The local magnetic behaviours of isolated Fe and Ni impurities in the II-VI semiconductors ZnS and ZnTe have been studied directly after recoil implantation. From the measured magnetic properties, which are detected by the observation of the perturbed angular distribution, orbital contributions to the hyperfine field as well as contributions from spin magnetism are found to be present at both impurities. The interpretations on the basis of the intermediate ligand field model suggest that Fe and Ni ions are found to exist in 2+ and in 1+ states and that electronic excitations may play a significant role even microseconds after the implantation.