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I wonder is there some confusion on "canned" lions in South Africa vs "canned" leopards?

There have been many stories of lions shot in too small fenced paddocks but I have never heard the same of leopards.

Are there captive leopard breeding programmes for hunting on the scale of lions?

I would think leopards are crafty enough to negotiate the average game fence, going under, over or through, and that is my understanding. Not many large scale game fences would hold them.

Dantri is right in that the area we hunted in 2002 is supposed to be good for leopard and the local PH has access to areas near previously unhunted country. He certainly said he had been going through the donkeys he used as bait.

It adds to a plains game safari to come across leopard tracks and both my plains game hunts we have come across fresh or recent tracks. Maybe not as good as coming across a live leopard in daylight though.

Some people also make ridiculous statements about hunting fenced properties. Along the lines of shooting game pressed up against fences

. My experience with hartebeest with BigFive was we hunted the hartebeest very hard for four or five days. One time we tracked them many kilometres across the property and yes they were nearing the far boundary. This last paddock (ie divided by tracks from other "paddocks" had the thickest thorn of any and after a couple hundred metres the tracker lost the tracks or gave up.

Heading back guess what tracks we cut? The hartebeest. They had circled around in front of us and were headed back to their home territory. So much for cornering game against a fence

.

In the end we missed out on "Hellbeasts" (named by me for their demonic horns and red coats and torture they put us there). They beat us.

If anything the game on this property was more skittish and hard to hunt than the free range game in Zimbabwe a week later.

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John aka NitroX

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Govt get out of our lives NOW!
"I love the smell of cordite in the morning."
"A Sharp spear needs no polish"

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