“.. .. .. and risking life and limb.”

I thought everyone would really enjoy the following story from Jumbo Moore (outfitter zim) about a bit of a fight he had with a leopard this spring.

Dear All,

A quick message as we (Tom Ondrus & I) pass through town on the way to the ele camp. We have just finished hunting on the ARDA concession. We were predominately after leopard and some plains game. As it is Tom's 4th trip to Africa (1st with me), he has collected the majority of the plainsgame. We did get half a dozen impala baits and a couple of zebra which we used for bait and ended up shooting the leopard off. Yesterday we took a big black "stink" giraffe bull with his .577 double rifle. It was pretty impressive seeing the hitting power of that 750 grain bullet on that big animal. It did not knock him over but the giraffe did not make it more than 10 paces before he fell over.

Well, now for the leopard story!! Those of you who are familiar with ARDA know the famous "Leopard Rock". Ian Chase Dunn (2002) & Butch Lockerby (2003) took their big cats off here. Tom was no difference and he ended up taking a 7' 5", 175 lb tom cat on day 4 of hunting. (See the picture). There was a slight hiccup on this hunt though. The cat came in at 7.30 pm and Tom shot him, too far forward and through the meat of the front leg. It was pretty obvious from the instance he was shot that I was going to have my hands full. He actually ran straight towards the blind, probably just running towards the light as they generally do when you shoot them when they are looking at the light. He ended up lying down no more than 20 yards from the blind but we could not see him due to the long grass. It didn't take long to realise that he was not dying. We sat still for close to 1/2 a hour and finally I decided to call the truck in. The cat then decided to move off up the hill. This was definitely a case for a morning follow up.

We started the follow up at 7.30 am after the sun was high enough up to eliminate some of the shadows. The bush was thick and it was an uphill follow up. Everything was in the cats favour. There was not a lot of blood and it was extremely slow going. Patson & Abel (my 2 x trackers) and Chisepe (the gamescout) did a marvellous job of keeping me on the track. In 3 hours we had covered no more than 200 yards. We went through thick bush, rocky outcrops, CAVES, and the rest. The cat was just moving from ambush place to ambush place in front of us.

We finally came to a rocky ledge round a corner and all our senses was telling us, this is where it is going to happen. I started round the bend on the ledge. The ledge was about 10 foot wide with a sheer drop off of about 70 foot into rocks below. Not a very pleasant sight! About a third of the way around the corner was an entrance to a cave. This took about 5 mins to check the entrance and for me to pluck up enough courage to actually stick your head around the corner and into the dark cave to check for the cat. Nothing!! We continued forward and further round the corner. Another cave but it had a smaller entrance which I had to get down onto my hands and knees to check in. This probably gave me a false sense of security as surely a cat would need more space to charge from. Using my flash light, I peered around the corner. Nothing!! It was a long and thin cave. Probably starting off at 3 ft wide and narrowed and 30 ft long with a dead end (I thought). Back up on my feet and off round the corner again with trackers and g/scout in tow. Into the thick bush we went again but no tracks. We scouted around for about 10 mins and finally we decided that the cat must have decided to turn back before crossing the open rock ledge. No tracks were found on the other side as well and I decided to call a rest. We all sat on the rock ledge and took a breather.

For some reason Patson sat with his back to the entrance of the small cave. I was actually talking to Patson when all of a sudden he virtually turned white. His eyes were huge and slowly he turned around and turned the flash light on into the cave. He seemed to settle down a bit and all of a sudden it was elbows & a--es as he took off. He didn't say a thing but kept pointing into the cave. Finally I got it out of him that he saw the cats tail move at the end of the cave. What we originally thought was a dead end was actually the wall of the cave as it bent around a corner to the right. The cat was lying down facing away from us. I sat at the entrance with the shotgun and had the boys throw stones inside to try and get the cat to come out. It was going to be easy, narrow cave, shotgun with 000buck at point blank range! Nothing happened. Not even a sound out of the cat. Next plan, Patson you shoot my .44 Mag into the cave at the direction of the tail. Boom! Nothing! The tail didn't even move. Next plan, somebody crawl in there and recover the cat. I wonder why I didn't get any volunteers?!? No space for the shotgun and me, so I took the .44 and flash light and gave the shotgun to Patson. I started to crawl into the cave on my belly and there was absolutely no movement from the tail. One body length into the cave and here comes a leopard slowly in reverse gear. I must say it must have been commical as I was pretty impressive wriggling backwards in reverse at high speed. When I got to the entrance, I waited for him to reverse around the corner. Finally he had come far enough around the corner for me to drive the .44 up his rear end and hopefully into his chest. Well apart from blowing my ears out and turbo charging the cat, there was not much change except time went by extremely quickly. In a fraction of a second he reversed back far enough that the cave got wide enough for him to spin around and make eye contact with me. He covered the remaining distance in milli seconds. The last thing I remember was firing another shot into his face at point blank range and trying to roll out of the way.

I felt the cat run over me. Then I felt the cat jump back onto me and then another deafening boom. There was plenty of growling through out this. I was back on my feet in time to see the cat going over the cliff. I managed to empty the .44 in the general direction of the cat as it swan dived through the air and then took off into the dense undergrowth. It was at this stage that I noticed blood running down my face and arms. I actually got away extremely lightly. I think this was due to actually putting the cat off balance with the frontal .44 shot at point blank range. I had actually shot it off centre down the side of the neck and we recovered the bullet under the skin on its rump. Not bad penetration at all.

Patson told me how it had run over me and then spun around and jumped back onto me and this is when he pumped it with the shotgun. The wad was recovered inside the shoulder of the cat. I took one claw through the peak of my cap and into my eye brow, a couple into my right hand and arm, my jeans and cover alls look light swiss cheese oh, I nearly forgot, one of the 000Buck pellets made it through the cat and through my clothing and into my leg! I found some lead shraple in my arm later, obviously it had bounced off the rock face.

We found the cat dead in the undergrowth. I am very fortunate that Patson had shot it off me even though the .44 shot was fatal, that cat was going to work me over pretty good until his last breath had run out. I suppose that I am fortunate as well that Patson hit the cat fair & square and not me.

We are now off to the ele camp and I hope we end off the hunt with no more incidents. This is definitely too much for the first hunt of the year. The wounds are fine and thanks to all of you who have given me your spare first aid items such as antibiotics etc, I am well onto my way to a full recovery. Soon, I won't even have any scars to show for the war stories.

Regards to all and safe hunting for the rest of the year.

Jumbo

P.S. now it is 32 successful leopard hunts out of 35!!!!