Lion Tracking with a Bushman

“There were two jackals here, and three hyenas.”

“Really?”

He looked a bit closer at the ground, “Yep. And it looks like there was also a pair of lions - one smaller, and one bigger.”

We were walking along a dirt road in the middle of the Kazuma Pan National Park - in the middle of the wilderness of Zimbabwe. Anything could be out here with us. I looked over the tracks he was pointing at. Evidently, yes, there were prints of some sort, but the tracks were merely impressions in loose sand - reducing any amount of detail that I could discern. But it was different story for MK.

“There’s no detail in this track,” I asked him. “How can you tell this one’s a lion and not a hyena?”

“Practice, my friend.”

Stepping away from the tracks, we walked over to a nearby tree. The only difference between this one and the millions of others we were surrounded by was the camera that was strapped to its trunk. It was a trail camera - a motion sensing, night-vision equipped, all-weather camera that would take pictures if any movement was detected. If we were lucky, it would have been capturing images of animals over the past three weeks, since MK had last set it out. With those pictures we could keep track of animal populations, movements, and migration patterns; all very helpful information for biology research. This is what I was doing in Zimbabwe, helping biologist Dr. Greg, his right-hand man and tracker MK, and their team collect field data on wild and endangered animals.

Helping MK remove the camera, I removed the SD card, and handed it to Dr. Greg, asking “What do we got?” He plugged it into his MacBook.

His thick British accent rolled through; “Hmm. Looks like a couple jackals...” He paused to scroll down while the pictures were loading. “A few hyenas,” he added. More scrolling.

I just need proof of the lions now, I thought to myself. But by now Dr. Greg was no longer scrolling through different pictures of animals, but through hundreds of pictures of rustling leaves. Classic.

This happened often enough: wind had rustled grass in front of the camera, causing it to ‘trip’ without any animals in frame – it’s simply a motion sensor camera after all. Sometimes rustling leaves are the only thing the camera will capture for hours and the whole card will fill up without anything else. I was hoping that hadn’t happened - I still didn’t know definitively if the last set of prints MK had shown me were from lions or not. But my luck held out - the card had enough room, and Dr. Greg stopped scrolling. There they were, two lions.

MK was right!

In fact, I came to learn, he was never wrong. Every single time that there was a camera to verify his claims, he correctly identified which animals had been there.

See, that’s exactly why Dr. Greg hired him on in the first place. As a biologist and wildlife conservationist, he couldn’t do all the work. He needed a right-hand man, one who really knew his way around the bush. One who could handle himself in the wild, (not that Greg couldn’t - he had spent up to a month camping alone, and previously fended off lions after surviving a plane crash) but most importantly, someone who could track.

Tracking seems easy enough. It’s not too hard to tell a chicken’s footprint from a dog’s. But the art of tracking isn’t only concerned with footprints and pawprints. It entails knowledge of all spoor,’ any leftover sign of the animal’s presence. That includes scat (dung), fur, claw marks on trees, dug up dirt, left-over meals, scent-marks, dens, and much more. What people don’t realize is how much information tracking yields. An experienced tracker not only has the ability to identify the species, but potentially as well, the number of animals, their relative size and weight, their speed, emotion, and even intent, by taking into account all of the above. MK is able to do this, and this is one of the biggest reasons I was drawn to Africa, for the opportunity to learn from a master.

But how does one get to that point of mastery? Like with anything else, it’s practice. As a child, MK had been tasked with taking his father’s cattle out for grazing in the bush. As he told me, “From the age of six to the age of 23, almost every day, tracking used to be my hobby - taking my cattle out and tracking them.”

MK tells me that, normally, villagers will tie bells on to their cattle so that when they’ve wandered miles away, farmers can keep an ear out to find them. However, just as bells are useful for humans in finding their cattle, it helps predators find them too. “I didn’t depend on bells, I depended on spoor and footprints and tracking them.” His family never even tied the bells on – and when the cattle wandered away, MK didn’t depend on the modern solution, but resorted to learning an ancient practice that humans have known for thousands of years.

He started simple first. He learned the farm animals; tracks from donkeys, chickens and goats. Those were easy to distinguish. But with time, he began to add wild animal tracks to his repertoire. Slowly but steadily, he developed his ability to ‘read’ the tracks as one would a book. First starting by learning letters (which animal it was) then reading words (what the animal was trying to do) and then putting together sentences (a holistic understanding of the animal’s role, in the immediate moment and beyond).

With tracking you often never even see the animal. You don’t get proof. Sure, there’s tracking guides, but sometimes it’s not that simple. Sometimes only part of the animal’s foot made an impression - what’s called a ‘partial register’. You may know a full raccoon print by heart, but can you identify a raccoon track when only two toes show up in the mud? Whether its wind, rain, sun, or even other animals that wear a track down, there are so many factors to consider. Sometimes an animal will even step into its own prints. So, how does one ever prove which animal made a track?

The hardest, but arguably most satisfying way to prove an animal’s track, is to simply follow the tracks all the way till you get to the creature itself. But that can only be accomplished by a select few, like the Kalahari bushman in southern Africa, who depend on the skill for survival. You can also use a guidebook, as mentioned earlier, or take a picture for reference, and then look it up at home later. Or, if you’re lucky like me, and in the presence of a practiced animal tracker of many decades, you can just ask him. Which is what I did.

Needless to say, I spent as much time as I could with MK, with an endless stream of questions. Throughout our trip I would copy any good prints into my journal, so I could reference them later. I would have MK draw different types of tracks for me in the dirt and quiz me in my knowledge. Slowly but surely, I began to identify the spoor around me. The clues of the life that surrounded me since I had arrived started to make sense; the tracks were no longer remnants of the past. They become a testament to the present life around me. The splatter of green-looking mud; I learned could only be hippo dung; the trees torn out of the earth I now knew were an elephant’s doing. After a few weeks I was no longer a complete stranger in this foreign land.

As the anthropologist Louis Liebenberg, pointed out curiously, it seems that the best trackers are often the humblest. And I found this to be true with MK. It wasn’t till three weeks into my trip that he told me had used tracking to save a man’s life.

It was before his current work with Dr. Greg and conservation research, when MK was a Scout from his previous work, as he puts it, does “conservation work, patrols, serving animals and people, trying to control poaching.” With his team members, he would spend weeks at a time tracking down poachers and animals, all while avoiding getting killed by either.

Normally, they didn’t perform search and rescue operations, but it was completely within their capability. The missing man was a local, older and with dementia. He had been walking with his daughter between villages, and as is bound to happen, had to relieve himself on their walk. Of course, there aren’t bathrooms out in the wild, so she waited behind some trees to give him privacy. And waited. Eventually enough time had passed, and she realized something had gone wrong. It turns out, after relieving himself, he had gone completely the wrong way. He had walked straight into the wilderness.

The police knew they were in over their heads, so they called up the Scouts. MK and his team were deployed within that area, and decided to take the case. So, he and his five teammates started tracking the man, already gone for hours. Coming to his last known location, and armed with only their water bottles, and without any camping gear like tents, sleeping bags, pads, or food, they started walking. “And walked and walked, miles and miles and miles,” MK tells me. As with any other animal’s track, the man’s were easy to follow at some points, and almost impossible at others. “At some point his spoor was being blown out by the wind,” he would recall.

So what does one do when that happens - when there’s no more prints? You have to use other clues. Other spoor, like an overturned rock, or a broken grass blade. You put yourself in the creature’s shoes, take a look ahead, and try to guess where they would have gone. Straight into those bushes, or around to the right? Towards the fruit tree, or perhaps to the top of the hill? It tests your knowledge of every individual animals’ behavior.

And it certainly was testing MK’s team. After spending the whole day following the man’s tracks, they had to spend the night on the trail. They curled up as comfortably as one can on dirt, made a small campfire, and continued the next day. Luckily, however, as MK tells me, “this person was clever enough to make a handful-sized pile of firewood along his way.” He was walking and leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs. “That was our sign to follow.” If the footprints were lost MK and his guys would simply “look around for the spoor and track him again.” Whenever the trail would get faint, a new breadcrumb recharged their excitement and hope for finding the lost man.

For three days MK and his team kept following the man’s tracks, knowing that every hour the man marched closer to his death. He didn’t have much longer; it had already been three days, going that long without water and the human body begins to fail. On top of that, the woodpiles had stopped. In situations like this its best to be realistic; the man was likely dead, and besides that, they needed to take care of themselves as well - being a 20 kilometers walk  into the bush is no joke. Counting on the likely fact that the man was already dead, and for their own good as well, they set a backstop. MK said “If we can’t find him before we get to that mountain, it means we give up.” He admits, “We wanted to give up, we couldn’t see the spoor.”

Unfortunately, there was still no sign of the man when they arrived. No piles of wood, and no tracks either. A gloom was cast over the group, who, after trying so hard to save a man’s life, now had to turn to saving their own. But dehydration wasn’t going to be the culprit, there happened to be a spring of fresh water by the hill -  an almost sick and twisted joke of nature. “This person was almost to that spring, but he couldn’t make it to the water. We went in and topped off our water bottles,” says MK.

Resigned and disheartened they turned back home, the effort of a three day hike crashing down on them. Had they been a little faster, or a little more observant, maybe they could have found him. But this is when they struck gold, as they we were walking out away from the spring water. “We picked up on the spoor. It was fresh.”

He recalls their conversation, translated for my sake, “We can’t give up. this spoor is fresh. Let’s give it another hour and see what we can find.” It was within that hour that they found the man. Laying on the ground, unconscious, and in a comatose state, he was extremely dehydrated. The joy of the success was phenomenal, MK recalled, but it was quickly suppressed with the realization that they would now have to carry the man back, over 20 kilometers through wild bush to the village where they started. But no job is too tough for bushmen, they fashioned a cot out of wood and tree fibers, and did just that.

MK’s story of saving the man’s life blew me away, as I’m sure it will with many others. I had already heard of tracking being used to save lives, like what Tom Brown Jr. writes in his book “The Tracker.” He himself had saved dozens of lives. So I knew it was possible. But what was so unreal to me was that I had actually met someone who had done it. Since reading that book years ago, tracking had gone from an idea I was fond of, to a hobby I practiced, to a daily obsession, and finally, it had taken me all the way to Africa, to meet a bushman master. Biology research was how I got to Zimbabwe, but tracking was the reason I was there.

And I studied well underneath him. Needless to say, I spent as much time as I could with MK, with an endless stream of questions. Throughout our trip I would copy any good prints into my journal, so I could reference them later. I would have MK draw different types of tracks for me in the dirt and quiz me in my knowledge. Slowly but surely, I began to identify the spoor around me. The clues of the life that surrounded me since I had arrived started to make sense; the tracks were no longer remnants of the past. They become a testament to the present life around me, the splatter of green-looking mud I learned could only be hippo dung, the trees torn out of the earth I now knew were an elephant’s doing. I was no longer a complete stranger in this foreign land.

The other interns I was with weren’t as devout students of MK. They weren’t there to learn tracking, they were there for different reasons, and that’s ok. They were still there to help with animal conservation, to conduct research, and make an impact. But I would argue they missed out on a great opportunity, to learn an ancient skill from an expert - to interpret the signs of the past into a reality of the present, to comprehend the wilderness around you, not just to learn a single animal print, but to decipher our natural world. They were missing out, and it became most clear on our last camping trip.

Like any other night in the bush, we slept under the stars, in our sleeping bags, around a fire. As had been happening most other nights, I would wake up occasionally, get out of bed, and stoke the campfire. I often wouldn’t go back to sleep immediately. Reveling in the beauty of the African night sky, the song of the night-jar birds, and the occasional haunting-yet-beautiful hyena howl, I would sometimes stay up for an hour or two, afraid to miss the opportunity of the African night.

But this night was different. I woke up sharply around midnight - not excited to see the stars or listen to the birds, but this time feeling quite alarmed. In fact, I felt absolutely terrified. Remembering the hyena howling I had heard earlier, I looked down at my feet, No, nothing dragging me away, I thought. Hyenas have been known to do, but at least that wasn’t the case. What’s wrong then? I glanced around the fire. MK was sound asleep. So was Dr. Greg and the other students. On top of that, MK and I had promised to each other to wake each other up if we noticed any animals nearby at night, and he hadn’t woken me up either. Must just be me then, I thought. At ease with my cursory glance of our surroundings, I fell back asleep.

The next morning coffee was ready, a welcome treat in the pre-dawn hours. I greeted the other interns, who were bundled up, surrounding the fire, and poured myself a cup. Strangely, MK and Dr. Greg weren’t with us around the fire as they usually are in the mornings.  Looking around I realized they were a few yards away near the edge of the campsite. But something was off, they were talking in low voices, to be discreet, as if they were trying to hide something.

I knew something was up by now. I got up, and started to walk around the camp. A few discreet glances at them, and I noticed Dr. Greg motioning to the ground, so I started looking for anything of interest. I started to track.

It didn’t take long before I found them.

Lion prints, not more than twenty feet from where we had been sleeping. There were three sets of them. I traced their path from a nearby patch of woods, into the small clearing we had slept in. Their trail curved around us and the campfire, then returned back the same way they came.

I walked over to MK, having finished his conversation with Dr. Greg, eager to share my discovery, but he beat me first.

He spoke, asking “Did you see them?”

“Yes! There were lions! Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked. He laughed in response.

“Because I was too afraid to move to wake you up! I heard them, but Dr. Greg actually saw them.”

“You broke your promise MK,” I teased. “Next time I hear an animal I’m not waking you up!” we laughed. “I was actually awake at some point but I didn’t notice anything”

I was bummed I didn’t get to see the lions. I was envious of such an opportunity. I knew they were just curious. You see, often the best wildlife interactions are when they decided to approach you on their own terms. And not that I was trying to get eaten by lions, but I wish I could have looked at one up close in the wild. I knew they wouldn’t have harmed us; Dr Greg, MK, and countless other people had been camping like this their whole lives with no serious issues. And since we were never in significant danger, as we weren’t being hunted (which would be a time for concern), I had missed a unique opportunity to see such a majestic predator in their home turf. The lions in the night were just curious, and they never openly attack people unprovoked. Camping with a group is your safest bet. But even then, if you alert and aware of approaching animals, you can do fine on your own. There are risks involved with being out here, but they can be mitigated. What would be dangerous, however, would be to start yelling and waking everyone up, destroying the calm of the lions, and ourselves. Which is why neither MK or Dr. Greg did so. At least while the lions visited us out of curiosity.

My point with this story isn’t to scare or discourage people from going to Africa, to go camping under the stars, and to see an abundance of wildlife that is so hard to find anywhere else in the world. It’s for the same reason that Dr. Greg and MK didn’t tell the rest of the group. They didn’t want to have the others terrified of sleeping out here again.

Ultimately, tracking can be much more than just a fun hobby. It’s more than simply identifying what animal made a print, or what animal pooped there. It is a lens through which you can be witness to so much more of the natural world -a way of thinking. It’s a paradigm shift from the way modern society would have us observe. Life isn’t meant to be lived staring into your phone, getting lost on TikTok or Instagram for hours, swiping from one instantly-gratifying post to the next. It’s meant to be fully experienced, with a child-like wonder that we all used to have at some point. It teaches us to ask questions, how the wind is blowing, why the terrain is shaped the way it is, and where the lion hunts. The rest of the group had no idea that we were even visited that night, and unless they read this, they will never know what happened. Tracking opened my eyes to the secrets of the wild, I only wish that others can learn to do the same.

 

Paul Henry Flynn1 Comment