Sometimes, you will come up against a leopard that has been hunted before, and perhaps missed. These cats simply won’t show unless it’s pitch dark and, therefore, illegal to shoot; not that you could see them, anyway. A ploy that has worked for me a couple of times with these sharpies is to try to track the cat to the spot where he hides to watch things during the day. Usually, he’ll pick the same spot. Then, rather than using the bait as the focal point, you can make a small blind when you’re sure he’s not around and wait for him at this point. It usually works.
Baits should be wired in such a manner that the cat cannot freely feed upon them, but can only reach part of the meat. I use the underside of the branch, wiring the bait at both ends and the middle. On the theory that stolen grapes are sweeter, the cat frustrates himself most of the night and only partially feeds. The next day he may become impatient and hit the bait while it’s still light enough to have a shot. That, in a nutshell, is the theory and practice of leopard hunting.
* * *
It only took a half-hour of poking around the thicket to find where the cat had been doing most of his housekeeping. It was a perfect tree, the sloping trunk a mass of claw scars and some white belly hairs. In a lower branch the bleaching skull of a young impala was caught, showing that the leopard used this spot as a regular place to eat his own kills. Sekala, a skinner, scampered up the tree and squatted casually twenty feet up while Invisible threw him a rope’s end. I knotted the braided, buffalo hide line about the horns of the puku and, with Sekala hauling from above and the rest of my men pulling, we hoisted the antelope to the branch. Under Silent’s and my direction they triple-wired it fast in position. Silent flipped his knife to Sekala, who opened the paunch, tossing down offal to sprinkle on the trunk to mask the human scent.
I walked some forty paces away, lining up the bait and open sky behind it with the base of an elephant-killed fallen tree, a super spot for the blind. The tangle of roots still left would provide a solid, natural-looking support for the structure. “Mushy, Bwana,” nodded Silent in approval. “Lo Ingwe hayiazi bona tina lapa.”
“Silent says it’s a good place,” I answered Armando’s questioning look. “He reckons the leopard’ll never see us here.” Collecting their hatchets and knives, my men disappeared into the bush behind us. I explained to Armando that in order to make the site look absolutely natural, all the grass and foliage had to be brought from out of the area. Leopards just aren’t that stupid. When they find a nice neat package of goodies, they tend to look a gift antelope in the mouth, but anything out of place will keep them away like the plague. In two hours the blind was perfect, a blob of meticulously woven grass and dead bush that blended exactly with the jumble of the thicket. I went back to the bait tree and had Silent move around inside the hide. Satisfied I could see nothing except a flash of white axe scar on one of the supports—quickly corrected with spit-dampened dirt—I told Invisible to cut two wrist-thick Vee-sticks for the gun supports.
“Hell’s bells, Pedro, I could hit him from this distance with my eyes shut,” commented Armando. “Why all the rests?”
“First off, amigo, unless you have him within your sight from the word go, he’ll disappear the second he spots your muzzle movement through the gun port. Second, you’re using my rifle.” His eyebrows went up. “Again for two reasons. Your 7mm. won’t put as big a hole in him as my .375, and I would rather stitch up his hide than mine; second, you only have cross hairs in your scope. In the bad light the post in my scope will be much easier to pick out.” He shrugged and watched with interest as Silent removed the blade from his fighting hatchet and stuck it vertically into a split mopane stick as a digging tool. Carefully, he placed the gun rests in front of the small hole in the blind and marked where their bases touched the earth. Little by little he chopped away at the dirt, measuring the depth until satisfied. I took the .375 Magnum and rested it on the sticks, lining it up on the rough center of the bait. At my grunt Silent packed earth around the sticks until they were as solid as if concreted. Tomorrow, or whenever the leopard hit, I could just replace the rifle and, with a bare minimum of movement, be right on target. After a final inspection from all angles we recrossed the river and, taking only Silent, Invisible, and Armando, drove a pair of miles away to check the scope on the .375. I have always shaken my head with wonderment at people who have other men shoot in their guns for them. Almost no two men shoot to the same point of impact with a telescopic sight because of vast differences in facial structure, the way they hold the rifle, and how they squeeze the trigger. A man can only zero in a scope for himself.
Selecting a dead muSassa tree standing in front of a termite heap to absorb the slugs, I had Silent cut a two-inch-square white blaze. I carefully paced off forty-seven yards, the same distance as from the bait to the blind, and pulled up the Land Rover. Armando lay the rifle across a folded blanket over the bonnet and dry-fired with the rifle empty to get a feel for the trigger. With the tip of my Randall knife, I carefully pried off the alloy tips of six Winchester Silvertip slugs, exposing the bright, soft lead beneath. It is hard to get 300-grain soft-point ammo in American loadings for the .375, and the Silvertip bullets are manufactured with an aluminum alloy tip to prevent expansion on big game until penetration has been achieved, not my aim with the light-boned, thin-skinned leopard. I wanted as big a hole as possible on the way out for free bleeding and a clear spoor in the poor light. I didn’t know it then, but that little trick might just have saved my life with this particular leopard.
I saw Armando’s hair fly at the recoil of the first shot, the muzzle blast leaving a score on the hood paint that would go unnoticed among the numerous bashes sustained by bush. A splash of bark spurted two inches high and three inches left of center of the blaze, a shower of powdered wood exploding from the back of the tree as the slug whumped into the termite heap. With the rim of a .470 cartridge, I clicked the scope adjustments down and right, rapping the mount to settle it. His second shot tore smack into the mathematical center of the blaze, a ragged, black puncture that swayed the tree. A third, just-to-be-sure round doubled the last. “There goes your last excuse,” I told the Spaniard, who made me an attractive offer on the rifle. I’d sooner have sold him a couple of fingers.
Back in camp, the fire crackling away the evening chill as we digested the fish course of fresh tilapia bream followed by Manyemba’s breast of francolin in cream sauce with a bright Stellenbosch ‘64, Armando and I got down to cases. “Okay, viejo,” I launched into the lecture. “Here are the rules. First, no moving around in the blind. At all. Do all your scratching, sneezing, and coughing now, and obviously, all your talking. If a tsetse starts chewing you, don’t slap. Push him away. This probably sounds silly, but you can chain smoke up ’til twilight if you want to, just blow the smoke down, not up or out of the blind. Most of this bush is smouldering from grassfires this time of year anyway. Once you’ve put a smoke out, it’s got to be your last. These cats can hear a match or a lighter wheel a half-mile away. Understand?”
“Just where and when do I pop our pal, anyway?” Armando took another pull at the Fundador.
“Good point,” I said. “Leopard hunting is a little like quail shooting. Don’t yield to the temptation of just shooting at the shoulder or chest—pick your spot exactly. Just as you would choose a single perdiz from a flock of your Spanish partridge, pick a particular rosette and put your slug right through the middle of it. Choose one in the middle of the shoulder and try to break bone. Then you’ll probably get lung and arteries, too. Leopards are easy to kill if you hit ’em right. It’s when you wing ’em they get tough and I wouldn’t want any nasty marks in my lovely complexion.”
I topped off Armando’s and my snifter as a nightcap, careful to cover the glasses so the stream of flying ants at the bar pressure lamp didn’t fall in. “Now, this is really important,” I warned him. “Do not, under any circumstances, fire until I signal you. Unless the cat is actually feeding on the bait, he could get jittery and move at any second.
Let him settle down. If he jumps as you shoot, it means a miss or worse, much worse, a wounded cat. If you do that to me, I’ll take away your brandy or shoot you, whichever is worse.”
“Dios,” said Armando in awe, “shoot me.”
We were shooting ducks the next morning on a nearby lagoon when I noticed Silent trotting down the track that ran from the Munyamadzi toward us. I waved him over and he squatted down, formally clapping his hands softly for an audience. “Yena buyile lo Ingwe?” I asked him, aware that he had crossed the river earlier to inspect the bait.
“Eeeh,” he nodded, “ena buyile.” I winked at Bassi.
“There’s service for you, pal. Twenty-four-hour delivery at Pedro’s Pantry. The gentleman here says you’re in business.”
I questioned Silent about the size of the spoor and how much bait had been eaten. He replied that the cat was a real Induna, a chief or general, and that although he had nearly severed the bait wires, he hadn’t eaten more than about six pounds of the puku. Spot on! If everything went properly, we should have a very nice Ingwe pegged out by cocktail time, I thought.
It was about four o’clock when we bellied up to the blind and sneaked in. Silent set up a pair of camp chairs as I put the .375 into its supports and had Armando adjust it so that the sight picture was just over the bait. Wrapping the barrel in leafy vines so that there would be no reflection from the blued steel, I fished out my small binoculars and focused them on the bait. I could easily see the flies crawling around the spear punctures and the big gaps in the claw-marked hams where the cat had fed, ripping out chunks of meat.
We settled back, listening to the sounds of the bushveldt, watching the little black drongos chandelle and split-S over the grasstops. Around us roosting doves began to gurgle their sorrow at the fading day as the sun changed from incandescent white to crimson to carmine, sliding soundlessly behind the acacias. I probed with the binoculars, but there was no movement. Come on, come on, I thought. Another twenty minutes and it’ll be too dark to shoot.
A tiny, scraping sound suddenly froze me. I edged the glasses back to my eyes. In the first crotch of the tree, silhouetted against the western sky, crouched a tremendous leopard. There had been no warning at all, only the dry whisper of razor claws cutting into bark as he came to the top of his ten-foot bound into the tree. I softly nudged Bassi, watching his face controt with amazement.
The muscles in my forearm tightened as I dug in my fingers for absolute silence. He flashed a sideways look at me, which I answered by holding my palm flat and down. Wait. Thirty seconds hobbled arthritically by as the cat cast his green-eyed stare around him. Once more, I was certain that nothing in the world of hunting dangerous game could compare with the magical appearance of a huge leopard in the tortured magnificence of a sunset-lighted tree; this was the moment that made all the aches, sweat, and risks worth it.
One moment the cat was in the crotch, the next he was gone like ectoplasm. He had simply dissolved before our eyes. My heart stopped until I found him again, ten feet higher, standing on the bait branch. Again he studied every leaf around him as we sat frozen in the blind. Then satisfied, he slashed with his paws at the bait with blurring speed, sparring with the carcass. Lying on his stomach, he stretched around to reach the bait on the underside of the branch, scissoring off a slab of flesh with the edge of his face. I squeezed Armando’s arm twice more and let it go. He looked at me and I nodded. Carefully, he worked up to the rifle stock and settled it in his shoulder hollow.
I waited for the crash of the big rifle, holding my breath unconsciously. The cat was perfectly still, gnawing at the bait, exposing a big chunk of his right shoulder. An eternity passed. Why didn’t he shoot? I knew the safety was off, I had checked it when I settled in the gun. What the hell was wrong? If he doesn’t shoot soon, the bastard will … BOOM! I saw a flash of movement beyond the muzzle flame as the leopard flickered down the tree head first. Then he was gone.
I was furious with the anger of frustration and fear. “What the bloody hell happened?” I snapped at him. “It was a perfect setup!”
“He moved,” Armando said in horror, “just as I touched off. I saw the post of the sight on his stomach just as it fired. Couldn’t stop the trigger squeeze in time.” He looked so miserable I regretted my outburst.
“Well, don’t sweat it, amigo,” I said. “He’ll probably be dead as a rock right over there,” I lied in my teeth. Silent brought over the leopard bag, and I got into my armor.
The old, cold feeling settled as a lump in my stomach as Silent and I started to go into the grass. I hadn’t liked the mobility with which Ingwe had poured down that tree, nor did I like the greasy look of his dark blood. Stomach wound. The worst. It makes him the most savage but does nothing to slow him down. As we penetrated the murk, I could feel drops of gore being wiped off the grass stems and onto my bare shins. When we had made five yards, I motioned Silent to forget tracking and cover our rear, which he did, back to back with me. Darkness was a badly woven shroud by the time we were ten yards into the vegetable morass. I slowly swung the shotgun back and forth from the hip; no chance in this stuff to shoulder-shoot in case of a charge. In case of? There’d be a charge, all right.
The growl sounded low, vicious, rising to a threatening snarl. In a heartbeat, I covered the spot in the grass it came from, every nerve tight as a bicycle spoke, crouched in readiness. Nothing. No charge, no leopard. I was dumbfounded. I had never heard one betray a charge with a single sound before, yet here was this one, threatening unseen a few paces away. I waited for ten seconds, my brain whirling. What the hell was going on? Why didn’t he come for us? I dared not waste a shell in a blind shot.
Silent tugged at my bush jacket, pulling me away. Cautiously we backed away into the open, still covering the spot. “Yinindaba?” I asked him. “What gives?”
“Ingwe gula, Bwana, too much,” he said thoughtfully. “The leopard is dying, Bwana. He is too sick to charge. If we wait, he will die in that place. His blood flows like water.” He spat for emphasis and thumbed the edge of his spear.
“Maybe you are right, Medalla,” I answered him in Fanagalo after some thought. It had to be that the cat was almost gone, or he would have attacked and not just threatened. Sure, that was it. We’ll just wait a couple more minutes, then go in and find him with the flashlights. Sure we will.
It was full, inky, stygian, sable dark. Black, no-moon night. We had sat with Armando smoking while he begged us to wait until morning. Nothing could have pleased me more, but if we left the body, hyenas would find and eat it before dawn. We’d gone to enough trouble to prevent that, and besides, what kind of a fate was that for a beautiful cat? Carrying the fingers of light, we went back into the grass.
As we approached the place where the growl had come from, I gave Silent both torches and covered the spot, slipping the muzzle of the gun through the stems of grass as a probe. In the light nothing was there but a slick pool of drying blood, damp smears, and splotches leading off toward the river. Oh, boy. Still with us.
It took twenty minutes for us to follow the spoor across a break in the thicket into a choked grove of yellow acacias. I worked my light as far ahead as it could reach, searching for eyes, while Silent caressed the thin blood trail with his. As we entered the grove, the spoor ran beneath a twisted, giant tree, straight into a stand of scrub mopane. Eyes riveted on it, I double-checked the shotgun and went forward.
The drop of blood splocked squarely onto my head, warm as it ran through my hair to my scalp. In a high-voltage bolt of panic, I threw myself back, swinging the shotgun up into the blackness above. Before I could aim it, there was a small sound and a hurtling splotch of spots rushing through the beam, thudding at my feet, motionless. It was the dead leopard.
The next morning Silent and I put it together. When the cat had left the place where it growled, it had deliberately left its blood trail under the big tree and clearly into the thicket beyond. Then, with the cunning only a leopard could call upon, i
t had doubled back, gotten up the tree, and waited for us over its own spoor, using its own gore trail for bait. He had really won, clearly outmaneuvering us. The only thing he hadn’t counted on was our waiting before taking up the hunt again. In the interim he had bled to death from the big slug, which had nicked an artery. If we hadn’t stopped for those smokes, he would have had us completely unawares.
Who says smoking isn’t good for your health?
4
Cape Buffalo
The man who was about to die padded softly along the narrow trail, tiny puffs of reddish dust spurting from beneath his crude, auto-tire sandals. He carried his spear easily across his right shoulder as he walked, the honed edges of the iron head flickering with the golden light of late afternoon. Wiping the sheeting sweat from his scar-welted forehead, he thought about the pot of sorghum beer that would be in the shade of his hut, another two miles down the path, and licked his leathery lips. He thought he could almost taste the sharp flavor on the back of his tongue as he passed the deep, conbretum thicket, its waxy, green leaves masking deep caverns of shade.
Terror grabbed his chest with the first grunt, short and hard from the tangle to his right. It was close, too close, the man knew as he froze, watching the branches shake as the snorts came nearer. He found his legs in a burst of adrenalin panic as the buffalo broke cover, black, hooked head up, pale gray eyes locked on his. Too frightened to shriek, the man dropped his spear and ran for his life, the thunder of flatiron hooves hammering just over his shoulder. Thirty yards ahead a large muSassa tree overhung the path with fluffy, green arms, and hope flooded into the terrified man. He was only two paces from the leap that would save him when the flats of massive horns smashed into the small of his back, driving him against the base of the tree with terrible power. Instantly, the bull hit him again, crushing his upper chest against the rough bark, splintering ribs and clavicles like a lizard under a heavy boot. The man was probably dead before his shattered form could fall over. That was just as well.
Death in the Long Grass Page 15
