The old bull with the broken left tusk, asleep on a branch
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Robert says back to the northwest. A lot of cow-and-calf sign on the gravel road — a water source nearby we don't yet know about. Felix races south to the big dried pan. The massive spoor is there, and we take it.
Robert said back to the northwest. As we turned off the gravel we saw a lot of cow-and-calf sign on the road — Felix said there must be a water source we did not yet know. Young bull and cow tracks on the dirt road in. At the water: nothing old.
Ten to eight Felix drove south, hard. An hour on he was at the big dried pan. The massive spoor was there. Half past ten, nice weather, a cool breeze. The bull was alone on hard grassy soil. The track was difficult — we lost him several times. Soon he joined a group of other bulls.
Thicker bush, more tracks mixing. We caught them under shade — six bulls. Our old bull was among them: a very old bull, fading in color, round-headed. Both tusks about sixty pounds. Another bull was sleeping so soundly he was resting his right tusk on a branch of a tree. We went to thirty meters. Not the bull we came for. Half past one back at the cruiser for lunch.
In the afternoon, two blue wildebeest six hundred meters out in a wide open. We stalked to three hundred — both young. Then we spotted a third lying down. We drove in — she was an old collared cow. She had died of age, a day or two ago, in the warm afternoon grass.
