Chapter Fifteen
Follow Up
I remember once reading something along these lines – “When following a wounded leopard, you have an 80% likelihood of getting mauled,” and, “When following a wounded lion, you have a 20% chance of a mauling”. And then the bad news, “If you’re mauled by a lion, the likelihood of death (yours) is a horrible 80%. If you’re mauled by a leopard, you’re only 20% likely to die”.
Sounds a bit like, “don’t worry about the Ebola virus too much, you’ll probably just die from malaria”.
But whoever came up with these percentages, in my opinion, did hit pertinent points. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the percentages, but the idea seems sound. Wounded, or even unwounded, angry lions are very vocal. When they spot the hunter they will growl menacingly, or sometimes they will give an irritated grunt and make off. So the hunter has warning, and can at least prepare himself and face the right direction before the terrifying hell of a charging lion breaks from the grass.
A leopard, however, says nothing. He just lays there, crouched for the spring, and only once he is in the charge does he give vent to guttural grunts. The exception to this, I have found, is when hounds are involved. The leopard will be rumbling away like a huge engine all the time the dogs are near him, and great angry belches erupt from him when he attacks any hound which has ventured too close. But without the hounds, he is silent. Another factor which also raises the likelihood of being hurt by the leopard as opposed to the lion, is that he will only charge from very close range. He will try by all means to hide there undetected, or he will slip away at the first opportunity. But when he feels the game is up, or when he has been seen, he comes out of the bush like a snarling bolt of lightning.
Camouflage also plays an important part here. Lions are adept at camouflage; they have to be in their line of business. But leopards wrote the book on concealment. I have been amazed, many times, at the scantness of cover in which a leopard has hidden himself. Of course a large leopard weighs 150 pounds, while a large lion will weigh three times that, so it is much easier for the spotted one to worm himself into effective cover.
All these factors make it far more likely that wounded leopard will score against the hunters. And score they do. Without even racking the brain I can think of a dozen people I personally know who have had unfortunate encounters with wounded leopards, the most serious attack being the one on my brother at Shangani.
In the early nineties a startling story made the rounds in Bulawayo about a botched follow-up in the Gwaai River Valley where everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. I read a well-written story on this particular incident not long ago, by Kevin Thomas, an excerpt of which follows, taken from Battle of the Gwayi edited from his book “Shadows of an African Twilight” and published in the African Hunter Magazine Volume 10 No.6, 2004. A very angry gut shot cat inflicted wounds on five people, and to make things worse, an inexperienced game scout let rip with a shotgun and bagged one of the follow-up team. Two different assaults had been mounted against this cat and he damned nearly won both of them.
Battle of the Gwayi
Professional Hunter Mike Bunce walked right past the wounded leopard 355 but his tracker, following, looked down to his right and ‘locked’ eyes with it. That is all that it takes. In a blur of snarling rage, the leopard launched itself at the tracker, and, downing him, bit deeply into his left upper bicep. It then raked its claws across his back before discarding him and springing up with lightning speed onto Bill Chatham’s bare head, where it did a ‘number’ on him with exposed hook-like talons. It then launched itself from Bill’s bald and bleeding dome onto the luckless Dave Chatham. By this time in a frenzied rage accompanied by loud growling and snarling it really worked Dave Chatham over, as they rolled around in the dust and leaves, locked in deadly combat. Dave’s clothes were soon in tatters and torn bits and pieces festooned the battleground. Under these circumstances there is little that one can do short of cleaving the leopard’s head with a panga, or trying to stick it with a spear or bash its head in with a kirrie. You most certainly cannot shoot it for the incredible speed of the encounter may well see the person getting mauled, being shot in error, or a bullet ‘driving’ through the animal and killing the person.
After evacuating the wounded, Mike Bunce led a second follow up laterin the day and once more led the way in.
This time his intrepid band of hunters’ was made up of Thys de Vries, the PH son of well known safari operator ‘Buck’ de Vries, plus two Forestry Commission game scouts’ armed with l2 gauge shotguns loaded with number 4 shot shell. Young de Vries was carrying a NATO 7 .62mm FN military rifle. No sooner had the group of hunters arrived at the scene of the morning’s joust, than the leopard decided to carry the battle to them. It did so suddenly, without warning, attacking Mike Bunce with extreme aggression, before dislodging itself from his lacerated form and rushing Thys de Vries, who tried to bring his NATO 7.62mm FN into play. He got off one shot that was later reportedly found to have creased the leopard’s belly. Thys’ nightmare then became reality. His FN had a ‘stoppage’. An empty case was jammed in the breech. This was all go for the leopard and it took but a fraction of a second to land on top of Thys bringing him to the ground. Thys then began to receive similar treatment from the leopard that the hospitalised Dave Chatham had.
This time around, however, there were two extremely nervous game scouts who had witnessed both PHs bite the dust within seconds of each other. It was just too much for one of them, because he knew that standing closest to Thys de Vries, who was by this time involved in a serious and very noisy joust on the ground with the leopard, he would be next on the leopard’s ‘Want List’. By his way of thinking, and as a true survivalist, it was time to do something so he did just that. He let rip with his shotgun at the rolling man and leopard locked in close combat at his feet. His timing was, however, slightly out and he jerked the trigger as Thys de Vries was on an upward roll and on top of the leopard. Thys absorbed the fully ‘choked’ number 4 shot into his one buttock cheek. It brought tears to his eyes and cancelled out any pain that the leopard was meting out! Thys no doubt then began to holler in his home language to shoot the f”**ing leopard, not me! This had the desired effect and both game scouts brought their shotguns into play. It was all that Thys de Vries could do trying to keep a pissed-off and dying leopard between him and two game scouts who had gone berserk. Eventually, the leopard gave up, due to the weight of lead that it had absorbed, (both l 2ga and .458 Winchester, as well as the 30-06 soft nose from the night before). By then the leopard-lacerated PH Mike Bunce had come back into play and was able to put in a coup-degrace. All of the ‘players’ in this last scenario made it back and they too, were casualty evacuated and joined their colleagues in Bulawayo’s Mater Dae Hospital. The hospital ward now held five lacerated casualties to one enraged leopard, a poor show all round.
All this, I think, makes the point that the wounded leopard is an extremely dangerous adversary and certain rules or procedures need to be taken when conducting the follow-up.
It is hard to believe, but when we look back over our records covering the years of specialist leopard hunting, a shocking 50% of cats presented to the hunter have been missed, wounded, or allowed to escape unshot at! This is from a double-sandbagged rest, at less than 110 yards, with at least a million candlepower spotlight! The two main reasons seem to be “buck fever” – pure hand-shivering excitement and nerves, and the oldest, most common enemy of the rifleman, the jerked trigger, or flinch. A distant third is difficulty identifying the target. Hunters anticipate a golden, black-rosetted skin whilst they are sitting in the blind. But the reality is that the leopard, under the light, usually looks a pale dusty grey colour, especially at a distance past 80 yardsor so, and this departure from what has been anticipated so acutely, can throw the hunter off for a crucial few seconds.
So much for the reasons resulting in lots of wounded leopards. For want of a better place to start, I think it makes sense to discuss firearms used in following wounded leopards.
Around the campfires of African big-game country, I think the most debated, discussed, beaten-to-death topic, way ahead of religion, politics and ladies, is firearms, bullets and ballistics. The beauty of this topic (for the gun enthusiast) is that like religion, politics and ladies, there is no clear-cut black and white indisputable answer. They can argue happily all night long. It is open to personal preference, different terrains, different weather conditions and a host of other factors. All of which come into play deep into the fireside arguments. Once again I can only write about our personal experiences and what works for us regarding the great firearm debate.
At the end of the Rhodesian war I commenced hunting for Major Don Price, and shortly after that I worked for one of Rhodesia’s pioneer safari operators, Fanie Pretorius, whose base was Matetsi Safari Area Unit 7, on the Zambezi River, about 50 miles upstream from Victoria Falls. Fanie had been very badly mauled by a wounded lion and was convalescing when I went to help him. In fact, to my mind Fanie never really recovered from this severe mauling, even though he is a strong giant of a man. Fanie’s back-up weapon was a .460 Weatherby Magnum. When talking guns one day he told me about a client’s wounded bull elephant which was crossing the Westwood vlei, going like a bat-out-of-hell westwards, towards the teak forests of the Botswana border. The elephant was a good 200 meters away when Fanie brought him down with a well-placed 500 grain bullet to the hip. I never forgot this story, and I made up my mind there and then to try to get bold of a .460 as soon as I was financially able. In those early days I was using a Sako.375 which had been given to me by a Danish client. This is a beautiful rifle which I still have today, 24 years later.
I do not class myself as a “gun nut” and could not argue effectively against any ballistics ‘fundi’, but one thing I do have, is plenty of experience seeing what bullets can do to big game animals. I have faced charging elephant, buffalo, lion and leopard, even a charging bushbuck and a wildebeest! I have read all about “hydrostatic shock”, “knock-down power”, “latent expansion”, and many other impressive sounding phrases describing bullet performance. But I have also seen an impala shot low in the shoulder with a .458. This impala had not read the chapter on knockdown power, and he ran off. He ran like hell for about three miles, leading us all a merry dance with his shattered leg wind-milling sickeningly. I have seen numerous animals shot with big rifles in the wrong place, and it is amazing how far African game can go on three legs, or with other horrendous wounds. As every hunter knows, the most important aspect of shooting a game animal, whether it is with a .22 Hornet or a .700 Nitro, is placing the bullet in the correct place. That is it. Number one priority! The second rule should be having the right tools for the right job. The hunter obviously needs enough firepower to achieve the task he has set himself.
But the professional hunter’s responsibilities extend further than that of the pleasure hunter-sportsman. He must have the correct tool which can handle a huge variety of different circumstances. He will occasionally have to pull the trigger at a disappearing animal’s backside, or at just a fleeting glimpse of tawny skin through the scrub mopane. He will have to face 12 thousand pounds of screaming bull elephant and he will have to have confidence that his rifle will protect human life. He must be able to kill a large animal as far as he can shoot with reasonable accuracy, and he must be able to kill at point blank range. A lot of people will point out that there are numerous categories of firearms for numerous different tasks. That is true. But Murphy says that you will have the wrong rifle in your hand when the stool samples go into the fan. When you have been following Joe’s wounded leopard into the impenetrable Malalangwe bush at the base of the koppies with your trusty 12 gauge shotgun at the ready, Murphy will show you the huge cat, blood on his guts, looking back at you 85 yards away up in the rocks. You will look down at your shotgun and you will hate Murphy. And you will hate yourself. Penetrating an animal’s vitals with bullets is what kills an animal. Not knockdown, or hydrostatic shock, or any of these other by-products of shooting bullets into wild animals. So I made up my mind many years ago that I need to have a rifle which, above all else, I shoot well, under any and all circumstances. That rifle must be able to kill, easily, the largest land animal on earth, and it must also be able to do it from any angle. When you are following up wounded dangerous game you cannot wait for, or work towards, the perfect shot. You have to take the one which is offered. And more often than not it is a bad one. My .375, and later, a very short stint with a .458, showed me that they were not what I needed. Obviously they had their uses but they both had severe limitations too, the most glaring being lack of penetration on the big game – elephant and buffalo.
I finally got my hands on a brand new .460 Weatherby in 1985. In the last twenty years this rifle has saved my life more than once, the lives of at least three of my staff, and the lives of various clients. An incident occurred in the late l990s which turned out to be an eerie return to full circle. Some friends operating Inyathi Hunters on Unit 3 Matetsi safari area asked me to assist in a large group safari for elephant. The clients were Mexicans and they were all pleasant, fun people. I believe I had the most easy-going fellow of the lot except for one quirk. This fellow under no circumstances, wanted me toback him up on his elephant. I am a long way removed from being a “double tap” man. In the early 1980s I worked for Dan Landrey of Denda Safaris and one of the things he taught me was, “It’s a perfect job you’ve done when you don’t have to fire a single shot the whole safari”. I’ve watched some of these big game videos that seemed to have tried their damndest to turn good old-fashioned African Safaris into something glitzy, American, and above all marketable, and in them the professional hunter shoots every single animal! It is puzzling to believe that the clients are so ecstatic on the films, having paid all their money just so that the PH can enjoy a whole prolonged season of freebig game shooting and kill their trophy for them! Takes all kinds I guess. Anyway, back to Javier, who did not want me to back him up. Unit 3, Matetsi, has as its western border, a cut-line separating Zimbabwe and Botswana. If any wounded game animal crosses that border, it cannot be followed. The dollars are paid and the show is over. I explained this to Javier, and told him that I generally do not fire ‘back-up’ shots, and that I prefer a hunter to kill his own game, but if we came across a trophy bull anywhere near the Botswana border, I should put an insurance round into the animal as well. He said “We see”.
Accompanying this safari was Rod Evans, a professional hunter from Bulawayo who was in the process of accumulating elephant experience in order to upgrade his full hunter’s licence. I was happy to have Rod along as he was pleasant company and a highly skilled man with his hands if it came to firearm or vehicle repair. We glassed many, many elephant. Finally we found a group of 17 bulls, one of which was a beautiful symmetrically-shaped 55 to 60 pounder. We manoeuvred into position but the elephants started to sense something was amiss, and they began to move off. We finally got a chance at the bull we wanted. He was angling very slightly away, going from our right to left, at about 30 yards. Javier was carrying a .375, Rod a .450 Watts, and myself the Weatherby.
“I shoot, I shoot, – you don’t shoot!” says Javier.
“Okay, okay, go for the lungs Javier, right in the crease behind the shoulder, first shot perfect, then give two more!”
The .375 cracked, the elephant sagged briefly, then a merry tinkle andclatter as Javier’s magazine floor plate opened and all his bullets fell on his boots.
“Shoot, shoot, okay! Shoot Wayne!” says Javier.
Both Rod and I let go at the bull, but he had now turned and we were firing wildly at his stomach area as he merged with the others. After one shot we held fire. The 17 elephant bulls wheeled back to the right, heading for Botswana with our big bull at the back. They crashed through a shallow bushy dip, then up the other side. They were now in full flight and bent on the border. The big bull was a good 200 yards out, but I could see him for a split second, aimed at his right hip and squeezed off. At the boom of the rifle he sagged at the back, then disappeared into the dust. Rod and I both scorched Javier with ‘I told you so’ glares, and we went to check if there was a blood trail. The opportunity we had been offered for back-up was poor, but I knew that between us, we had some rounds in that bull. The follow up was unsuccessful. I guessed that Javier had put his first .375 shot too far right and too far back, into the guts of the poor animal. The little blood we found dried up within 500 yards. The next day we put a light aircraft up to look for the wounded animal to no avail. We walked, for several days, but came up empty handed, and the safari closed on a dull note.
Five days later, on a new safari, Rod was again accompanying the hunters when the group drove up to a water-hole, or pan, near the border. Inside the water was standing a big bull elephant whose tusks Rod recognised immediately as Javier’s! After a quick heated debate with the game-scout, Rod and the PH walked up to the elephant and dispatched him. He was literally on his last legs. His right hip was dishevelled and broken and the poor old boy was in dreadful condition. The knives came out as it was now ‘proof time’, and Rod had to convince everybody that this was indeed Javier’s elephant. They recovered my .460 bullet which had smashed the right hip joint and angled down into the back of the guts.
There followed prolonged petty vindictiveness by the department of wildlife authorities at the Matetsi Headquarters. These people said that since Javier’s safari was over, he could not claim the elephant, even though Rod had proved, with my bullet, that this was indeed the bull which Javier had wounded and paid for! I do not know how Inyathi Hunters resolved the issue, but Javier got his tusks. Thanks to the .460.
I understand that they weighed 60 and 62 pounds. It was with a wry smile that I thought about the incident 20 years before, not far away as the crow flies, that prompted me to look for a .460 Weatherby. How similar the two situations were.
The obvious problem with the .460 Weatherby, and other powerful magnum rifles is recoil. It is pointless owning a rifle you are scared of, and flinch from when firing. I have always advised young PHs that they should use the most powerful rifle that they can handle effectively. People have different tolerances of recoil. It should also be borne in mind that a good PH will probably only fire his big rifle in an emergency four or five times a year. Add to that three or four rounds fired checking the zero of the rifle, and it is not a lot of shooting. Secondly, when he does fire, he will usually be powered with adrenaline and excitement, and will not notice recoil anyway. I have found that one of the biggest mistakes made by sportsmen hunters preparing for a safari is the over-use of bench shooting. Once a rifle is zeroed, I do not believe that any shots at all should be fired off the bench. Firing a big rifle from the bench drives the recoil straight into the collarbone area with the body unable to ‘roll with the punch’ as is the case when firing in the standing or sitting position. A hunter would be far better served aiming his empty rifle, or dry firing onto an empty case, several times a day inside his home, than he would be, blasting away from a shooting bench, developing a perfect flinch just in time for his safari.
As much as I swear by my .460 as a back-up weapon, I do not recommend any Weatherby calibres as a client’s hunting rifle. Too many hunters are sold on the ballistics of these powerful rifles, but most people cannot handle them without developing a flinching habit. They have a punishing recoil. One problem I had with the .460 when I first got it, was the murderous volume of noise flying sideways and backwards out of the built-in muzzle brake system. If you fired sitting down, dust would fly up ten feet either side of you, and your ears would not recover. I already had ear damage at an early age from my time spent in the war and the .460 made it worse very, very quickly. I took the rifle over to the US, and had the muzzle cut back to get rid of the muzzle brakes. It did help a little, but the damage was done. With ‘ear protection’ being about as common to the Rhodesian fire-force soldier as ‘tender feelings’, or ‘post-traumatic stress-disorder complaints’, it was inevitable that I would develop the constant maddening buzzing in my ears that sounded like cicada beetles inside my head. I have carried the .460 now for twenty years, so it feels like a natural extension when I am in the bush and as surprising as it may seem, it works very well on charging cats, both lion and leopard. One big advantage, besides being the rifle I am most familiar with, is that it can be fired accurately up to about 220 yards if you have a good set of open sights. I favour the conventionally-angled big game back sight in iron, and the tiniest iron bead that I can find, fitted at the front. This I paint white every couple of months. I tried the Williams big game sights made from an alloy, but they are not made for tough work. The adjusting screw strips the thread very easily, making them worthless. I know several other PHs who carry their ‘big gun’ when following wounded cats, and most of them do so for the following reasons. Firstly, that they are more familiar with their big rifle than any other, and secondly, that shotguns are for the birds.
Some hunters follow up wounded leopard with a shotgun. In 1986 a PH named Russell Labuschagne was working for me and he and I were guiding two Hawaiians for leopard, down on the Bubye River in the Lowveld. Russell and his hunter, Mike Iwaai, were sitting for a big female a couple of miles away from where I was sitting on the Bubye for a big male, with a hunter named Eugene Yap. At about 7pm we heard Mike’s rifle go off. He had his leopard, and she was a beauty – probably the heaviest female I have ever seen. Our leopard did not come in until close to midnight. Gene wounded the cat and we went back to camp which was a ramshackle fly-camp less than half a mile away. I do not remember why Peter Sebele, my tracker, was not on this safari, but the end result was that Russell and I were doing the follow-up alone. As soon as it was light we picked up the blood trail which lead directly across the dry Bubye riverbed, into the thick reed beds, and then out the other
side.
Russell was carrying a double barrel side-by-side l2 gauge shotgun, and I was armed with a semi-automatic 12 gauge with three rounds inside. We both had 00 Buckshot as ammunition. We found where the cat had lain down under some thick bushes about 500 yards from where Gene had wounded him. The blood was fresh. We had pushed him out of this thicket and back into the thick reedbeds. It was hellishly thick. In some places we had to push the gun ahead, then follow, wriggling on our bellies like snakes. The strain was fatiguing and we were taking turns in tracking, one guarding while the other was doing the tracking. Luckily we had reached some slightly more open reeds before we found the cat. Russell was tracking, and was about five yards ahead of me when the leopard roared and came from our right hand side from about 20 feet out. We both saw him coming through the reeds and commenced firing as soon as we saw him. In a rush of adrenaline both guns were suddenly silent. And empty. The cat was still thrashing and roaring in a fierce ball, biting himself, the reeds and the sand. Russell was standing about three feet from this raging beast with an empty gun and I yelled for him to pull back. We left the leopard still growling and carrying on and made our way out of the river to where the staff and clients were waiting. We grabbed Gene’s rifle and stalked carefully back into the reeds where we found the animal dead. It was a huge leopard and everyone was overjoyed at the outcome. It had been badly wounded in the liver and guts which accounted for him not making much mileage during the night. We took a lot of really spectacular photographs with both clients and their leopards in one picture.
Shortly after, we skinned the trophies and Russell called me over to look at the carcass of Gene’s cat. Three pellets, out of a total of 70 had actually penetrated far enough to finish this cat! It was quite amazing. We were fairly new to leopard hunting in those days and were of the generally held belief that leopards should be followed with a shotgun. That was the last time I ever did this. The remainder of the pellets had lodged in the flesh just under the kin. Granted, we were inexperienced and probably fired too early and too much. and we were shooting through some light reed cover, but I was not impressed. At fifteen to twenty feet I had expected to stop the cat in his tracks. We were lucky.
I read an article in 2004, published in the African Hunter magazine about following cats with shotguns, and the writer hit on a very succinct observation. The shotgun was made for bird-hunting – leave it in camp until its bird-hunting time! In this particular article the writer described a follow-up on a wounded lion, and one of the hunters was carrying a shotgun! After the lion was accounted for, with the help of some heavy rifles, they found that the shotgun pellets had barely penetrated the skin. The same as Russell and I discovered so long ago in the Bubye.
Somebody standing up for shotguns on cats would say this to me, “You recommend shooting a charging leopard at point blank range with your big rifle, but a shotgun, at point blank, will also stop a charging leopard!” This is correct, it would. My argument is that I shoot my .460 well in an emergency, I trust it, so there is no need to swap. Secondly, as mentioned previously, if you are carrying a shotgun, you will not be able to take the ‘long’ shot (60 to 120 yards) at an escaping cat. With my heavy rifle, I can.
Towards the end of the 2004 season I was at Graham’s ranch when George Parkin’s hunter wounded a big male leopard. George followed the blood trail the next morning as far as a huge dangerous labyrinth of rocks and caves. Quite rightly he returned to camp to seek help. He arranged for a houndsman, Theo Bronkhorst, to come out with his pack. I accompanied the group back to the caves but took a back seat with the client whilst George and Theo got on with it. It was only a few minutes before the rumbling growls rose to meet the baying hounds. Theo was armed with a revolver (I do not remember the calibre) and George with buckshot. They managed to get a view of the cat down in the crevasses and both George and Theo put several rounds into him. The pelt was very badly blown apart by the shotgun, but on close inspection not a single pellet had penetrated a vital organ!
I have heard several times – “don’t worry about ruining the head or the skin on a wounded lion or leopard – the taxidermist can fix it – rather his skinthan yours!” I agree with this 100%. But looking at this skin I felt pretty bad. However, no one was hurt, and the client got his wounded cat, it was a good job all round. Except, once again, I saw the shotgun fail.
In summary of all this, regarding the ‘right’ weapon for leopard follow-up. I can only answer thus – a large calibre rifle that the hunter shoots best, loaded with soft nose bullets. No shotguns! One more small point on our follow-up armoury. When Sean was convalescing from his near-death mauling he said that had he been armed with a pistol as well as the shotgun he was carrying, he would have killed that leopard when it was on him. I thought about it for a while. Since that day, I carry my 9mm Glock, cocked, and jammed in my belt when following wounded leopard and lion. If I had a I0mm, I would carry it. It is further insurance, and it certainly makes me feel more prepared. We have been asked many times on many aspects of the follow-up, so I think the most sensible thing to do is to describe a typical scenario in the hills. That way I can stay away from the irritating do this, do that diatribe.
Ninety nine percent of the time our leopard is wounded at night. We wait for the vehicle and staff to arrive. Usually at least a good three quarters of an hour has passed before we are ready for the next step. Often, from watching how the cat fell, and from what the client has to say about his sight picture at the time of the shot, we will have some idea about what to expect. Once the jeep is with us we drive up to the bait shining the light very thoroughly all around the bait tree. Occasionally, if a leopard has been spined or brained, he will be laying right there. Beautiful. If not, then I have my No.2 tracker shine the light from the vehicle whist I go forward armed with my rifle and my pistol tucked into my belt. I like to move a few yards in a crouch, then quickly kneel in the firing position looking around over the sights of my rifle. This way I am down on the cat’s level and can see under any bushes nearby. Once we have established that the leopard is not right there, Peter joins me and we look carefully for blood in the bait tree or on the bait, and obviously on the ground. At this stage only the two of us are on the ground.
Usually you can tell if the leopard is hit as the shot is fired. You are only 90 to 120 yards away, so you can usually see the animal take the impact of the bullet. If he is hit solidly, through a shoulder bone, he will be knocked out of the tree, or if he is on the ground, he will be knocked sideways or down. He will normally issue a loud grunt or cough as he makes off. Quite often, a leopard will be temporarily paralysed in part of his body at the shot, and the rest of his body will be snarling and clawing around beneath the bait. But if a leopard is shot cleanly right through the lungs, he will leave the tree or bait area as if he is untouched. Many times we have found tiny amounts of blood at the bait, only to discover the cat is stone dead the following morning not even 100 yards away! Another way in which you can tell if a leopard is hard hit, is to listen carefully, immediately after the shot. If he is mortally struck he will be noisily bashing through the sticks and bushes and you can hear his getaway quite easily. But if he has been nicked or missed, he will disappear silently.
I have heard some hunters saying that it is better to follow a wounded cat at night with the spotlight, as the eyes will give the leopard away as he is watching you. This makes sense, and in certain areas of savannah or Miombo woodland I would probably try it. But the Matobo Hills, in my opinion, is the wrong place to fool around with wounded cats at night. There are so many rocks and crevices and holes which could conceal a cat, that the likelihood of having to receive stitches is great.
Usually by looking at the bait, or in the bait tree, Peter and I can tell where the leopard has been hit. Sometimes a bullet hole in the bait tree, or into trees or rocks behind the bait tree will indicate a possible miss whilst blood and meat, or bone or cut hair, will indicate a strike. Depending on what we find around the leopards’ getaway tracks, we will decide to follow or to leave it until the morning. Sometimes one of the staff will hear a gurgle or a sigh as the cat expires nearby, and in this case we will go after it. If thick gouts of lung, or lung blood, or lots of dark arterial blood are evident, we will also go after the cat. I keep a small 12volt battery, usually a light car or motorcycle battery, which we use to follow leopard at night. We unhook the light from the big car battery and attach it securely to the smaller battery. We do not rely on crocodile clips to attach the spotlight wires to the battery. Murphy will remove them just when the first saplings go down in the charge. We wire them securely with baling wire and pliers. One of the staff, normally the number two tracker, will carry this battery while Peter shines the light. I am in front, Peter behind me and the third man behind him. We will start off kneeling at the first tracks or blood-sign. I will move back slightly, or to one side, so Peter can shine thoroughly into all cover. Once he has done that we will then put the light onto the blood sign and move forward. Peter shines the beam forward, and I move quickly, crouched, for about ten feet, then again I kneel down, rifle at the ready. Peter and No.3 follow.
We then start the whole process again. Look into cover, look down, find blood, note furthest blood, lift light, move forward. It is stressful work. Over many years Peter has had it drummed into him that if the leopard comes, he has to hold the light on the cat so that I can get a shot. Fortunately we have not had to face a charge in these tricky circumstances at night. When we are following a cat at night and the spoor leads further than we expect it to, or if it goes up into very thick cover or caves, we call it off and wait until the morning.
Nine times out of ten in our areas, when we find the leopard dead in the morning, he is unmolested. But in government concession areas, or wilderness areas there is a very strong probability that the leopard will have been damaged by something. Normally the culprit is hyena, but I have found clients’ leopards torn apart by lions and also eaten by other leopards! It’s a horrible night for a hunter when he has to try to sleep knowing that his ten thousand dollar cat is laying out there in the bush.
On a morning follow-up dawn finds us at the bait. If at all possible we try to have another professional hunter along as back-up. Many clients want to be on the follow-up, but it is just not practical. It is difficult enough trying to keep yourself and two or three trackers out of hospital. If you add the constant worry of the welfare of your client to the pie, things become a little too much.
I have heard of, and seen a few follow-ups that are more disorganised than the Haj. One big concern, on one of these ‘everyone do their own thing’ follow-ups, is the risk of someone getting shot. Everybody is on edge, and if people start popping up unannounced in all sorts of thickets and dense grass, there is going to be a tragedy. The follow-up has to be controlled.
If we have tracks or blood spoor, Peter bends low and follows them. I follow immediately behind him, rifle at the ready, safety off, and the barrel literally above his back. No one else is on the follow-up at this stage. Every few steps we will squat down and watch the surrounding cover and pay attention to the activities of other wildlife.
About ten years ago I was hunting on Graham’s ranch with an Italian-American hunter who wounded a male leopard. A long hot boring follow-up ensued which took up most of the morning. There was just no blood at all. I was at the point of calling off the whole thing when Graham, who was assisting me, said he had found a single track leaving the area going under a cattle fence. We went to check it out and found a tiny drop of blood. Peter managed to follow for over half a mile where he found the cat’s lying-up spot amongst some thick bushes. Here there was only about a teaspoon-full of dried blood. The cat had probably licked his wound clean and left. Suddenly, further up in the hills, I heard a lone vervet monkey chattering away in agitation. I knew it was a warning call, and Graham and I ran up there as fast as we could. We saw the monkey squawking away in a pod mahogany in the middle of one of those small secluded basins or valleys we find up in the granite ranges. We moved carefully now with Graham walking around the left of the basin as we approached it, and I moved into a small outcrop of rocks in the centre near the mahogany tree. As I got there, the place simply reeked of leopard piss. Graham was out of sight, so with rifle at the ready I called for him. As I called, the leopard grunted about 25 yards to my front, and took off. I could not see him but l could see the leaves and grass marking his passage away from us. I yelled louder for Graham to backtrack around the basin back to where he had come from in the hope that he could cut it off.
Suddenly I saw the leopard leap into some rocks about 100 yards away, there was a gap about three feet wide between the boulders in the direction he was heading. I aimed at the spot and sure enough he sneaked into it. I touched off the .460 but saw nothing afterward. Graham joined me and we cautiously approached the boulders. There the cat lay with a big hole through his shoulders. We had the monkey to thank for that one.
Another incident, demonstrating how wildlife can give away the presence of a wounded cat occurred in 2005 in western Tanzania. I was hunting with Frank Zitz, a good friend of ours who is a top taxidermist from the East Coast. Frank wounded an old male leopard late in the evening. It was just before dark and Frank had difficulty making out what position the cat was feeding in. When we followed up the next morning there was very little blood and we battled to get started. After about two hours we finally found where something had lain down near some young Ilala palms. There was no blood, but on further examination we found tracks. The area was very grassy, and without blood, tracking was impossible.
I had been listening subconsciously to a flock of arrow-marked babblers for some time before it registered. They may have seen the leopard! These plain-coloured brown birds are inquisitive, noisy things and will often harass snakes and occasionally give unwelcome attention to hunters waiting in blinds. I told Frank to stay and cover the trackers who were still looking for tracks while I raced off towards the babblers. The birds saw me and took off. Immediately I heard an animal run through the low noisy palm fronds into a thicket of tall yellow grass surrounding an anthill. This must be him. I approached the anthill with my .460 at the fire position. I saw a clump of grass move about ten feet in front of me and I stopped. Nothing. I did not know whether I should fire, it did not seem a good idea as I was not I00% sure it was the leopard, or whether I should just wait, covering the spot. I waited but I was getting tired of waiting. Suddenly two small black and white batis (tiny birds) arrived over the grass and alighted on a spindly bush and began twittering like mad, glancing sideways all the while at the animal in the grass. I decided to take a shot and risk being left facing a charge whilst trying to reload. I aimed at where I was sure the animal was, and fired.
Immediately at the shot, the leopard commenced roaring and tearing up the grass and bush. Still I could not see him! Frank now came up and I motioned for him to climb up in a tree with his rifle. I did the same. Frank saw the leopard and dispatched him with two more shots. It was a beautiful old male with worn-down yellow teeth, and interestingly, a home-hammered musket ball under the skin of his right shoulder. Without the babblers I do not believe that we would have nailed this cat. We noticed that my shot into the grass had been a lucky one and had broken the cat’s pelvis.
Back to the follow-up. Peter and I will move in this fashion until we find the leopard, or until we lose the spoor. If, or when we lose the blood we mark the last blood with toilet paper and carry on with tracks, or what we think may be tracks. At this stage it is important not to fall into the trap of the gunman also looking for spoor. The man with the rifle must be looking about 10 to 15 feet out into the most likely cover expecting the charge every second. If there are no tracks or scuff marks showing, then basic tracking procedures follow. The tracker and PH assess the route the cat has used so far, and then try to gauge the most likely route that he must have taken. That route must now be checked a few feet further. If that route or pathway, produces nothing then the next most likely route must be checked, and so on. If the situation is ideal, and there is a back-up gun, then that person will be behind me covering one side and my focus would be mainly forward and on the other side. In this way we are covering the 180° that we have not walked through. If the follow-up still produces no blood, Peter and I will stand up and move out about 20 or 30 yards where we have not been walking around and sitting and leaving all sorts of sign. We will slowly cover a 180° arc in the direction the cat’s last tracks were heading.
A variation on this is for the back-up gun to take one tracker and take a left quadrant, and Peter and I to take the front right quadrant. When doing this, it is imperative to know where the other two are operating in order that we do not shoot each other. If a cat has been struck mortally, we would by now have sign of him again, or we would have found him. As a last resort, a couple of ever-widening 360° circles around the last confirmed spoor will generally produce something when following a well-struck cat.
There are so many variations of what a wounded cat can do, that it is not possible to describe them all here. In these Matobo Hills a cat which is very sick will not go far. There is plenty of cover and he will find a place in which he can hide and will lie there and die, or he will lie there and come at you when you find him. A cat which is not badly wounded will generally make his way up into the crevices and caves of the koppies. This is when serious problems arise. It does not matter how good you are, or how experienced you are, you are going to leave yourself exposed to leopard attack at some time on a prolonged follow-up. Most of the time you will walk through that exposed period – when your rifle is on your shoulder, or you are taking a leak, or you have to put your rifle down to pull yourself up onto a ledge, and nothing will happen. But it just needs that little slice of poor luck, that wrong roll of the dice, and that exposed period will happen right when you are next to the hate-filled bag of fury. It is simply not possible to fossick around the hills for seven hot hours and keep to the normal follow-up drills. Obviously the more time a crack team spends in an area without finding sign, the less likely it is that the leopard is still around. But you have to remember, Mr. Murphy is patient, and he has that horrible sense of humour.
Once all sign of the cat is lost, or when a cat gets into broken cave country, we ask the client if he wants us to try to organise some dogs to help find it. This can cost anywhere from $500 to $2500, depending on how long the dogs keep trying. Although – as can be seen from the chapter on hounds – I do not have much faith in hound hunting, they are definitely a big asset when looking for wounded leopards. They do not need blood-sign or footprints, and have boundless energy, and they can get into holes that we cannot, or do not want to. They are also very useful in attracting a leopard’s attention in thick cover whilst the hunters try to get a shot. We have used two professional houndsmen and their teams with varying degrees of success and we have also used local tribesmen and their motley bands of curs, and their effectiveness was quite surprising.
If hounds are unavailable, it is up in the hills long after the blood-spoor has been lost, that I believe the hunters are at their most vulnerable. Down in the thick stuff near the bait everyone is fresh; everyone expects and is ready for a charge. But when the excitement has worn off, and the sun beats down, and everyone splits up and starts poking around listlessly in dark cracks and caves, Murphy will find the leopard. And he will make sure you walk right past him.
Whilst free-ranging the dogs, a large male leopard was surprised, chased by the dogs, and then wounded by Mark’s client. The very cavalier and not to mention naïve Mr Sparks spied the wounded cat inside a crevasse. Unarmed, he requested Mark’s old revolver, cocked it, and advanced casually toward the fracas as if he intended to do nothing more than dispense a few words of advice. The enraged leopard saw Mr Sparks and tore out of the cave as if propelled by powerful machinery. The furious leopard issued the by now extremely vocal Mr Sparks a severe mauling before being dispatched by Mark Butcher.
