Game viewing anywhere in the central Kalahari area can be a stark contrast to the amazing densities of game that can often be seen in the Okavango-Linyanti-Chobe region. To get the best out of the CKGR, you'll require lots of time and patience, often just watching and waiting. The big game is here, but on average it occurs in very low densities – as you'd expect in such a harsh, arid environment. The only way to get around this is, as mentioned below, to visit when it congregates on the open pans in the north.

Springbok are probably the most numerous of the large herbivores in the park today. That said, the game populations in the central Kalahari seem to have been fluctuating fairly wildly, at least for the last century, and perhaps longer. In his Comment on Kalahari Wildlife and the Khukhe Fence, Alec Campbell suggests that over this period human activities and interference have altered the balance of the wildlife populations in the Kalahari substantially – and led indirectly to population explosions and crashes.

Currently springbok disperse in small herds across the park during the dry season, but congregate in very large numbers on the short grass plains found on pans and fossil riverbeds during and shortly after the rains. (Note that this is exactly the opposite of the usual situation for many mammals, including elephants and buffalo, which gather in larger herds as the dry season progresses, only to disperse during the rains.)

These successful antelope are both browsers and grazers, which can derive all the moisture that they need from their food, provided that the plants that they eat contain at least 10% water. They'll often rest by day and eat at night, thus maximising the moisture content of their fodder by including dew on it.

Springbok populations are very elastic: they are able to reproduce very rapidly when conditions are favourable, allowing them to rapidly repopulate after a bad drought. With good conditions females can produce two calves in 13 months, while even six-month old ewes will conceive, giving birth to their first lamb when they are barely a year old. To maximise the survival of their offspring, the females gather together in maternal herds and synchronise their births, thus presenting predators with a short-term surplus of easily caught young lambs.

The central Kalahari's population of blue wildebeest has, at times within the last century, swelled to enormous proportions. Campbell describes them as peaking in the 1960s when 'herds of 50 and 100 had so accumulated in the Matsheng and Okwa area that they stretched unbroken for many kilometres and numbered hundreds of thousands'. Thane Riney, an ecologist there at the time, was familiar with the vast herds of the Serengeti yet still referred to these as 'the largest herds of plains game left in Africa today'. Wildebeest populations were then estimated at up to 250,000 animals, but within a few years lack of water, grazing and the existence of veterinary cordon fences had conspired to wipe them out from much of the central Kalahari. Today you'll find small groups of wildebeest in the CKGR, but I've never seen them in large numbers here.

Probably the area's most common large antelope are gemsbok (also known as oryx), which can be seen in congregations of hundreds on the short grass plains during the rains, but usually occur in smaller groupings during the rest of the year. These magnificent antelope are supremely adapted for desert-living. They can survive fluctuations of their body temperature which take it to up to 45°C (when 42°C would kill most mammals) because of a series of blood vessels, known as the 'carotid rete', located immediately below their brain. These effectively cool the blood before it reaches the animal's brain – the organ most adversely affected by temperature variations.

Red hartebeest can also be found here in good numbers, as can eland and – an amazing sight – giraffe. Kudu occur, but generally in quite small numbers – either small bachelor groups or family groups consisting of an old male, several females and a number of youngsters. Common duiker are occasionally seen, too, but if you catch a glimpse of a small antelope bounding away from you, it's much more likely to be a steenbok.

The main predators here are lion, cheetah, leopard and spotted hyena, which generally occur in a low density, matching their prey species. The lion prides range over large territories and are bonded by loose associations; members spend most of their time apart from each other, living alone or in pairs, and meeting relatively infrequently. Individual lions will often hunt a variety of smaller prey, like bat-eared foxes and porcupines, as well as the larger antelope more commonly thought of as lion fodder.

Similarly the central Kalahari's leopard here have a very catholic diet, ranging from mice and spring hares to ground squirrels and wild cats – plus steenbok, springbok and calves of the larger antelope.

The park's cheetah seem to be more nomadic than the lion or leopard. In other parks, where game densities are higher, cheetah often lose their kills to these larger cats. Thus the CKGR's relatively low density of predators makes it a good place for cheetah. Hence this is one of sub-Saharan Africa's better parks for spotting them – at least at times when the springbok concentrate on the pans and river beds.

Amongst the scavengers and insectivores found here are the brown hyena (the original object of study for Mark and Delia Owens, black-backed jackal, caracal, Cape fox, bat-eared fox, aardwolf, genet and wild cat. However, as there is no facility for night drives in the reserve, only black-backed jackals are commonly seen as they aren't strictly nocturnal.

Meanwhile the diurnal yellow mongoose is sometimes seen scampering around in search of insects, and families of meerkats (or suricats) are amongst the most entertaining and endearing of all the park's residents.