In search of a leopard

To see a cheetah or a lion from the open roof of a Land Cruiser or some other safari vehicle is a wonderful thing but after the first encounter you lose any sense of fear you might have correctly brought with you into the bush and, after awhile, you even start to feel a bit blasé about the whole thing. Oh, look, another herd of elephants…shall we head back to camp for cocktails?

It can’t be helped. Viewing wildlife from a minivan is really very much like going to the zoo. You know the elephant isn’t going to charge your Toyota. You know the lion is unconcerned with your minivan.

But get out on foot in the bundu or the forest and it’s a very different thing. The elephant and the lion and the other masters of the wilderness are habituated to vehicles; they know what they smell like and look like and they aren’t afraid of them. A man on foot is a different thing. A man stalking them on foot is a predator to be feared; or perhaps a meal.

Last night camp was particularly noisy. The baboons and the leopards cursed at each other all night long. Robert Ruark in his fabulous description of a safari in the ‘50s, does this bit about an imagined conversation between baboons and leopards:

A baboon barked somewhere down the donga and followed it with an outraged squawk. A little later the leopard which had outraged him sawed at the foot of the tree, from which the nugu undoubtedly was swaying from a limber branch. “Bastard,” the baboon said “Spotted, evil, ugly bastard.” The leopard replied: “Just wait, nugu. I’ll have indigestion over you yet.”

Yes, this is exactly how you imagine the conversation to go between a baboon and a leopard, they are such mortal enemies.

Since we had been in camp now for quite some time, Calvin figured the leopard that lived in the caves above our camp might be getting used to us and becoming less cautious. Perhaps we could lure him into the open. So this morning after breakfast we bundled up in forest-green fleece and set off into the woods in search of the leopard that has been keeping us up most nights.

The plan was to find a spot in the forest above the camp and hunker down while Calvin made odd noises to imitate an injured bushbuck, a small, rather elegant member of the antelope family that is a favorite meal of the leopard (in our walk, we came across the lower jaw bone of a bushbuck, giving further credence to Calvin’s idea that our leopard friend might be enticed to come out of his lair if he thought there was a wounded animal so near to him).

Hunker down on the ground, Calvin whispered. Do not move; do not make any noise. Then Calvin found a perch on the rocks above us and, with the Rigby .500 in his lap, began to make his dying-bushbuck call which, to me, sounded more like a dying duck. In any case, the leopard wasn’t enticed to come and take a look. But we did get a response from an old lion somewhere further off in the woods. Which was a bit disconcerting.

Anyway, here’s a short video of Calvin making his bushbuck noises in the woods of Lake Paradise.