A few years ago my wife and I went to Kenya and whilst we were there we visited the Tsavo East national park.
It was something truly different, there were giraffe and elephant everywhere, we even saw a pride of lions just after they settled down for dinner (which of course was just a few minutes after they’d ‘found’ the dinner partner).
After a while we also went to visit a Masai Mara village (the indigenous people of the region who still live in mud huts, hunt with spears and have a coming of age rite that involves the young men going out and ‘finding’ a lion).
So we did the normal dancing thing and then one of the Masai hunters showed us how he tracked dinner and also how he distinguished age, distance and danger. So all in all a really interesting visit.
So what are you boring us with this for?
Well, we always assume that these types of activities are reserved for big game hunters or the Indians of the American prairies – not so.
One of the things that always surprises people here in Europe is that there are animals who will attack bee hives and there are also animals that although they wont attack are real honey lovers and so can be considered as opportunistic thieves.
Here in Switzerland the biggest threat (animal wise) is the wild boar – if you’ve not come across these animals before there’s a picture below (the picture is from the Telegraph news paper, it was better than mine).
So the boar is a wild pig – with a difference. First it has great big tusks and secondly is predominantly made of muscle, even a small boar weighs a lot and if you hit it with your car you will be going to the garage (or scrap yard if you hit it hard enough).
So why is this animal a threat to bee keepers?
Simply because if it’s hungry enough a boar may actually tip over bee hives to try and get to the honey and the really bad thing about this is typically when the boars attack it’s during winter (during the summer or early autumn it’s possible to recover from the damage).
So where does the tracking come in to the story?
The next time you go into a forest do an experiment and look for tell tale signs.
In the forest stand still and look around. You’re looking for what looks like small footpaths going through the forest (assuming that they’re not man made footpaths) – and there will be more or less of them depending on the animal population – they’ll also criss cross.
Once you find these pathways you’ve found what are called game paths (if you can’t find them move to the edge of the forest and look down the side of the forest for small entrances, typically enough for a small child and well used). Now you can have a closer look.
If you find places where the earth is a little muddy you should look closely because there will probably be foot prints – the foot prints will then help you determine what kind of animals are using the path.
Another interesting sign that you might see on the game trail is trees where the bottom 40-50 centimeters (or slightly more) are completely smooth. The reason for this is that animals have continuously used the tree root space as a resting place.
WARNING – I’m adding this for my own conscience – if you see a wild boar it will probably have already seen you and be heading of in the other direction – however – if you find one that is not running away from you DO NOT APPROACH IT/THEM, those tusks are not a fashion accessory and I’ve not come across one yet that wants to be ‘friends’.
So if wild boars are a threat what about the other stuff you find in the forests over here?
If I had my hives down in the South I might be talking about bear(s) now as they also tip hives but thankfully I’m not. For me the only other serious animals are the deer and the foxes (the rabbits haven’t started hassling me yet, nor the hares or birds of prey).
The deer are curious animals and I’m not even sure if they like honey but the foxes do like honey – actually they love it.
A fox wont attack a hive but if it has been damaged (storm, animal, vandalism,…) then the fox will try and help itself.
But why is this important/of any interest at all?
Beekeeping, like any activity, includes a certain amount of risk and so if we know about a risk we can do something about it, in my case that means in the winter months I make the bee hives harder for the boars to tip over (by fastening them all together the overall weight is too great).
So the big game tracking is actually a risk identification/mitigation exercise – it also makes for some interesting nature watching during the summer months.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and if you have I’d encourage you to do the ‘find the game trail’ game with your kids, mine thought it was fantastic to go down the animals paths in the forest (we even saw a few deer, rabbits and a fox this way).
Remember, stay away from wild boars and wild bores. |
