MY FIRST encounter with waterbuck was in the old Eastern Transvaal near Klaserie. I was a student and worked on a game farm during the December holidays. While being showed around on the first day, we stopped at a waterhole and the farmer asked whether I could smell anything peculiar. When telling him that I could detect a strange musky odour in the air he simply said, “Waterbuck. Follow me.”
We walked along a dry riverbed leading away from the water and within 100m came upon a shady spot littered with heart-shaped spoor and droppings where the air was thick with the strong musky odour. The farmer then told me that waterbuck always stay close to open water and rest up in the shade during the hot part of the day. A couple of days later I saw waterbuck for the first time in the wild – four cows and a young bull – and a week later, a mature bull. He was not as regal looking as a kudu bull, but he looked rather stately, I thought.
These shaggy-coated animals are not aquatic
