Africa Wild

Bushcraft wrote: ↑Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:11 pm

Picture and sound only returned to our car about 1km before Mazithi Dam, but it was short lived because as we pulled up next to the dam I spotted a leopard walking into the bush on the other side of the dam wall through the Cow’s passenger window.

“Leopard! There! Take pics!”

The rest of the family unfortunately couldn’t see it which resulted in my normal over the top uncontrolled “leopard explosion”

“It’s moving! Quickly! Are you all blind?”

I couldn’t get to it with my camera without jumping on top of the Cow, but just as I was about to do that, the leopard disappeared into the bush, which in hindsight is probably fortunate because the Cow would have gone into attack mode.

I had seen the “direction of travel” though, so roared forward 50m and pulled over.

5 minutes later the leopard cruised out again and started sneaking towards us.









Others had also spotted the leopard, so the crowd was growing, which resulted in the leopard hitting the brakes. He parked off for 2 minutes checking the scene out and then turned and ducked back into the bush.



We had a plot though as the clan were tracking the leopard through the bush and it became clear it was moving north, so we drove another 50m up the road and switched off at the far northern end of the dam, which was away from the crowd that had gathered.

Some waterbuck provided a distraction while we sat waiting.



Suddenly the Cow shrieked “it’s coming out”, which reminded me of Bushpig’s birth, so I got the shivers first and then went into “leopard hypo mode” again.

“Take pics!”



The leopard hit the brakes again though and then ran off towards the riverbed and out of sight.



Most of the crowd was still gathered at the original spot around 50m away waiting for the leopard. I suppose it’s easy to get caught if one takes one’s eyes off a leopard for a second; hopefully they soon realized it was gone.