“If some animals are good at hunting and others are suitable for hunting, then the gods must clearly smile on hunting.” - Aristotle
It was day three of our Zimbabwe hunt. I woke up again to the cool morning air and got ready for another day in the bush. I slipped on my clothes and joined the rest of the crew for breakfast. As the older men were drinking their morning coffee and I was eating my eggs and bacon; they were talking about switching tactics. So far we had only been focusing on the Cape Buffalo, but that was not our only quarry. Frog also had his eyes on the African Leopard.
The leopard has the widest range of all the big cats and have, surprisingly, expanded their range since Europeans arrived. Leopards are very adaptable and have a range from South Africa to Egypt and from Pakistan to Thailand and even as far North as Russia. There are even populations that live and hunt exclusively in cities in India! Leopards are primarily nocturnal hunters and have a very unique adaptation to cut down on competition from other predators. Leopards have extremely powerful neck muscles, this allows them to carry their prey up into trees and out of reach of larger predators like lions, tigers, hyenas, and bears. Other smaller cats, like cheetahs, often end up having their kills stolen from them by other predators, the leopard does not have that problem. Leopards are also solitary hunters. They don’t have to share their kills and as such don’t have to hunt as often as lions do. These adaptations help the leopard to be a very successful hunter.
Hunting any big cat is, obviously, very dangerous. The only safe way to do it is to find a place where leopards are known to gather, stick some bait in a tree, and then sit in a blind and wait for the cat to arrive. There are a number of difficulties with this. First, is that leopards are most active at night. Not being able to see your target is a big problem, particularly when your target has night vision, retractable claws, sharp teeth, and is extremely stealthy. Hunters counter this by setting the blind relatively close to the bait in order to hear the leopard coming. Night vision cameras can also be used to assist you. Once the leopard is focused on feeding, you quickly shine a spotlight on the target and fire. Another issue when hunting leopard is having a clear line of sight. As with most big game animals, you want to place your shot just behind the shoulder to aim for the lungs and heart. This can be a problem because the leopard may not be facing in that direction for you to get a clean shot. So how do you get the leopard to stick around long enough for him to give you a clean shot? You do this by strategically selecting what bait you put in the tree for the leopard to eat. The easiest way to do this, is to cut off the legs of a game animal and run a rope through the gaps in the shoulder blade and tie it tightly to the tree. Tying the rope to the tree ensures that the leopard won’t grab the meat and run off with it somewhere else. However, this presents new problems. Legs and shanks are not the most prized cuts of meat. It is often very rough meat and there is not much of it in that section of the animal. Predators often focus on the midsection of their prey animals, specifically in search of organ meat. That is where most of the vitamins and nutrients are. Only predators with strong teeth and jaws, such as hyenas, will eat most of a carcass. So because there is not much meat on the cuts used for bait, the baits need to be switched out every few days and that requires fresh game. However, this hunt was an abnormal African safari in that no plains game were on the docket, only the Big Five. Fortunately, Gavin had a solution.
Typically, the previous clients trophies would be used as bait for the next client coming in. But at this point in our trip that bait had gone sour, we needed fresh meat. The solution was to go to a local native village and barter for meat. We packed up the Jeep with a large bag of assorted clothes and shoes in order to trade. Our goal was to trade clothing for a cow. We set off on our drive, the village was a two hour drive. It was a clear and sunny day, 70 degrees F, and we actually saw a fair amount of game. Some impala, zebra, and a couple giraffes. Growing up the giraffe was my favorite animal, and I was always in awe of them when we drove by them. Tall, majestic, and very relaxed, they often did not care as we drove by; they were just focused on eating their acacia trees. We rounded one corner and saw a giant male in our path. One honk of the horn set him galloping on his way, at a surprising speed for a beast of his size.
Eventually we came to a dried up river bed. The bed was covered with very large and jagged rocks. Not sharp enough to cause a problem for the Jeep but, after the incident of getting stuck, Gavin took his time to cross. When we reaching the half way point of our 35 yard trek across the river bed, we noticed something around the bend upriver. It was a large bull elephant standing on the same side of the river we just came from. We stopped the Jeep to take a look at him. He was massive, every bit of 9 feet tall and 10,000 pounds. He was slowly making his way away from us along the shoreline, through the knee high brush. I jumped out of the back of the Jeep and onto the rocks below to get a better look. Fox, Frog, and Kevin joined me as a took pictures of him. (sadly that camera was lost in transit back to the states, I wish I had those pictures) Kevin took out his binoculars and observed him as he walked along. Almost in unison we all noticed something was off about this bull. He was walking kind of funny. Kevin pointed out with his binoculars that he was walking with a limp and something was wrong with the bull’s back right foot. Gavin stepped out of the Jeep and took a look for himself. Indeed, something was wrong with this bull. It was a poachers wire snare, wrapped tightly around the bull’s foot. It had cut him to the bone and Gavin noted that the wound appeared to be badly infected. The bull ducked back into the scrub forest and was out of sight. Gavin said: “We are going to have to go after him Kevin.” Kevin nodded his head: “I’ll come out tomorrow morning and track him down.” I wasn’t sure what they meant by that, but before I got an answer they started to move back to the Jeep. Back to the task at hand of acquiring some bait.
We arrived at the village. It was small, no more than 30 huts and maybe 150 people. Everyone gathered around to greet us. I remember a group of children giggling and pointing at me, I must have been the first white child they’d ever seen. Gavin and Kevin spoke to the elders in their native language and negotiated for a large white bull. We gave them a large bag of clothing and shoes and they brought out the bull. The elders put some kind of ointment on the bulls snout and stabbed him in the heart with knife. It must have been some kind of ceremony for them. The bull bled out quickly and then with the help of the villagers we lifted him into the bed of the Jeep. I saw the children getting excited over a pair of flip-flops that was in the bag. It was an interesting experience for me, and put things into perspective. No matter how bad things get, be thankful I was born in America and not in the middle of the African bush.
It was midday now and we were heading to a number of areas Gavin had set up cameras to look for leopard activity. We checked three cameras, each spread several miles apart from each other. Our native trackers took a hand axe to the bull and chopped up the legs and tied them up in the trees. When we reached the third baiting area, the older bait had been hit. Looking at the camera, it was a male (tom) leopard. He had been feeding on the meat at 3:00 AM a few nights before.
The trackers climbed up in the tree and put up some more bait. Hopefully the leopard would return again tonight. It was late afternoon at this point, too late to look for buffalo, so we decided to set up a blind. In no time at all the trackers were chopping down branches to clear the line of sight from the blind to the bait. The blind was set up in a tree, ten or so feet off the ground and twenty yards away from the bait. They were clearly masters at assembling these blinds. With nothing but machetes, hand axes, and some rope they rigged up a two person blind like it was child’s play. They camouflaged the blind with chopped down branches and covered it on all sides. They cut small windows in the front with a clear line of sight to the bait and tied a wooden ladder to the tree. The finishing touch was two folding chairs from the back of the Jeep. We now had a leopard blind set up similar to the one below.
With dusk approaching we headed back to camp. The sun was just starting to set as we pulled in for the night. As we pulled in some of the other camp residents were out for a stroll, a family of banded mongooses. Similar to weasels, though they are actually more closely related to cats, mongooses are small mammals, no more than 5 pounds and 1.5 feet long. Mongooses have a reputation as snake killers, and indeed they live up to that. Amazingly, they have rough fur that acts as a shield from most snake bites and they are immune to many kinds of snake venom. They live in family groups around a dozen or so and were a welcome pest control around the campsite. This particular family was very domesticated and had no issues with people holding them or petting them. They went scurrying off into the brush, no doubt looking for some food.
A quick shower and I was off to dinner. Buffalo steaks and vegetables tonight. Our mongoose friends were never too far away. You could always hear them running around outside the hut and calling to each other. The bull elephant came up in discussion again, as the men were sharing a bottle of red wine. Kevin and one of the trackers would take another one of the vehicles and look for the bull. Part of training to be a professional hunter (PH) is to hunt each game animal that you intent to take clients on a hunt for. Experience is the best teacher, and Kevin had not shot an elephant. This big bull would likely not survive such an injury to his leg. Gavin had confidence in Kevin and was interested to see how he would handle this challenge on his own. Kevin got up from the table to turn in for the night, surely he was nervous for his big day tomorrow. As he got up to walk out of the hut, we heard screaming and yelling outside. Gavin and Kevin rushed outside and Frog grabbed my arm to hold me in place. They quickly came back and showed us what the commotion was all about.
One of the cooks was grabbing firewood and found a Puff Adder hiding amongst the wood. This viper species gets its name because they inflate, puff, their bodies with air to make them appear much larger and then hiss loudly. The snake hissed at him and he quickly decapitated it with a shovel. The snakes headless body was still moving as we approached it. This was a big one, 3 feet long and very fat. Puff Adders, while not the most venomous, kill more people in Africa than any other snake. They are found all throughout sub-Saharan Africa, have excellent camouflage, and are very aggressive. Because they are fat snakes, some as heavy as 15 lbs., they are very slow and are very quick to bite. They are vipers, so they have special heat sensing pits at the end of their snouts that help them to detect their prey in low light levels. They feed almost exclusively on rats and mice, which brings them into common contact with people. Their venom is cytotoxic, meaning it attacks the cells. The bite wound will quickly swell up and start to hemorrhage because your cells are dying too fast in order to coagulate. All of your open wounds start to bleed and then the flesh around the bite wound starts to die. Necrosis sets in within a few days and people regularly lose limbs if left untreated. Death often takes a day or so in humans, usually due to massive blood lose. In no time at all the mongoose family came by and were eager to get a meal. Gavin chopped off the tail of the snake and gave it to me. I ended up hand feeding some of the mongoose pups. Was a cool experience, even though the little ones were aggressive with their little sharp teeth. Crisis averted and it was time for another night around the fire. More stories were told, more stars were seen, and as always Orion was watching over us…
Love your hunting tales