With a whole new group of guests in the lodge it was time to put my game-face on and get ready to show all of them this magical piece of Africa. All first timers the drive started out with lots of the basic questions like what they could expect to see and my explanation remains the same every time I get asked…”this is Africa, we can see anything or nothing, all depends on the day.” Well this turned out to be a GREAT day!
The drive started off watching a male rhino trying to court a female and she was having none of it as she chased him away anytime he got too close. Then we moved on and found a nice herd of zebra, warthog and impala all grazing along without a care in the world. It was just perfect…perfect weather, great game and the guests were full of beans and easy to get along with.
From here it was time to find us a cat and knew exactly where to go look as some of the other vehicles had found a big male from the east of the reserve but by the time we got there we couldn’t find him. Fortunately though we herd some impala alarm calling and eventually found a young nomadic male strolling along sniffing around inquisitively. He was behaving really strange and it wasn’t till we saw the big male we were originally looking for staring at the youngster with a glint of hatred in his eye. We watched as he stalked behind a bush all the while I was waiting for him to charge the youngster.
Leopard Stalk video
When the youngster realised he was being watched he turned tail and tried to increase the distance between the two but the big male was not going to let him get away that easily. He chased after him and we chased after them trying to see what was happening but they went into a thicket and all we could see were bushes moving but the noise was intense as they scrapped it out in the thicket. Within a matter of seconds it was all over, the big male moved off and the young male came back out of the thicket looking very timid but not badly injured.
This was not the end of the action. Again the big male came out looking for him and the youngster again kept distance between them as the large male followed…with a burst of power the dominant male surged at the young male sending him scurrying straight up a tall marula tree with the big male clawing hard at the heels but giving up half way up the tree. Things seemed to calm down as the big male moved off a little way and lay down to sleep. All this commotion had also brought with it a hyena, which wanted to see if there was an opportunity for him to benefit out of the situation. We were then joined by a female leopard who also wanted to see what was happening! 2 leopards fighting a third joining to make a leap of leopards and a hyena for good measure!
Treed leopard video
