Game for a Walk?

Those of you that have invest­ig­ated a visit to a game reserve, may have come across Game Walks as an optional activ­ity which can be enjoyed when stay­ing at one of South Africa’s lux­uri­ous game lodges. What exactly do they mean by this? Well, you get taken deep into the bush and track wild­life by foot (for­tu­nately under the expert guid­ance of an armed game ranger) ...

The romantic notion of walk­ing in the bush and view­ing wild­life with noth­ing but the tall grasses and trees of the savan­nah between you and your goal, is swiftly replaced with a thump­ing heart and light sweat. Realising that you are out in the open with noth­ing but a rifle and a ranger (albeit a well-trained and exper­i­enced ranger) between you and a wild animal is a hum­bling exper­i­ence. Almost imme­di­ately after leav­ing the safety of our 4x4 open safari vehicle, our ranger laid out the rules:

• Do not run or I will shoot YOU.
• Stay behind me and the rifle at all times.
• If I tell you to do some­thing do it immediately.

Now, I just had to ask what he might tell us to do. “I might tell you to get up a tree or run for a thicket once I have its atten­tion. If so, do it and don’t check where I am, leave me to deal with the animal” was the response I got.

With the fear of God put into me, we star­ted off — two brave (read, quak­ing in our boots) trav­el­lers and one ranger. We left the well defined road and embarked on a foot­path littered with animal drop­pings and tracks. Now would prob­ably be a good time to let you know that the largest animal we saw was a prey­ing mantis. In hind­sight this was a little dis­ap­point­ing, but at the time this cow­ard (for one) was a little relieved that we didn’t come across the pride of lions which had been seen in the vicin­ity just a few short hours before. Nevertheless, the hour and a half we spent in the African bush with our ranger, Doug, was per­haps the most edu­ca­tional time we spent in the Welgevonden Private Game Reserve.

While on a game drive with him the day before, we’d often seen him stop to check tracks and drop­pings, but on the walk he explained what he was look­ing for, what he was see­ing and what his obser­va­tions meant — the dir­ec­tion of tracks, whether or not they were fresh, which anim­als had passed through the area. For example, did you know that hyena drop­pings are white? This is because of the high con­cen­tra­tion of cal­cium in their diet (mainly bones).

Wandering through the area, Doug poin­ted out tusk marks left behind by a herd of ele­phants, the tracks left by said ele­phants (inter­est­ingly, these tracks are slightly lar­ger than what should be left behind, because the leg span of ele­phants is such that the rear paw lands almost exactly where the front paw left it’s print), the tracks left by gir­affe (ima­gine a camel print), hyena and vari­ous ante­lope, the most not­able being that of the dimin­ut­ive Klipspringer which because of it’s rock-hopping abil­it­ies is the reverse of other ante­lope (if you didn’t know this you’d head off in the wrong dir­ec­tion if you were track­ing them).

I also finally had the oppor­tun­ity to ask him about his exper­i­ences. How long he’d been a game ranger for, how he’d amassed his vast (should say end­less) know­ledge of the fauna and flora of South Africa, where he’d worked before and which reserves he counts among his favourites.

By the time we’d looped back to the vehicle and were on our way safely back to the lodge, I was filled with a true sense of peace and a much greater under­stand­ing of what these game rangers (who give us some of the best memor­ies of our lives) must go through every day.

If you ever have the oppor­tun­ity to go on a game walk, I can thor­oughly recom­mend this activ­ity. Just make sure you have an exper­i­enced guide with you. This is not a walk in the park (excuse the pun), it’s a dan­ger­ous out­ing, though poten­tially the most-rewarding exper­i­ence you’ll have while vis­it­ing our beau­ti­ful country.

Useful Links:
Sediba Game Lodge (within the Welgevonden Game Reserve)
Limpopo Game Lodges
South Africa Game Reserves