Jim's Blog
Leopards Reluctant to Take the Bait
First off, about the blog, I apologize for missing a couple of days. That's how it works with this blog when I'm hunting in remote places and trying to call this information in on my satellite phone. Sometimes the satellite reception is bad and I can't get a signal to get my blog called in to the person who transcribes it and puts it on the Web site. It's not like I have a computer and internet connection out here. It's also why sometimes the blog might not be exactly word for word as I say it because the connection is often bad and hard to understand.
So, with all that said, here's the latest report from the jungles of Ethiopia: Real slow day today. No leopards hit any of our baits, and we sat all morning and no nyala came in. We're looking for that bull that I hit the other day. So it's a pretty interesting camp when we're looking for one single bull with a small flesh wound. It's going to be tough to tell them apart. So we're waiting for the leopard basically. That's all the news. Really cold, clear skies right now. Everything seems to have shut right down. Not seeing bushbucks, not seeing anything. Even our Stealth Cam just on the one mudhole there was only one picture of one female bushbuck and that was it. We were seeing 5, 10, 15 a day there. Everything has definitely slowed up.
The Next Day
Went out this morning sat in our usual spot. Nothing came out. Zero, zippola. The guys went out and checked our baits and nothing hit any of our baits. So this evening we went down to one of the other places we were hunting when we were hunting nyala. Sat there. Saw a couple little bushbucks, that's it. And we've been really hoping to get a warthog, because here in Ethiopia you cannot use any animal for bait that you bring into the area. It has to be indigenous to that area. That 's really tough to get here because we're in the jungle. So we do have the bushbuck hanging and we've got the reedbuck and the giant forest hog, but we really needed the warthog to have in our back pocket just in case.
And we hadn't seen a male warthog in 11 days up here in the jungle and finally today coming out we spotted one ... just a monster of a warthog at least 13 1/2 inches on one side heavy, heavy; the other side is broken off at about 5 inches. But he's huge and perfect shot. We got him, so we hung half of him and we brought the other half back here so now we have 6 leopard bits out. I think our best bets are numbers 1, 3 and 6. Hopefully a leopard is going to hit.
The weather is good; it's overcast but not raining, so it's getting harder for the leopards to hunt easily around here because it is getting crunchy on the ground as opposed to when it's raining and it's all quiet and soft walking.
We ave not seen another nyala bull. In fact we didn't even see a nyala at all today. I think my one chance at that bull was on April Fool's day, but we're still trying in case he comes out. Maybe he'll show up agin, who knows. I think I must have just nicked him because he was defiitely going for a long time.
4/7/2010
