HUNTING FOR THE HEART
Hands-on experience is a good way to learn
AS A PH I’m often asked what I do during the off-season when I’m not hunting. The truth is, a lot of my spare time is spent hunting or fishing and honestly, I don’t get tired of it. When you do something you have a passion for, it doesn’t seem like work. It’s different being in the bush by yourself or with a friend – and it’s good for your soul.
A while ago, whenever I had some free time, I would head off to a farm outside Francistown in Botswana where I live. The farmer always needed game animals culled to control their numbers and the meat from these was sold to fund the day-to-day running of the farm. Although close to town, the farm was still very much in the wild, with elephant in or around it and the occasional lion and hippo passing through.
I have fond memories of times spent there, occasionally for as long as two weeks, when the owners were away and needed someone to keep an eye on things. I learnt a lot while hunting on my own and got to improve my tracking and general hunting skills. Last year this farm became part of a large conservancy, which is a great conservation initiative. I have since hunted on the farm with a few clients and being there always brings back good memories.
There are a number of different plains game on the property but I only harvested impala, wildebeest, kudu, warthog and the occasional zebra. For the pure enjoyment I did this by walk-and-stalk which had the benefit of keeping me fit for the upcoming hunting season. With so much time spent on the farm I have certainly had a lot of interesting experiences there.
Out hunting one afternoon, I planned to walk to a big vlei by the Tati River where animals were often found late in the day. The afternoon was uneventful but, as I approached the vlei, I could hear wildebeest and impala snorting and a kudu barking. I stalked into the thick bush surrounding the vlei. From there I could see a number of animals staring in one direction; they were clearly not very happy. Looking through my binoculars,
Time off for a PH
I picked up some movement on the opposite side of the vlei. To my amazement I saw that it was leopards mating. I watched the scene for a while but the light was fading and I had a job to do. I selected a wildebeest bull and fired a bullet that passed through both shoulders. He ran a few metres and went down. I was then very surprised when the rest of the herd ran towards me. I acted quickly and dropped a big cow with a shot to the chest whereafter the herd scattered into the surrounding bush.
Taking a look around, I saw the leopards had not moved and were now looking around themselves. A kudu bull stood staring at them. It was a long shot and I was shaking with excitement but I managed to place a bullet behind the bull’s shoulders. He ran a short distance and expired. I brought my attention back to the leopards – they were still there, staring in my direction. I knew it was going to get dark soon and couldn’t waste time enjoying the scene so I checked all the animals and marked their positions with toilet paper. Only when I approached the kudu did the leopards slink off into the bush.
It was a long walk back to the car and pitch dark by the time I got to it. I drove to the compound to get some staff to help me load the animals. Now, this was January, and it was still quite wet. On my return, when I turned into the vlei at the point which I thought was the closest to the nearest wildebeest, the vehicle immediately sunk up to its axles.
This was going to be a long night... After a lot of effort we extracted the vehicle and made it back to the road where we eventually found a dry route into the vlei. With the two wildebeest loaded, I turned the car in the direction of the kudu. Ahead of me I picked up some eye shine and there was the male leopard, happily eating the back haunch of my kudu. Having been disturbed, he soon moved off but the staff certainly weren’t very happy about getting out of the vehicle to load the kudu. With a lot of
persuasion we got done and headed back to the farmhouse, eventually arriving at midnight. I got to bed at 2am after sorting out the carcasses but was up early and happy to start hunting again.
On another occasion I was walking along the edge of a dry riverbed where normally I would find a lot of impala and kudu. It was quite late in the morning when I noticed some movement in the grass and bush on the side. Whatever it was, it was heading towards a big bare patch of earth as is often found in mopane woodland.
Thinking it might be a warthog, I got into position against a tree and prepared for a shot should it move out into the open. When the animal emerged from the grass I couldn’t believe it – it was a female leopard about 40 metres away, with no idea I was there. She lay down by a tree on the edge of the opening, possibly hunting the same way I was for impala that often frequented these clearings. I watched her for a while and tried to lower my rifle to get out my phone to take a picture but she noticed the movement and disappeared in an instant. I carried on hunting and at the next clearing spied a lone impala ram. As I crept up behind a tree, the ram noticed me and turned, quartering onto me. I aimed for the chest, squeezed the trigger and the ram dropped on the spot. While I reflected how lucky I had been during the morning, the ram was up and gone in a flash, leaving me cursing for not reloading and getting ready for a second shot.
I picked up the spoor but there was very little blood and it soon petered out. For about an hour I tried in vain to find the impala, doing loops and following different tracks until I decided to head back to the house to fetch Two Pula, the farm tracker, to help me. We returned to the spot where I had found the last blood and he managed to follow the spoor. After a few minutes on the trail I heard a rustle in some thick bush about 10 metres from us. Approaching, rifle at the ready, I saw the white of the impala’s belly under a bush and saw straight away that it was dead. We pulled the impala out to examine it and saw that my shot had missed the chest, but entered behind the last rib and broken the back leg, although that’s not what killed it. There were distinct puncture marks around its neck and the area between the back legs had been eaten. I assume it must have been the same leopard I had seen that morning. What are the odds?
A large number of leopard lived on this farm and in the surrounding area – we often saw their tracks when we were out hunting. The farmer had also done a lot of leopard research by laying bait and getting trail cam pictures. He trapped a few and put tracking collars on them which resulted in some interesting data. One of the big males who was collared for about 6 years ended up being poisoned on communal land across the river. Sadly this often happens to big cats in farming areas. With the ban on hunting in Botswana from the end of 2012, I would hate to guess at the number of leopard that have since been killed as vermin. Hopefully with the re-opening of hunting here, people will see the value of protecting these animals because of the financial incentives they bring.