One Heck Of A Ride

93 Zambia’s Big Cats and a shower and flush toilet), a dining and bar area with a kitchen, and separate quarters for the camp’s dozen or so workers and a skinning shed with a storage area for skins, skulls and horns were a short distance away. Everything had been built with local materials. The walls and roofs -- even the doors and the panels that served as windows -- were thatched with grass. The entire complex was situated under tall trees that provided shade and gave the place a comfortable ambiance. My main quarries on this safari were the two big cats, and the first order of business was to collect the bait we needed to attract them. It didn’t take long. Darryl and I were in the Land Cruiser the next morning, heading for a hippo pool that he knew about, when Phineas Shumba (Darryl’s head tracker) tapped the top of the cab to indicate he’d seen something from his perch in the vehicle’s bed. A second or two later, a small group of buffalo started across the two-track trail about fifty yards ahead of us. We were on foot when we caught up to them in a thicket ten minutes later. We were assessing the horns of the males when a lone old bull with heavily broomed horns stepped out about halfway between us and the herd and stared directly at me before tilting his head in an effort to get my scent. He was no more than fifty yards away when I found him in the scope on my .375 H&H Magnum and fired. Because of the recoil, I hadn’t seen the bull drop. All Darryl and I knew was that the bull and the herd had vanished. “Where did you hit him?” Darryl asked before adding, “Did you hit him?” “I think so,” I said. “But I’m not sure.” When we found the bull dead where he had been standing, we could find no entrance or exit wounds. A closer inspection showed my bullet had entered a nostril and scrambled his brains without exiting the skull. He was dead before he hit the ground. After the crew cut up the old dugga boy, we spent the rest of the day hanging the meat for lion bait at three different sites. Meat is not simply hung from just any tree when hunting lions and leopards, nor is the same technique used for both cats, I soon learned. Lions are social animals and three or more of them will consume a huge amount of meat in a single night. When baiting for lion, the goal is to hang enough meat so that some will be left to get the cats to return for more after they’ve spent a night gorging themselves. A single medium-size antelope, say an impala, won’t last the night. The front half or a hindquarter of a buffalo may be enough if it’s hung high enough that hyenas can’t reach it and a lion will have to stretch to pull off a chunk. Also, the bait tree needs to be carefully chosen. It must be upwind from where the hunter will approach it and there should be a good site within forty yards or so for building a blind after the cats start feeding there. Ideally, a lion tree should have no branches below about a dozen feet that smaller scavengers can use to reach the meat. Finally, the meat should be covered with leaves to hide it from predatory birds. Not every suitable site has a suitable tree, and several of our lion baits were merely anchored to a tree trunk with chains before being covered with leaves and branches. Although less meat is needed for baiting a leopard, more care is needed in selecting a bait tree. Leopards are shyer and more cautious than lions, and usually will wait for the last minute of light before approaching the bait. Professional hunters look for a tree that not only is upwind and silhouetted at sundown, but it also must have a heavy limb that can support a leopard and the bait. They carefully wire the bait under the limb so the cat will be silhouetted in the fading light as it tries to get the meat. As when baiting for a lion, PHs also will use leafy branches to hide the meat from vultures. Most will use the bait animal’s entrails to lay a scent trail to the bait, and some