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Three days of training in the Hluhluwe / uMfolozi Park

 

Just a short letter on our three days of training in the park.

 

The first morning started out as a cold misty morning but soon turned into some serious training and excitement. We found a large elephant bull in full musth.  Now maybe I should first explain what musth is.  

Musth is an Urdu word for rutting or mammalian mating behavior.  In male elephants it is driven by a surge of testosterone. In this time they are looking to mate with females and will cover vast distances looking for receptive cows. The signs are temporal glands that swell and secrete sticky fluid. They will often messages these glands with their trunks and rub their heads more frequently on trees. It is accompanied with lots of ear flapping to spread the scent. Instead of urinating frequently, urine dribbles from the bull’s penis all the time. The urine stains his penis and has a very strong smell. Other males would back off to males in musth. Bulls only go into musth at the age of 25 to 35 for a few days up to one month. Bulls 40 to 45 go into musth 3 to 4 months a year. Severe fights brake out between bulls in this period. Receptive cows prefer bulls in musth. So when you ever come across a bull in musth, be very careful.

 

So let me continue.  This bull was the perfect opportunity to train the students to look for the signs of a possible charge from such an elephant.  You have to be extremely aware and focused, and of cause, stay calm at all time.  This elephant was about to give us everything needed for any new guide.  He gave us all the displays and more.  The rest of the trip into the park for the first day was just as exciting as the morning.  It became a day to remember for all the students.

 

Day two was a bit of a different day.  We left for the uMfolozi side of the park and where we discussed a lot of animal behavior the previous day, we concentrated the next on ecology, plants and geology.  The birding was also superb and could we see and ID a lot of birds.  Bethia also got an opportunity to drive the vehicle and learned that it was not as easy as driving a normal car.  

 

Day three we took some Dutch guests into the park for another great day.  Here the students could get firsthand experience on how to do a game drive with guests.  They saw that guiding is not just about seeing animals but involved much more. The afternoon they accompanied me on an ecological walk in the sand forests at Ezulwini.  They again learned that doing a walk is completely different from doing a game drive and that if you want to do a walk you need to concentrate on the smaller things of nature.

 

All and all the three days was very successful and educational. Bethia will do her first game drive into the park already on Friday.

 

Go look at the slide show of our day