Day 5 – 18 October
The previous night’s beautiful sunset wasn’t wrong, the weather had changed dramatically, from a humid 33C/91F degrees at 7pm last night to 15C/59F at 0530 this morning. Blustery winds, rain and heavy mist all morning, quite any ugly start to the day. It's mother nature and not much you can do about it!
After some breakfast, a couple cups of coffee and the rain not letting up, we delayed our departure from the lodge. N0 need to get the guys in the back drenched. By 0800 it had let up enough so we pressed on to start checking the baits, dropping off Cowboy at the skinning shed to help with burying the elephant head to rot out the tusks, skinning out of the ears and portioning out the large pieces of elephant.
The lead skinner also handed me a Woodleigh Hydro that they were able to find. I don’t know the exact weight of the 300 gr solid before firing and I’m not about to break down one of the factory loads, still has 295.5 grains remaining. Impressive performance from the Woodleigh Hydrostatically stabilized bullet.
The other question in our minds, what did this weather front do to the feeding patterns of the leopards we have on bait? We checked the closest baits first without any hits and worked our way around and stopped at the dry creek bed with the logs across. Anticipation was high. Did the leopard return last night, did we catch him on camera, was he mature enough?
We walk up the wet coarse sand of the creek bed towards the bait, water droplets dripping from the branches overhead, we round corner and see the green branches down on the ground!
Ok, a leopard had fed, did we catch a glimpse of him on camera? We all huddle around Wayne as he begins downloading the SD card to his iPhone, come on, come on, download will ya! There are pics!
Wayne shows us the pics as we are like a bunch of school boys crowding around the kid who found his Dad’s Playboy magazine! Wow!!!
Feeding
Big thick body!
We evaluate the pics and go through the checklist:
Male – check
Dewlap, massive neck and shoulders– check
Thick stocky body – check
Ears on side of head and appear small – check
Wayne turns to me, “we are going to kill this cat”! This cat is obviously bigger and older than the other cat we have on camera. We evaluate the bait situation, he has eaten most of the Zebra quarter and the remainder is covered in maggots, with goo and more maggots dripping on the ground. Do we sit on what’s left of the bait tonight or do we hang something fresh? We all agree we need a fresh bait hanging.
Evaluating the situation; it’s getting to be mid-morning and we don’t want to be building a blind until early afternoon, the light, listening gear and cushions are back at the lodge and we still need to find a bait. Too much to do today, we don’t want to screw this up now. Wayne also wants to send the pics into the expert for his opinion but we are positive he is old enough.
We had seen very little sign of game this morning, animals seemed to be all laying low with the winds, rain and heavy mist. We climb back into the Toyota and head back towards the skinning shed and the spotty wi-fi to get the pics out for evaluation. Wayne and I discuss the bait, should we shoot an impala for bait or be consistent and shoot another Zebra. First, we need to find something to shoot!
It begins to rain again as another wave moves through, finally the guys spot some Zebra back in the bush. Wayne and I climb out of the cab, grab the sticks and start a slow stalk in the blind, we can’t see the Zebra from ground level. We are heading up a slight grade in low thick bush but the wind is good. Wayne spots a Zebra ahead of us at the top of the rise but its too thick. We lose sight of them and work our way around in a loop keeping the wind in our favor. Wayne gets to the crest of the rise and spots a Zebra through the branches, only a head is visible. I’m crouched in a sitting position on the ground and he whispers to me if I want to take a head shot. I ask how far, 100 – 125 yards, I tell him no. I don’t want to be chasing a wounded Zebra if I botch the head shot. We begin sneaking forward slowly and now there is a herd of impala spread out 30 yards in front of us! Not good.
The wind is still in our faces and our approach has been very quiet as the ground debris is sopping wet. They haven’t spotted us but we must be very slow in our movements. The Zebra are beyond the impala, no way to get to them without us busting the impala. Wayne spots a narrow shooting lane to one of the Zebra, I slowly move up and put the 375 on the sticks. He whispers guidance to me and I find the small window to shoot through as the impala mill around in front of us feeding.
I have to literally shoot between the ears of impala facing away from us, above a log and between two twisted and broken trees. I’m steady on the sticks, put the red dot on the Zebra and squeeze. I lose sight of the Zebra at the shot and turn to Wayne and he’s smiling, “good shot man!”. The 300 grain Peregrine flattened the Zebra at the shot, no wonder I lost sight of it.
I stepped back to where the Impala was feeding and took a shot of the narrow shooting window.
We weren’t too far from the fenced in farm area and left Sam and Dumasen to cut us a trail to the Zebra which was a couple of hundred yards from the road while we went back to send the pics off for evaluation. We received confirmation that it was indeed a proper cat and went back and retrieved the Zebra, giving instructions to the skinners to have it skinned and quartered by the time we returned from lunch.
Back to the bait site with a fresh Zebra quarter rubbed over with Wayne’s special marinade. Sam whacked off two-thirds of the existing rotten bait but left a small piece to continue spreading the lovely odor, hung the fresh quarter and covered the bait. We also repositioned the camera to the front of the bait, the direction from where I would take the shot. A few scrapes were placed on the tree holding the bait at 24 and 34 inches to gauge the height of the leopard on camera and as a reference point in the case of a different leopard appearing while we were waiting for this one to show, when we did decide to sit for him.
New bait hung:
We picked out a location where we will set up the blind, the guys scraping away the detritus to have a clean start in the morning. Ants were thick on the ground but Wayne explained with just bare ground they shouldn’t be a problem in the morning.
Wayne checking out the line of sight to the bait:
Here’s the view to the bait site.
We didn’t want to do any chopping or clearing of the brush as we didn’t want to be making too much noise this late in the day as it was approaching 4:30pm. Left the area, scent dragging the roads once again.
We had also checked the remaining two baits that had leopard feeding, the female was still hitting and also the male that is still a bit too young along the lake. Apparently, the weather doesn’t bother hungry leopards!
A couple pics of the young Tom from the Lake bait, I thought these were interesting.
The terrapins were out looking for a place to lay eggs, this one picked a nice soft spot but it was in the center of the two-track!
On the way back to camp, spotted this bull elephant in the bush:
Scenery view, mountain acacia:
End of the day, glass of South African red beside the fire to take the damp chill out of the bones!
Until tomorrow, cheers!
