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  1. #1
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    Default Encounters with Jackal

    As alluded to in the other thread I have had a few very interesting encounters with jackal over the course of my life.

    Although I have never called jackal I have quite a few jackal kills under the belt. This is not a thread about the dead ones though.

    Encounter 1:

    On a very, very windy, piss cold winter's morning I am walking through some dense bush hoping to bump into a herd of Kudu or BWB where they are standing seeking shelter against the wind. On days like these the wind and cold are both your friends as well as your enemies; friends, because the howling wind masks not only your scent but also the sounds of your approach whilst the early morning cold makes animals sluggish to move. Enemies, because the animals don't readily move other than to seek dense bush to shelter them from the elements.

    You have to walk SLOWLY and look through every bush carefully before moving on. Luck plays a role in this as well as you could easily walk through areas at this slow pace for hours and be in the wrong place.

    The movement caught my eye immediately as I approached a clearing, I have learnt over the years to pay attention to anomalies, that one thing that doesn't quite fit the picture and this was like a red light flashing. A game path ran diagonally across the clearing and I was entering it from one side. At the same time a jackal was entering the clearing from the other side.

    The jackal didn't know it at that moment but he was heading straight for me at a fairly rapid rate. He seemed to be preoccupied and deep in thought, not at all the vigilant villain I had come to know over the years. As the distance closed I knew how this would end, a second later he noticed the anomaly observing his every move. At that moment the hunter realised he had become the hunted...

    What happened next is difficult to express in terms which lead credence to the theatre that played out. The look of disbelief and the utter terror of knowing these are the last few moments he would be alive was plastered over a face in which the eyes seemed to grow ever larger by the millisecond. A sound escaped his throat, it did not sound of this world, a wailing scream of despair which only grew louder as he desperately tried to convince his still running legs to stop, change direction, reverse, or do anything but what they were doing.

    Eventually a signal from his frazzled brain got through to his legs, what that signal said and what his legs did, I think were two different things entirely. The front legs stopped but the rear ones kept going, sending him into a tumble that would have been judged to be of olympic standard, that is, if he had managed to stick the landing which he didn't. Instead he ended up in a mess of tangled limbs and dust, still screaming and still trying to coordinate the thoughts in his head with the movement of his limbs.

    In those few seconds I firmly believe that jackal aged considerably and as he eventually got his bearings and ran off I thought I saw a bit of a droop in his stride.

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Encounters with Jackal

    Encounter 2:

    During a hunt for a big BWB I was walking with a PH through some fairly open woodland. In a particularly sparse patch we happened upon a jackal sunning itself next to a solitary tree. Upon seeing us it did something I had never experienced before.

    Instead of heading for the hills he jumped up and went into hiding behind the tree. As we moved along he would sporadically poke his head out from behind the trunk and adjust his position before ducking his head back so as to be invisible to us. This went on for quite some time. almost like a game of hide and seek. Only when we were quite a ways away did he eventually abandon his "shelter" to make a run for freedom.

  3. #3
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    Apr 2011
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    Default Re: Encounters with Jackal

    Thanks for sharing, I don't know what it is about them, maybe they remind me of dogs too much, but I like jackal. Don't get me wrong, I know they are destructive but as I am not a farmer I have not shot one yet and don't really have plans to.

    As such I do enjoy reading these posts about them, even the killing thread, because I might learn something new.

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