ZIMBABWE: Of Cigars, Leopards & Cape Buffalo

[Ravensview]

Love the way your telling the story, but I gotta admit after reading this I don’t think that I am going to buy anymore twinkies.

 

[Mort Hill]

Day 7 Can You Say Pucker

Last night was a complete thrill. To hear that male leopard sawing was just plain awesome. What a great first sit.

I agree with @Royal27. I am hot natured seeing as I am a large dude. I think fluffy is a good description. After last night’s sit, I will rethink my blind apparel and worry less about getting cold.

So first thing we return to the bait where we sat. The female was there most of the night, as was the male. That male did not get big by being stupid. In fact in his curiosity, he decides to destroy all evidence of the trail cam at the base of the tree. The final image captured being of his mouth and whiskers before it was crushed.

We immediately head over to the other bait that had been hit, and are greeted with glorious news. The bait has been hit hard. And the trail cam verifies it was at 6:40PM. Total euphoria. So we immediately begin the process of constructing a PROPER blind. We drive off a couple of clicks and the boys cut post and cross members for the blind. They also cut ample brush to cover the blind. Pete has several rolls of matted thatch with which to wrap the blind, and we do our routine of setting up chairs and rest so the gun is easily sighted on the bait, as well as the base of the tree. I will have no peep hole at this blind as a hat is placed in my gun opening, and I will only move the gun into place once Pete verifies the leopard on bait is the large male. This is picture looking at the blind from the road, about half way between the blind and the bait. The other is a close up of the blind, which is large, roomy, open top and comfortable.

I forgot to mention that yesterday morning as we are hunting and checking baits, we are driving through thick jess. All of a sudden, at 9:30AM, only 20 yards or so in front of the vehicle, a black rhino burst from cover and trots across the track. Holy Cow! Now that to me is a once in a lifetime event.

Now as we drive to check other baits, Pete randomly mentions that in a week we have personally seen the Big Five in the wild. I ponder this for a moment and silently offer a prayer of thanks to the man upstairs. How richly blessed I am.

We check the other baits and find yet another bait hit by a male, this one at 4:30 PM in daylight. We can tell he is a younger male, but still a fine cat. He just does not stack up to the two big boys we have working on.

We head back to camp and look for my black giraffe along the way. This will be a constant theme, along with getting an opportunity at an eland, for the remainder of the trip.

We lay up and rest at camp until time to head out to the blind. This time I have on only my t-shirt, and will add my fleece when we get in the blind. We arrive around 4:00, get situated and comfortable. I do not want to give Pete any reason to blame failure on me, so instead of smoking cigars, I will simply chew on them.

Aside, my father smoked cigars until up into the middle 1960’s. I was still a youngster. He had to have his gal bladder removed, which was a fairly major surgery in that day. The hospital would not let him smoke his cigars, so for the two weeks he was in recovery, he just chewed on them. He never lit another cigar again, and just chewed on them all day long for 50 more years until his death.

Back to hunting. So we sit for a couple of hours until complete darkness falls. Sometime an hour into complete darkness, and with no real sense of light other than dark and darker, I hear something walking from behind the blind. I glance over at Pete and point to my ear. Listening? He gives me that palm down up and down motion like, yes I hear it, just quit moving and stay quiet. Again, there are definitely footsteps and they are 10 yards or so from my end of the blind. Again, I look at Pete and this time give him my by silent rendition of the WTF emoji? He quietly takes his two pointer fingers and mimics an upward arc from his lips. Holy shit. You mean an elephant I think to myself. As if to confirm, I hear the loud rumble of his stomach. At this point my hand is on my rifle, and one foot is tucked behind the chair leg to give me that 1/2 second jump I will need to beat Pete to the blind door and leave him to be turned into elephant floss. Again, Pete gives me the calm the shit down sign. As if to alleviate my own fear, I use the international sign for sucking, then point to myself, the point to my crotch. He looks quizzical like I am trying to describe what is going on outside. I get tickled, so I go through the pantomime again. He still doesn’t understand and give me the flat palm be quiet, calm down stuff.

Back to reality from my self induced little world of humor, I quickly realize there are two elephants, a cow and a bull. The bull can be heard sniffing the air at the road. At this point, I hear the bull turn down the very path toward our blind and I start counting steps. I honestly fully expect to see a large bull elephant head rise up over the front of the blind, extend his trunk and pluck my head off like a grape.
Pete, cool as cucumber, pulls out his MagLight, takes the tshirt from his viewing hole, shines the light into the bulls eyes, and the bull calmly changes course about 10 yards from the front of the blind.

Now the bull ambles off to the left of the blind, the cow remains somewhere out at the road to my right feeding and breaking branches.

At this point, there is no reason to believe I would ever fall asleep in the blind. My adrenalin is pumping! Then out of nowhere, off to my right, I hear the strangest, loudest screaming I have ever heard in Africa. I think it has to be an elephant in distress. It goes on for several minutes, back and forth. Pete later tells me it was hyenas but he has never heard a display like that in all his years hunting. Of course not knowing this, I am left to conjure all sorts of demon creatures just ready to pounce on the unsuspecting hunter. Well I got news for them, I ain’t going down without a fight.

Just then, a leopard coughs somewhere out in the night. I am again on high alert. I am still listening to the elephants, to something that just ran down the road, to the distant sound of a full grown tree being pushed to the ground.

What? There it was. I swear I heard it. In all the cacophony of sounds, I swear I heard a cat jump up onto our bait tree. And as if to confirm that almost imperceptible sound, I now hear branches being swept away, and the loud crunch of meat, bone and sinew. I dare not make a sound. I only look to Pete for the sign to get the gun up.

Pete has removed the tshirt from his peep hole, and is glassing the bait with only the light of the quarter moon. I know Pete has studied the trail cam pictures of the male on bait. He has mentally marked measurements with his field of view to insure he can determine the size of the cat and verify it is our male. After several minutes of viewing my heart jumps. Pete points at the gun and takes the hat out of my shooting hole. I am mentally reciting all the steps I practiced like Bible memory verses. Slow moves of the gun into the shooting hole. Safety off with two fingers so as not to click. Turn on my lighted reticle, whoops, too bright, back it down. Cheek to the stock, gun positioned where I had practiced. OK, ready.

The light comes on. There is my cat. He has just taken a big bite of meat, has turned around facing the way he came up, and sitting like a dog. I am shooting premium .375 bullets, so I know that I will go for the shoulder shot, break both shoulders, and the static shock will turn the lights out on the leopards nervous system. Well, that’s how they say it works. I quickly sight in the red dot of the reticle on the point of the shoulder and squeeze. I do not give myself time to think. Before and after trail cam pictures.

As the gun comes back after recoil, and my sight picture is regained, all I see if the vacant limb. But there, just above the grass line, under the bait tree, is a single leopard cat paw reaching up and then fall back out of view. The leopard is down. Now Pete hollars for me to grab the gun and come on, hurry up. I think somehow, impossibly, the leopard is only stunned, or wounded, and we must run to get a finisher in. In actuality, Pete was as excited as I was, so his screaming at me should have been” Mort, your leopard is down for good. Grab your gun because we still have elephant close by and I am not sure what they will do”.

We arrive at the leopard and I just stand in awe. He is a beast, a toad, a whopper, a “fill in the blank”. The boys arrive shortly with the truck and hugs and dancing and all sort of fist bumping and back slapping goes on. Tafodzwa, my ranger had told me that I would kill a leopard to night by 7:00. It is 8:00 now, and had it not been for the elephant party on our front door step, he would have been spot on.

Mort, says Pete, you have got yourself one helluva cat.

Manager, Pete’s long time tracker of 24 years tells me this is the largest leopard they have killed since he has been with Pete.

So I am not someone into measurements, so you can take this for what it is worth. 180lbs, 16-1/2” skull, 7’1” nose to tale. All I can tell you is when I am there holding that cat, that is a 6’2”, 290 lb old man struggling mightily to hold it up. And for reference, I included the 150lb diminutive Manager, who can shimmy up a tree like a gecko.

We head to the skinning shed with loud choruses of Shona songs being sang. We whoop, we hollar for anyone that can hear that the leopard slayer from Tennessee has won.

Big Mike and Brent drive and meet us at the skinning shed and it allows me the opportunity for a picture with my best hunting buddy!

What an awesome day, and I celebrate with another fine meal and fine cigar!

Tomorrow morning we sleep in. No more 5AM wake up calls. Our main two objectives completed, we will now start hunting for other targeted species.

 

[whitetail]

Congratulations on a fine cat!!

 

[npm352]

Great cat

 

[Hunting Hitman]

Awesome cat and Im enjoying the story immensely! Happy Fathers Day to all.

 

[Royal27]

Well done!

What a story....

 

[cpr0312]

Heck yeah man! That's a big cat, congrats!

 

[PARA45]

I remember thinking, “Good for you old boy, because I’m gonna wreck your world, and this is last piece of leopard ass your gonna remember.”

What a beautiful way you write this report, more like a story. I'd love to sit by a camp fire smoking some fine cigar and hear you tell me this story.

BTW, that right there is some funny sh*t! I busted laughing out loud and I'm at work.....oops.

Congrats on a toad of a leopard, wow!!!!

 

[Randy F]

Day 7 Can You Say Pucker

Last night was a complete thrill. To hear that male leopard sawing was just plain awesome. What a great first sit.

I agree with @Royal27. I am hot natured seeing as I am a large dude. I think fluffy is a good description. After last night’s sit, I will rethink my blind apparel and worry less about getting cold.

So first thing we return to the bait where we sat. The female was there most of the night, as was the male. That male did not get big by being stupid. In fact in his curiosity, he decides to destroy all evidence of the trail cam at the base of the tree. The final image captured being of his mouth and whiskers before it was crushed.
View attachment 407828View attachment 407829
We immediately head over to the other bait that had been hit, and are greeted with glorious news. The bait has been hit hard. And the trail cam verifies it was at 6:40PM. Total euphoria. So we immediately begin the process of constructing a PROPER blind. We drive off a couple of clicks and the boys cut post and cross members for the blind. They also cut ample brush to cover the blind. Pete has several rolls of matted thatch with which to wrap the blind, and we do our routine of setting up chairs and rest so the gun is easily sighted on the bait, as well as the base of the tree. I will have no peep hole at this blind as a hat is placed in my gun opening, and I will only move the gun into place once Pete verifies the leopard on bait is the large male. This is picture looking at the blind from the road, about half way between the blind and the bait. The other is a close up of the blind, which is large, roomy, open top and comfortable.
View attachment 407830View attachment 407831

I forgot to mention that yesterday morning as we are hunting and checking baits, we are driving through thick jess. All of a sudden, at 9:30AM, only 20 yards or so in front of the vehicle, a black rhino burst from cover and trots across the track. Holy Cow! Now that to me is a once in a lifetime event.

Now as we drive to check other baits, Pete randomly mentions that in a week we have personally seen the Big Five in the wild. I ponder this for a moment and silently offer a prayer of thanks to the man upstairs. How richly blessed I am.

We check the other baits and find yet another bait hit by a male, this one at 4:30 PM in daylight. We can tell he is a younger male, but still a fine cat. He just does not stack up to the two big boys we have working on.

We head back to camp and look for my black giraffe along the way. This will be a constant theme, along with getting an opportunity at an eland, for the remainder of the trip.

We lay up and rest at camp until time to head out to the blind. This time I have on only my t-shirt, and will add my fleece when we get in the blind. We arrive around 4:00, get situated and comfortable. I do not want to give Pete any reason to blame failure on me, so instead of smoking cigars, I will simply chew on them.

Aside, my father smoked cigars until up into the middle 1960’s. I was still a youngster. He had to have his gal bladder removed, which was a fairly major surgery in that day. The hospital would not let him smoke his cigars, so for the two weeks he was in recovery, he just chewed on them. He never lit another cigar again, and just chewed on them all day long for 50 more years until his death.

Back to hunting. So we sit for a couple of hours until complete darkness falls. Sometime an hour into complete darkness, and with no real sense of light other than dark and darker, I hear something walking from behind the blind. I glance over at Pete and point to my ear. Listening? He gives me that palm down up and down motion like, yes I hear it, just quit moving and stay quiet. Again, there are definitely footsteps and they are 10 yards or so from my end of the blind. Again, I look at Pete and this time give him my by silent rendition of the WTF emoji? He quietly takes his two pointer fingers and mimics an upward arc from his lips. Holy shit. You mean an elephant I think to myself. As if to confirm, I hear the loud rumble of his stomach. At this point my hand is on my rifle, and one foot is tucked behind the chair leg to give me that 1/2 second jump I will need to beat Pete to the blind door and leave him to be turned into elephant floss. Again, Pete gives me the calm the shit down sign. As if to alleviate my own fear, I use the international sign for sucking, then point to myself, the point to my crotch. He looks quizzical like I am trying to describe what is going on outside. I get tickled, so I go through the pantomime again. He still doesn’t understand and give me the flat palm be quiet, calm down stuff.

Back to reality from my self induced little world of humor, I quickly realize there are two elephants, a cow and a bull. The bull can be heard sniffing the air at the road. At this point, I hear the bull turn down the very path toward our blind and I start counting steps. I honestly fully expect to see a large bull elephant head rise up over the front of the blind, extend his trunk and pluck my head off like a grape.
Pete, cool as cucumber, pulls out his MagLight, takes the tshirt from his viewing hole, shines the light into the bulls eyes, and the bull calmly changes course about 10 yards from the front of the blind.

Now the bull ambles off to the left of the blind, the cow remains somewhere out at the road to my right feeding and breaking branches.

At this point, there is no reason to believe I would ever fall asleep in the blind. My adrenalin is pumping! Then out of nowhere, off to my right, I hear the strangest, loudest screaming I have ever heard in Africa. I think it has to be an elephant in distress. It goes on for several minutes, back and forth. Pete later tells me it was hyenas but he has never heard a display like that in all his years hunting. Of course not knowing this, I am left to conjure all sorts of demon creatures just ready to pounce on the unsuspecting hunter. Well I got news for them, I ain’t going down without a fight.

Just then, a leopard coughs somewhere out in the night. I am again on high alert. I am still listening to the elephants, to something that just ran down the road, to the distant sound of a full grown tree being pushed to the ground.

What? There it was. I swear I heard it. In all the cacophony of sounds, I swear I heard a cat jump up onto our bait tree. And as if to confirm that almost imperceptible sound, I now hear branches being swept away, and the loud crunch of meat, bone and sinew. I dare not make a sound. I only look to Pete for the sign to get the gun up.

Pete has removed the tshirt from his peep hole, and is glassing the bait with only the light of the quarter moon. I know Pete has studied the trail cam pictures of the male on bait. He has mentally marked measurements with his field of view to insure he can determine the size of the cat and verify it is our male. After several minutes of viewing my heart jumps. Pete points at the gun and takes the hat out of my shooting hole. I am mentally reciting all the steps I practiced like Bible memory verses. Slow moves of the gun into the shooting hole. Safety off with two fingers so as not to click. Turn on my lighted reticle, whoops, too bright, back it down. Cheek to the stock, gun positioned where I had practiced. OK, ready.

The light comes on. There is my cat. He has just taken a big bite of meat, has turned around facing the way he came up, and sitting like a dog. I am shooting premium .375 bullets, so I know that I will go for the shoulder shot, break both shoulders, and the static shock will turn the lights out on the leopards nervous system. Well, that’s how they say it works. I quickly sight in the red dot of the reticle on the point of the shoulder and squeeze. I do not give myself time to think. Before and after trail cam pictures.
View attachment 407836
View attachment 407837
As the gun comes back after recoil, and my sight picture is regained, all I see if the vacant limb. But there, just above the grass line, under the bait tree, is a single leopard cat paw reaching up and then fall back out of view. The leopard is down. Now Pete hollars for me to grab the gun and come on, hurry up. I think somehow, impossibly, the leopard is only stunned, or wounded, and we must run to get a finisher in. In actuality, Pete was as excited as I was, so his screaming at me should have been” Mort, your leopard is down for good. Grab your gun because we still have elephant close by and I am not sure what they will do”.

We arrive at the leopard and I just stand in awe. He is a beast, a toad, a whopper, a “fill in the blank”. The boys arrive shortly with the truck and hugs and dancing and all sort of fist bumping and back slapping goes on. Tafodzwa, my ranger had told me that I would kill a leopard to night by 7:00. It is 8:00 now, and had it not been for the elephant party on our front door step, he would have been spot on.
View attachment 407838View attachment 407839View attachment 407840View attachment 407841View attachment 407842View attachment 407843
Mort, says Pete, you have got yourself one helluva cat.

Manager, Pete’s long time tracker of 24 years tells me this is the largest leopard they have killed since he has been with Pete.

So I am not someone into measurements, so you can take this for what it is worth. 180lbs, 16-1/2” skull, 7’1” nose to tale. All I can tell you is when I am there holding that cat, that is a 6’2”, 290 lb old man struggling mightily to hold it up. And for reference, I included the 150lb diminutive Manager, who can shimmy up a tree like a gecko.

We head to the skinning shed with loud choruses of Shona songs being sang. We whoop, we hollar for anyone that can hear that the leopard slayer from Tennessee has won.

Big Mike and Brent drive and meet us at the skinning shed and it allows me the opportunity for a picture with my best hunting buddy!
View attachment 407844

What an awesome day, and I celebrate with another fine meal and fine cigar!

Tomorrow morning we sleep in. No more 5AM wake up calls. Our main two objectives completed, we will now start hunting for other targeted species.

Congratulations!

 

[Royal27]

What a beautiful way you write this report, more like a story. I'd love to sit by a camp fire smoking some fine cigar and hear you tell me this story.

BTW, that right there is some funny sh*t! I busted laughing out loud and I'm at work.....oops.

Congrats on a toad of a leopard, wow!!!!

I've gotta say, that last installment was one of the most intense that I've ever read here. Elephant, leopard, just needed a black mamba in the blind during the shot to be complete.

I'm just glad I've never had a PH have to tell me to calm down, quit moving, and be quiet.

 

[Graham Hunter]

Congratulations

 

[Ridgewalker]

Mort Hill, my hero! Excellent writing! What a grand adventure indeed! Thanks so much for sharing. I really needed this vicarious adventure.

 

[rinehart0050]

Awesome!! Congratulations!

What a hunt! Good thing those elephant decided to back off!

 

[Scott CWO]

Wow, what a night and a hammer of a leopard!!

 

[Peter Radekevich]

Extremely well written and a superb adventure. Congratulations!

 

[Wheels]

Just got the chance to read this Mort. You got a great buff and leopard. Congratulations. Sorry Mike didn't get his lion.

You do a great job of spinning a yarn. Thank you for taking us on the trip with you!

 

[AZDAVE]

Mort you have a very nice leopard Congratz!!! Hope to read about the giraffe and eland next.

 

[Red Leg]

Wonderfully written! Thank you so much for sharing it and doing it so well. I took my leopard at night as well, and the bush at night is a very different, special place.

 

[buck wild]

EXCELLENT! How many cigars were sacrificed over this cat ?

 

[Chukar]

Thanks so much for sharing this! Congratulations!