Jim's Blog
Left-footed Safari Stays Dead
Long, slow day today. We got up early in the dark as usual, did our walk down to our blind, sat there. One little bushbuck came out and that was it. Checked the Stealth Cam pictures. The giant forest hogs had come back in the night, so we got good pictures of them, but just a few female nyala, no males. We never saw a nyala all day today. Just really dead slow.
Then tonight we even set up a bait now for hyenas, just trying to get something to salvage the hunt, and right at prime time a bunch of honey gatherers walked right through our bait stand, so they're in the area too walking around. Nothing hit the baits, we checked them all today. Just dead. Weather is perfect, everything should be good. We have three days left and our time, unfortunately, is winding down because we gotta have time to get the leopard. Just seems to be at this point it's a left-footed safari, got postponed by a week, got behind ... maybe there will be some good luck for us. ... Jason is doing his best, nothing he can do about it. It's just hunting, it happens.
The Next Day ...
Went it rains, it pours. This morning we sat nothing came out to our stand. We went down to check out the Stealth Cam, no pictures, so we were getting really depressed walking back up to our blind and one of the guys who had been checking the other leopard baits was waiting for us at our blind. There were apparently not one but two different leopards on our stand number one and stand number three that hit the baits last night. So we spent the whole day making stands. Put up our Double Bull blind at one of them and at the other one just did a natural one because we only have one Double Bull.
Anyway, we sat at the Double Bull blind tonight, but he never came in. He circled behind us. We could hear him grunting off in the jungle, but never came in. He knew something was up because obviously we were in there working pretty hard setting up the blind and all that.
We did have two bushbucks and three giant forest hogs come by including one beautiful male 15 yards away from us, but no leopard. So we got exaclty a day and a half left. We can sit tomorrow morning, tomorrow evening and the next morning, and then we have to hike back to the main camp so we can catch an airplane the next day.
We're cutting it right down to the wire. We'll see what happens. This is a smart leopard, so usually it will take more than the time we have, but we'll see ...
4/10/2010
