Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 119 and the leopard was neither bleeding much nor stopping. Tracking was very slow at one stage. I went on ahead, and I heard the leopard growl as it rushed out of the low cover and straight into a patch of long, unburned grass and palmettos. I ran after it, then climbed a nearby termite mound to find that the area into which the leopard had run was surrounded on three sides by a fresh burn. He certainly had not come out, so he was still in there. Now I had him—or so I thought . . . I put the Baron, armed with his Drilling, on my termite hill, Mutia and the .30-06 on another. His job was not to shoot but to tell us if the leopard bolted. Salim and I, with the .470 and the 12 bore, then stepped into the shoulder-high grass and palmettos to do battle. Oh, the brashness, optimism, lack of experience, and pure stupidity of youth! The blood trail was on the left side of the tracks, which denoted the slug had not passed through the animal. Obviously, the cat had not been hit fair and square, as it had not reacted in the normal way. So, my deduction, dear Watson, was a flesh wound. would have been flattened, if only momentarily. This had not happened and was quite troubling—not from the point of view of any danger, but because it is extremely rare to catch up with a lightly wounded animal, especially one so adept at hiding as a leopard. Our chances of finding this animal were slim, to say the least, and I was already mentally working out how to phrase my "Wounded Dangerous Game Report." Meanwhile there was a job to be done, so my two gunbearers armed themselves, and I checked my ammo belt to make sure I had only soft-nosed bullets for my .470 Harrison & Hussey. Salim Ali, my M'Namwezi gunbearer, had my B.S.A. 12-bore side-by-side with a box of SSG; Mutia, my M'Kamba gunbearer, had my scope-sighted .30-06. I felt ready for anything with my .470 as a stopper, the 12 bore to flush it out of the bush or grass, and the .30-06 in case of a long shot. The client following behind me was the big worry. The country was open with small, scattered bushes. The donga was not even a donga in the true sense of the word and petered out in a hundred yards or so. It was now about 3:30 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of light remaining. The fresh green grass was about knee-high, We were standing in waist-to-shoulder-high vegetation, so we could not see the leopard which was coming low and, of course, very fast. He covered the 15 feet or so in a flash; all I saw was the moving tops of the leaves and grass. When he finally appeared he was right under the barrels of my shotgun. I pulled both triggers, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back, feeling very silly and extremely frightened. illustration by bob kuhn