Northern Tuli Game Reserve Wild Dog Release

Wow! What a couple of days we’ve had and only now got back to an Internet connection so that we can upload this.

On Saturday the 5th of April some 16 dogs were released from the boma at Mary Hill near Pont Drift in Botswana. They’d spent the past few months in the bomas getting used to their surroundings and (hopefully) would identify the Northern Tuli Game Reserve as their new home. A few hundred metres away was the Limopopo river and the border with South Africa and everyone was hoping that the dogs would not simply hightail it back to SA and their original home.

The Northern Tuli Game Reserve Researcher, Craig Jackson, has spent the past few months laying out a bio fence that would hopefully keep the dogs within the partially fenced game reserve. A bio fence? Well what this entails is collecting a whole pile of doggie doo from other wild dog packs in other game reserves around the country and placing this around the area in which you want to keep the dogs, the theory being that as the dogs approach this “fence” they recognise another pack’s territory and keep away. Does it work? It seems it might. Watch this space…

Shortly after their release a few male dogs split off from the main pack (this dispersal behaviour is normal) and headed west towards the “fence” and we last seen heading north along it – not crossing it. Hold thumbs that it works.

For the most part the other dogs are hanging around the boma site, no doubt hoping that someone would pitch up with an impala in the back of a pick-up for them to feed on. No such luck though! We have seen them making a few attempts at impala herds and they did manage to get a young warthog piglet as the family clippety clopped right into the middle of the dog pack as they were resting under a tree. We got some amazing pix of this but alas, you’ll have to wait for the book to see them! Sorry about that but we like to keep the best for last!

It was our first actual Wild Dog “kill” and what a learning curve. Picture the scene: The 16 wild dogs are lying, fast asleep under a tree when in come 6 warthogs (2 adults and 4 piglets) and we’re watching this, camera at the ready and fully prepared. At some point one of the dogs spots the warthogs and in an instant you’ve got complete pandemonium! There are now 22 animals screaming around in an area about the size of a tennis court. The warthogs are squealing, the dogs twittering away in that strange way of theirs and there are dogs and dust everywhere. What to photograph? There is soooo much happening that it is very difficult to zone in on where the action is and which dog was going to grab which animal. And quick! Looking at the EXIF information afterwards we see that the action was over in just under 20 seconds.

I was using Canon’s 100 to 400mm zoom on my 1Ds MkIII and I must say that it was superb. It’s extremely easy and quick to use and it shows in the results. I cannot think of any other lens I’d rather use in this situation.

Oh what the hell, here’s one of the pix!