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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Mammal Profile
Red Duiker
Based on Chris and Mathilde Stuart’s book, “Game Animals of the World,” published by African Hunting Gazette, here’s everything hunters need to know about the Red Duiker
English: Red Duiker
Latin: Ephalophus natalensis and C. harveyi / C. callipygus and C. weynsi
German: Rotducker
French: Céphalophe du Natal /Céphalophe de Harvey
Spanish: Duiqueros rojos
Measurements
Total length: 80 cm – 1.2 m (2.6‘– 3.9‘)
Tail: 9 – 16 cm (3.5” – 6.3”)
Shoulder Height: 45 – 60 cm (1.5‘– 2.0‘)
Weight: 10 – 24 kg (22 – 53 lb)
Description
Red and Harvey’s duikers are very similar, having a rich, reddish-brown coat, with the underparts being slightly paler. Chin and throat are paler than the rest of body. The tail is short, and towards the base is the same color as the rest of the body, but towards the tip has mixed black and white hairs. There is a well-developed crest of hair on the top of the head, sometimes obscuring the short horns. Both sexes carry horns which slope backwards at the same angle as the face. Two very similar species – Peters’s and Weyns’s duikers – have “red duiker” coloring, except the rump is usually richer reddish, with western animals paler. Peters’s has a darker stripe down the back, usually absent in Weyns’s.
Distribution
The red extends from north-eastern South Africa, along the Mozambique coastal plain and into southern Tanzania, thence northwards into Kenya. Both are huntable in Tanzania, the red in South Africa and Mozambique. Peters’s and Weyns’s occur across the Congolean forest belt, but the exact range split unknown. One, or both, are huntable in Cameroon and C.A.R.
Conservation standing
All are heavily hunted as bushmeat, but in many areas all four species occur in substantial numbers. Red probably>40 000; Harvey’s >20 000; Peters’s and Weyns’s together may be >500 000. The last two species probably benefit from dense thicket growth resulting from forest clearing.
Habitats
Red and Harvey’s are forest types and associated thickets and dense woodland. Peters’s and Weyns’s occur in equatorial lowland forests, with Weyns’s extending into montane forests in the east.
Behavior
Very little is known about either Peters’s and Weyns’s, but probably similar to the other two species, and even these are poorly known. Usually single animals are sighted, but it is probable that a pair may live in loose association within the same home range and territory. Small dung pellet heaps are deposited in a limited area, or midden, and serve as territory markers, as do secretions from the gland in front of the eye. Probably all four species are mainly day active.
Breeding
Mating season: Throughout the year, but peaks
Gestation: 210 days
Number of young: 1
Birth weight: 980 g (35 oz) (red duiker only)
Sexual maturity: 18 – 24 months
Longevity: One captive 6 years 3 months (red duiker)
Food
Browse, including leaves, flowers, fruits, and commonly feed on discards from monkeys below trees.
Rifles and Ammunition
Suggested Caliber: .224 – .243. Bullet: Expanding bullet.
Sights: Low-range variable scope.
Hunting Conditions: Medium-range shots in open forest.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17875,17876″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
By Ernest Dyason
I grew up in an era when hunting as a profession was well established but not so well known. In fact, when I was a small kid I did not know you could do it as a “Job”.
I have a half-brother who was a professional hunter at the time, the infamous Frank Dyason, but he was a grown man, and me just a very shy little boy. I was referred to as the small boy with the pink feet, as all you ever saw of me, was the bottom of my bare feet, fleeing from anyone unknown to me. I loved the bush and the solitariness of it.
As a child growing up on our smallholding in the then Clubview, now Centurion, my passion was going to our game farm, Thornybush in the eastern lowveld region. School holidays were always spent hunting, and just being in the silent wilderness. As kids, we always commented on the “quiet” there, and it was a competition on who could first detect the distant sound of the train, some 40 miles away.
There were no fences yet, and game was not as abundant as it is now. Abundant enough, though, to be able to fill the freezers every winter with biltong and game meat. We siblings were all given our opportunity to hunt, when we were old enough. Before my time came, the closest I could get to the action was to help butcher the carcasses. Once they were all cut up, I was allowed to collect what cuts I could salvage for my own business, which was selling dried game meat to the local communities back in the city. That and the many doves and guinea fowl I would shoot on a daily basis, supplemented my pocket money of 25 cents per week, very nicely.
I was the late one, and thus the last to be allowed to officially hunt any large animal. Unknown to my parents I had taken shots at many wildebeest with my .22, but never recovered any. If ever my Dad had found out, my behind would have been glowing in the dark.
My oldest full brother was tasked to take me hunting. He must have been around 13 at that time, a good eight years older than me, and very experienced in the hunt. At that stage I think all my siblings were happy for me to take over, as shooting for the pot was a chore.
Up till then I had only been shooting with a .22 so I had to train with the ZiDi (.22 Hornet) with open sights, as that would be the preferred rifle for my first big animal. Shooting at a target was easy, but when the first opportunity arose for me at an impala, about 150 yards away, it just did not happen for me – I clearly remember the sights covering the whole impala.
I got a major chewing out from my older brother for wasting the bullet, and that was that -my opportunity gone.
On another occasion, and I don’t remember how many days later, we were just driving in our old Land Rover when we happened upon a warthog, just standing about 20 yards away.
My brother asked me if I wanted to try again. We only had the family’s scoped Churchill arms in .270 Win. Mag. with us. There was no hesitation. The rifle barely fitted me, but I shouldered and pulled the trigger, hitting the pig in the neck just behind the skull. The recoil was so severe that it threw me aside.
I was as astonished as was my family, but never admitted to not even aiming. My first “big” game animal was down and I was now the designated shooter. Since then I did a lot of hunting, though very seldom from the old Landy as it was just too much of a hassle to get the thing started. I would wake early in the morning, fetch my tracker and walk from camp, generally finding impala close enough from camp to shoot, get the wheelbarrow and wheel the animal back for butchering.
I also remember wanting to get out further from camp on occasion, but in order to achieve this, I needed the Landy. So, the procedure would be to remove the air filter cover from the carburetor, fill the carburetor with petrol, get the vehicle started, and then drive as fast and as far as possible before running out of fuel, then proceeding from there on foot or follow the same procedure as before if you did not reach a far enough place. My knowledge of mechanics stopped there, and I could never figure out that the fuel pump was kaput.
On one of these escapades I had hardly left the confines of the camp when I drove straight into a lioness on a fresh impala kill. The open Landy stalled and I was stuck facing the lion.
Luckily for me the lion made a hasty departure and I claimed her impala – lucky find for me. I could even get back to camp in time for my Mom’s hot tea and homemade rusks.
It was much later in life, maybe when I was around 15 years old that my half-brother Frank, approached me, then running our game lodge and hunting business on Thornybush.
I had to go with him to shoot some impala. Nonplussed, I agreed, but up until then I did not have much contact with him. Unknown to me at the time, he was testing my shooting ability. We just drove around and shot over the front of the Land Rover, not frowned upon in those days. On two occasions Frank offered to get me closer to impala we had spotted, but I declined and just shot quickly, both times dropping the impala in their tracks.
Later in life, over many alcoholic beverages, Frank actually confessed on how impressed he was with my shooting ability for my age, but at the time nothing was said. I was awarded the task of escorting all the local meat hunters that would come from time to time.
That was the first time that I realized that there may be a future in this, and that’s how it all started for me.
Ernest and Marita Dyason are the owners of Spear Safaris, based in the Lowveld region of South Africa. Ernest is the main professional hunter and operates mainly in three countries, namely South Africa, Tanzania and Burkina Faso. He has very many fond memories of his upbringing on Thornybush, now a world-renowned Photographic Game Reserve, part of the Greater Kruger system, where he can teach his children about the wildlife.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F30-31||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]Some thoughts and insights into egg-collecting
By Dr John Ledger
In an article in The Guardian in 2012, writer Kevin McKenna expressed his surprise when he saw a BBC nature programme called Autumnwatch where Sir David Attenborough admitted to being an egg-collector in his early years. He was being interviewed by Autumnwatch presenter, Chris Pakham.
The two men were debating why so few young people in the United Kingdom were getting involved with nature.
“I’m out there all the time and I just don’t see the boy that I was and you were,” said Packham. “That’s a disaster in waiting, isn’t it?” And then Sir David said: “Yes, and part of the reason for that is that it’s no longer legal to be a collector. I openly admit that I collected birds’ eggs.”
McKenna: Sir David Attenborough collected birds eggs? I was quite overcome, for I, too, had collected birds’ eggs and have been made to feel like a pariah ever since. And a leper too. It got even better as Sir David added: “I knew when the right moment was to take one, and the bird would lay another, so you didn’t damage the population. I learnt a lot.”
The Scottish government and all those myriad outdoor agencies upon whom it lavishes millions tell us how beautiful are our big open spaces and how gorgeous are our fields and forests. Yet teachers won’t take children to them because of the risk assessment. So wouldn’t it be splendid if responsible egg-collecting could be introduced into the curriculum? We could limit the collectible eggs to the 20 most common or garden species like blackbirds, song thrushes, robins and chaffinches. And you wouldn’t need to go into the Highlands for them. Most of the wee birds like these lay a couple of clutches a year, so a couple of eggs here and there wouldn’t be missed.
We’d leave the eagles and the ospreys alone.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/11/kevin-mckenna-nature-egg-collecting
In South Africa it is illegal to collect birds eggs without a permit from the appropriate government agency at provincial level, and such a permit will rarely be granted unless the activity forms part of a scientific investigation by a suitably qualified researcher.
Egg-collecting has pretty much been criminalised by the authorities and demonised by the popular conservation media in most western countries. This has effectively stamped out what used to be a widespread activity in many countries, practiced by numerous young people who later became prominent conservationists or natural history communicators and educators like Sir David Attenborough himself.
In my own case, I grew up on a South African farm where my brother and I, along with the children of our farmworkers, made up a motley band of barefoot urchins, who scoured the countryside like primitive hunter-gatherers looking for food. We each wore a catapult around the neck, and the pockets of our shorts bulged with ammunition; suitably-sized and weighted roundish stones collected along the footpaths as we made our way to the hunting grounds.
We hunted birds, but we were not without ethics, because the golden rule was that whatever we killed we had to eat. We learnt rather quickly that a dove grilled over an open fire was quite delicious, whereas most brightly-coloured and insectivorous species certainly were not. The collective firepower from our catapults was quite formidable, and the accuracy and range that some our fellow-shooters could achieve was remarkable.
We never graduated to air-rifles, I think because my father thought they were a bit too lethal and that the urchins might get too big for their boots and forget their code of ethics. Apart from some nice twelve bore shotguns my father also had a nifty little over-and-under Remington, with a .22 long rifle above and a dinky .410 shotgun below. It also had a plastic stock, which was really gross, but that never worried us one bit. My father used the .22 for dealing with the feral cats that bothered his chickens, and would occasionally use the little shotgun to bag a Swainson’s Francolin for the pot.
My brother and I were occasionally allowed to take the Remington on a hunt, which was a huge privilege, and we mostly looked for francolins which were good to eat. My brother was a great shot, but an accident at school with a cricket ball left him with a dysfunctional right eye. He quickly learnt to shoot left-eyed, and on one memorable occasion dropped a running Swainson’s Francolin with a .22 bullet in the head. But just once, mind you! He probably forgot to move the little round selector on the side down to shotgun mode, but what the heck, we still talk about that shot around the fire fifty years later…
I graduated from the catapult classes and started collecting eggs. Like the young Attenborough, I learnt to study birds and their behaviour in order to find their nests. Spotting a bird flying with a twig or a feather in its beak meant it was building a nest, and sometimes hours were spent in observation mode to pin down the exact location. When I went to high school I met other boys who were also collectors, and we spent many, many happy hours cycling and walking in pursuit of new additions to our collections.
Over the years I built up a very attractive collection of eggs, some of them objects of great beauty which sat on white cotton-wool inside glass-topped drawers, each egg with a neatly-written label indicating the place and date of collection. But for me, each egg also represented an indelible memory of exactly where and how it had been collected; what challenges of tree-climbing had been overcome, the wet and filthy road culverts that were climbed down to reach a nest, and the horror of sticking your hand deep into the nesting burrow of a Pied Starling and touching a snake skin that the birds had used to embellish their boudoir!
I graduated from egg-collecting to bird-ringing (or ‘banding’, the term used in the USA). This provided endless pleasure as the skill of trapping birds, marking them with bands and hoping you would hear about what happened to them subsequently, was a great way of developing great young naturalists and ‘citizen scientists’ (a term only invented many years later). Imagine my absolute delight and sense of achievement when two Barn Swallows that I had originally banded as a schoolboy on my father’s farm were found in Russia and in Poland!
I subsequently went on to complete a degree in Zoology and a career in wildlife conservation, and served as Director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust for 17 years. My early interest in nature and the environment was sparked and nurtured by egg-collecting, some rather primitive hunting, and mostly of course by spending time in the countryside, learning to understand, outsmart and eventually hold a beautiful piece of nature’s miracle, biodiversity itself, in your hand.
As schoolboy egg-collectors we believed that it would not be right to take all the eggs from a nest. So if there were two eggs in the nest of a dove, for example, the first-finder would take one and we would leave one. Likewise if there were three eggs, we would only take one, although there was always a bit of a dilemma there, especially if it was a coveted species. And for species that only laid one egg, the dilemma and sense of guilt would be quite painful. Four eggs would see us each take one and leave two for the bird. A guineafowl nest can hold up to 20 eggs, so there was no issue here. We only kept a single egg of each species in our collections, and that was deemed sufficient.
We read about other egg-collectors who would take an entire clutch for their collection and indeed more than one clutch if they were really serious. We thought this was highly unethical, but we could have spared ourselves the fretting. Most bird species will simply start again if they lose a clutch of eggs, and will lay replacements, especially if they were lost early in the incubation cycle. Some species will even lay two or three replacement clutches if they are having a hard time at the hands of nest predators.
Our noble sentiments at leaving the birds with some eggs were mostly misplaced. By visiting the nest in the first place we would have left signs that could be read by a mongoose, a crow, or a snake, and they would have quickly taken the eggs we had so considerately left behind.
In most birds the eggs are the most expendable stage of the life cycle. In the wild, a host of predators actively seek out nests to eat the eggs or the chicks. It seems many species are geared to deal with this threat by re-laying, or double-clutching as the behaviour is technically termed, or even triple-clutching. The number of eggs that a female can produce in this way is remarkable, and indeed it is this talent that we harness in our egg-producing chicken farms.
There is a famous, diminutive Cape Robin-Chat living at the Delta Environmental Centre in Johannesburg. She was first captured and banded on 25 May 2000, and was subsequently recaptured and given a colour ring, and has been sighted regularly in the same locality, most recently in July 2018. She is at least 18 years old now, and has been breeding every year. This species first breeds at about two years, so she might even be older than 18. But let’s assume she has attempted to breed every year for 18 years, and assume that she loses one batch of three eggs every year and lays a replacement clutch. In 18 years she has possibly laid 108 eggs, and still occupies the same territory. This means that rather few of those 108 eggs have produced breeding adult birds, and it would not have mattered very much at all if some had been taken by egg collectors.
The phenomenon of double-clutching has been used with great success to bring the California Condor back from the very brink of extinction. In 1987 no birds remained in the wild, with only 27 in captivity. These surviving birds were intensively bred at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and the Los Angeles Zoo. Numbers rose through captive breeding and using double-clutching to increase the numbers of eggs that could be artificially incubated. Starting in 1991, condors were reintroduced into the wild. Since then the population has grown and as of December 2016 there were 446 condors living in the wild or in captivity – a truly remarkable achievement.
By removing each egg as it was laid, one researcher was able to induce several Sharp-shinned Hawks Accipiter striatus to lay 15 to 18 eggs during a one-month period. It is evident that many raptors possess the potential to lay more than one replacement clutch in a season.
It is thus evident that egg-collecting under strict control could be sustainable, and a valuable means of educating and interesting young people in nature and biodiversity conservation, as suggested by Sir David Attenborough and The Guardian writer.
Unfortunately, the strict control and proper checks and balances are unlikely to happen in the increasingly imperfect world in which we live. The commodification of wild birds’ eggs would simply add more pressure to the threats they already face from human activities. The late advent of wind farms in South Africa now poses a major new threat to a host of bird species, many of them slow-breeding raptors, threatened species, or migrants that are supposed to be afforded the protection of the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species.
Regrettably egg collecting is thus no longer a viable activity for young people any more, but their interest in nature and the environment can instead be ignited by photography, bird-banding and, of course, hunting.
Dr John Ledger is an independent consultant and writer on energy and environmental issues, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. John.Ledger@wol.co.za[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F30-31||target:%20_blank|”][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17786,17787,17788,17789″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F118-119||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]PH Dylan Homes – From camera to gun
African Hunting Gazette: Tell our readers a little bit about your personal background and where/how you grew up.
Dylan Homes: I was fortunate enough to be brought up in a farming environment. Hunting and fishing was the highest priority from a young age. I spent some time in the Eastern Cape as well as Natal for most of my life. I began my career in the hunting industry in 1998 and have enjoyed all of it.
AHG: How and why did you become a PH? Who have been your most influential mentors?
DH: I answered an advertisement in the newspaper for a position as a videographer. I had never seen or used a video camera, but I answered anyway. A few days later I was filming my first safari and the rest is history.
I have been very fortunate to share a camp fire with a lot of great people in my time, but I have to say that most of what I know and have achieved in the hunting industry is all through Mark Haldane.
AHG: What countries have you hunted and where are you currently hunting?
DH: I have hunted Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Australia, Alaska, and South Africa. I am currently hunting in Mozambique as well as wing shooting in South Africa. I will be doing a wing shooting safari to Zimbabwe later this year.
AHG: What is your favourite animal to hunt and why?
DH: Bushbuck – they are special animals. You must know what you doing to get your clients good trophies consistently. I personally enjoy hunting them as well.
I am also very keen on wing shooting. Conducting good wing shooting safaris is no easy task, but I believe we have the right formula.
AHG: What guns and ammo do you use to back-up on dangerous game?
DH: I have a Merkel 140AE in 470 and use Hornady DGX, 500-grain ammunition.
AHG: What guns and ammo do you recommend for clients for dangerous game? For plains game?
DH: A .416 REM with Hornady ammo is a good combination for clients on dangerous game. On plains game, the rifle he shoots the most at home. A well-placed shot with a familiar rifle is hard to beat, within reason, obviously.
AHG: Tell us about what you consider to be the greatest trophy you’ve taken with a client.
DH: A bushbuck we hunted in an open area in Natal. Saw him on the first day and could not get a shot at him. Three days later we found him again and he gave us an opportunity. Paul took him on 11 September 2001. He was a beautiful bushbuck. He measured 18 6/8 if memory serves me correctly, and had a wonderful shape.
AHG: What has been your closest brush with death while hunting? As you look back, is there anything you should have done differently?
DH: I was helping a professional hunter look for a buffalo that his client had wounded. After several hours of tracking in thick vegetation the buffalo charged from 10 metres. I was fortunate to drop him at four paces with a shot to the brain. I do not believe there is anything I would have done differently, the situation ended well.
AHG: What qualities do you believe to be most important to achieving success as a PH?
DH: Honesty, Reliability and Dedication.
AHG: And what qualities go in to making a good safari client?
DH: Practice shooting off shooting sticks, be prepared, and ask as many questions as you like before you leave home.
AHG: What one thing would you suggest to your hunting clients to help improve their safari experience?
DH: Try to relax, experience the beautiful places you have paid a lot of money to get to. Trust your guide – he wants you to have a good time.
AHG: Have you noticed any significant changes in the hunting industry over your years as a PH? Any changes in the clients over that time?
DH: Safaris are much shorter; time constraints are creating pressure-cooker safaris. I think clients have not changed much – the industry has changed the client’s expectations, especially in South Africa.
AHG: What can the hunting industry do to contribute to the long-term conservation of Africa’s wildlife and of hunting itself?
DH: Stand together, clean our act up properly, and root out those who disrespect nature and give our industry a bad name.
AHG: What advice would you give to a young man or woman interested in a career as a PH?
DH: Find a reputable outfitter and request to spend some time in the industry first. Find out if it is really what you want to do because it’s not all “charging buffalo and big tips”.
AHG: Any final words to our readers?
DH: Respect nature. Respect the animals we are making a living off, and respect each other.
Keep safe and happy hunting.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F118-119||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17770,17771,17772,17773″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F60-61||target:%20_blank|”][vc_column_text]Zambia Spots
By McKenzie Sims
As the plane taxied down the runway, I had one thought in my mind. I was leaving my home state of Wyoming, heading for the Dark Continent for another adventure, another great safari, and what would be my second hunt for one of the great cats of Africa – a leopard.
After a long layover in Dubai, I boarded a plane to Lusaka, Zambia, and after clearing my rifles and bags, I loaded onto a small commercial flight to Mfuwe airport where I was met by Leslie Long Sr. A short hour’s ride later in the dark, I was at the camp. My friend Mark Peterson and his father had been in camp for the first fourteen days of the season, and had already collect-ed some fine animals. His dad had hunted leopard for the entire two weeks but had spent most of the hunt waiting for a leopard he had wounded in the early days of his safari. Mark was scheduled to fly out on my first day, and spent that morning retrieving a bushbuck that got into the thickest of scrub the night before.
Meanwhile PH Jason Stone and I went out in search of zebra to get us four baits. We found zebra pretty early in the morning, but it took a little time of playing hide-and-seek to finally get a shot. We arrived back in camp in time to say goodbye to Mark and his father. After eating a great lunch made with puku, we loaded up the zebra and set off to start the baiting process. The first afternoon was spent traveling from spot to spot, dragging and setting baits. That night I went to bed, my head full of thoughts and questions. Would a cat hit that night? Or would we be spending lots of days checking baits, re-dragging, replenishing and setting up new ones? Only tomorrow would tell.
We woke early the next morning, had breakfast, loaded the truck and started our routine of checking baits. We had high hopes that a cat had hit one because of the number that had al-ready been on baits while Mark’s dad was hunting. When we arrived at the first one it was easy to see from the truck that nothing had hit, so we turned around and made the thirty-minute drive to bait number two. Again, no cat. It was the same for the others, so it was 0 out of 4 on the first day.
Back at camp for lunch. Because none of the four baits had been touched, we needed to start planning to set up more that afternoon, and Jason had picked out a big bull hippo out for me.
Its incredible body size and lumps that hid its tusks would produce up to ten baits. This bull would be perfect! But the hippo had other plans. In 18 days of Jason being in camp, this would be the first day that he would not see it.
However, we needed bait, so we went out in search of impala. We took one, and drove far in-to the concession to set up a fifth bait, and returned to our first lot to re-drag them before dark. As we refreshed our last one, just as darkness was falling, we could hear the faint but unmis-takable call of a leopard in the distance. This was a hopeful sound. But the excitement wasn’t over. Not 500 yards down the road, a large herd of buffalo crossed over in front of us. That was a cool sight! I really like seeing buffalo. Then 100 yards further on, a big male lion walked down the road straight in front of us in the headlights. Then he ambled off. As we passed the spot where he left, there was not only him, but another big male as well, standing at the edge of the road. What a way to end our second day!
Day 3 started the same as previously. The first three baits we checked showed no sign of an-ything feeding. But as we pulled up to bait #4, known as the “lucky tree” we could instantly see that it had been well hit! The entire zebra leg and back half of the ribs were gone. A cat had hit it, but it was the wrong cat… tracks around the tree showed that it was a lioness. So we decided to look for the hippo, and as we drove off, not 100 yards down the road and lying 50 yards away near a small pan were the two culprits that had enjoyed our zebra the night be-fore. After some photos and a video, back to camp we went.
Later, we found the hippo, but in the hour and a half of sitting, not once did his entire head come out of the water to present a shot. We needed more bait, but this hippo was not cooper-ating. As we had lunch and discussed the problem, the truck arrived from checking the last bait, and Usuf the driver walked in holding two small sticks, indicating the track size of two cats that had fed. One looked to be promising – a big cat. We quickly finished lunch, drove back to the tree, and Jason inspected the tracks.
“It looks like a worthwhile cat to sit for,” he said. “We must sit tonight.” We headed back to camp to gather all the stuff needed to be back in the blind by 3:30. The plan was to get dropped off at the blind and get the chairs and everything set up while the trackers did a re-drag.
We arrived at the blind to the sounds of alarmed baboons in treetops just down the creek bed – a given indication that a cat was close. We quickly and quietly got off the truck, set up in the blind, then the truck left us in silence. The sporadic alarm barks of baboons gave some reas-surance that maybe the truck had not spooked the cat. About thirty minutes passed, and apart from the baboons, all we could hear were birds and the occasional hippo from the river. Then we heard that distinctive grunting from the dark thick cover beyond the blind. The rough, saw-ing sound became louder and louder as the cat moved closer, until we could hear it just be-hind the base of the tree, below our line of sight because of the high bank of the creek. Ten minutes later, a leopard was in the tree.
It was a beautiful cat, but it wasn’t our cat. It was a female, and she began eating, and fed for what seemed to be hours. Meanwhile, the male was still grunting and calling from the thick brush. Thirty minutes later she turned and slipped out of the tree. Light was starting to fade and we had only 20 minutes of shooting light left. Suddenly Jason tapped my knee, indicating that the giant tom we had been waiting for had appeared in the tree. Then his hand applied pressure… shoot when ready. I wasted no time. I settled the crosshairs behind the leopard’s shoulder, squeezed the trigger, and the cat fell out of the tree. All was suddenly silent. Then 10 minutes later Jason called the truck to come in. It was already getting very dark when it ar-rived. Everyone was on high alert. Jason told me to stay back as they went to look under the tree. Armed with torches and weapons – a rifle and a panga from the truck – they headed in.
As I waited in the truck, the five seconds of the shot kept playing over and over in my mind. Was the shot as good as it felt? Would the cat be under the tree? The lights stopped moving and I heard faint talking. Then, the relief of a loud call from Jason: “McKenzie, come look at your cat!”
I quickly scrambled from the truck, turned on my phone flashlight (a tracker had borrowed my my Surefire) and ran down the bank and across the creek to find all the guys standing in a half-circle as the tracker Dickson was drawing a beast of a cat out of some brush below the tree. We all high-fived and hugged, exchanging smiles as Dickson and Festo carried the beautiful leopard across the creek for us to take pictures. After a few hundred photos, we loaded it and headed back to camp, stopping on the final stretch to decorate the truck with tree branches and toilet paper.
The guys also built me an awesome crown out of twigs and toilet paper. Then the singing be-gan, and grew louder and louder as we reached camp. The camp staff was already waiting and ready to celebrate! As we celebrated and continued to take photos well into the night I couldn’t believe of how lucky I was to take such a magnificent big leopard like this on only Day Three! For the rest of the 14-day safari we took several other great trophies, me having the time of my life.
I can’t wait to get back to the Dark Continent and enjoy everything it has to offer!
Until then I will have a short video of this safari on my Youtube channel (McKenzie Sims) for anyone who would like to see it.
McKenzie Sims (22) from Evanston Wyoming is passionate about the out-doors. Working for the family oil and gas construction company is second hand to spending every possible minute that he can in the outdoors. Africa is one of his favorite continents, and he always look forward to returning to enjoy the last great adventure known as safari.[/vc_column_text][vc_btn title=”View article in E-ZINE” color=”orange” align=”center” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fafricanhuntinggazette.com%2Foctober-november-december-2018%2F%23october-november-december-2018%2F60-61||target:%20_blank|”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”17728,17724,17727,17726″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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