured or ill. Youngsters with females are usually found in the middle of a herd where they can be protected by adult males and females. This was not the case here. Neither did the female make a concerted effort to rescue the calf. It only took one or two of the pups to keep her at bay.

Did you know? An adult dog pack can strip a fully grown Wildebeest to hooves, skin and horns in under 10 minutes. Their Latin name, Lycaon pictus, means ‘Painted Wolf’. And much like the wolves in Europe and the USA, they are amongst the fastest eaters in the wild.

The bellowing of the dying calf was NOT easy to listen to. I was able to almost block the sound out as I recorded the 20-minute incident and my first kill from start to finish. The other guests in the vehicle did not have any distractions and as such, it became an emotional and immersive experience for them. It is not easy to witness a violent death, as this one was, however, it was a teaching outing for these pups who HAD to learn how to kill to survive into adulthood.

Unlike the adults in the pack that understand how to kill quickly, here it was a struggle to subdue their prey and kill it efficiently. The nose was one of the first parts that were attacked as it was an easy target, but although it looked bloody, the wound was not fatal.

With so much blood around, I was amazed that the pup’s teeth remained almost a pristine white. Ripping into the flesh left the dogs with bloody fur but their teeth were unsullied by the carnage that they wrecked on their meal.

Eventually, it seemed that the dogs started to understand what they needed to do to subdue and finally end the life of this calf. At this point, there was still intermittent noise from the calf as it struggled in vain to escape the attackers.

When this pup appeared with the buffalo liver in its jaws, we on the the vehicle were certain that the calf had finally succumbed to the pack.

Lesson learned? One of the pups took a moment to raise its head to survey the surrounding bush for the adults of the pack. Was it looking for validation of a job well done? To anthropomorphize this event and the effect that it had on me and the other guests on the vehicle would be a disservice to this pack. What I did discover, was that after waiting for more than 4 decades to experience an event like this, was that every day is a constant battle that plays out between predator and prey. For one to survive, another has to die. In the African bush, that is the natural ebb and flow of life and death. It is not like being a witness to murder as in instances like this, it is done for sustenance and not for sport or pleasure.

Finally, after the bellowing had stopped, the air fell silent and with full tummies and their first successful kill, the entire pack moved off. We sat for a long while, internalizing what we had just been witnesses to. And, although we were saddened by the loss of life, lessons had been learned and the pups would be able to hunt on their own in future. This was an expensive breakfast as far as the reserve was concerned. The buffalo here are BTB (Bovine Tuberculosis) free and as such can be worth around R1m each.

Postscript: This entire pack later died of rabies, brought into the park via domestic animals that had infiltrated from nearby settlements. A truly sad and unnecessary ending to these endangered animals.

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