RHINO

Thanks to a thing called a green hunt, the rhino is making a strong recovery in some parts of Africa. A green hunt is where the hunter shoots a rhino with a dart. The animal is only out a short time for vets to draw blood and run a few tests. The money spent by hunters on green hunts has given a value to the rhino. A portion of this money now goes to the local enconomy and the local people.  When it comes to conservation, the money spent by hunters is still the best chance of  the rhino making a come back. At this time, I think South Africa has stopped green hunts for some reason? Poachers shooting rhino, just to saw off their horn to be sold in Asia, still remains the biggest threat to this wonderful animal. Three times on safari I had the crap scared out of me by rhino. Luckily I was in the safari truck each time it happened. Towards the end of an evening hunt as we were looking at some game on one side of road, a rhino exploded from the bush on our other side just a few feet in front of us. The second time it was almost a carbon copy of the previous encounter but is was on a night game spotting ride. The third time also happened on a night game spotting drive but it was in the Limpopo region on the river bottom. We were driving along an over grown road. Frikkie had seen the eyes of something to our right so everybody's attention was focused in that direction. Suddenly the thick brush very close to the left side of the safari truck exploded with snorts and cracking brush. We had driven up on three bedded rhino and scared them about as bad as they scared me. An adult male rhino can weigh in at over 4,000 pounds and has only two enemies, Man and the odd bad encounter with angry elephant. For the most part a rhino goes and does what he wants to do, when he want to do it.  The rhino also is known to have a very short temper and  a reputation of charging even when unprovoked.