The first cow — and a local tip
Saturday, 1 September 2012
Five minutes from camp the dark shadow of a cow crossing the road. The first cow we've seen. Felix says perhaps the luck has turned. A big old-bull spoor at the south pan — the bull lives here. We track him for fifty minutes.
Five minutes from camp at first light, the dark shadow of a cow crossing the road ahead. It was still dark. The first cow we had seen the whole trip. Felix said perhaps the luck had turned our way.
A big old-bull spoor at a pan in the south. From the sign he lived here. We tracked him fifty minutes and had him standing in a thick thorn bush. We circled for wind; he heard us and held. We waited for him to calm and feed again. Very old. Both tusks fifty-five pounds.
We drove the roads and pans. Two bulls at three hundred meters; we walked closer. The smaller had forty-five to fifty-pound tusks. The bigger had a broken left tusk and a tapered right at three and a half feet — a sixty- pounder.
After lunch, the old-bull spoor we had tracked two days ago. Late afternoon the northwest water hole. A young bull, cows drifting around. Felix had been giving the locals rides since day one — as you do, in Africa — and on the way home a bushman from Tsumkwe told us of two pans near his house where the elephants still drank. Tomorrow.
