14th and 15th February – Big 7 Completed!!!

Photo of the Day

Baby zebra on Valentines Day

14^th February Morning Drive

(Chad, Grant and Johannes)

2 x rhino

1 x breeding herd of buffalo – Borneo, KNP Cutline

4 x buffalo bulls – Borneo, Somewhere....

1 x elephant bull – Argyle, Great North

1 x elephant bull – Argyle, Argyle Dam

14^th February Afternoon Drive

(Johannes)

1 x leopard (Argyle Jnr’s boy) – Argyle, Buffalo Pan

1 x breeding herd of buffalo – Java, Crossing Below Java

1 x breeding herd of elephants – Java, Airstrip

15^th February Morning Drive

(Johannes)

14 x wild dogs – Peru, Argyle Rd

1 x rhino

(Bushwork team)

1 x leopard (unidentified male) – Karans, Western Cutline

1 x breeding herd of elephants – Java, Western Cutline

1 x elephant bull – Vielmetter, Elephant Dam

1 x breeding herd of buffalo – Vielmetter, Double Highway

1 x buffalo bull – Vielmetter, Elephant Dam

15^th February Afternoon Drive

(Peter)

2 x elephant bulls – Peru, Sohebele Plains

2 x buffalo bulls – Motswari, Giraffe Pan

Daily Synopsis

Following the excitement of the day before, I guess anything was going to be a let down, but we went out and gave it our best shot.  I was looking for lions, so checked the northern and western sections to see if anything had come into the area during the night, but didn’t have much luck besides seeing a good number of giraffes, impalas, waterbuck and a lone elephant bull.

Petros then went and successfully helped track down two rhinos that we got to view, albeit in a massive mopane thicket, but we spent time with them and they soon came out into the relative “open”.

After coffee we moved back towards the camp and passed a couple of groups of zebras, including one herd with a very small foal – we saw more giraffe and nice general game to close off a wonderful 10 days of game drives for me and my guests over that period.

Johannes was out on his own in the afternoon, and I believe had a nice drive, but his best came the next morning when Peter found a pack of wild dogs on the Argyle Rd on his way to town and phoned to let us know; Johannes left the rhino he was watching and managed to get there in time to view the dogs, completed a treasured Big 7 for his guests (Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Elephant, Buffalo, Cheetah and Wild dogs!).

We went out on bush work to remove all of the marula trees the elephants have been pushing over the last few weeks and had a great drive ourselves – we found a leopard, a herd of buffalos and a lot of elephants – we also could have seen a couple of rhino sightings, but chose to do some work instead...some of the work did involve following up on a bunch of vultures that were sitting in trees – we went on foot and found the source of their interest; a dead and very smelly honey badger!  Not sure how it died, but possibly it succumbed to a snake bite?

Peter was out on his own in the afternoon and got to see