![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Crocodile-Kruger-National-Park-safaris.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTom and Louis were fishing thigh deep in the river when from the reeds a 5-metre long crocodile suddenly emerged and made straight for Tom Yssel and grabbed him by the leg.\u00a0 As crocodiles do with prey, it wanted to head for deeper water where the crocodile will then roll and drown its prey.\u00a0 Louis Olivier was having none of that and in a desperate attempt to save his friend life, did the unthinkable and managed to get astride the beast and attempted to prise open the crocodile’s jaws.<\/p>\n
The crocodile maintained its grip on Tom Yssel\u2019s leg and would violently shake him from time to time.\u00a0 It was during one such shaking that Tom\u2019s thigh bone broke with what sounded like a rifle shot.\u00a0 Louis was in the meantime still attempting to keep the crocodile and his friend in the shallow water while at the same time trying to attack the crocodile\u2019s eyes with a small pocket knife.\u00a0 The pocket knife kept folding back and in the end, he threw it away.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By this time Hans Kolver, who had been enjoying a cold one on the river bank rushed over to join the fight in the water.\u00a0 By now the crocodile had Tom Yssel by the mid-section.\u00a0 Although Hans dug his fingernails into the crocodile\u2019s eyes in an attempt to get it to let go, the crocodile held tightly onto its prey and kept shaking him from time to time improving its grip with each shake.\u00a0 There was blood everywhere.\u00a0 A crocodile has an external eyelid that is as tough as nails.\u00a0 At a stage, the crocodile opened one of its eyelids and Hans managed to get a finger in there, at which stage the crocodile let go of Tom and with a bone-crunching snap, latched onto Han\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
Tom, now furious and full of adrenaline had every intention of continuing the fight, but when he looked down he saw that his foot was pointing the wrong way and his intestines were floating next to him.\u00a0 Louis, on the other hand, got hold of a study knife from the tackle box and with renewed strength went back in to save Hans.\u00a0 With luck, he landed a perfect blow, straight into the crocodile eye socket.\u00a0 The crocodile let go of Hans immediately and headed for deeper water.<\/p>\n
Tom Yssel was flown to a hospital in Nelspruit where his wounds were treated.\u00a0 It took years to recover from his gruesome ordeal.\u00a0 The crocodile was not shot because of what it had done, as this is what crocodiles do, it was shot because it was severed injured and so the next afternoon as it lay basking on a rock it was killed with a single shot to the head.<\/p>\n
It was high drama at the local fishing spot on the Sabie River one hot summer\u2019s day in November 1976.\u00a0 Tom Yssel and Louis Olivier two rangers from Skukuza and a helicopter pilot friend Hans Kolver, went fishing at a waterhole near the staff village.\u00a0 It was here that one of the worst battles between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-of-the-kruger-national-park"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kurtsafari.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}