Jim's Blog
Ethiopian Safari Fizzles to an End
Tough, tough, tough day. We got up early early, went into our blind, waited until it got light, and then we realized that the leopard had not come back to that bait during the night, which is only the second time ever that's happened to Jason.
So we raced all the way over to the other bait, where the second leopard had hit yesterday where the guys actually saw the leopard at the bait. We sat there and nothing came out, so we walked over there and realized that that one hadn't returned to the bait either. So now we have two baits with no leopards returning to them. Only the second and third time that's ever happendd to Jason. So we came back and sat from one o'clock on on the first bait thinking that maybe the leopard would be back early in the afternoon. Sat there right until 7 o'clock and he never came back.
So we're kind of up a creek without a paddle right now. We've only got tomorrow left. So it's definitely ... unless the hunting gods smile down on us, we're kind of not doing too good.
The Next Day ...
This hunt is officially over. We saw one nyala bull today. The first one that I could actually get close enough to that I could get a good look at. I can see now where I made my mistake on the other one. I shot him way too far forward. They're just all massive muscle up front and it goes back farther compared to all of the other animals here. So it was my mistake.
The leopard did come back last night and fed, but did not come back all day today. We were pretty well on stand the whole time.
We're totally depressed; the hunt just fizzled on us. We got lucky on the one giant forest hog, we just weren't handed any hunter's luck. We have to go back and look at the good things. We got our gazelle and Abysinnian bushbuck. I messed up the shot on the nyala and that put us behind on the baiting with the leopard. We got a nice reedbuck and Menelik bushbuck, just didn't put it together on the leopard. Only the second time ever for Jason that he didn't get a leopard, even in that amount of time. Just one of those hunts. We got a nice warthog, didn't get the bush duiker, bush pig, golden jackal, hyena ... we hunted all those, too. Just didn't get them.
I'm off to Russia now for brown bear. Hopefully my luck will change. One thing is for sure on this hunt we did our absolute best and worked hard at it. That's hunting.
4/13/2010
