Into The Thorns

Chapter Nine

 

Mauling at SHangani

 

One of the safari booking agents we used to work with sent us a Spanish hunter who spends most of the year in Mexico. He is Venancio Ruis Corbella and he is a fine gentleman of the old school. I guided Venancio on his first safari and also on his second, when he brought his three children with him. It was an absolute pleasure initiating Venancio and his polite, well-behaved children into African hunting.

 

Venancio’s third safari was booked for leopard. I was already committed for the period that Venancio had allocated himself to try for the leopard, so I contracted my brother Sean to do the hunt. Sean is nine years my junior and a well-respected professional hunter. Like me, he lives to outwit the big cats and he has built himself a good solid reputation for getting the job done. Fortunately he has, in abundance, the single most important ingredient required by anyone wanting to be a successful PH – the capability for hard work.

 

Prior to Venancio’s arrival, Sean scouted out our western Matobo areas and identified two large male tracks which were fresh enough to warrant a careful baiting plan. Fate, or Murphy, had a different plan. The day before Venancio arrived I received a telephone call from the headquarters of the De Beers ranch at Shangani – our open plains area 60 miles east of Bulawayo. A marauding leopard had slaughtered three calves in the previous two weeks. The De Beers ranch at Shangani is about 80% open grassland and the other 20% is made up of riverine vegetation and koppie ranges. There are leopards in this area but they are not in the same density of numbers found in the Matobo range. The cats in this Shangani area have an abundant food supply and evidently their gene pool is strong, because the ones we take there are wonderful specimens, well over seven feet in length with massive heads and deep strong chest and shoulders. Their colouring is of the savannah type, much lighter than the Matobo cats and the rosettes are fractured into definite separate marks. But they are big healthy specimens and are beautiful. Each year the ranch gives us two leopards on quota to be taken on our 200 000 acre lease. But De Beers Shangani (Debshan) exists for the purpose of producing beef, and cattle-killing leopard and beef production do not go hand in hand. So we were obliged to take action against the old leopards which had crossed the line, and this cattle killer could not have commenced hostilities at a better time, or so we thought.

 

Sean and Venancio settled into our beautiful picturesque camp near Wabaai, the majestic giant bald granite dome that rises over a thousand feet up out of the plains. Sean decided to scout the broken koppie area around the Lambamaai section homestead. This was the area where the calves had been taken and Sean wanted to establish at least two positions suitable for a ‘set up’ and hang fresh impala in those spots. Unlike our western Matobo areas, Shangani had abundant impala and part of our safari concession duties was the culling of 200 of these animals per year.

 

Late in the afternoon on the second day, the ranch tractor driver flagged Sean down on a farm road not far from Lambamaai section. The killer had struck again. A chain of koppies stretches south from the Lambamaai section Manager’s homestead for about three miles. The problem cat had taken the calves and dragged them into this range and eaten them at his leisure, and this appeared to be the case now. The cattle workers had heard anguished bellowing from a cow and on investigating they found the drag mark. It crossed a dirt road and pointed towards the koppies.

 

There was very little time to get set up properly for the night but Sean knew that this first night after the kill was so important. They had to be ready. The hunters raced to camp to collect the blankets, spotlight, food and other equipment necessary for a night out in the hills. When they arrived at the scene of the crime my brother could see that they were not going to be ready in time. They followed the drag marks and Sean could see that this was no ordinary cat. The splayed pug marks were huge. Sean’s tracker found the calf. It was about three quarters of the way up a small koppie and had been stuffed under a thicket, the crotch and back legs devoured. With the sun dropping quickly and time running out, Sean had to make a decision. He found a small cave in an outcrop of rock, on the same koppie as the kill some 70 yards away. It would have to do as there was no time to erect a proper blind. The hunters quickly scraped out noisy grass and sticks from the hole they had found and camouflaged the mouth as best they could.

 

Sean uses a listening device to alert him of the leopard’s arrival, and he barely had the microphone hung and wires hidden, when it was time. You cannot be fooling around with a natural kill after nightfall. The leopard has to be nearby, anxious to keep the bushpigs and jackals off his new meal, and finding people around the calf would blow the whole project.

 

The tracker drove off in the Land Cruiser whilst Venancio and Sean settled in as best they could in the cramped cave. Sean was worried about all their recent noise and activity and the fresh scent they had left near the dead calf.

 

But it was imperative that they were on the kill this first night, and Sean also knew that this cat had been prowling close to the Lambamaai headquarters for some time. He was used to man-smell.

 

One thing worried Sean as the bushveld noises settled for night. Once the cat commenced feeding he and Venancio would have to move forward slightly onto an exposed rock platform in order to see the bait clearly. Not good. But there had been no time to set up anything better without chopping, which obviously the hunters wanted to avoid at this late hour. The dice were already thrown, it only remained to see what they were showing. If only Sean knew. At 7.30pm Sean heard low purring and licking noises in his headphones signalling the killer’s arrival at the calf. It then ripped hard at the meat, trying to tear it free from where Sean had wired it to a bush. It was time to move. Slowly, too slowly as it turned out, Venancio and Sean moved into position. These wasted seconds gave the powerful leopard time to pull the calf around to the back of the bush. Sean hit the light but all they could see now was the big cat’s head, eyes flashing green-white through the brush. What to do? Should they wait? Would he come back into the open? Would he leave, now thoroughly educated? Sean decided.

 

“Go for it Venancio, if you can see a shot at the head or the chest, go for it,” said Sean.

 

Venancio went for it. The crack of the .375 was met with enraged roars and snarls from the leopard as he spun and whirled in the thicket, Sean fired buckshot into the melee and then the hunters could not see him anymore, but heard the racket clearly. Finally silence. Further down the range of hills baboons barked questioningly into the night.

 

Venancio was shaking with excitement and quite understandably unsure of his shot. Sean knew my feelings regarding professional hunters following wounded cats at night, so they packed up and drove up to the Lambamaai homestead where they recounted the evening’s events to the manager and placed a telephone call to my home in Bulawayo. We always try to find a back up professional when following wounded cats if at all possible. Sean knew that my own safari was only due to start in two days and in these koppies, with a leopard this size, he needed back up.

 

But as I said before, the dice were already thrown. My wife and I were at a function at my son’s school and the answering machine picked up Sean’s call. How I wish I had played that machine when we returned home that night, maybe things would have turned out differently.

 

Sean, his tracker, and Venancio were back at the scene as soon as it was light enough to see the next morning. Venancio was positioned up at the firing position from the night before whilst Sean and his tracker, Milton, approached the bait. I ended up at the scene later that day and I remember the layout clearly. The range of koppies runs north-south, about 120 yards east of a dirt road which runs parallel, also north-south. The calf was about three quarters of the way up one of the koppies. You must realise that these koppies are not clear-cut cones in shape. They are strewn with boulders and brush and flat areas and dips and outcrops. They are irregular. As you walk from the road up toward the calf, the shooting position is on your right, south, at the top of a rocky outcrop about 70 yards away. As you reach the calf, on a flat bench of earth about the size of a dining room table, you are facing east. In front of you, going up, the koppie breaks into two pieces like two giant orange halves upside down. But the crack between the two upside-down oranges is about 20 yards wide and has a small game trail running through it. But rocks, basketball size to refrigerator size to motor car size, are clumped haphazardly all over the place, with bushes often surrounding their base. As you stand at the calf, still looking east towards the gap between the hills, a low wall of stones

and chest high boulders comes down in front of you from the right-hand side, about 30 yards in front.

 

As Sean and Milton reached the calf they saw the flattened area where the enraged cat had laid waste to the brush and grass. Blood was evident. Sean was armed with a twelve-gauge pump gun loaded with 00 Buckshot. Milton went forward with the droplets of blood and Sean following. The blood trail led into the rocky wall.

 

There is no pedestal where I am standing. As previously mentioned, the hunter leaves himself open to attack many times in a follow-up. Whether he is bored, or not paying attention for a second, turning around to talk to a tracker, or laying a weapon down on top of a boulder in order to climb that boulder, he is going to be exposed sooner or later, that is the nature of this business. I can see where things went wrong. It is easy to say “you should have done that!” or “I would have done this!”, I have erred many times, but I have been lucky. Sean was not lucky. My brother opted to go left around the end of the low rocky wall. It would be quicker and quieter, and he felt he could cover anything happening on the other side, or he could pick up easily any blood sign on the game trail between the oranges.

 

But the leopard had not gone far during the night. He was festering in great pain and fury only a few metres away, behind the low wall.

 

Picture this… Milton is approaching the broken wall, Sean peels left to go around the end of the wall. The leopard is laying hidden in some rocks beyond the wall, the same direction Milton is heading. The leopard turns towards Milton’s noise but now the leopard sees Sean to the front right. He crouches, waits to see if he will be seen. The leopard is now behind, to the right of Sean. If you are right-handed, as my brother is, your barrel is pointing to your front left in the opposite direction from where the hurting cat is laying.

 

Sean, short like myself at 5’8″, is an extremely powerful individual. He was at his physical peak then as he was representing his country in the game of rugby – a game not well known for its gentleness. But the strongest human being alive cannot win hand-to-hand combat with a one-hundred-and-eighty-five pound fighting machine which has walked for twelve years on its hands, which has never had a beer, a cigarette or a potato. This machine is armed with ten two-inch knives welded to his hands and two-inch canines inside a jaw that can snap the neck of a two hundred pound antelope. It is a fight that will only be won by gunplay. Whether the cat was pressured by the slow approach of the tracker into moving position, or whether the cat decided to take my brother while he had his back to him, we will never know, but Sean heard something behind him and started to turn, but it was too late.

 

That horrible roaring burp-grunt sounded as the leopard came at Sean and his young rugby reflexes were not enough. The cat was on him before he could swing the shotgun around to the right hand, or offside. Because they were both in a standing position, the leopard went for Sean’s face and throat. In most leopard maulings the victim falls to the ground and the natural sensible thing to do is to roll onto your stomach and try to protect the back of your neck. Most people do this without actually thinking about it.

 

The problem with this attack was that Sean had fallen against a young sapling which supported him in an upright position. In split seconds he tried to guard his face and the enraged beast took his arm in its mouth and snapped and crushed his left wrist without hesitation. Sean went for the cat’s face with his right fist and that went into the shredding machine too. Sean was desperate now! To this day he remembers clearly the absolute blazing hatred radiating from the yellow eyes of this furious beast. He had to force it away! He was weakening and beginning to feel real fear. This animal was going to kill him! In desperation he began to knee the standing leopard in the stomach. This probably saved his face as the cat immediately dropped its head and bit Sean in the thigh. Where Milton had been standing during those last few seconds no one knows but he eventually snatched up the discarded shotgun and blasted the 00 Buckshot side-on through the animal’s lungs at point blank range. There is no doubt in my mind that this brave action saved my brother’s life.

 

Sean crumpled down and was in bad shape. Venancio had listened in shock and dismay to the whole ten- or twelve-seconds fight. Shouts and yells all the time overridden by the furious guttural growling from the leopard and nothing at all to be seen. At the shot he yelled questions and made his way down to the bait. Between him and Milton they nursed Sean back down the koppie and drove the short distance to the manager’s home. It was about eight in the morning when my telephone rang.

 

“Wayne? It’s Clive Swanepoel at Debshan. Your brother has been very badly mauled by a leopard, you need to get hold of MARS (Medical Air Rescue Service) or an ambulance. He is conscious and on his way from Lambamaai to this loc”.

 

My heart sank.

 

Sean was picked up by the MARS ambulance at the tar road turnoff to De Beers and rushed to town. Sean’s wife, my wife, and I met him at the hospital. The 90-mile trip had to have been pure torture with no painkillers and the initial numbness of shock wearing off. We saw him laying on an operating table, white with shock, clothes and jeans shredded to pieces and dried blood everywhere. He was grimacing in pain, his lips caked with spittle, and pieces of white bone visible in his fingers. It was very unpleasant.

 

It took many painful, expensive visits to the doctor to get Sean’s arms and hands back to serviceable condition. He had fractured bones in both wrists, one arm and seven fingers. He had stitches to wounds in the shoulder, abdomen and thigh as well. Steel pins stuck out of the ends of his fingers for a long time.

 

I went out to the scene with Venancio and Milton to see what had happened to the leopard. At this stage nobody was certain that it still lay where it had fallen after Milton shot it. We went cautiously up to the scene and found the leopard dead. He was an absolute beauty in the prime of his life and weighed 185 pounds. We took photographs but Venancio’s heart was not in it and we cleaned up the area and returned to Bulawayo.

 

It took Sean several months to become operational again. When he did, he was determined to get back into leopard hunting. He had been plagued with nightmares – the hating eyes and stinking breath woke him night after night. The near-death attack had severely shaken his confidence and he needed to face another follow-up. Needless to say he faced the fire and overcame any nervousness he may have been worrying about. Milton was put forward for an award, which included money, at the Professional Hunters and Safari Operators end-of-year Ball and I was glad that he won it.

 

The Shangani mauling was not so much a wake-up call to those of us who make a living out of hunting the big cats, but a horrible violent reminder that one day, somewhere far out in the bush, the dice will roll. And there will be no aces.