NELSPRUIT, South Africa-- Whenever someone asks me about hunting a leopard I explain that it is hours and hours of boredom interrupted by a few seconds of terrifying excitement. In my last report I told you how Cody's leopard hunt at Casketts Ranch was being thwarted by the unexpected rains.
The possibility that a leopard might become bold and take a warthog less than a hundred yards from the lodge hadn't entered anyone's mind, and when it happened it gave Cody's leopard hunt a new dimension of danger and urgency. A leopard hunting that close to the lodge was a threat to the locals walking back and forth between their work and their homes, and their children. The leopard was now both hunted and hunter.
Cody and his professional hunter, Adrian Anderson, found where the leopard and warthog had fought, but not where the leopard had killed the warthog. What should have been a reasonably straightforward kill in nature's terms had became complicated when the warthog refused to become the leopard's dinner and fought back with unexpected tenacity. In an unusual turn of events, rather than the leopard killing the warthog the two animals fought for more than two hours. What the houseboy had stumbled into when he was sent to check for a warthog caught in a poacher's snare was a momentary standoff between the leopard and the warthog.
When Cody and Adrian reached the scene, three hours after the battle was first heard in the lodge, they quickly unraveled what happened by following the trail of torn up grass, dirt, and scattered blood. The warthog had fought back, throwing the leopard off on several occasions. However the hog hadn't escaped unscathed. At one point, where the warthog had tried to escape by running under a fence, the leopard had dragged the struggling warthog back and continued the battle. Adrian wasn't sure why the leopard had given up but somehow the warthog had managed to find safety in an abandoned warthog hole dug under the roots of an acacia thorn tree.
Adrian had an idea. If he could get the hog out of the hole and use it for bait the leopard might come back. He got a long stick and began poking it down the warthog hole to force the injured hog out. When the hog came out Cody was waiting with his rifle and he quickly killed the battered and nearly dead warthog. Adrian then hung the warthog in a nearby tree and the two hunters quickly backed out of the area and hoped the leopard would feed on the new bait.
That night the leopard did feed on the carcass and the next day Adrian built a blind 30 yards from the bait. In mid-afternoon he and Cody went into the blind to wait for the leopard. Once again the hunt changed and Cody experienced the fear of being hunted. The leopard returned to the tree by walking only a few feet from the blind. The leopard was so close they could hear it moving through the grass. A minute later it was in the tree and Cody tried to put the crosshairs of his scope on the cat. He couldn't. The scope's optics weren't up to the rapidly fading light. All Cody could see was a blob in the tree. He couldn't clearly distinguish the cat from the bait. For the next hour Cody and Adrian listened to the leopard feeding. They could hear the cat tearing chunks of meat from the carcass and the smaller bones crunching as the big cat fed. When the cat was through feeding they could hear it washing itself, then it slipped into the night.
The next evening the leopard returned, this time it walked past only inches from the blind. There was something in the air the big cat didn't like and rather than getting in the tree the leopard circled the tree and the hunters and yowled its dissatisfaction with having people too close to its dinner. After a few minutes the leopard left and the two hunters returned to the lodge.
Early the next morning Adrian and Cody went waterbuck hunting and Cody shot a nice trophy near the river and later in the morning Adrian and Cody took another bait animal. Adrian set a new leopard bait hoping to entice the cat to a different location. Instead of the cat moving to the new bait a second one came onto the ranch and claimed the bait.
Adrian built another blind and in the middle of the afternoon had one of the guides drop them off at the bait. The guide drove away and a few minutes later they could hear the leopard warning other animals of his presence as he picked his way through the grass to the bait that was now his dinner. Until now the leopards Cody had seen had waited until the last light of day to go onto the bait. This cat, they both realized, was bold and full of himself. A few minutes after four in the afternoon the leopard was in the tree 30 yards from Cody, and Adrian was telling him to shoot.
Cody used a custom-built .240 rifle to take his leopard. He made what he felt was a perfect shot and the cat rocketed into the air. For a few minutes it looked as if Cody might have wounded the cat because they could see where its claws had dug into the soft dirt under the tree as it scrambled to get away and had run into the long grass. The two hunters didn't want the unpleasant task of going into the grass along the Klassarie River to find a wounded leopard, but it had to be done and Adrian started after the cat.
Cody's shot, it turned out, had been true and Adrian found the seven foot, two-inch long leopard a few dozen yards from the bait tree. The .240's slug had smashed the great cat's heart. In some ways the shot and finding the cat dead was anti-climatic to the hunt, yet it is typical of how an African hunt can go from good to bad to thrilling, proving that in Africa you never know what to expect.
Next week I'll post a report on the fishing from what may be the world's greatest fishing waters.
Best,
Galen L. Geer
For more information on African hunting, contact the author or his booking agency, B&B Adventures by e-mail at 73737.2466@compuserve.com
Copyright 1996 Galen Geer. All rights reserved.
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