Another Saturday night and all dressed up in camo. . .

THE icy wind howled across the 4 500ha Thula Thula game reserve but Evan Spiers and Mike Thomson did not seem the slightest bit fazed.

Rifles in hand, jackets zipped to their chins and clad in full camouflage gear, the pair patrolled the reserve on the lookout for any sign of poaching. As day turned to night and rain fell, they kept walking in complete darkness.

Over the course of nearly four hours in the bush Spiers and Thomson would cover just shy of 12km. The Sunday Times accompanied them on patrol on Saturday night, and the dangers they face became alarming real.

“Often you can hear their [hunting] dogs, so you know they’re inside somewhere. You just don’t know where they are. We’re surrounded on three sides by local communities, so they can come in from anywhere,” said Spiers, the second-incommand of the reserve’s security team.

Apart from poachers and their dogs, the wildlife itself is a danger. Stumbling across the reserve’s elephant herd or gang of buffalo could be fatal, especially since the rangers do not use torches on patrol because they could easily be spotted.

None of the reserve’s elephants or rhinos have been poached for the best part of seven years — white rhino cow Heidi was killed by poachers in 2009, and one of the rhinos was shot in the leg during a gunfight in 2013 — but that does not mean poaching does not happen.

“We see a lot of poaching for bush meat,” said Spiers. “Just a few weeks ago, a wildebeest was shot through the fence.”

And as the all-night, allweather patrols show, the reserve is taking no chances. —