off we go and an hour or so later , lackson tell patsy this her herd .
so stop to identify her , once we got , pats , stops the ute gets out and starts to mix up the drugs , and prepare her other needles of anti biotic and wormers ,and what not im good as gold till I see how big them bloody needles are , them l shut up step back ,and try not pass out...........them needles take the fun out of this side trip adventure , I don't mind telling you.
once she filled all the needles, wegot back in the ute, loaded the dart gun and slowly ambled back into the herd , patsy says 30 metres is about as close as they will let the ute into , passes me the rangefinder
and said let me know when we are 40 metres please.
as soon as the dart hits the old matraich , the whole herd stops and comes in to her as she wobbles of , with us keep her in eye sight
after a couple of mniutes she goes all wonky ,
and patsy says not all the drug is in her and makes up another , then gives her one in the rump
she goes down ,faster than a brides knickers after that one .
the whole herd are keeping with in a close distance , as patsy and lackson , go in and blindfold her . then mike starts squirting her down to keep her cool , patsy checks to makes sure the snare is not there , only and ugly scar . patsy starts jabbing this poor old queen with all sorts of tonics , while the sable sits there making some eerie bloody noises.once everything is done and dusted
pats call me over to pat her and get some photos with her while they put bright orange earring ,in her so they see her from afar to monitor her healing .
then cool as a cucumber we pack up all the drug boxes and dart stuff
while patsy mixes up the reversal drug
and gives her a jab in either artery in both side of the neck takes the blind fold off
with in 20 seconds the sable queen is on her feet , again . wobbly and wild eyed as she walks back to calf and the rest of the herd muzzle up to her , to make sure their matraich is ok
she has lost a lot of weight and the hind left lag is awfully swolleln, so this clean out and dose up should do a world of good
that was plenty cool , definitely ,yet another highlight
once see shes good to go patsy says , right lets go find you a reed buck ,bluey
we see a cracker , and bail out to walk back but its that loud with all the leaves and tinder dry grass anywhere from knee deep ,to nipple high , we are busted long before we get any where near him
so we decide to come back here and try again in the gusty wind in the morning after a sit in the croc blind .
we head back up the penisula for a walk on the bushbuck ,its been a bit quiet on them today ,weve only seen 8 or 9 , and only two were shooters.
mike drops us off near the house where we have seen a really nice bush buck , in less that 10 minutes we are presented with another blue duiker , he doesn't even know we are there , it is a sitter .
we just keep strolling towards the house , when we are nearly there , mike and tinnus are coming back out to dump the lechwe guts at the croc sight
we let them go ,and waited five minutes to let the dust settle ,then we stalked in our single file quiet mode we developed on the first day . down in there tyre tracks after maybe fifteen minutes we see an eland hoof print in the utes tyre tracks , we step it up a bit trying to spot him ,hoping like mad that its the blue loner bull we seen this morning, after 1/2 a k or so we are at another cross road , patsy , does the right thing and points left and mouths the word little , then turns back the way we have been heading , and mouths big , me and lackson just walk towards big , and we stalk along till patsy deems it to dark for a shot .
when we about face and head back for a shower and a beer ,
love hunting with these two .we are really making a team .
