Makuti safari area
Mbalabala safaris
Dates June 1-June 16
Ph: Tinie Kok, Lindon Stanton, Dean Peel and Kanjan Dawie
4 hunters
Day 1
The first thing we did as always was shoot the rifles, a 300 win mag and 458 win mag. After confirming that the rifles were in fact sighted in and the airlines had not broken them for us, we headed off to check baits and cameras across the concession.
The concession sits in the Zambezi escarpment near the town of Makuti and has beautiful mountains and valleys that are filled with Buffalo, Leopard, Lion, and Elephant. During our time there the grass was tall making hunting challenging but exciting with close encounters on buffalo and cats comfortable coming onto baits.
After we checked some of the baits we found that we had a total of 7 leopards on day one feeding with 4 males.
Later that morning we saw and I shot a zebra at about 50 yards for bait. This was close to the road I only walked about 50 yards but on Day 1 of a Leopard hunt, one does not argue with a gift Zebra for baits.
After shooting the zebra we ran it back to camp to be skinned and quartered for baits and checked cameras. The next bait that we checked had 2 good-sized males that we wanted to look at feeding on it. So we built a blind which is a really cool experience for this Alabama boy to watch. Then, we sat down at around 3:30- 4:00 pm and waited. After about an hour we hear a stick break and there are a couple of elephant cows about 30-40 yards from the blind. We quietly wait and hope that they will leave which they thankfully did without an incident or disturbance. At this point, dark is closing in and we hear the magic sounds of claws on wood! We are at 40 yards and the male is on the bait. After a few tense moments, Tinie said that the male is too young but only by a year or so. Getting to watch him in the dying light was a cool experience, and after about 5-10 minutes that felt like a year, he left.
We are really losing light now but thanks to the good folks at Swarovski I can still see clearly. That’s when I see through the scope another male has hopped on the bait but with the low light, we cannot be sure that it is not the same male. So we pass when we check the cameras the next day it turns out that the second male was a larger cat and we had in fact seen 2 males on day one.
Mbalabala safaris
Dates June 1-June 16
Ph: Tinie Kok, Lindon Stanton, Dean Peel and Kanjan Dawie
4 hunters
Day 1
The first thing we did as always was shoot the rifles, a 300 win mag and 458 win mag. After confirming that the rifles were in fact sighted in and the airlines had not broken them for us, we headed off to check baits and cameras across the concession.
The concession sits in the Zambezi escarpment near the town of Makuti and has beautiful mountains and valleys that are filled with Buffalo, Leopard, Lion, and Elephant. During our time there the grass was tall making hunting challenging but exciting with close encounters on buffalo and cats comfortable coming onto baits.
After we checked some of the baits we found that we had a total of 7 leopards on day one feeding with 4 males.
Later that morning we saw and I shot a zebra at about 50 yards for bait. This was close to the road I only walked about 50 yards but on Day 1 of a Leopard hunt, one does not argue with a gift Zebra for baits.
After shooting the zebra we ran it back to camp to be skinned and quartered for baits and checked cameras. The next bait that we checked had 2 good-sized males that we wanted to look at feeding on it. So we built a blind which is a really cool experience for this Alabama boy to watch. Then, we sat down at around 3:30- 4:00 pm and waited. After about an hour we hear a stick break and there are a couple of elephant cows about 30-40 yards from the blind. We quietly wait and hope that they will leave which they thankfully did without an incident or disturbance. At this point, dark is closing in and we hear the magic sounds of claws on wood! We are at 40 yards and the male is on the bait. After a few tense moments, Tinie said that the male is too young but only by a year or so. Getting to watch him in the dying light was a cool experience, and after about 5-10 minutes that felt like a year, he left.
We are really losing light now but thanks to the good folks at Swarovski I can still see clearly. That’s when I see through the scope another male has hopped on the bait but with the low light, we cannot be sure that it is not the same male. So we pass when we check the cameras the next day it turns out that the second male was a larger cat and we had in fact seen 2 males on day one.
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