PhotoCollector73
AH veteran
Excerpt from 'Great African Trophies,' by Dianna Rupp:
This huge leopard was in the Rowland Ward top five at the time it was shot in Kenya in 1969. It measured 8 feet, 5 inches. Robert von Reitnauer guided Weatherby Award winner Frank Hibben to this huge cat in the Hell's Gate region near Mount Longonot. One of the many mysteries of the Rowland Ward record book involves why this cat no longer appears in its listings. The only leopard that appears in the 29th edition under Hibben's name may or may not be the same cat; it is listed as having been taken in Magadi, Kenya, but with a date of 1956. With skull measurements of 11 3/4 length, 5 7/8 wide, and a total score of 16 5/8, it could be the same leopard with the date incorrectly recorded, or perhaps Hibben never officially listed his 1969 leopard, which seems somewhat odd since he was justifiably proud of his record cat.
Hibben wrote an article about this exciting hunt for the October 1970 issue of Sports Afield, which is reprinted in its entirety:
The hiss of steam jets sounded like the threats of angry dragons advancing along both sides of the canyon. Fumaroles and geysers blended noise and odor with the bizarre volcanic afterbirth that babbled and belched around us. Even the colors of the rocky cliffs were psychedelic. This was a place of mystery and terror. The dying molten forces that underlay this part of Kenya were gasping to escape from every crack and crevice in the awesome valley. Suddenly, there he was. The scenery around us belonged to some geological era millions of years in the past, but nothing was prehistoric about that leopard. He was glaring at us from behind a sulphur-streaked rock. A steam jet puffed a white plume close above his head, but he paid no heed. Apparently, the monarch cat had been drinking at a small puddle where condensing stream run down the surface of the rock. The head of the leopard was as large as a lioness' and his shoulders were as massive. His spotted face turned, and he disappeared.
"That was the leopard of Longonot," said Rooken-Smith at my elbow. "He's been here ever since I came to the ranch. Few people have ever seen him, but I've seen him twice, and he's made a fool out of me a dozen times," he said ruefully. Rooken-Smith is the manager of the vast Akira Ranch in central Kenya. The ranch occupies most of the great Longonot Volcano, which was active during the Ice Age. The Valley of Evil Spirits, as the Masai call it, is a multicolored fissure down the side of Longonot Mountain. Steam jets, geysers, fumaroles, and hot mud springs indicate that the volcanic fires are still very hot and close to the surface. All of this country is dry, as the volcanic ash absorbs surface water. In a search for water, a hole was driven into the floor of the Valley of Evil Spirits. The result was a gushing jet of stream, but the Akira managers turned this volcanic offering to their advantage. They rigged a series of large pipes to condense the steam and drain it into a trough where domestic cattle run water. Natives from the adjoining Masai Reserve were given permission to bring their cattle into the stream trough. They do so but will go no further into the Valley of Evil Spirits.
Everyone seemed to know about the great leopard. Each morning his tracks were on the floor of the canyon and quite often he came as far as the cattle trough. He did not have to drink there as he had a number of private puddles back in the canyon where sulphurous water collected in rocky pockets. But a leopard of his size needs a lot of meat, and on several occasions, he had killed Masai cattle or the big cows that belong to Akira Ranch. Ordinarily, a leopard will not attack so large an animal, but the Longonot leopard often killed a full-grown cow with ease and ate the whole belly and hindquarters at once. Furthermore, he never seemed to come back to kill a second time. Long ago he apparently had learned that if he returned to kill, he might be shot or speared.
The Masai people have a village or manyatta not far from the mouth of the Valley of Evil Spirits. The old Masai chief said that since he was a boy the great leopard had lived in the canyon. I doubt if the Longonot leopard could have been there that long, but no one seemed to remember just when he came. We were told stories of the many times the Masai had tried to kill him. Often a Masai moran or warrior will spear a lion or leopard to prove his manhood so he is eligible to take his first wife, but it is his duty to kill a cat if it is bothering the Masai stock. The Longonot leopard several times made kills within sight of the boma or thornbush enclosure where the Masais protect their cattle at night. Once the great leopard jumped the boma fence and killed a cow with a single bite through the back of the neck. He did not get to feed on the kill as the morans came swarming out of their dung-covered huts, brandishing long-bladed spears and flaming pieces of wood. Foreign hunters did equally badly with the Longonot leopard. Ordinarily, a leopard can be attracted to a bait. A Grant gazelle or zebra is dragged with the stomach contents spilling out to leave plenty of scent. Leopards do not have a keenly developed sense of smell, but their eyesight is phenomenal.
The bait must be hung in a tree in just the right manner. If hung too low, a lion or a hyena will jerk it down. The bait should be hung so that the leopard can climb a large limb, reach down, and pull the bait up to feed. The bait tree is chosen with great care so that when the leopard is feeding, he will be outlined against the sky. Usually, the leopard comes just at dusk, or after dark. A very careful leopard hunter will rub on the tree limb so that the cat will detect not even a faint whiff of human scent. The bait and the rope suspending it are covered with vines and branches so that everything looks natural. When the bait is hung, a blind is built with a roof as well as a back. If any light shines through, the leopard will detect the movement of the man inside. A path or approach leading to the back of the blind is cleared of every leaf and twig so that two men crouching low can slip into the blind just before sunset and not be seen or heard by a leopard lying near the bait.
This particular leopard had apparently read all of the books written on leopard hunting. He didn't do anything he was supposed to do. In addition to the efforts of Rooken-Smith and the Masais, nine safaris had come to the Akira Ranch specifically to bag the Longonot leopard. Only two hunters had even seen the leopard. One veteran who had a dozen lesser leopards to his credit got a shot. It was twilight and the leopard was moving. The shot went wide off the mark. If anything, the Longonot leopard grew wiser and wilder. "That leopard is as big as a lioness," Bob Reitnauer once said. "I've never seen him, but I've seen his tracks. He has a foot the size of your hand." Several other professional hunters added stories of the huge leopard. The first night at Akira, we pitched camp under a wild fig tree at the foot of a small lava escarpment a couple of miles from the Valley of Evil Spirits. That same night, two of the lions that we were seeking fell into camp. Apparently, they were coming down a game trail over the rocks in the darkness when they suddenly saw humans and fires that were not there before. In attempting to scramble back up the cliff, two of the lions actually fell end over into the middle of our camp. It was all very exciting.
It goes without saying that I was determined to get the Longonot leopard. Bob Reitnauer, our professional hunter, and Rooken-Smith spent an entire evening trying to talk me out of it. "The leopard fever gets them all," said Rooken-Smith as he put down his beer mug and rose to his feet. "You were lucky to get a glimpse of that leopard. And that's all you'll ever get." We knew the Longonot leopard had been baited by experts. We also learned that he spurned the bushbuck and reedbuck that lived in his canyon. He came out every night to hunt and prowl. The Masai chief told us the great leopard had at least twice killed adult zebras and once an eland. In the acacia-dotted flats from the base of Longonot to Narok is a wide variety of plains game. There are Grant and Thomson gazelles by the thousand. Impalas are still numerous. Normally those smaller antelopes are the food of leopards, but this was no ordinary leopard. By choice he killed cattle. He did not care whether the cattle belonged to the Masai or to the Akira Ranch.
There is a Masai proverb, "Fools do not have the wisdom to stay away." Nonetheless, Bob Reitnauer and I circled the flats to shoot a zebra. This took some hunting, as Rooken-Smith shoots every zebra he can find on the ranch. Zebras, like all horses, have to drink, and in this area, the precious water must be saved for the cattle. I made a lucky running shot at extreme range. We carried the zebra, an old battle-scarred stallion, up into the Valley of Evil Spirits. Rooken-Smith had pointed out three or four trees where bait had been hung before. We spurned these as beneath the intelligence of the leopard. Instead, we hung the zebra in a brushy little gully near the mouth of the valley. We built a blind on top of a mound of volcanic ash so that we could approach it from behind. From this elevation, we could look over the top of the bushes without disturbing anything.
The next morning, we cautiously crawled into our hiding place. The zebra had been hoisted higher in the tree. The belly and both hind legs were eaten. Strings of skin and ligaments still dripped red. The leopard must have eaten 100 pounds of meat. What an animal! As there were no vultures in the trees, and no jackals or hyenas to scavenge tidbits on the ground, we knew that the leopard was lying nearby to protect his kill. Silently we withdrew, crawling on our hands and knees in spite of scratches from the volcanic cinders. When we got into the next gully, Reitnauer and I hugged each other. What luck! The wily old leopard had taken our bait the very first night.
Early in the afternoon, when the sun was hot and the birds quiet, we crawled again into the blind. Reitnauer carried a double-barrel shotgun loaded with buckshot. I placed my .300 magnum across the two poles I had carefully prepared as a gun rest. Through the small hole in the grass and leaves of the blind, I could look through the telescope sight. I adjusted the barrel so that it pointed just above the branch where the leopard would lie to feed. The wise old leopard would come just at dark. Any movement would alarm him. I would have to move the rifle only a little and squeeze the trigger. I looked through the sight again. It was all yellow, and the yellow was marked with black rosettes! Automatically I shifted the cross hairs of the scope to the shoulder. Wait! This was the middle of the afternoon. I punched Reitnauer's leg. He was busy killing ants that might disturb us later on. Across the flat, I could see a herd of Masai cattle coming to water. The Masais with their long-bladed spears were urging the cattle along. I could hear the shouts of the men. Bob and I stared in amazement through our peephole. There was the leopard in the tree. It was a leopard, but not the leopard.
As furtively as the first, a second leopard appeared. This was a male but of no great size. He looked around carefully, and then he quickly scaled the tree. He took a position above the female, lounging along a limb as though on lookout duty. Three more leopards appeared in quick succession. These were young but almost full-grown animals. They quickly climbed into the tree and began to feed. The afternoon sun glinted on their beautiful spotted coats. Their muzzles were wet and red. Occasionally they snarled and fought with each other on the crowded tree limb. Reitnauer was mumbling something under his breath. I knew what he was thinking. Leopards never feed in the middle of the day. A male leopard never stays with the female when she has kittens. Apparently, these leopards had not heard the rules. We watched in fascination for over an hour. Five leopards in one tree! I moved cautiously to the side of the blind. I took a single picture of the male leopard on his observation post as the rest of his family jumped down and faded into the brush.
For three weeks we sought the Longonot leopard. During that time he had killed a half-grown Masai cow and a burro. During this same period, we had offered him two delectable Grant gazelles and a wonderful stinking warthog in just the right state of putrefaction. If we placed these tidbits in the Valley of Evil Spirits, nothing touched them. If we hung the baits in any of the side canyons around the shoulder of Longonot, other leopards helped themselves. We saw two other leopards and two families of cheetahs, but not the old man of Longonot. Every morning, as we surveyed the situation, we saw his tracks, and we never failed to marvel at their size. Every night the big leopard made excursions out of the gorge into the surrounding terrain. We always found his spoor in the damp cattle trails around a steam vent. Every morning he returned to the canyon. There was no doubt that he had his lair there.
"If we could just find some pattern in his habits so that we could get ahead of him instead of behind him," Bob said for the dozenth time. "He won't take bait... Wait a minute! I've got an idea. Once we caught a wise old leopard like this one. He ignored everything else, but he fell for an ostrich." It didn't seem like a very good idea to me, but at least it was a plan. There wasn't an ostrich within ten miles of the Valley of Evil Spirits. We circled on the flats until we found an old male with dirty plumes. "I hope he won't taste as tough as he looks," Bob commented as I made the shot. We saved the feathers, skinned the carcass, and carried it back to the volcanic valley. Now if we could just think like a leopard, or best of all think a little better than this leopard, we might have a chance. After discarding a dozen schemes, we decided to be subtle. We did not drag the ostrich, nor even attempt to make it easy to find. We carried the carcass through the brush on one side of the valley and placed it in the fork of a tree that grew in a gnarled mass out of a crack in the red rock. We covered the ostrich with branches to keep off the vultures and then wiped our tracks clear with ostrich fat. We even pushed back the bushes and tree limbs as though we were attempting to hide the greasy old ostrich. Two hundred yards away, we built a small blind beneath a ledge of the cliff. We were not the first to use this shadowed little cave. There was part of an ancient stone wall, and on the rock of the overhang, done in red and black, were pictographs of ancient men hunting ancient animals. Through a crack in the rocks, we could barely see the tree where the ostrich was concealed. In dim light, it would be impossible. Nevertheless, we carefully scraped a tunnel along the face of the cliff so that we could crawl unseen into the house of the ancient hunters.
The next morning we looked as usual for the tracks of the Longonot leopard. They were not there. We crawled along our tunnel into the cave beneath the cliff. We saw immediately that the branches over the ostrich carcass had been batted away. With our binoculars, we could tell that thirty or forty pounds of meat were gouged out of the belly of the bird. Bob pounded me silently on the shoulder. The wily old leopard thought we were trying to hide the meat, so he decided to help himself. That afternoon, we were in the stone-walled cave by four o'clock. We moved every twig and leaf that might make a noise. Silently we waited the long hours until sunset. The cliffs of many colors fell into shadow. Only the steam jets hissed in the twilight. When I tried the sight on my rifle, I was dismayed to see that the canyon shadows were so dark and deceiving that I could not see the leopard if he were there. We waited till midnight, and then crawled back down the tunnel and walked the mile or so to the cattle troughs where we had left the car. "If he feeds only at night, we are finished," Reitnauer remarked. That is exactly what the Longonot leopard did. The next morning, when we crawled into the house of the ancient hunters, we could see that another piece of meat as big as a washtub had been gouged out of the ostrich. Vultures sat high on the red cliffs above, but none were close. That meant the wily old leopard was lying somewhere among the rocks guarding his banquet. He probably was watching us contemptuously at that very moment.
I motioned Bob forward. He shrugged his shoulders and followed. It is folly to walk up on a leopard bait. Ordinarily, the leopard will see you, disappear, and never return. But this old veteran didn't play by the rules and neither would we. We walked up to the bait tree. We saw the claw marks on the bark where the leopard had jumped up. The scratches on the tree were as widely spaced as I could spread my hands. At one side was a little rocky basin. From a clump of moss and ferns dripped a tiny trickle of water. There in the mud between the rocks was the imprint of the leopard's mighty paw. As he lay on his belly to drink, he had pushed down the rocks and ferns longer than the length of a tall man. I measured the distance from the water puddle to the cliff where our blind was hidden - too low and too far away. I chose a place on the side of the cliff where a small clump of brush clung to the rocks. We could reach this place from behind. We judged that one more meal was left on the ostrich. It was our last chance. We took with us Kinyenze, a Wakamba hunter with phenomenal eyesight. We were going to need every advantage and a fantastic amount of luck to pull this off.
We lay on our bellies behind the brush on top of the cliff. As before, the shadows deepened early in the valley. Across from us, a wide-mouthed fumarole belched a yellow smoke and steam. The last of the Masais had driven their cattle away into the distance. A bushbuck barked sharply. The leopard was moving. The shadows below us were now so deep I could barely make out the form of the ostrich in the gnarled tree. I looked at the red rock basin where the water dripped. The spotted rocks there still showed some color in the fading light.
Kinyenze was jerking at my leg. "Chui! Chui!" he whispered urgently.
The leopard had appeared out of nowhere. He crouched at the little pool and was lapping the water. His shoulders were hunched. His tail whipped back and forth nervously. I could see the white tip clearly. The middle of his body was behind a rock. In the telescope sight of the rifle, I could see the blurred form of black rosettes. Suddenly the leopard turned his head. He stood up and looked straight at us. He could not have heard any sound above the hiss of the steam jets. Perhaps he had seen a movement. It was now or never.
I shifted the black dot of the sight just forward of the rock. When the dot covered the base of the leopard's neck, I squeezed off the shot. In a single arching bound the Longonot leopard was gone. The three of us climbed down over the ledges. There was little use in going up to the water pool. The long leap showed clearly that the leopard was unhurt. My shot had missed. Bob and I decided to cut down the remnants of the ostrich carcass.
"Chui, bwana, chui!" screamed Kinyenze.
Reitnauer swung his double-barrel shotgun. Among the scattered bushes in the red rocks, a mottled form crouched, the wide head raised. At that distance, a wounded leopard could kill us in a second. As we stood there tense, with guns ready, the leopard never moved. Kinyenze jumped forward and jerked the leopard's tail. The Longonot leopard was quite dead. My shot had hit the base of his neck. That long leap had been his last.
The Longonot leopard will place among the first five in the world records of spotted cats, but this is not the main point. He was a giant of his kind, possessing the intelligence of a man. The Valley of Evil Spirits will be a different place without him.
This huge leopard was in the Rowland Ward top five at the time it was shot in Kenya in 1969. It measured 8 feet, 5 inches. Robert von Reitnauer guided Weatherby Award winner Frank Hibben to this huge cat in the Hell's Gate region near Mount Longonot. One of the many mysteries of the Rowland Ward record book involves why this cat no longer appears in its listings. The only leopard that appears in the 29th edition under Hibben's name may or may not be the same cat; it is listed as having been taken in Magadi, Kenya, but with a date of 1956. With skull measurements of 11 3/4 length, 5 7/8 wide, and a total score of 16 5/8, it could be the same leopard with the date incorrectly recorded, or perhaps Hibben never officially listed his 1969 leopard, which seems somewhat odd since he was justifiably proud of his record cat.
Hibben wrote an article about this exciting hunt for the October 1970 issue of Sports Afield, which is reprinted in its entirety:
The hiss of steam jets sounded like the threats of angry dragons advancing along both sides of the canyon. Fumaroles and geysers blended noise and odor with the bizarre volcanic afterbirth that babbled and belched around us. Even the colors of the rocky cliffs were psychedelic. This was a place of mystery and terror. The dying molten forces that underlay this part of Kenya were gasping to escape from every crack and crevice in the awesome valley. Suddenly, there he was. The scenery around us belonged to some geological era millions of years in the past, but nothing was prehistoric about that leopard. He was glaring at us from behind a sulphur-streaked rock. A steam jet puffed a white plume close above his head, but he paid no heed. Apparently, the monarch cat had been drinking at a small puddle where condensing stream run down the surface of the rock. The head of the leopard was as large as a lioness' and his shoulders were as massive. His spotted face turned, and he disappeared.
"That was the leopard of Longonot," said Rooken-Smith at my elbow. "He's been here ever since I came to the ranch. Few people have ever seen him, but I've seen him twice, and he's made a fool out of me a dozen times," he said ruefully. Rooken-Smith is the manager of the vast Akira Ranch in central Kenya. The ranch occupies most of the great Longonot Volcano, which was active during the Ice Age. The Valley of Evil Spirits, as the Masai call it, is a multicolored fissure down the side of Longonot Mountain. Steam jets, geysers, fumaroles, and hot mud springs indicate that the volcanic fires are still very hot and close to the surface. All of this country is dry, as the volcanic ash absorbs surface water. In a search for water, a hole was driven into the floor of the Valley of Evil Spirits. The result was a gushing jet of stream, but the Akira managers turned this volcanic offering to their advantage. They rigged a series of large pipes to condense the steam and drain it into a trough where domestic cattle run water. Natives from the adjoining Masai Reserve were given permission to bring their cattle into the stream trough. They do so but will go no further into the Valley of Evil Spirits.
Everyone seemed to know about the great leopard. Each morning his tracks were on the floor of the canyon and quite often he came as far as the cattle trough. He did not have to drink there as he had a number of private puddles back in the canyon where sulphurous water collected in rocky pockets. But a leopard of his size needs a lot of meat, and on several occasions, he had killed Masai cattle or the big cows that belong to Akira Ranch. Ordinarily, a leopard will not attack so large an animal, but the Longonot leopard often killed a full-grown cow with ease and ate the whole belly and hindquarters at once. Furthermore, he never seemed to come back to kill a second time. Long ago he apparently had learned that if he returned to kill, he might be shot or speared.
The Masai people have a village or manyatta not far from the mouth of the Valley of Evil Spirits. The old Masai chief said that since he was a boy the great leopard had lived in the canyon. I doubt if the Longonot leopard could have been there that long, but no one seemed to remember just when he came. We were told stories of the many times the Masai had tried to kill him. Often a Masai moran or warrior will spear a lion or leopard to prove his manhood so he is eligible to take his first wife, but it is his duty to kill a cat if it is bothering the Masai stock. The Longonot leopard several times made kills within sight of the boma or thornbush enclosure where the Masais protect their cattle at night. Once the great leopard jumped the boma fence and killed a cow with a single bite through the back of the neck. He did not get to feed on the kill as the morans came swarming out of their dung-covered huts, brandishing long-bladed spears and flaming pieces of wood. Foreign hunters did equally badly with the Longonot leopard. Ordinarily, a leopard can be attracted to a bait. A Grant gazelle or zebra is dragged with the stomach contents spilling out to leave plenty of scent. Leopards do not have a keenly developed sense of smell, but their eyesight is phenomenal.
The bait must be hung in a tree in just the right manner. If hung too low, a lion or a hyena will jerk it down. The bait should be hung so that the leopard can climb a large limb, reach down, and pull the bait up to feed. The bait tree is chosen with great care so that when the leopard is feeding, he will be outlined against the sky. Usually, the leopard comes just at dusk, or after dark. A very careful leopard hunter will rub on the tree limb so that the cat will detect not even a faint whiff of human scent. The bait and the rope suspending it are covered with vines and branches so that everything looks natural. When the bait is hung, a blind is built with a roof as well as a back. If any light shines through, the leopard will detect the movement of the man inside. A path or approach leading to the back of the blind is cleared of every leaf and twig so that two men crouching low can slip into the blind just before sunset and not be seen or heard by a leopard lying near the bait.
This particular leopard had apparently read all of the books written on leopard hunting. He didn't do anything he was supposed to do. In addition to the efforts of Rooken-Smith and the Masais, nine safaris had come to the Akira Ranch specifically to bag the Longonot leopard. Only two hunters had even seen the leopard. One veteran who had a dozen lesser leopards to his credit got a shot. It was twilight and the leopard was moving. The shot went wide off the mark. If anything, the Longonot leopard grew wiser and wilder. "That leopard is as big as a lioness," Bob Reitnauer once said. "I've never seen him, but I've seen his tracks. He has a foot the size of your hand." Several other professional hunters added stories of the huge leopard. The first night at Akira, we pitched camp under a wild fig tree at the foot of a small lava escarpment a couple of miles from the Valley of Evil Spirits. That same night, two of the lions that we were seeking fell into camp. Apparently, they were coming down a game trail over the rocks in the darkness when they suddenly saw humans and fires that were not there before. In attempting to scramble back up the cliff, two of the lions actually fell end over into the middle of our camp. It was all very exciting.
It goes without saying that I was determined to get the Longonot leopard. Bob Reitnauer, our professional hunter, and Rooken-Smith spent an entire evening trying to talk me out of it. "The leopard fever gets them all," said Rooken-Smith as he put down his beer mug and rose to his feet. "You were lucky to get a glimpse of that leopard. And that's all you'll ever get." We knew the Longonot leopard had been baited by experts. We also learned that he spurned the bushbuck and reedbuck that lived in his canyon. He came out every night to hunt and prowl. The Masai chief told us the great leopard had at least twice killed adult zebras and once an eland. In the acacia-dotted flats from the base of Longonot to Narok is a wide variety of plains game. There are Grant and Thomson gazelles by the thousand. Impalas are still numerous. Normally those smaller antelopes are the food of leopards, but this was no ordinary leopard. By choice he killed cattle. He did not care whether the cattle belonged to the Masai or to the Akira Ranch.
There is a Masai proverb, "Fools do not have the wisdom to stay away." Nonetheless, Bob Reitnauer and I circled the flats to shoot a zebra. This took some hunting, as Rooken-Smith shoots every zebra he can find on the ranch. Zebras, like all horses, have to drink, and in this area, the precious water must be saved for the cattle. I made a lucky running shot at extreme range. We carried the zebra, an old battle-scarred stallion, up into the Valley of Evil Spirits. Rooken-Smith had pointed out three or four trees where bait had been hung before. We spurned these as beneath the intelligence of the leopard. Instead, we hung the zebra in a brushy little gully near the mouth of the valley. We built a blind on top of a mound of volcanic ash so that we could approach it from behind. From this elevation, we could look over the top of the bushes without disturbing anything.
The next morning, we cautiously crawled into our hiding place. The zebra had been hoisted higher in the tree. The belly and both hind legs were eaten. Strings of skin and ligaments still dripped red. The leopard must have eaten 100 pounds of meat. What an animal! As there were no vultures in the trees, and no jackals or hyenas to scavenge tidbits on the ground, we knew that the leopard was lying nearby to protect his kill. Silently we withdrew, crawling on our hands and knees in spite of scratches from the volcanic cinders. When we got into the next gully, Reitnauer and I hugged each other. What luck! The wily old leopard had taken our bait the very first night.
Early in the afternoon, when the sun was hot and the birds quiet, we crawled again into the blind. Reitnauer carried a double-barrel shotgun loaded with buckshot. I placed my .300 magnum across the two poles I had carefully prepared as a gun rest. Through the small hole in the grass and leaves of the blind, I could look through the telescope sight. I adjusted the barrel so that it pointed just above the branch where the leopard would lie to feed. The wise old leopard would come just at dark. Any movement would alarm him. I would have to move the rifle only a little and squeeze the trigger. I looked through the sight again. It was all yellow, and the yellow was marked with black rosettes! Automatically I shifted the cross hairs of the scope to the shoulder. Wait! This was the middle of the afternoon. I punched Reitnauer's leg. He was busy killing ants that might disturb us later on. Across the flat, I could see a herd of Masai cattle coming to water. The Masais with their long-bladed spears were urging the cattle along. I could hear the shouts of the men. Bob and I stared in amazement through our peephole. There was the leopard in the tree. It was a leopard, but not the leopard.
As furtively as the first, a second leopard appeared. This was a male but of no great size. He looked around carefully, and then he quickly scaled the tree. He took a position above the female, lounging along a limb as though on lookout duty. Three more leopards appeared in quick succession. These were young but almost full-grown animals. They quickly climbed into the tree and began to feed. The afternoon sun glinted on their beautiful spotted coats. Their muzzles were wet and red. Occasionally they snarled and fought with each other on the crowded tree limb. Reitnauer was mumbling something under his breath. I knew what he was thinking. Leopards never feed in the middle of the day. A male leopard never stays with the female when she has kittens. Apparently, these leopards had not heard the rules. We watched in fascination for over an hour. Five leopards in one tree! I moved cautiously to the side of the blind. I took a single picture of the male leopard on his observation post as the rest of his family jumped down and faded into the brush.
For three weeks we sought the Longonot leopard. During that time he had killed a half-grown Masai cow and a burro. During this same period, we had offered him two delectable Grant gazelles and a wonderful stinking warthog in just the right state of putrefaction. If we placed these tidbits in the Valley of Evil Spirits, nothing touched them. If we hung the baits in any of the side canyons around the shoulder of Longonot, other leopards helped themselves. We saw two other leopards and two families of cheetahs, but not the old man of Longonot. Every morning, as we surveyed the situation, we saw his tracks, and we never failed to marvel at their size. Every night the big leopard made excursions out of the gorge into the surrounding terrain. We always found his spoor in the damp cattle trails around a steam vent. Every morning he returned to the canyon. There was no doubt that he had his lair there.
"If we could just find some pattern in his habits so that we could get ahead of him instead of behind him," Bob said for the dozenth time. "He won't take bait... Wait a minute! I've got an idea. Once we caught a wise old leopard like this one. He ignored everything else, but he fell for an ostrich." It didn't seem like a very good idea to me, but at least it was a plan. There wasn't an ostrich within ten miles of the Valley of Evil Spirits. We circled on the flats until we found an old male with dirty plumes. "I hope he won't taste as tough as he looks," Bob commented as I made the shot. We saved the feathers, skinned the carcass, and carried it back to the volcanic valley. Now if we could just think like a leopard, or best of all think a little better than this leopard, we might have a chance. After discarding a dozen schemes, we decided to be subtle. We did not drag the ostrich, nor even attempt to make it easy to find. We carried the carcass through the brush on one side of the valley and placed it in the fork of a tree that grew in a gnarled mass out of a crack in the red rock. We covered the ostrich with branches to keep off the vultures and then wiped our tracks clear with ostrich fat. We even pushed back the bushes and tree limbs as though we were attempting to hide the greasy old ostrich. Two hundred yards away, we built a small blind beneath a ledge of the cliff. We were not the first to use this shadowed little cave. There was part of an ancient stone wall, and on the rock of the overhang, done in red and black, were pictographs of ancient men hunting ancient animals. Through a crack in the rocks, we could barely see the tree where the ostrich was concealed. In dim light, it would be impossible. Nevertheless, we carefully scraped a tunnel along the face of the cliff so that we could crawl unseen into the house of the ancient hunters.
The next morning we looked as usual for the tracks of the Longonot leopard. They were not there. We crawled along our tunnel into the cave beneath the cliff. We saw immediately that the branches over the ostrich carcass had been batted away. With our binoculars, we could tell that thirty or forty pounds of meat were gouged out of the belly of the bird. Bob pounded me silently on the shoulder. The wily old leopard thought we were trying to hide the meat, so he decided to help himself. That afternoon, we were in the stone-walled cave by four o'clock. We moved every twig and leaf that might make a noise. Silently we waited the long hours until sunset. The cliffs of many colors fell into shadow. Only the steam jets hissed in the twilight. When I tried the sight on my rifle, I was dismayed to see that the canyon shadows were so dark and deceiving that I could not see the leopard if he were there. We waited till midnight, and then crawled back down the tunnel and walked the mile or so to the cattle troughs where we had left the car. "If he feeds only at night, we are finished," Reitnauer remarked. That is exactly what the Longonot leopard did. The next morning, when we crawled into the house of the ancient hunters, we could see that another piece of meat as big as a washtub had been gouged out of the ostrich. Vultures sat high on the red cliffs above, but none were close. That meant the wily old leopard was lying somewhere among the rocks guarding his banquet. He probably was watching us contemptuously at that very moment.
I motioned Bob forward. He shrugged his shoulders and followed. It is folly to walk up on a leopard bait. Ordinarily, the leopard will see you, disappear, and never return. But this old veteran didn't play by the rules and neither would we. We walked up to the bait tree. We saw the claw marks on the bark where the leopard had jumped up. The scratches on the tree were as widely spaced as I could spread my hands. At one side was a little rocky basin. From a clump of moss and ferns dripped a tiny trickle of water. There in the mud between the rocks was the imprint of the leopard's mighty paw. As he lay on his belly to drink, he had pushed down the rocks and ferns longer than the length of a tall man. I measured the distance from the water puddle to the cliff where our blind was hidden - too low and too far away. I chose a place on the side of the cliff where a small clump of brush clung to the rocks. We could reach this place from behind. We judged that one more meal was left on the ostrich. It was our last chance. We took with us Kinyenze, a Wakamba hunter with phenomenal eyesight. We were going to need every advantage and a fantastic amount of luck to pull this off.
We lay on our bellies behind the brush on top of the cliff. As before, the shadows deepened early in the valley. Across from us, a wide-mouthed fumarole belched a yellow smoke and steam. The last of the Masais had driven their cattle away into the distance. A bushbuck barked sharply. The leopard was moving. The shadows below us were now so deep I could barely make out the form of the ostrich in the gnarled tree. I looked at the red rock basin where the water dripped. The spotted rocks there still showed some color in the fading light.
Kinyenze was jerking at my leg. "Chui! Chui!" he whispered urgently.
The leopard had appeared out of nowhere. He crouched at the little pool and was lapping the water. His shoulders were hunched. His tail whipped back and forth nervously. I could see the white tip clearly. The middle of his body was behind a rock. In the telescope sight of the rifle, I could see the blurred form of black rosettes. Suddenly the leopard turned his head. He stood up and looked straight at us. He could not have heard any sound above the hiss of the steam jets. Perhaps he had seen a movement. It was now or never.
I shifted the black dot of the sight just forward of the rock. When the dot covered the base of the leopard's neck, I squeezed off the shot. In a single arching bound the Longonot leopard was gone. The three of us climbed down over the ledges. There was little use in going up to the water pool. The long leap showed clearly that the leopard was unhurt. My shot had missed. Bob and I decided to cut down the remnants of the ostrich carcass.
"Chui, bwana, chui!" screamed Kinyenze.
Reitnauer swung his double-barrel shotgun. Among the scattered bushes in the red rocks, a mottled form crouched, the wide head raised. At that distance, a wounded leopard could kill us in a second. As we stood there tense, with guns ready, the leopard never moved. Kinyenze jumped forward and jerked the leopard's tail. The Longonot leopard was quite dead. My shot had hit the base of his neck. That long leap had been his last.
The Longonot leopard will place among the first five in the world records of spotted cats, but this is not the main point. He was a giant of his kind, possessing the intelligence of a man. The Valley of Evil Spirits will be a different place without him.
