The Story:
I hunted with Alland Cilliers, whose outfitting business used to be called, "Ha Nore". It is now called Allan Cilliers' Safaris, I believe. Neil Summers does the booking and did an EXCELLENT job for me.
Allan hunts Leopard like no other outfitter! His land is backed right up against Bushmen Land, a HUGE reserve set up by the Namibia government for the Bushmen. His trackers are all Bushmen and you ain't seen a tracker until you have seen one of these trackers. Track a mouse on cement and run him down for you...
The idea is not to bait the Leopards...the Bushmen trackers go out each morning and find Tom tracks. Then they follow them to a kill. If they find one before noon, then they go in and set up a Double Bull blind 14-15 yards from the kill. Because it is the Leopard's OWN kill, he will normally come in with lots of light left.
We had ten days scheduled. We also had a problem. Full moon and THREE estrous females in the area. The Toms weren't killing. They were lady hunting. There were at least three different, LARGE Toms in the area. After 10 days, Allan said, "We'll just keep on hunting." We hunted 17 days...same results. In the meantime, I managed to get a 62 5/8" Kudu, the largest I have ever seen!
Two nights left to go and still no kills. I told Allan that I wanted to sit at a particular waterhole, since there were usually a bunch of Eland Bulls around there. There we were sitting in the blind watching and all-of-a-sudden, I was grabbed, pulled down below the blind window, and told, "Leopard"!!!!! I looked out and there was a big Leopard just walking to the edge of the water tank. No matter what you think, when you're shaking like a dog passing bones, it is NOT easy to pick a spot. I THINK I did and as I started my draw, the Leopard crouched down to drink. That was my undoing, since I was just about to release. Before all this Allan had made it very clear that you get ONE and ONLY ONE shot at a Leopard...no second chances! I never even saw where the arrow went, but obviously it was right over the Leopard's back.
The Leopard went straight up in the air and was turning in mid air when it came down on the edge of the water hole and fell flat on its back in the water. It attempted to jump out and fell right back in. Well all this caused it to forget that something had spooked it. The Leopard walked about 12 feet, with a look of abject DISGUST on its face, and started to shake off...facing away from me. This last bit, by-the-way, is all on video!
Shake the legs and feet, shake the tail, shake the head, do the rest all over again. I may miss, but one thing I always do FAST, is have another arrow on the string. As the Leopard began to turn away to walk off, I drew, definitely picked a spot, and drilled it!
Man, you should have heard the ROAR, as the arrow hit and it did a complete flip about 14 yards in front of me! The Leopard then trotted off another 25 yards, walked around a bush, sat down, looked around, and then lay down and died!
We waited a while, but the arrow had blown right through the Leopard, centering the "goodies". When we got over to the Leopard, we found that it was a female, quite old and very large for a girl.
You can still drive a medium sized car under my feet when I'm walking. I don't reckon my feet will touch ground for another few months. If you want a FABULOUS Leopard hunt, with LOTS of other good stuff to hunt, as well, contact Neil Summers and take a run at it.
I don't know how to put a video in here and it's somewhat jerky due to the guide's excitement, but it shows the whole story right there on film.
Now you have "The rest of the story"!
Too Short
Topic: Brunner's Kitty (Read 3134 times)
