The names of the Govt. officials have been changed to protect the innocent and the dumb.
Hi Wayne
If you have a spare minute - A delightful short story:
Yesterday, we pulled in the Wildlife Department’s Game Control Officer, Mr. Braaivleis (my big mate) yesterday to come advise on how we should deal with a buffalo that has been hanging around and which chased guests and askaris 2 days ago. As a draw card, we obviously had to pay for their diesel to get here and give them lunch at 4PM.
Anyhow Mr. Braaivleis, our esteemed comrade, and HIS esteemed comrades, carrying an assortment of different calibre rifles (even a shotgun) decided that shooting the buffalo was the best option. These guys managed to take about 7+ shots to bring the animal down. However there were 3 of them, so 2 got away with haste. All this havoc and mayhem only to find 5 buffalo taking refuge in my carport this morning. Probably making their way down to RM 10 as we speak. Brilliant!!
Anyhow they chopped the thing to bits with pangas and loaded a variety of ‘cuts’ into their pickup. As you can imagine there was nothing left for the hyenas. A guest saw blood on one of the WD guy’s pants (where & how I don’t know) and mentioned to Karen that it must have been killed. This all happened around 5pm, when guests were meant to be out on drive but came back early due to some rainfall. The story we told the guests was – they were chasing a rogue buffalo bull away from the lodge with gun shots. And after the guest mentioned the blood to Karen she added - it must have turned on them and threatened their lives so they had to unfortunately shoot it.
These guys are such cowboys, they bashed their vehicle up the steep hill to get to the carcass on very wet ground (no idea about conservation). They took out their spare wheel to make space for the meat and rolled it down the hill towards the open plane. On the way it almost hit our vehicle parked on the road (not allowed on the wet ground), which it would’ve smashed up as it was going at a serious pace. It rolled over trees and bushes and halfway towards the open area with a couple of WD guys chasing after it laughing and screaming, which I am sure our guests did see and definitely heard.
So long story short, if we get any complaints you now know why J
It doesn’t end there though. Obviously! Mr Braaivleis has given me letter asking for a donation to put him through wildlife college for a year. The cost of his tuition is $6,860. As much as it pains me (and it seriously pains me), I think we should make a contribution, if not all of it, then possibly half. I am not sure what budget you have for this sort of thing. He is an important and influential dude and can make our lives easy or difficult depending on his mood. He will be a good oke to have on our side. Let me know your thoughts.
Oh BTW, the tuition fees is for a Professional Hunter’s Course – Hilarious!!
And yes, just to confirm, it is still the Wild Wild West out here.
Cheers
Matt
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