After 18 days of leopard hunting, I had two days left. Mid afternoon, we arrived at the bait location with the blind. We had sat there the prior day and nothing hit the bait. We’re hoping today is the day.
Nick and I got settled into the tent blind and so began the four plus hour sit, while being absolutely quiet. My rifle had a round chambered and ready for action.
To pass the time, I started scrolling through the photos on my phone and deleting duplicate and bad photos. After a couple of hours, Nick nudged me and pointed at the bait. I looked at the bait, and it looked the same. But a few seconds later, the Tom appeared and was soon on the bait. I was a bit startled because I anticipated the cat to appear at last light. It was a good hour before sunset and here Mr Spots was. Two taps on the leg was the signal to shoot and Nick had just done that. Switching the safety off and making a slight adjustment to the rifle to put the crosshairs on the cat, I fired and the cat dropped. However, it clearly wasn’t dead, so I had to take a follow up. Probably not the best shooting I’ve ever done, but I at least had a leopard!
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