I tried to take it all in, to make a mental note of everything, so that I could play it back to myself as a coaching tool when aboard the helicopter. And then a wave of nausea suddenly engulfed me. What if I accidentally did something stupid and put Jacques’s life in danger? He had been flying for over twenty-seven years and never crashed. He alone serviced his helicopters, and knew every nut, bolt and screw. He could control everything about his aircraft – except me. It showed his immense trust in Cobus, I thought, to allow a complete stranger into the helicopter with a dart gun loaded with Etorphine.
Explanations done, Cobus took the students over to the vehicles to get them set up, leaving me with Jacques. I climbed into the helicopter, positioning myself as Cobus had done just moments before. I wasn’t quite as tall as him, so with my foot on the skid I was more out of the helicopter than in. I double-checked the seatbelt; it looked secure enough. Having done an external check around the helicopter, Jacques climbed into his seat. He was always punctilious about his checks. Working in a profession where the average life expectancy was six years, I could see why. He motioned to me to put my headset on as he did the same. Suddenly the outside world went quiet.
‘Can you hear me?’ Jacques’s voice sounded as though it was in my head.
‘Yeah, fine.’
‘All good? Are you happy?’
‘Yup, strapped in and set.’
‘Great! Just so you know, we can talk freely through this. They can’t hear us on the ground, but I can communicate with them on a different frequency. Does that make sense?’
‘Got it, thanks.’
‘So it’s your first time darting from the helicopter? It’ll take a bit of getting used to, but I’ll talk you through it. We’ll go up and find the groups and then I’ll work out which one to dart. From there it’s all about following them, anticipating their movements and looking at the terrain ahead for the best place to dart them. I’ll tell you when to load, when to get ready, when to take the safety off, and then it’s over to you.’
‘OK, that sounds good. How do you anticipate their movements?’
‘All animals have tracks and paths that they use. These are often invisible from the ground, but they are clear as day in the air, so you follow those, but it’s also a matter of experience, knowing how different animals move. Flying’s the easy part!’
I’d seen these guys in action from the ground and it was always impressive, but I knew I was now about to witness Jacques’s skill on a whole other level.
‘Oh, one final thing. Make sure you keep that gun well away from the skid. If the dart accidentally hits it, the drug will spray into my face. If that happens I’ll be taking you to 5,000 feet, by which time I’ll be unconscious, so it’ll be your problem!’ His laugh had an air of defiance about it, and I knew he wasn’t joking.
Best not hit the skid, then, I thought, nervously pointing the gun further away outside the helicopter.
‘Helicopter to ground crew, do you read, over?’
‘Hearing you loud and clear,’ came Cobus’s slightly crackly reply across the radio.
‘OK, let’s get this bird in the air!’
Jacques was already flicking switches, and then with a sudden roar, the engine started, the slow revolutions of the propellers quickly picked up, and with a slight jerk we lifted off, hovering momentarily a couple of feet off the ground before we rose into the air, banking away to the right. It was hugely exhilarating. I felt like the ultimate action hero.
Settling at a couple of hundred feet in the air, we headed for the front gate to start a systematic sweep of the farm. Although I knew the terrain fairly well, it now appeared completely alien and unfamiliar, and I quickly lost my bearings.
‘There are some of the tracks I was talking about,’ Jacques said, pointing out of the helicopter to the right.
He was right: they were as clear as day, well-defined paths through the scrubland, yet barely visible from the ground.
A herd of impalas were the first animals we saw, and then two giraffes browsing at the top branches of a mimosa tree, none of which took any notice of us. Over the rocky terrain on the far side of the farm we found the wildebeest and blesboks. Looking far across to the right, I could see all the students gathered around the bakkies and trailers on the feeding ground, their eyes fixed on us, oblivious to the ostrich that suddenly darted across the road to their left. It was an amazing perspective.
Within minutes we were at the top boundary of the farm – a distance that would have taken over an hour on foot. It was there that we got our first sighting of one of the zebra groups. There were seven animals in all, in thick bush at the top of a rocky hill and completely inaccessible by car. This was clearly one of their secret hiding places.
‘We have a visual,’ Jacques reported back. ‘I’ll bring them out into the open for darting. Stand by. Over.’
‘Roger that,’ Cobus replied.
Looking back towards the feeding ground, I could see a frenzy of activity as they loaded up into the two bakkies in preparation. My heart started to pound. The sightseeing tour was over, and it would soon be over to me.
‘I’ll bring them down into the open,’ he said to me. ‘Do you see the second from the back? That’s a young stallion, I think we’ll go for him first.’
I marvelled at his skill. The vegetation was quite thick, so even from the air they were difficult to see. I could see one that looked quite large so I assumed she was a pregnant female, but as to sexing the rest I was at a complete loss. Flying over them and turning back, Jacques came in low, till he was about 50 feet above them, to direct them down the rocky hill. The proximity of the unfamiliar air attack was enough to set them moving.
‘Can you see the path they’re following? This isn’t the first time they’ve been up here.’ I saw how the path zigzagged from side to side down the rocky embankment. ‘You’d never take a shot in this situation.’ He slowed the helicopter behind them, all the time watching them and assessing the terrain ahead. ‘They’re constantly changing direction,’ he went on. ‘The ideal shot is a path that takes them straight and on an incline so their speed is slowed and you can come in straight behind them. We don’t always get that, but we will today. When they come out of the brush they’ll turn left and then head off to that bottom field over there.’ He pointed at an open expanse of grassland separated by half a dozen large bushes. ‘Then I’ll bring us back round the other side of them and they’ll be heading in single file up the hill – so that will be your shot. You can load a dart now. But keep the safety on.’
‘OK, thanks.’ It dawned on me that, as we had been flying, he had been carefully studying the terrain, creating a detailed map in his mind of every track and path. He was reading the landscape like I would an Ordnance Survey map, but instead of roads, footpaths and bridal ways, he was seeing impala routes, zebra paths and giraffe tracks. It was a skill I could barely fathom.
Keeping the Dan-Inject well out of the helicopter, I unscrewed the locking mechanism and loaded the dart into the barrel. Screwing the pin back in to seal it, I double-checked the safety was on and then pressurized the chamber. Cobus had said three bars should be right for the distance, so pushing the tap forward I watched the gauge creep up to three. The relatively low pressure meant I’d be darting at a distance of less than 10 metres.
By the time I’d got myself set, the zebras, having followed the exact path Jacques had predicted, were now in the open field. Jacques hung back to let them momentarily settle and regroup.