Our very first full course in the Lowveld was a huge success! We had a full course of 10 students and the last month Jan Carsten Radeke joined us once again for his annual bush experience. The group was a mix of people from South Africa and from the rest of the world; United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany.
Let’s introduce the first Nature Guide Training student group! From left to right: Anne, Clinton, Markus, Hugh, Iris, Maggie, Freddie, Patrick, Werner and Dan

The first couple of weeks were almost too much for some of the students, with its blazingly hot sun and temperatures of high 30 and even mid 40 degrees Celsius during the middle of the day. It was a sweaty ordeal in the bush, but it was a good introduction to the Lowveld in the summer. Summer also means plenty of birds, flowers, green trees, flowering grasses, insects, reptiles and many more things around for easy identification and learning.

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During the first days and weeks the focus was on Game Drives and seeing plenty of animals, small and big, colourful and camouflaged, dangerous and placid. Not all of the students had been to Africa and so they were introduced to the bush, seeing lions, elephants, white rhinos, giraffes, impalas and many, many more animals. One of our very first sightings of impala got very interesting. The students were talking about the impala and what they were doing and suddenly there was a flash…. It was a quick, very quick flash of yellow and black rosettes, our first leopard sighting and in the first week! A leopard chasing impala! It was the impalas lucky day, no luck for the leopard this time…

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Lions were all around camp during the first two weeks. We could hear them during the night and early morning and each morning we went out looking for them. When we found them we would spend hours with them. Just sitting and watching them. Even if the visual wasn’t great we would just relax and wait. This waiting was rewarded every single time, a few of the sightings were cubs suckling their mom in plain sight, the whole pride getting up and walking only 8m in front of the car, roaring lions not even 10m away (the vibration you feel when several lions are roaring is amazing and still gives me goose bumps) and them feeding on a buffalo kill. The most important lesson for the students to learn here was 1) to enjoy being so close to Africa’s top predator (even if you only see a head popping up once in a while) and 2) be patient and you will be rewarded with something amazing.

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Soon we had to start with the hard core studying that was needed during this course. Every week they would get an exam on a different subject. We started with 15 common trees from the area. Identification, scientific name and some uses were required for all 15 of them. The students were keen and eager to learn and they devoured the trees… Bird calls were next, this was something some of the students were a bit afraid of. How can you tell the difference between a Crested Francolin, a Swainsons spurfowl and a Natal spurfowl? In the end this again was nothing for them and everyone passed with at least 85%! One of the other assignments that the students had was to do a presentation on two of the animals most seen in the area. They sank their teeth into this assignment and presented many interesting facts & experiences about each animal.

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After a month of working on their foundation knowledge it was up to the students to show us what they had learned and what they still needed to learn. One of the fun exercises was to stop at a random spot in the bush, they then had to entertain the rest of the group with their freshly gained knowledge from the last month. For some students this was a challenge that they had been waiting for and showed amazing knowledge and communication skills. Some of the students struggled and needed a bit more guiding to get through their first 5 minutes of ‘real’ guiding! After just a few practice runs everyone enjoyed these exercises and they showed huge improvements every single time.

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As usual we had Jens Reissig from Emergency Solutions with us for the First aid session. He did his usual magic and the students loved it (especially him being nice and letting them sleep in till 07.00!) Here are some photo’s of the First aid course and the practical they had to do in the bush.

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Iris Thririaux was with us for the second time. She wanted to get more in depth knowledge to succeed with her Level II practical assessment. She indeed succeeded in a Game Drive that was cold, windy and wet! Well done to Iris it was a great drive even under such difficult circumstances. Another of her objectives was to become a Wild Flower specialist. To have Lee Gutteridge as the founder of the Wild flower specialisation helping her during the course was certainly a bonus. She did the slide show and the practical and passed with flying colours! She is now the FIRST Wildflower specialist in the Lowveld (with Keith Jenkinson the only SKS Wild flowers in the Lowveld).

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Soon it was time to write the FGASA Level I theory exam. The students were stressed days before the exam. Did they learn enough? Did they study enough? It was good to see that they took this exam extremely seriously,  and all of them did what they could to pass this exam to the best of their abilities. Study groups were formed and all went their own way to study for hours and hours. The result of the exam was extremely good, with all of them passing and most of them in the high 80’s or higher! Nicely done guys!

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The next step was to get ready for the practical Game Drive assessment. This was practiced many times and the students were fully aware where their personal weaknesses were. They studied and practised to the point that they felt they could conduct a Game Drive that guests would enjoy and would be indicative of their own personality. It was important for the students to be themselves on their Game Drive and not act as someone else. Guests would notice and challenge this, so this was a very important aspect of the Game Drive. All students had very good Game Drives and passed their assessments. All were now Level I Field Guides!

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At the end of the second month the students also had a Track & Sign assessment! They went out for the day and Lee found tracks and signs left right and centre… Soon it became clear that a Track & Sign level is not that easy to achieve. A minimum of 70% is needed for a level I. After 50 tracks it was clear that not everyone succeeded in this. A few students managed a level I, some level II and Werner Immelman got a level III. Well done Werner!

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The last month of the course was focused on the Back-up Trails guide qualification. During the first two months the students had done many 5 and 8 hour walks with several Dangerous Game encounters. Now it was important to focus even more on encounters, pass the Advanced Rifle Handling assessment, pass the practical Back-up trails guide assessment and pass the Trails guide theory exam. A lot to do in the last couple of weeks…

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Using the Landcruiser was limited during this month to just getting to a point and then we would walk from there looking for Dangerous Game. This could be lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo, hippo or leopard. Leopard was as elusive as was expected and we did not manage to see one on foot. Because of a lack of large enough bodies of water we also did not manage to view any hippos on foot. On the other hand we encountered many elephants on foot. Some of our walks we had to change direction to avoid ‘another’ elephant… This ranged from elephant bulls to elephant breeding herds. We managed to avoid any serious encounters with bulls in musth. Definitely not something you want to have a ‘discussion’ with! One of our encounters was with a Daggaboy. We were on a general bush walk and hadn’t seen any fresh signs yet of any Dangerous animal. Suddenly 20 meters on our right hand side there was a Daggaboy. He was on his own, looked at us and stormed through the Acacia thicket in the opposite direction from us. This was the students’ first potential serious encounter and they were slightly flustered. We decided not to follow up and to go the opposite way the buffalo went. If the buffalo decided to do something else, we would be long gone…

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The Advanced Rifle Handling was something new for many of the students. Many of them had never handled a rifle and definitely not a .375 or .458. Before they were allowed to shoot the rifles they had to ‘dry handle’ a lot with the rifle. Muscle memory and safety are the most important things when working with rifles. It took almost two weeks before we got to the shooting range and they shot a few rounds. The recoil was a surprise to some of them and they soon found out how to position the rifle correctly into their shoulder. In the end 9 out of 11 students managed to pass the Advanced Rifle Handling.

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The trails guide exam was another obstacle to overcome. It was study time again at the end of the course. Studying theory on how to walk, where to walk, what to do in dangerous situations was something the students enjoyed thoroughly. The rifle handling part was a bit more difficult for them. Knowing the muzzle velocity of the different calibres was a challenge!

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Al in all this was a very interesting and successful course. We lived in our little camp for 85 days with all kind of animals around us. There were lion tracks on our drive way with once a ‘smelly little present!’, leopard tracks on the same drive way, white rhino on the other side of the drive way, hippo tracks 5m next to our camp, elephants brushing against our tents at night, spotted hyena watching us brushing our teeth in the morning, daggaboys walking on our drive way and many of the smaller nocturnal creatures came to visit us at night. In the end we even had our ‘own’ vervet monkey! He found us and decided we had to share our fruit with him. What else to do than to enjoy having him around us.

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