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I posted this on another board a while back and thought I would post it here as things seem a bit slow (or maybe that is my imagination). Maybe I am trying to keep myself pumped up for the next trip so I can keep getting on that treadmill. For most of you who have been there and done that this will likely be a boring read -- it was originally written to post on a board where only a few had gone to Africa.

These are just a few things that happened in and around the leopard blind when I was in Namibia in the summer of 2005.

The way it is supposed to work is that you work up to it, shoot some bait animals, show everyone that you can hit something with your rifle, settle in a bit. Only there I was, first full day in Africa, sitting in the blind waiting for the leopard. I arrived the day before, bleary-eyed from 20+ hours of travel and barely able to make out the words in the fine-print on the immigration documents. I was awake enough to realize that the urinals in the airport were about a foot higher on the wall than back home!

We got a late start on the trip courtesy of South African Airways, who left all the rifle cases off the plane. They arrived on the last flight of the day and I spent the night at the Safari Court Hotel in Windhoek. After a few hours of sleep we headed out at four AM on the 6-7 hour drive to the concession. The other hunter and his PH in camp told us about a zebra carcass they had seen not far from camp, killed by misadventure, an unlucky hunter, maybe a poacher. We checked it out. Something had been feeding on it and there were leopard tracks around – it looked like a female and possibly an older cub. My PH knew there was a large male in the area and decided to set up there that evening.

The blind was a Cabelas pop-up, brushed in. We did not have much time to set it up but did our best and got settled. You know how you get chilled even on a warm winter hunting day (we get a lot of them in Texas) once the sun goes down? The PH had advised putting a sweater on when we arrived so as not to get the chills when the sun went down. He also indicated that we should move nothing more than our eyes. I had trained hard for this, sitting for hours in front of the television without moving, but this would be a challenge – much more difficult than a deer blind back home.

It did not take long to figure out that the heat of the sun was going to roast me. That was the last night I wore a sweater in the blind – I thought I might pass out from the heat. I was quite tense, expecting the leopard to come in at any time. After a while we heard steps behind us, approaching the back of the blind. Of course, I had read stories of leopards coming right up to the blind. Despite the heat and the tension I managed to stay perfectly still. The steps left, the sun finally went down, and Matthew the tracker brought the Toyota Hi-Lux around to pick us up. No leopard.

The PH asked if I had heard the steps and said he thought it was possibly a hyena – not his favorite animal. We found the tracks the next day – a jackal had come up close behind us and then left.

The next day was quite busy – while looking for a zebra for bait we took a kudu and a gemsbok. No sitting that night.

The third day we tried the zebra carcass again. The vultures had moved in – a sign that the leopard was not close. However the big male had walked right by the carcass and we hoped he would return that night. Again the strain of being perfectly motionless was telling on me as I watched the vultures feed on the zebra. One by one the vultures started to leave. I told myself that this was it – the vultures were leaving because the cat was coming! My nerves were about as tight as they could get when there was a burst of motion from the carcass. I just about jumped out of the top of the blind as the last vulture, hidden behind the zebra, took off with a rush. The PH and I both laughed, then settled down to wait for darkness again. No cat.

The next few days we set up a number of baits without getting a hit. We spent the days looking for fresh tracks, setting up baits, checking baits, hunting baits.

Hanging a Bait:

On the fifth night I dreamed that the leopard had come. When we checked the baits the next morning we found that four had been visited, at least two by large males. We had three baits in one dry riverbed, not too far apart. One had been fed on by a large male, one had been fed on by a younger male or a female, and one had been examined by a large male who had followed where we dragged the meat, his paw prints in the drag marks, and lain down in the sand to look over the bait. The fourth cat was in a different area.

Leopard Track:

This Bait has been Hit:

Do you see the Blind?:

View from one Blind to the Bait Tree:

Freshening up the Bait:

We took down the bait the small cat fed on (between the two larger cats) and put up the blind at the most promising spot. We were next to a large tree on the same side of the dry riverbed as the bait. We sat quietly watching the bait. Each of us had a small hole to look through and the rest of the blind was covered with brush. After a while we began to hear many very heavy footsteps. We looked at each other (moving eyes and not much else). The steps approached and moved all around us. Something (somethings actually) were moving all around us, and they were big. Elephants? We could not tell. Finally the PH could not stand it any more and carefully unzipped a very small section of the door. "Giraffe" he mouthed. A group of giraffes were feeding along the riverbank. The top of the blind was mesh for ventilation. In my mind I could see a giraffe feeding along to our tree, looking down to see us, and panicking. Would he kick at the blind with his powerful legs, with the kind of power that even lions respect? It seems silly to be worried about a giraffe but they are very large and quite strong. Eventually the group of giraffe fed all around us, I seem to recall a half-dozen or so. One approached the bait twice, even sniffing it. But none came right up to the blind. Of course no leopard showed up either!

They Look so Friendly:

We spent several more nights in the blind with nothing particularly noteworthy happening. We did hear something scratching around the blind pretty much every night – never figured out what that was. We moved farther down the river to where the other big male had been (the smaller cat in between looked for his free meal two nights running after we took down his bait). Although he hit the bait hard and we could hear the warning sounds of birds and kudu signaling his approach at night he did not come in the daylight, although we did hear the faint sounds of his cough once. Several nights the trackers heard the lions in the concession next door roaring ever closer to us until they were close enough to be faintly heard from the blind at the end. It did give a bit of extra spice to the nights we had to walk back a half mile or mile to the Hi-Lux without lights in the soft river sand. What would it be like to face down a pride of lions in the dark? I was either too tired or too naïve to be properly nervous, but the PH was visibly relieved every time we made it back without incident.

The last night in the blind was pretty much like all the rest. Warning noises from birds, kudu barking in alarm, but no leopard. We had decided the last couple of nights to stay extra late, relying on some light from the moon and my Zeiss scope to maybe get a shot. As the evening deepened we heard the usual scratching noises from outside the blind. But then something different happened. Something was tapping on my right foot. Of course it could have been a mouse or something innocent but all I could think was "black mamba." You are not supposed to see many snakes because it is winter, but we had seen a few, including a python. I had heard several stories of snakes in the blind. It always seemed to be something very poisonous. We were a long way from a real city, and a pretty good ways from even a short runway. I told myself it was nothing and I could wait it out. The darkness deepened and without my scope I could not even see the bait. As I heard the faint sounds of a motor as the trackers came to pick us up, the tapping began on my left foot, in the middle of the blind. That was just about enough. I sat still until the truck was almost there and then whispered to the PH "There's something in here with us." I explained quietly and he told me to shine my Surefire on it. I was already slowly pulling it off my belt but by the time I got it shining on the floor there was nothing there.

Python:

Snake? Mouse? Not enough sleep and too much malaria medicine? I have no clue, but I did feel it and sitting still while that was going on was about as hard to do as anything I have done while hunting.

The next day we packed up and headed in to Kamanjab where we spent the night at a nice guest house where I heard an argument in Afrikaans as to who makes the best four-wheel drive and bought some souvenirs. The next day it was back to the airport in Windhoek and on the way home.

At the time I said I did not think I could sit in another leopard blind. With the need for being very still and quiet and the tremendous tension when you think he is coming and you hope you make the shot, that no one will have to look for your cat in the dark if you hit him badly, it is something far removed from the relaxing times in the deer blind. But now over a year later I find myself thinking about it again – the magic of the time when he finally does come in, and you see that marvelous cat in the tree, meaning you have outsmarted the cunning predator and can take him on even terms. Maybe there will be another time in the blind – but hopefully no snakes.

If I have any details of date and time wrong I plead the year and half plus since I was there, but this is as close to how it happened as I can make it.

[Click images to enlarge.]

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Some pictures from Namibia

Some pictures from Zimbabwe

An Elephant Story