Chapter Six
Baiting
If you have ever sat around a group of bass fishermen after a long day on the water and listened to their numerous theories, and if you’ve heard all about the merits of the ‘fuzzy’ or ‘purple oil worm’, then you will know what it is like to sit around the fire in the evening with leopard hunters. Every hunter knows the correct way to outwit the big cats. Every hunter will have the remedy to rectify a problem situation which is not bearing fruit. Everybody has all the answers!
The sceptical layman observing one of these sessions must be forgiven for concluding that these intrepid cat hunters are out-and-out blowhards! The fact is the leopard is hunted in many different types of terrain – mountains, jungles, savannah, desert, semi-desert, rocky areas and thornveld. He is hunted in wilderness areas, populated areas and cattle ranches. All these different types of habitats have influenced different methods and different tactics. What works between the Masai villages in northern Tanzania will not work in the granite hills of the Matobo. Coupled with the factor of widely varied terrain, is the human element. Because buffalo are the most plentiful of the dangerous game animals, it follows that they are hunted more than the other dangerous game species. But not far behind the total days spent hunting buffalo, are the days spent in pursuit of the leopard. We are not talking about the number of hunts brought to successful conclusion, we are talking about the hunting effort itself. In Zimbabwe between four and five hundred leopard export permits are made available each year. About two hundred to three hundred leopard trophies are actually exported. I would guess that if one half of leopard hunts are successful, we would be very generous in our estimations. So if 250 animals are actually taken, we can assume that 500 leopard have been hunted. The minimum number of days marketed for a leopard hunt is 14. Therefore a minimum of 7000 hunting days are taken up in Zimbabwe alone in leopard hunting! Add to that the figures for Tanzania, Mocambique, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and Namibia, and you begin to get the idea. Add this phenomenal amount of hunting effort to the many varied habitats where leopards are found, and the result is a giant medley, where the tactics that work, are as numerous as the spots on the skins which we seek with such fervour.
I have mentioned elsewhere in this book that these experiences, these adventures, both failed and successful, have not been put together for the purpose of instruction. They have been written purely to share our triumphs and heartbreaks, to show what has worked for us. I have been determined to steer away from the ‘do this’ or ‘do that’ syndrome that we see so much of when cat hunting has been written about. What I describe in these chapters may be perceived by others in our game as wrong, or a complete waste of time when transposed to their areas. But that is the point. This is all about what we do, and what works for us. And of course, what hasn’t.
So many of us have, or have had, preconceived ideas about the leopard. Yes, the leopard is the supreme master of the ambush. He is the dispenser of violent, sudden death. Yes, he is powerful, cunning beyond belief, and he is a successful hunter. But leopards, quite surprisingly, are not fussy when dinner time arrives. He has no airs and graces. He is a scavenger. Unlike his cousin the jaguar, and unlike the cheetah, the leopard will consume someone else’s kill. He will eat animals killed by fire, wire snare or drowning. He is a survivor. He will, when he has to, eat meat that would sicken a maggot. Lion and hyena, to varying degrees, are the same. This seems to be the situation in most ‘wilderness’ areas – large tracts of land that have been set aside purely for the benefit of wildlife. East Africa’s Serengeti and Masai-Mara, Zimbabwe’s and Zambia’s huge National Parks and Safari areas, South Africa’s Kruger National Park. In these areas the leopards have not been significantly influenced by man. Their natural prey is abundant. Obviously some seasons are more bountiful than others. When the antelope have their young, and the grass is green and high, providing plenty of cover for a stalking cat, it is the season of plenty. But when the winter months arrive and the leaves fall and the wind and frost lays the grass down, the leopard has to work harder. His menu of acceptable foodstuffs grows to accommodate his hunger. This is how we understand the scheme of things for the leopard in unspoiled wilderness areas.
But the fact that the leopard is such an adaptable predator, the fact that he can exist cheek by jowl with man, has changed what we accept as ‘normal’ behaviour for his kind. He has changed. In many parts of his natural habitat he has evolved, changing his habits in order to survive, both by utilising what man has to offer on one hand, and by avoiding contact with man on the other. He has adapted his skills and hunting habits in order to avoid the people he lives near, and he has had to accept a very different menu of foodstuffs than his cousins in the wilderness. He has learned about dogs, wire, steel traps and poison. He knows well the pitfalls and opportunities presented by cattle and goats. He knows the smell of man, of tobacco, of vehicles, diesel and petrol. This leopard, the private ranch leopard, is a very different quarry than those who live in the wilderness areas. He has developed into a far more cunning and altogether more difficult adversary.
Because of this sophistication, baiting our Matobo leopard is a far more detailed, complex, and important part of the hunt, than it is when trying to outwit a cat in a wilderness area. The hunter cannot just hang meat haphazardly out in the bush and sit back waiting for success. He has to outwork, outthink, and out-luck the most adaptable chess master of them all. Baiting cats in our areas is approached with three main aspects in mind. These are where to place the bait, what kind of bait to use, and presentation of the bait.
Where to Place the Bait
In both the mountain camp and the project camp, we have large I :50 000 maps pinned to cork boards in the lounge area. On these maps we record all pertinent information about our leopards. We mark fresh track sightings, actual leopard sightings, tracks reported by cattle workers, nocturnal calling, calf kills, natural wild kills, and places where we have been able to work out approximate home ranges.
It was not long before we knew most of the big males on our area by name. We usually named these big boys after a river or koppie in their home range. The result of all this was that we were able to cut down the time wasted at the beginning of a hunt looking for tracks. We already knew where several large males lived before the hunt even started.
Pre-scouting and constant map updating took care of any debate about which areas we should commence operations. The next step then was to select the actual spot, the actual tree where the bait should hang. Some of this has been covered in the other chapters, so the reader will have to bear with, and forgive any information repeated here.
After years spent following both lion and leopard tracks, sometimes by vehicle but mostly on foot, from the northern Tanzanian border to the western areas of Zimbabwe on the Botswana boundary, if there is one thing I learned that is true for all the cats, it is that, like us, they will take the easy road whenever possible. The leopard takes cover during the day in the deep shade of the high rugged koppies but at night he goes about his business on footpaths, dirt roads and sandy dry streambeds. I would guess several factors influence this, the main ones being comfort and ease of movement, quietness, due to the absence of noisy grass and bushes, and lastly, good visibility. Some years ago we picked up a very large leopard track on the eastern side of AJ’s land, on the Ingwezi river. We decided to follow the track as far as we could, and if and when it went into good cover, we would ‘flood’ the area with baits. The track climbed out of the Ingwezi riverbed and headed exactly west toward Botswana. After walking about five miles on this track, which stayed on the dirt farm road, I sent George back for the Land Cruiser. When he arrived, Peter seated himself on the left-hand side of the bull-bars so he could see the footprints and we set off slowly, expecting the track to pull off the road at any time. We followed that animal in a straight line for about 17 miles! We were amazed. If I had seen that track in the morning in the Ingwezi, and then on AJ’s western boundary later on, and we had not followed it, I would have said it was a different animal. We found where the big cat had killed one of AJ’s weaners and we built a tree hide and sat for him, but that turned out to be one of the hunts filed under ‘screw-ups’. Whether that big leopard travelled such a distance during the night to take care of boundary marking or social obligations, or just hunting, we will never know, but he did it comfortably, straight down a well-used dirt farm road.
Even though the Matobo cats will hunt down, or walk along river beds, roads, paths and fence lines, he will not eat his kill in the open. He kills an animal then drags it into thick cover where he will settle down to feed. Often we have found where a leopard has killed, dragged his meat a considerable distance into cover, fed on it, and stashed it under leaves and grass. He has then returned the following night and dragged the kill off once more – most times up into a thick rocky koppie.
Whether a hunter is operating in a wilderness area or on private ranch land, leopards make it clear that they are happier and more comfortable feeding in dense cover. I have found that the thicker the cover surrounding a bait, the quicker the leopard will come to feed in the evening. This is a crucial factor when hunting leopard on a government concession where you have to shoot the leopard without the use of a light. If the leopard has to cover large open areas in order to get to the bait tree, he will do it very late into the night, if at all. He will not cover that open ground in the daylight.
With these two factors influencing the leopard’s behaviour – the fact that he uses dry riverbeds and paths to travel, and that he prefers to feed in thick cover, we place most of our baits on the edges of the riverine bush and at junctions. River-road junctions are a very productive spot as long as there is good cover nearby. Fence line river junctions and to a lesser extent fence line road junctions, are used a lot by our hunters. River junctions – where a tributary enters a main riverbed – are also excellent areas to hang bait.
Where a pathway or road, or even riverbed, cuts through a pass in a hill range, there is an excellent possibility of finding leopard sign. If these particular koppies look like they would have sufficient cover to hold a recently satiated leopard, then this would be one of the few times that we would use a drag. The idea would be to attract the leopard’s attention as he uses this pass through the hills, and then draw him away into a position where it would be favourable for the hunter to set up a blind. We don’t want the cat to feed on a bait then lie up where he can watch us build the blind, so this drag, hopefully, will be found by the cat when he utilises the pass in the hills, and if we can get him to follow it to the bait, we are in business.
With these basic principles in mind, where the leopard walks, with dense cover nearby, another important aspect joins the mix, and that is wind direction. Wind direction is of paramount importance when building a blind and when considering a leopard’s approach to the meat once the hunter gets him feeding.
Wind direction also influences where one puts the bait initially. If a riverbed flows from the north to the south – as most of ours do – and the prevailing breeze is from the southeast – as ours is – then it does not make sense to place the bait on the west bank of the river. Especially if the cover is a fair distance away from the streambed. The leopard will walk down the streambed oblivious to the tasty smells wafting away from him. It therefore follows that the bait needs to be in dense cover on the eastern bank of the riverbed and the blind will be downwind, in cover, on the western bank. The influence of wind, here has been described in black and white, in basic terms, but I have always believed that an old male leopard, living in a 12 000 acre home range, will find your bait no matter which riverbank you put it on. It’s his own back yard, and he knows it intimately. He may have lived there longer than a decade, and he is very aware of what is happening at home. But placing the bait where he will smell it when using one of his normal trails, will accelerate matters, and this is important when you only have two weeks to lure your cat in for the shot.
Unlike cats that have adapted to extremely dry climates, as in the Kalahari in Botswana, our Matobo leopards drink regularly. With plenty of watering points available, such as rivers, dams, cattle tanks and granite dwala catchments, these cats can be quite choosy when deciding where to slake their thirst. Understandably, they will drink where the water is clear and unsullied by cattle or game activity. These regular drinking spots are also baited successfully, especially if there is a good thick cover upwind of the water. As the streams and granite basins dry up in the winter months, it becomes easier to identify a cat’s favoured hole, and in a really dry year we will bait just about every well-vegetated watering point in a big cat’s home area.
Apart from streambeds, junctions and watering points, another situation which influences our baiting tactics is ‘funnel’ meadows or valleys. If a valley, or sunken meadow, lies on an east-west line, and if the mouth of the valley makes a pass, or funnel, through a ridge, or hills, on its eastern side, then any rotten meat placed in this spot will stink up the whole valley to the west every time a prevailing breeze blows. And a hungry hunting cat will find this bait very quickly. Thanks to gunfire my hearing is poor, but my sense of smell is acute. Usually when driving around in the open hunting vehicle I will smell something rotten in the bush before anyone else on the truck. We will always investigate these smells in the hope that it may be a stashed leopard kill. When the breeze is right I can pick up the tainted smell of a rotten bait a good 500 yards away in one of these “funnel” valleys. A super-predator like the leopard must be able to smell it a lot further away than I can.
If you are fortunate enough to find a ‘throne’, it can be another ace in the deck when trying to close accounts with a big cat. Matobo leopards, especially a dominant male, will have several places in his territory where he lazes away most of the daylight hours. Because of the abundance of granite koppies in our area, many of which have high promontories, the cat’s throne or favoured lookout/sleeping position will be high up in the rocks, and worthless to us for the purpose of baiting. But occasionally we find a large tree well hidden in the thick stuff which just reeks of leopard. These throne trees are usually scratched where the big boy has been cleaning his claws and marking his territory. This is an excellent place to hang a bait – he will definitely be coming back to this favoured spot. We found in the Zimbabwe lowveld, where koppies are not so plentiful, scratch trees, or “tree thrones” are more common. Several times we have spotted leopards in the early morning or late evening stretching themselves or just gazing out over their territory, way up in the upper reaches of the bigger koppies. One such prominent look-out is situated about 900 yards in front of our mountain camp, and we have twice seen a large female calling from there.
All these factors influence where we place the bait, but if the hunters have had the time to do their homework, then at least one, possibly more, big male leopard’s home ranges and patrolling routes will already be known, and these routes, his watering points, his scratched thrones, his paths through the hills, must all be baited as soon as possible.
What Kind of Bait?
Whether you are listening to hunting talk or just reading about leopard hunting, you will get the idea that the best baits for leopard are warthog, impala and zebra in varying orders of preference. Impala and warthog are both prolific breeders and most hunting areas enjoy good numbers of both species. For this reason the quotas offered on these animals are generous, and generally speaking, neither species is overly difficult to find. It follows then that these will be used more for baiting leopard than other game and because of their ‘manageable’ size, are probably killed by the leopards in greater numbers than the larger species. Zebra too are common and widespread throughout most hunting areas. A zebra will provide four good-sized leopard baits, and because the meat is very fatty and oily, it does not dry out quickly in cold windy and dry conditions like most other meat will. It remains moist, and lion and leopard both appear to favour it.
But the truth is, a leopard will generally eat just about any meat presented in good condition in thick cover. I have taken cats on elephant, buffalo, giraffe, steenbok and nearly every type of game animal inbetween. Not all private ranch land or communal lands hold populations of warthog and impala however, and this is the case in most of the Matobo range. But these leopards do not go hungry. Every koppie is a larder for these opportunists, providing several different varieties of prey.
The prime food for the leopards in our areas is the rock hyrax, or dassie, as he is known locally, and there are plenty of them. These small interesting animals thrive in the granite hills of the Matobo range. They live together in colonies of sometimes up to thirty animals and their numbers are often made up of two different species living happily side by side. In appearance the dassie resembles a tail-less beaver and they weigh about eight to ten pounds. Dassies spend hours basking up on the rocks and when it becomes too hot they move back into the ample shade thrown by balancing boulders. At night and in bad weather they move into tightly-packed huddles in the crevasses for warmth and protection. Apart from the leopard, their main threat is from the majestic black eagle, several snakes, and the eternal enemy – poachers. The rural Africans use the dassies’ skins to make warm karosses (blankets) and they relish the meat as well.
Other animals which live in and around the koppies, and that are preyed upon by leopards, are klipspringers, duikers, kudu, bushpigs, francolin and small cats. Klipspringers are dainty antelope weighing about 30 pounds. They are a yellow-grey colour and only the male has horns. Klipspringers live in small family groups of two or three, and they bound up and down the granite rocks like rubber balls. Their feet are quite pliable and rubber-like, and these unusual antelope appear to be standing on their toes like ballerinas, as they perch on top of the boulders. The common grey duiker is hunted by the leopard almost throughout the whole of the leopard’s range. They are also small antelope and also brown-grey in colour, but unlike the klipspringer they do not need the rocky outcrops to survive. They are very adaptable animals and can survive throughout a wide range of habitat. They are normally found alone and occasionally in pairs.
Bushpigs are ferocious nocturnal animals which travel in groups from two to twenty. They vary in colour from red-brown to yellow and almost black, with a white ridge or mane running over the crest of the shoulder and down the back. These pigs usually spend the daylight hours hidden away in thick bush up in the koppies, and they commence foraging in the late evening.
Kudu are common throughout ‘koppie country’ where poaching is not out of control. Any young kudu up to a year old is easy prey for the leopard and we frequently find their carcasses hidden away in the thick stuff.
All these species are available to any leopard prowling the hills. Obviously the hungry cat will take other game like young zebra, impala and wildebeest, but I mention these to illustrate the abundance of prey inside the koppie ranges.
For more than a hundred years a kind of guerilla war has been fought in these bush-choked granite hills. The battle between the cattle farmer and Panthera pardus. South western Zimbabwe is dry country, but it is good cattle country and even before the white settlers arrived, various black tribes grazed their herds throughout the Matobo range. And they suffered too. Leopards love to eat cattle; and cattle viewed in nature’s food-chain, are simply not designed to be a permanent link. Even though the Brahman mothers will aggressively defend their young, cattle are ill-equipped to increase their numbers in these areas unless they are carefully looked after, and the predators’ numbers are thinned. They are simply too vulnerable and lack natural raw cunning.
The African cattle owners pen their beasts at night. If one of these locals owned ten cattle he would be considered well-to-do, so the death of just one calf, 10% of his herd, would be disturbing news indeed. But any farmer, black, white or yellow, who wants to breed cattle as a commercial venture, has to leave his cattle out at night, as 50% of the beasts’ grazing will be done after the sun has set. The large scale rancher cannot afford to halve his cattles’ fattening time by penning them at night. When calving season arrives the commercial cattle farmer tries to keep his cows with calves at foot, near his homestead, in the hope that the calves will not be as exposed to leopards as much as they would be out in the bush. But grazing becomes limited around the homesteads and sooner or later the gambolling young calves end up in the dark hills.
A rancher with approximately 300 cattle will lose between 20 to 30 calves a year to leopard, hyena and cheetah. Our hunting areas cover five large commercial cattle ranches, 21 small scale cattle ranches and huge areas of African communal land, all with plenty of young calves living deep within leopard country. The result is that the cattle farming greatly increases our success in hunting the big cats. We may have 10 or 15 baits out for a client, but at certain times of the year there will also be 500 or more succulent young calves walking around ignorant of the fact that they too are actually live bait.
Forty percent of our leopard are shot off of natural calf kills. Seventy percent of our giant ‘Super Cats’- males over 160 pounds, which are normally the grizzled, wise old cattle killers, are taken off calf kills.
When we first moved into the Marula area on a permanent basis, we were still in the mind-set of going out with the client on the first day, driving around continuously, blasting away at any impala we could find. The problem was, the impala were just not available in the numbers that we were accustomed to in the south eastern lowveld. It was now a time-consuming frustrating exercise which never seemed to produce enough bait animals. To make matters even more difficult, this area had been under severe poaching pressure, both by vehicle and by dogs and wire snares, so the impala were not only scarce, but they were damned skittish too. We soon realised that we would have to find an alternative bait source.
If a client had a zebra on his list, we tried our best to complete this task on the first day. This would provide us with four good-sized baits without delay. But zebra (and wildebeest) hunting is no walk in the park in this area either, and sometimes it would take us several days in which to hunt one successfully. Most of the time we had to track these animals down on foot – no easy task when they spend so much time grazing through springy tough grass in the vlei areas. One problem encountered when baiting cattle ranches or communal land, is bait theft. Hungry poachers, or indeed any travelling native who comes across an impala or piece of beef hanging in a tree, will take it, not only wasting the hunters’ money, but upsetting the overall baiting strategy. Because the locals in western Matabeleland don’t eat zebra or donkey, we have to secure some of that meat when baiting a problem area.
One of us came up with a plan to try use the locals’ livestock in the communal lands for bait. This turned out to be a boon for these subsistence farmers. They were now able to get rid of old, lame, sick or just ‘for sale’ animals without having to walk them long distances to market. We started off using donkeys and goats, and with experience, we found that we achieved more hits on these baits when they were divested of their skin. I do not know why this is. We’ve thought about it, debated long and hard over the campfire about it, but I haven’t heard a convincing theory yet. During these years of goat and donkey baiting we continued to take impala as and when they presented themselves during a hunt. We were taking leopard, but not with the same success that we would enjoy later on when we had to reshape our business into ‘total’ leopard hunting.
Once we started using the natives’ livestock for baiting, I noticed curious differences in our information-map records. After looking at all our information of known big male movement and chatting to our PHs about them, we were able to deduce that most of the large males moved off our properties, into the further reaches of their home territories as soon as we started driving around blasting away at impala! It seemed they were shy of all the activity and gunfire. Now that we were utilising livestock shot far away in the communal lands, our known resident big males were staying put. It was great news and our success rate improved immediately.
With hindsight, of course, it is pretty obvious – if we needed ten impala for bait, more often than not it meant that about 15 shots were fired. Add that to the amount of vehicle activity, and the big cats were slinking off to quieter hunting grounds. Graham finally provided the solution to our baiting problems, and thereby helped push our success rate to where it had never been before. One year the guts fell out of the beef market. Rather than sell his cattle at a deflated price, with transport costs to consider too, Graham asked if I’d be interested in purchasing his sale stock for bait. We looked at the figures and found that this would suit both of us.
Instead of driving around for hours looking for impala, we could now fire one shot right near the homestead and have four large fresh baits immediately. One old dry cow would provide us with four big baits whilst younger stock would give us three. Beef is denser than an impala carcass and stays fresh longer. Add to this the benefit of the inside fillets, backstraps and tail for our use in the camp, the guts, head and feet taken for consumption by our staff, and it was a winner. The leopard went for this diet like they were born to it.
Another big plus for us moving onto using beef for bait, was when we had to “flood bait” an area urgently. Our standard method of baiting is to hang meat near rivers, paths and roads, in thick cover in an area frequented by a large male. But often during a safari we come across a large track in an area where we have no bait; where we are not expecting to find sign of a large dominant male. If the track is fresh from the night before, we track the spoor as far as we are able. In most cases the track will leave the road or game trail and disappear into the depths of a koppie range. It is likely that the cat moved up there at first light and is whiling away the day in thick cover. If we are able to get our hands on sufficient bait before nightfall, we put up as many baits as we can, ‘surrounding’ the area where we think the leopard is laying up.
This goes against my practice of not baiting against, or in big koppie ranges, but when I find a giant leopard track on day ten of a fourteen day safari, I will try anything at all that might put us into position on a big cat. Often, the following morning, we find that one of these ‘desperation’ baits has been eaten by the fellow with big feet. We immediately take down all the other baits placed nearby. If we leave them up, there is always the risk that while we are sitting at the eaten bait waiting for the leopard, he has stumbled onto one of the other baits and is happily dining on the fresh beef. The availability of cattle was crucial in providing enough meat in a hurry when we needed to action this “flood baiting” plan. If I had to pinpoint just a handful of factors that changed our leopard hunting success from around 50% to above 80%, baiting with cattle would be one of them.
A myth, or misconception that many people believe regarding Matobo leopard behaviour, is that baboons are the leopards’ favourite prey. I don’t know how that idea originally came about. Possibly because there are so many baboons throughout the Matobo range, people assume them to be an abundant source of leopard food. We have hunted in the Matobo hills for many years and not once has any of us found the remains of a baboon eaten by a leopard. Because we haven’t found such evidence doesn’t mean that baboons are never eaten by leopards – but it is definitely not as common as people believe. I watched an episode of National Geographic on television once where an average sized leopard attacked a female baboon at the edge of a large troop at a waterhole. Before you could say ‘bad idea’ nearly the whole troop had ganged up, and screaming and barking like mad things, they went for the leopard with their long canines bared. The cat snarled a few times and made a half-hearted rush at the enraged apes but his heart was not in it and he retreated into the long grass. The adult male baboon is a very strong adversary. Graham and I weighed one once, which had been shot by a hunter named Chris Cagle. This animal weighed 87 pounds, most of that was pure muscle. The teeth are a good two inches long, often longer than a leopards! Of course the world heavyweight baboon champion is not going to win a fight with an adult male leopard, but their large troops are a serious deterrent. I have no doubt that a wounded, sick, or in fact any ape that strays too far from the group, will be snaffled in a heartbeat by a hungry leopard, but I do not believe that they are ‘favourite prey’ at all. Baboons are unbelievably alert animals and always have a sentry or two on duty. It would be a difficult task to sneak up on them unannounced, even for the master of stealth.
Having said all this about our distant relative, the baboon, we have actually taken several leopard off baboon baits. In the mid eighties we were operating on three ranches in the Mberengwa area owned by the Knott brothers. These areas were tough to hunt. The country around Mberengwa is mountainous and extremely well vegetated, and to make matters worse it had been wellhammered by poachers. There were limited populations of big kudu, zebra, impala, bushpig, warthog and duiker, but the main reason we built a camp there was leopard. The Knotts had been fighting a similar war to the Matobo ranchers. One animal, however, which was abundant here was the baboon. There were plenty of them and they came to hate us. My brother Sean was in his early twenties in those days and still playing rugby for Zimbabwe, so he was physically very fit. In order to chase troops of baboons through mountainous country you have to be fit – these animals cover ground at a serious pace when under pressure. Because of the scarcity of game we had to resort to hunting baboons for bait.
This was long before we began to specialise in leopard hunting and we had yet to move on to the beef bait strategy. Our hairy friends found that their free-and-easy days foraging around the ranch at leisure were over. I think the leopard in the Mberengwa area preyed more on baboons because of the scarcity of small and medium sized wild game. Thanks to Sean’s tenacity we were able to bait extensively with baboon and we took some fine leopards in the two seasons we operated there. On the Knotts’ ranches were several abandoned asbestos mines which had shut down in the sixties and seventies. These interesting sites were strewn with disused and broken equipment and the bush was steadily reclaiming the land. We found leopard sign around one particular mine and we set a baboon bait on a pathway between two massive asbestos-dust dumps. I hollowed a small cave out of the dust high up in one of these dumps and took two very nice leopard out of that spot. The first was taken by Hank Sumpter from Kansas and the second by Dave Faust who hailed from Alaska at the time. I often shudder to think what American lawyers would have written to me if my clients had gone home coughing! Fortunately Dave and Hank both became close friends of ours and never developed asbestos-related chest problems!
I should mention here that we have found that a leopard will not feed on a bait indefinitely. As stated before, a hungry leopard (or lion) will eat meat in poor condition. But I believe his body needs the many nutrients which fresh kills give him – blood, heart, liver, and fat, so even if he does eat your rotten bait, he will soon leave it and move on to hunt something fresh. When we are trying to keep a leopard on bait for a client who is still to arrive, we try to give the cat a whole fresh ungutted impala rather than another piece of drying, bloodless meat. That way he usually stays around a little longer.
Presentation of the Bait
We found out pretty quickly that hanging meat haphazardly in any old tree was not going to work in the western Matobo hills. What worked for us on government concessions and in the south eastern lowveld was not going to work here. When we first moved our leopard operations to the Ingwezi river camp on AJ’s ranches, there were still lots of leopard on these areas that had come through the hazardous times of traps and poison. With the introduction of safari hunting, these were the veterans and they were very hard to kill. As we gradually outwitted these cats, or as they died of natural causes, their offspring also grew up learning about people, cattle and ranch activities but they were spared the dangerous lessons on steel and poisoned meat. With the advent of safari hunting, these leopards now had a value. Traps and poisoning were over. These ‘new’ cats were easier to get onto bait and our success percentage climbed. But compared to uneducated concession cats, they were still at the top of the class.
Once the correct spot and the correct bait have been selected, all that remains is the securing or positioning of the meat. So many hunters have said to us, “come on, I can see how you have to select the correct area, where the leopard will find the bait, but surely once you have that spot you simply put up good fresh meat and the job is done!”. Not true. Learning the hard way – at ‘Murphy’s school of hard knocks’ – we have lost leopard opportunities which could so easily have resulted in success if we had known better.
We learned to address three main aspects when presenting the bait. We had to present the meat that the leopard liked, that he would want to come back to. We had to secure the meat in such a way that we would see the leopard clearly
when the light went on, and last, we had to ensure that other meat eaters could not steal the bait or ruin the hunt at a crucial moment.
I have mentioned before that under certain circumstances, when a leopard is famished, he will eat bait in any condition – dripping with maggots, meat that’s dried in the cold wind so that it resembles wood, and sometimes even meat that has been tainted with fuel! Graham and my wife’s cousin, Neville Rosenfels, has an American friend who comes out every year to visit and do a bit of unguided hunting. A few years ago these two ended up sitting in a hide which was no more than a casually erected light grass screen. Their ‘bait’ which had been fed on, was a cow that had been doused with diesel fuel and burned. I do not know the circumstances that led to this strange arrangement, but that night they shot a large male leopard! I was incredulous when I heard this story. I can assure you this is the exception to the rule, and it reinforces what I mean about the leopard being able to eat anything when really hungry. Unfortunately we rarely come across one of these desperate hungry old cats when we really need him.
In order to save time we always hang a piece of what my trackers call ‘smelling’ in the same tree as the bait. This ‘smelling’ is usually a piece of an old rotten bait from a previous hunt, or it is a piece of meat actually rotted prior to the hunt, specifically for this purpose. In this way we have good smell drifting through the bush as soon as we hang the fresh bait. In the winter months it can take up to two weeks for a bait to start stinking, so this smelly piece of bait, coupled with our practice of pre-baiting, gives us an advantage of time in hand. Flies, and consequently maggots, are not nearly as active in winter as they are in hot months and the bacterial breakdown of the baits is slow. In October, when it’s hot, our baits only last about a week before they have been reduced to disgusting green and black slime. In the winter months some baits will last up to three weeks, saving the hunter bait money, but hanging a piece of “smelling” alongside the bait is very important.
I have mentioned here “pre-baiting”. Perhaps this would be the best place to briefly mention this practice. Our piece of “smelling” certainly accelerates matters, but two weeks is sometimes not really enough time in which to coerce a big educated private land leopard onto bait. We give our clients the option of paying for pre-baiting. Not long ago my company carried out this function as a courtesy to the client, at no charge, but costs in Africa have entered the ‘ridiculous’ column and this service now has a reasonable fee attached to it. We usually commence baiting a week before the hunter arrives, in effect turning the hunt from a 14 day into a 21 day safari, as far as the baiting is concerned. It is certainly an influencing factor and one more arrow in the quiver.
So into the tree goes a piece of ‘smelling’, and the bait itself. We always try to imagine that the leopard, when he finds the bait, is not starving. We imagine him, standing there, having followed his nose to our bait, suspicious, looking carefully for signs of people, or of another leopard. We want him to feed. We want the bait to look appetising. I have mentioned previously that we don’t spend much effort in ‘dragging’ for our leopard. Drags, to be effective, would have to be done every day, or at least every second day, as the smell left on the ground burns off in the sun and the wind. In our situation, with 15 or 20 baits to check, there is simply not enough time, and not enough guts at hand to drag. Secondly, if we have sufficient stink on the meat, then the leopard is going to find the bait anyway. We’re baiting in his backyard and if he’s in the area he will find the bait. I mention dragging briefly here because it reminds me of one young PH who had accumulated all his experience on a government concession before finding himself in the university of educated leopards. This fellow, as he had been taught, would shoot impala, open up the guts, and drag the impala behind his vehicle before hanging it. The end result was a sand and dirt-filled carcass. Not ideal for the sceptical leopard trying to decide whether to hunt down a tasty hyrax or get stuck into some venison and sand. If enough of a gut pile was handy and a hunter had time, certainly it would not hurt to lay out a fresh drag every other day, but we avoided dragging the meat itself at all costs. We want it clean, fresh and appetising.
In the mid 1980s when we were still hunting the lowveld area on the Bubye river, I was guiding Pete Olarian, a hunter from Kansas City. We bad some maggot-infested impala bait on which a leopard had taken a perfunctory nibble. We shot a fresh impala and hung it next to the old one. While we were sitting for the cat that evening, he came in, exerted serious power, and ripped the rotten bait down, dragged it away a distance of about ten yards, discarded it, and then returned and fed on the fresh impala. I was very surprised by this action and wondered if the rotten mess irritated the cat in some way, or if he was trying to preserve the fresh meat longer, by getting rid of the maggots and flies. Whatever the reason, it did demonstrate that leopard obviously prefer fresh meat and will actually waste, or discard rotten meat for fresh. Still on the aspect of trying to present a ‘good’ or attractive bait to the leopard – when we offer impala to the cat, usually the skin is left on. Impala skin is thin and no problem at all to the leopard. Buffalo and cattle skin, however, is a different story. After about a week, these skins dry hard, like a shield, and the only animal which could bite or rip through it easily would be a hyena. A hungry determined leopard will force his way under this hard skin in pursuit of a meal, but once again, we’re trying to make things as easy as possible, so we remove it.
In 1987, when I first started hunting on Matetsi Unit Two, near Victoria Falls in north western Zimbabwe, there was a resident bushman tracker there who had grown up in the area. We commenced a lion safari by taking a very nice buffalo bull which we cut up for bait, leaving the skin on. This old bushman tracker told us that these lion in ‘his’ area, preferred baits without skin, and we should remove it. I of course knew everything and left the skin on. A week went by, and when, for the third time we found where a big lion had nibbled away just a small piece of exposed meat and then left, I began to think that maybe there was something in what the old bushman had told us. We stripped the skins away exposing soft pink buffalo meat, and several days later shot our lion. There are few things worse for a young professional hunter who is trying his best to impress his client than getting dismissive ‘I told you so’ glances from a native tracker. I can only think that in an area of plentiful game – like Matetsi – lions do not have to work too hard to secure a meal and maybe they couldn’t be bothered wrestling with a hard dried old skin when they can secure a fresh meal without too much effort.
When ensuring the meat is attractively presented, we will try to secure the bait with wire as inconspicuously as possible. We try to avoid long pieces of shining wire sticking out from where we have tied the meat, and we also try to rub the wire or even hide the wire with fresh guts in order to try to help entice the leopard into the first feed. Another lesson learned long ago at Murphy’s school was to make sure that the bait was tied around the leg bone itself, as opposed to through the meat and sinew cord only. All your hard work can be undone when the big cat rips through the sinew and disappears into the hills with your bait where he can dine at a place of his choosing.
In certain circumstances where we know we are dealing with a leopard who is wary of wire and steel, we try to shoot a mature impala ram for bait and then force the head and horns between branches so that the carcass cannot be dragged away. This takes some muscle and some bush engineering, but it can be done, and there is no wire alerting the suspicious cat.
Once a leopard has fed on a rotten piece of meat we do our utmost to ensure that a fresh piece goes up right away. We have had situations where we have been reluctant to tamper with a feed, and left the rotten meat alone, the leopard has come in, nibbled a little, decided the bait is not so tasty, then left. A good fresh piece of meat will usually keep the cat interested and in position long enough for the shot.
On just about every safari we come across a situation where a leopard comes right up to the bait but does not feed. There is no way of telling why the cat chooses not to eat. Maybe he already has a fresh kill somewhere and his belly is full, maybe he is wary, suspicious of the set-up. Possibly day is breaking when he finds the meat and he intends to return at night. Who knows? In these situations we use urine, and sometimes the whole bladder from a leopard we have taken previously. About half the cats we take have a usable amount of urine in the bladder, and this we bottle and store in the freezer, marking on the bottle the sex of the cat, and date and place at which it was killed. When we are faced with the problem of the cat that arrives but does not feed, we take the urine and rub it all over the bait tree, the bait itself, and around the base of the tree. There is no way in which we can measure the success of this manoeuvre, sometimes the cat will tear into the bait the following night, sometimes he just doesn’t come back, but I believe that this new leopard smell does distract a hesitant feeder from worrying about the man-aspect of the set-up and I believe it entices the cat to feed.
When presenting the bait, the second aspect which we take into account after the ‘attractiveness’ of the bait, is the situating of the leopard, or in other words – where do we want the leopard to be?
On government concessions, as described before, no hunting at night, or with a spotlight is permitted. The leopard must be shot very early in the morning, or late in the evening. Even though the law states that ‘last light’ is thirty minutes after the sun has crossed the horizon, every second of visibility must be squeezed out of the situation. If you are hiding in really thick bush, it will be darker in there at 18.25 hours than it will be in open savannah. Unfortunately, the bait and blind will more often than not be in thick bush, because that is where the leopard feels more comfortable and will most likely hit a bait in the first place. Because of this light problem, or more accurately, the lack of light, the hunters have to do all they can to silhouette the cat against the sky. I’ve read in many articles how the leopard is silhouetted against the red sky after the sun has set. This is not always true, certainly not in Zimbabwe because the prevailing wind is usually from the south-east, which means the hunters are facing south east, not the western evening sky. However, whatever the direction, it is necessary to put the bait quite high up. One must remember that if the blind and bait are situated in dense bush, it would be necessary to get the meat nice and high in order to avoid any background ‘clutter’ of tree limbs and leaves behind the leopard. It is surprising how late in the evening a hunter can see when looking from thick hidden shadow up into an evening sky. One problem here is that even though the cat can be seen clearly in silhouette, often the crosshairs of the scope cannot, and it is necessary for the shooter to know his scope well. If a leopard is wounded and makes off into the bush on a concession area, it is going to be devoured by hyenas or lions during the night. Another factor which comes into play when considering silhouetting a leopard, is to position the bait in such a way that the leopard will feed whilst standing sideways. This is not such a crucial factor on our Matobo areas because we have the benefit of a spotlight, and we will shoot at the cat in whichever position he presents himself. The cat, silhouetted sideways at last light in a concession area will offer the shooter an easier chance at the heart and lung area and a little more leeway in trying to centre his crosshairs. Also, because of the danger of the leopard running off and being eaten by hyenas, it is preferable, in a concession area, to anchor the cat right there, and this can only be done by not only taking out the heart, but by breaking one, or both shoulders. This is easier done with the cat standing sideways.
In our western Matobo areas, even though we have the benefit of the light, we still have to pay a lot of attention to where the leopard will be when he is feeding. When we are shooting at a cat which is eating a ground bait, we have to make certain that there is no boulder, stump, or ‘dead ground’ that the cat can disappear behind when the light goes on and the seconds are ticking away. Contrary to what some people say, the leopard is not comfortable in the light and will usually only offer the shooter up to five seconds to shoot, so those five seconds need to have the cat situated where he can be seen. The old adage “the poor animal freezes like a deer in the light” is pure hogwash.
For obvious reasons the leopard cannot have a great big branch hiding his vitals from the shooter whilst he is feeding. Valuable time will be lost whilst the hunters have to wait for him to move. When we have a bait hit, I will finish the construction of the blind and set the hunter’s rifle in the sandbags. Once that has been done, I empty the shooter’s rifle and seat him in the shooting position. I then climb the bait tree and position myself in various poses in which we may see the leopard. In each pose I point to my body where the shooter should fire if I were the leopard. In this way we can check that there are no obstructions in the way and the shooter gets a better idea of what to expect. When we’ve finished this exercise I like to rub the tree where I have been climbing with some bloody meat or guts to help disguise any scent I may have left there.
Occasionally we will come across a leopard that will not take a bait which has been secured in a tree. These cats may have had experience with wire snares before. The rural folk often set snares for leopard which have taken their livestock. Usually the dead calf or goat, or part of it, is placed at the end of a gently-angled tree trunk and then a snare is set over that trunk. The leopard pushes his way forward until the snare tightens where his neck meets his shoulders, and a horrible death ensues. So it is not unusual to find one of these “wire-wary” cats ignoring our offerings.
When we find an area where one of these finicky males moves frequently, we try to bait him in the normal manner. When we find his tracks at the bait and the bait uneaten, we have to assume that this is a cat with experience of wire or traps and we try what we call a ‘dumped bait’. We shoot a large male impala and hide the animal under grass or a bush in the riverbed or near a path where the leopard is walking. We cover the meat in order to hide it from the vultures during daylight hours. The impala is not gutted, nor is it tied down in any way; we try to leave it in as natural a state as possible. Often a cat who will not take a secured bait, will drag the impala away, like it was his own kill. Although this method works well, it is full of pitfalls and potential foul-ups. When we find, or are called to calf kills, we are faced with the same problems. The leopard normally drags the dumped bait, or the calf, into the koppies; or failing that, into the thickest bush he can find. So now the leopard has unknowingly dictated where we have to put the blind, and many times there is no suitable blind position. We have to make the best out of a bad situation. There is no choice really, after all, this is a cat who won’t eat a conventional bait, and we have to try every trick we can in order to be there if and when he comes into one of the ‘dumped’ baits which he has dragged into heavy cover. We learned that it is imperative when trying this method, that a large impala is used. A giant male leopard can pick up a ninety-pound impala in his jaws, raise his head back, and carry it away leaving nothing but his pug marks. We need drag marks in order to relocate our dumped impala, and drag marks made from a heavy impala are easy to follow.
When hunting on concession areas where the leopard (and lion) are feeding at night, one way in which they can be coerced into feeding during daylight hours is by utilising a slight variation on this “dumped” or “free” bait method. Because of the numerous hyena, the bait is draped over a branch or branches, well out of hyena reach but is not secured in any way. The cat comes in during the night and the bait is either knocked to the ground by mistake, or it is dragged away to another site of the cat’s choosing. The next morning the drag is followed and when located, a blind is built. The cat will usually come early into a situation such as this. Care has to be taken when approaching this relocated bait though, especially in the case of lion, because the cat may very likely be there guarding his meat. Not only could the hunter be in a very dangerous situation, but he could be scaring the cat enough to jeopardise its return that evening.
With the crucial aspects of presenting the leopard with meat that he will eat, and that he will eat in such a way that will enable us to get a clear shot at him, one final detail often presents problems, and that is the attention of other bait-eaters. Not only will these animals waste the hunter’s expensive bait – especially as is the case with honey badgers and hyenas, but they can create a false-alarm situation, where the hunters turn on the light, and end up spooking the leopard which is nearby.
When “dumped bait” is used in a ground role, there is simply nothing to be done if one of these other animals finds the meat. It is unfortunately a necessary risk. Ground baiting with “dumped bait” is, after all, a desperate measure anyway, and most hunters will accept the consequences. Bushpigs, hyenas, badgers and jackals will often destroy a dumped bait in a single night. Sometimes there is a bit of meat left, but the whole “dumped bait” principle will be ruined. You want your leopard to find a natural-looking, large dead impala, so he will drag it away and stash it. You don’t want him to find a jackal-ravaged leg bone.
But the unwanted attentions are not limited to ground baits. Honey badgers and genet cats climb well and will feed on baits. Genet do not take enough meat to jeopardise a set-up, but they can trigger a false-alarm. Some PHs – my brother Sean included – utilise an electronic listening device to alert them to the presence of the leopard. They tell me that they can hear the difference between the feeding noises of the genet and the leopard and I can imagine that this would not be too difficult. I favour a warning line connected from the hide to the bait for reasons already discussed. On free-swinging bait, the genet can move the meat very easily, which in turn moves my warning stick, but we usually do not react to the gentle movement by a genet; a leopard will tear into the meat and the warning stick will gyrate in such a way that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the big boy has arrived. The problem is badgers, because they too will work the meat over vigorously, and if you’re using headphones, they sound like a feeding leopard, and if you’re using a warning line, the indicator stick will move as if a leopard is eating the bait. This, as mentioned, can trigger a false alarm and unnecessary shining of the light.
In order to get around this problem we have learned to “anti-badger” our bait. These determined animals are not in the same class as leopard when it comes to climbing, but they climb surprisingly well when you consider the shape of their body and legs and the fact that they do not have sharp retractable cat-claws.
If we have a bait hit by badgers, and we don’t want to remove the bait and start again elsewhere, there are two ways in which we ‘badger-proof’ the meat. The first is by using a length of thick (preferably 8 gauge) wire. The bait tree needs to have branches or a trunk which creates at least a three yard gap. Imagine a huge V, or an H that has not been crossed yet. We string the wire between these branches and hang the bait in the centre, equidistant from the two limbs, which create the V. The badgers cannot negotiate the ‘tightrope walk’ of the wire and they will move on. The other way is to cut a straight mopane tree about leg thickness and seven to nine feet in length. The bark is stripped off along with any little nubs or bumps which could help give a badger purchase. This pole is then greased with animal fat from the bait, then secured to the bait tree so that it juts out at about a 45 degree slope upwards. The bait is secured to the end of this pole so that it hangs about four feet above the ground. A leopard can reach it but a badger cannot, and the badgers footwork cannot negotiate the slippery 45 degree slope of the greased pole. It is hilarious to sit on a moonlit night watching these comical stubborn creatures trying every trick they can think of to get at the meat.
Hyena also create problems if the meat is hung too low. I have been surprised many times at the height that a spotted hyena can jump in order to get his teeth into a bait. Brown hyena, common in our western Matobo areas, will eat ground baits or low hanging baits, but they will not jump.
Humans, or more accurately, poachers, can be irritating bait stealers too. Many times we have had hunts ruined by people taking our leopard baits home to eat. When we target leopard which live close to communal land, or ranches where poachers are busy, we have to bait only with zebra or donkey meat. The AmaNdebele do not eat the flesh of these animals. Once I cut the hoof of a cow from a back-leg bait and in its place I wired the foot of a zebra but the poacher who found that bait was no fool. He left the zebra foot in the tree and made off with my haunch of beef.
Another spin-off from poacher activity that can screw up a hunt is the setting of long snare lines which the poacher fails to monitor. Several times we have found leopard tracks, baited the cat successfully, then found that he does not return. When we explore the area trying to see if he has made his own kill, we have found where he has fed on a dead kudu, or impala which has strangled itself to death in a wire noose. Our activity in the area has obviously scared the poacher off, but his deadly snares remain. Occasionally, when this has happened, we have taken down the bait, built a blind at the snared kudu, and have collected our leopard. Out-manoeuvring both leopard and poacher!
Vultures will completely demolish a bait when they find it. Fortunately there are not a lot of vultures in our Matobo areas but on government concessions they are numerous. All lion and leopard baits on these areas should be hung under thick canopy and the meat must be covered with leafy bushes. I have always been interested in the many theories that attempt to explain how vultures find meat. In big game areas they will glide into offal and blood remaining on the ground after a buffalo has been loaded, before the car is even twenty yards away! I read a report of a study carried out in the Amazon. These people were trying to find out how the vultures there located meat which was completely hidden underneath the jungle canopy. They finally decided that the birds could sense the heat which radiated from rotting meat! It is obvious that vultures have incredible eyesight and I understand this to have been scientifically proven. But how do these birds find a piece of meat hidden away for example in thick grass or reed-beds? The heat sensing theory aside, how do they arrive so quickly in such numbers? My tracker, Peter, and several other “bush folk” were not surprised at all by the question and were amazed that we did not know the answer. “They dream” he told me nonchalantly, “they become hungry, they dream while flying slowly in those great circles, and their dream shows them where the food is”. I see. No problem.
I believe that these sharp-eyed scavengers are constantly alert and aware of what goes on at ground level. They have to be in their line of work. They know what crows, jackals, eagles, hyenas, lions and leopards are. They even learn, in some areas, that safari hunting vehicles often produce food. This is most noticeable in Morromeau, in the Zambezi Delta in Mocambique. Consider this: a Bateleur eagle deciding to take a rest, finds your bait. He feeds on it for a few days. Two aggressive fork tailed drongos take exception to this eagle near their nest and begin to harass him constantly. A hungry sharp-eyed vulture, a thousand feet up, notices this commotion and glides slowly down for a closer look. He likes what he sees, and drops down. I believe that other vultures, each flying their own predetermined slow circle, are not only searching the ground but are jealously, constantly keeping an eye on their neighbour, and when he drops, they glide across and drop too. And so the domino effect goes on. They must watch jackal and hyenas constantly. But the staff say it is much easier for them to ‘dream’ the meat. Who am I to argue? I have seen and heard of stranger things in the African bush.
Into the Thorns is now available at Good Books in the Woods
