A very big track, and a pan that swallows it
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
A massive bull spoor on the dirt road at eight-fifty. Dung cold. He is hours ahead, walking east toward the fence. We race the line, hit him at a pan — and the pan takes his track and does not give it back.
We circled camp first for fresh spoor. Cows, calves, young bulls — nothing old. On the road south to the pan by the border, at ten to nine, we picked up a big old-bull track from early in the night. Walking the dirt road straight east toward the fence. His dung, on the road, was cold — he was hours out.
The track was big and very rough. Four kilometers east of where we had cut his line he turned left, into thick brush on a small rise, heading northeast toward the fence. Felix sent Robert and the old man down to check his track in; we drove the fence road east, far enough to be sure he had not crossed in front of us. We raced back.
We started tracking on foot at ten to eleven. Two and a half kilometers on we hit a pan. Every cow and calf in the country seemed to have come through it. The old bull’s track disappeared in the churn of theirs.
The trackers worked almost an hour. We cast back west and found him again five hundred meters off. Fifteen more minutes of tracking and we lost him again — hard ground, long grass, cows on top of his line. This time the trackers could not find him. Late in the afternoon we saw a young bull; his tusks maybe forty pounds. A day that had started big finished small.
