Remember this moment as it was yesterday. We were standing near a pond photographing some birds from a jeep on a safari in the Masai Mara back in 2009, 22 October 2009 to be exact.
As I was photographing and looking for birds my attention was attracted for a movement, far away, on the other side. At that moment I was using my Canon 7D with a brand new 800mm from Canon.
At first I thought that it were three gnoes running in our direction. So I aimed my lens in that direction and didn’t believe what I saw. It was actually a hyena running after two gnoes.…
Didn’t think that the hyena would catch up and was rather confident and in a good mode while watching this. The chase went in our direction and I became anxious for the gnoes because of the water just in front of us and them of course.
To my great surprise the hyena covered the distance with ease and brought down one of the gnoes. The hyena headed immediately for the belly of the gnoe and began to pull out parts of it’s intestines…
Thought it was finished for the poor beast but incredibly the gnoe managed to stand up and started to run desperately for his poor life. He run and run with half of his intestines pending out but was caught up again. About one minute later he was brought down for the last time.
The hyena went again for his belly and begun to finish his meal. A few seconds later the rest of the group hyenas arrived and a jittery revelry started…
About then minutes later only a few bones remained of the gnoe. After a while another jeep with tourists arrived and they didn’t understand why we were standing there. Just a few far silhouettes of hyenas remained visible.
When I looked to my dear wife I witnessed the tears in her eyes. And yes it was horrible but it was nature. The hunt was not for pleasure but just an opportunity to have a meal. Didn’t know that a hyena was able to put down a gnoe, thought hyenas were pure scavengers at that moment.
Don’t know about hyenas attacking people but a man couldn’t win from a hyena, that’s certain.
A few years later, in the Masai Mara, we were almost alone in an open camping place and one night I had to pee. Was sleeping in a rather small tent with a friend and of course the tent didn’t have toilets inside. Remember when I went outside I looked carefully after the tent before doing my thing. While I was standing there I anxiously watched around with my night vision goggles in one hand and saw some blinking eyes running around in the camp at some distance. What I thought to be dik-dik (little antilopes) were in fact hyenas looking for some left overs from the other people occupying a tent about 30 meters away. So if one of the hyena’s would have had just the idea to come for me I wouldn’t have survived it. But they didn’t, luckily. Next time I will definitely never try this again…will think twice.
So this is the story that I witnessed all these years ago and it keeps running in my mind. It’s regrettable that the resolution of the cameras don’t match with those we use nowadays. However I think I will never be able to take such pictures again so I’m very happy with these.This is what keeps us busy as photographers, to catch moments in time that would have been forgotten otherwise…and to be able to share this with other people.
So think twice next time you encounter an hyena…but don’t run because it won’t help you…
