They may be behind the scenes the majority of the time, but our Hoedspruit Endangered Species Centre (HESC) anti-poaching K9’s are some of the most respected and important members of our HESC family.
Their first and foremost priority is to patrol and protect our perimeters with their handlers, providing additional security, over and above the security systems which we also have in place to protect the precious wildlife in our care.

 Zee, Bullet, Nikor, and Jessie are four incredible Belgian Malinois’s that have been selected to protect our grounds.
In this blog, Corlet Grobler, our K9 trainer, shares some insight on Bullet, who is the lead tracker of the four, and by far the fastest, hence his name, Bullet
Bullet was born on 02 May 2016 and was in our care by the age of 8 weeks. We had the opportunity to train Bullet ourselves and what an exciting and rewarding time it was.

Bullet is fully trained in obedience, tracking, and bite-work. We started his detection training in May 2018.
Over and above his nightly duty of patrolling the grounds, Bullet, being our head tracker dog, occasionally showcases his excellent tracking skills as well as superb bite-work demonstrations to school children and WCE volunteers that visit HESC. They are often in awe at how loving and friendly he can be, and then change gear when in attack and protect mode.

As his name suggests, is a super energetic dog that is always ready for action and eager to please his trainer and handler/s. He has exceptional focus and determination and will do anything to protect his handler, and his territory, which is HESC.

Bullet grew up with Zee as a mother figure to him, as she is approximately three years older than him, and an extremely caring dog.  He just loves to play with Zee when not out protecting our wildlife.

We are so grateful for his selfless commitment he gives every day of his life to HESC, together with the rest of the HESC K9 Unit, including their handlers (which also consists of two ladies from the Black Mambas) and our trainer, Corlet Grobler