Tracking a Black Rhino

While reading Deon Meyer’s excellent book ‘Trackers,’ I was reminded of my attempt, many years ago I might add, to photograph a black rhino in the wild.

While a friend and I were visiting the Ndumu game reserve in northern Zululand, we engaged the services of an elderly ranger to lead us, on foot, in search of our quarry. For close to three hours we followed what he assured us was the spoor of a black rhino. (We agreed that this was a black rhino because the bushes it had nibbled on were at waist height. The black rhino is a browser, unlike its more docile relative, the white rhino which is a grazer.) Eventually, it dawned on us that our ranger/guide, very wisely, had no intention of encountering a black rhino while unarmed and on foot!

The truth be told, he probably saved not only his life, but the lives of two inexperienced would be wildlife photographers.