In early July we were so excited to see a leopard turn-tail in front of our bakkie on a Sunday afternoon drive. It was the first sighting on Hilton.
In early July we were so excited to see a leopard turn-tail in front of our bakkie on a Sunday afternoon drive. It was the first sighting on Hilton.
Neighbouring farms had been losing stock and we had heard the baboons' distress calls at night.
A few weeks later Dave Pohl had one on his farm which the dogs had up a tree. Craig Rippon also got a photo of one with his trail camera so knew they were around.
We did not know whether these were all the same leopard or not. John decided to set some traps using first fish, then warthog as bait. We checked the cages daily but nothing seemed to be happening until this morning.
Dane Kruger set off on the quad bike and parked a few metres away from the cage. He walked past it at 9am and it was still set. Billy Scott was there at 9.20am.
He realised he was in the wrong place and was doing a U-turn where the cage is when the leopard jumped at him from inside the trap.
Fortunately we had been in touch with Nature Conservation and Kwandwe with a view to capturing the leopard. The Kwandwe Team arrived very quickly.
They darted it and proceeded to carry out a battery of tests, microchipped it, put on a collar, gave it antibiotic and took blood.
It was then loaded into a box to be transported to a boma at Amakhala reserve before being relocated to its new home at Kariega Game Reserve.
* This story was published in the 28 August 2015 edition of Grocott's Mail.
