It all started one morning when Matt Rochford and his guest were sitting at the wild dog den. Everything seemed perfectly normal. The pups were where they were supposed to be, and the adults were going about their usual business. Then, one of the adults began looking around, almost as if searching for the others. Nothing about it seemed particularly unusual. Until, suddenly, and without any signal that anyone could see, every adult stood up. The pups followed suit. In what seemed like a single, coordinated decision, all four adults and five pups turned and headed south, disappearing into the bush.

A moment I will remember as the first of the pups came to greet the adult and emerged from the den.

It left everyone watching with more questions than answers. Were they moving dens, or were the adults simply taking the pups to a kill? At around two months old, the pups were still too young to leave the den permanently and begin travelling with the pack. This was, as far as we knew, the first time they had ever left the den site. There was simply no way of knowing what was happening.

The old den had begun to smell, and vultures had been hanging around the area. My own suspicion was that it was time for a change. Perhaps the den had attracted too much attention, and the adults had decided to move the pups somewhere safer. That might explain “why” they left, but it did little to answer the more intriguing question: “how”? Nobody saw a call, a gesture or even a glance exchanged between them. And yet, in the same moment, four adults and five pups seemed to understand that it was time to go. How did they all arrive at that decision together? I am not sure we will ever know. Matt attempted to follow them, but they quickly disappeared into thick terrain where his vehicle could no longer keep up. One moment they were there, and the next they were gone.

That afternoon, we set out to see if we could relocate them and solve the mystery of what had happened that morning. We found their tracks crossing the “Maxabene”, a dry riverbed, heading south and away from the old den. That gave us our starting point. South of the riverbed, we picked up a second set of tracks, this time heading east into a block. For those unfamiliar with the term, a block is simply the area enclosed by roads. It is one of the ways we break a vast landscape into manageable sections when searching for an animal. We circled the roads around the outside of the block, looking for tracks that might tell us where the dogs had gone. There were tracks going in, but none coming out. That suggested the wild dogs were still probably inside. Of course, “probably” was doing a lot of work in that sentence. The ground was incredibly hard after the rain, making tracks difficult to find and even harder to age accurately.

I parked the vehicle in the shade, and tracker Phendulo and I set off on foot. We followed the game paths, moving from one termite mound to the next, each one a possible den site. Every mound offered a glimmer of hope, and every empty one brought us back to square one. Eventually, I returned to the vehicle and drove the surrounding roads with my guests, checking for any tracks that the dogs might have left as they crossed the hard ground. We found nothing. The afternoon ended without a single wild dog in sight.

The mystery remained. The following morning, not long after leaving camp, we suddenly found ourselves in the thick of it again. The wild dogs ran across the road in front of us. Then came the chase. They were moving at speed, and I spent a good part of the next stretch reminding my guests to hold on tight as we took corners a little faster than the vehicle would ordinarily appreciate and bounced over bumps that threatened to lift us clean out of our seats. The dogs were clearly going somewhere with purpose, and we were determined to keep up. They led us into the block containing the old den, heading straight towards the den site itself. Excitement began to build. Surely, they were returning to the pups. Perhaps we were about to witness one of those remarkable moments when the adults regurgitate food for the young. All four adults looked remarkably well-fed, suggesting that they had recently been on a successful hunt.

We could hardly have hoped for a better outcome. There was just one problem: we could not reach the den from the direction they had taken. We had to loop around the block, hoping they would still be there when we arrived. By the time we reached the den, however, there was not a wild dog in sight. They had either never made it there or had passed straight through and continued on their way. Once again, we were left with questions. Phendulo and I headed out on foot, this time following the drainage lines around the den in search of anything that might narrow down the possibilities. There is a great deal more to tracking than simply following footprints, but the basic principles are worth understanding.

If tracks enter a block and none emerge along the surrounding roads, the animal may still be inside. If tracks cross a road, the search shifts to the next block. We also listen carefully. Alarm calls from other animals, or behaviour that seems out of place, can reveal the presence of a predator long before we ever lay eyes on it. Then there is the art of prediction: using our understanding of an animal’s behaviour, its movements, the terrain and the conditions to anticipate where it might go next. But that is a story for another day. For now, we still had a den to find. After a considerable amount of walking, we had made little progress. The block was exceptionally thick, with terrain unsuitable for a vehicle. Phendulo continued on foot while I looped around the surrounding roads, checking for tracks that might indicate the dogs had left the area.

Then, suddenly, as hope was starting to look thin, the radio crackled into life. Phendulo had heard the wild dogs communicating. He had found the next clue and was able to point me in the right direction. Andrea, another guide who had joined the search, was closer to the area. He raced off to locate the den, with us following shortly behind. As we rounded a corner, the first thing we saw was an adult wild dog. That was the moment the excitement truly returned. We were finally in the right place. We drove a little further, and two small heads suddenly appeared above the long grass. The pups peered out at us, their tiny faces raised above the vegetation. There they were. All four adults and all five pups, settled at a new den site.

The mystery was finally solved, although it came with a humbling realisation. That first afternoon, we had been searching the wrong block all along. The single track heading east that we had found south of the riverbed was most likely from the morning, when the wild dogs had left the den to hunt, rather than from the afternoon, when they moved the pups. With the ground so hard, ageing the tracks accurately was difficult, and we had misjudged that one by a few hours. A small misjudgement in the interpretation of a track had sent us searching in the wrong direction. In the bush, a few hours can make all the difference. Of course, finding a den at Londolozi comes with its own unofficial competition. There is always some friendly chirping between guides, and plenty of people are more than happy to claim the title of den finder. Ranger Pat Greeley was a prime example of this. Andrea may have been the first to see the wild dogs, but Phendulo and I had put in the hours on foot, worked through the tracks and pieced together the clues. So, naturally, there will be a few playful comments exchanged over the coming days about who the newest den finder at Londolozi really is.

I suspect the debate is far from over. Yet, beyond the friendly rivalry, I keep returning to that first morning. How did four adults and five pups all seem to know, at precisely the same moment, that it was time to leave? No obvious signal. No call that anyone heard. No gesture that anyone noticed. Just a sudden, collective decision, followed by the disappearance of an entire pack into the bush. We eventually found them, but it took two drives, a good tracker, plenty of walking and a fair amount of detective work to piece together the puzzle. Even then, we only managed to establish where they had gone, not how they had all known to go there together. Perhaps that is part of what makes following wild dogs so fascinating. We spend our days learning their habits, reading their tracks and trying to anticipate their next move. We build up an understanding of their behaviour, sometimes convincing ourselves that we know what they are going to do before they do it. And then, every now and again, they do something that reminds us just how much we still have to learn.