NEWS
HUNTING LEOPARD WITH DR STEVE COLE
Checking baits every morning early can become very monotonous work, but it needs to be done to hunt Leopard successfully.
First things first! You need to find a big fresh track to determine where to put up your bait. Fresh tracks and scratch marks on the Waterberry tree is a good indication of a tom cat’s marked area of operation.
Leopards love warthog, zebra or impala. With the bait in place, the work starts – checking the baits daily.
Dr Steve Cole booked for 14 days. Fresh bait needs to be put out every third day. We tried everything from sitting in a blind through the night to going into a blind from 4 o’clock in the afternoon untill 11 o’clock at night before going back to the camp. We also had problems with baboons. At one baiting station, against a mountain, looking down into the valley to where the bait was hanging, we were underneath the roackface which was the sleeping spot for a huge troop of baboons. Sitting in the rough rock blind, the baboons came straight towards us on their way to the sleeping area. It was just before dark when the alfa male slowly made his way straight at us. Six yards before he would jump onto our blind (rock) wall, I picked up a stone, got out of my seat and threw the stone at him. There were baboons all around us. With an unbelievable lot of noise they scattered all over except for the aggressive leader who took an attacking attitude, pulling his ears flat on his head and staring at us with wide open eyes. I let him have another stone, knowing that Steve had his 375 Magnum ready to cover me. At last they moved around us to come to rest above us on a rocky outcrop. Trouble was that if we should take a shot at the leopard, the baboons would get such a fright that their stomachs would start working and we’ll be covered in dung not to think of the avalanch of rocks coming down on us. The leopard did not show and we got out of the situation without a scratch.
We got our leopard the 10th day!! It was a beautiful cat and Steve took it with one perfect shot. The new 375 Magnum he had built for this hunt worked fantastic.
Well done Steve, you worked hard for your cat and you deserve the “beauty” you got!
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