Arathusa Safari Lodge blog

There have been a lot of kills over the past two weeks, but only one in particular that stood out. We’d been looking for leopard over the course of a few days, when we came across Safari, our old resident female, on the southern end of the airstrip. She was looking quite lean, so we knew she’d be on the hunt. Soon after she was spotted Safari made a dash at a scrub hare which had appeared out of nowhere. The hare took off at top speed, only just escaping with its life. At close on 17 years old, Safari had no intention of quitting that easily. She continued to prowl under the cover of darkness in pursuit of something to eat.

Not much later she came across a herd of impala. The leopard immediately fell flat on the ground in order to remain undetected. The impala had absolutely no idea that she lay a mere 15 meters away from them. The wind was very gusty and inconsistent, so Safari just lay there for about 20 minutes waiting for the right moment to pounce and attack. The light of the moon allowed everyone to get a good look at what was transpiring, which was great because spotlights are never used in a hunting situation as it would alert the prey to the presence of the hunter.

We were hoping that Safari would make her move soon, as we were running late for dinner and had to start heading back to camp. We were just about to leave when the wind picked up and the leopard made her move. Suddenly she was amongst the herd, and for a split second it looked as if she had no idea what was going on. It didn’t take her long to get her bearings however, and the next thing we knew she’d pounced on a youngster and brought it to the ground. She killed it fairly quickly by breaking its neck, causing the already shouting impala to alarm call even louder.

Safari proceeded to drag her kill towards a tree about 100 meters away. When she was about 5 meters away from the tree, she looked behind her in the direction of a sound (unheard by us) and scaled the tree in a flash with her prize. Just then two hyena pitched up, frantically sniffing about for the kill they were hoping to steal from the leopard.

Unfortunately in her haste to get the kill up into the tree, Safari picked the wrong branch and was now desperately trying to secure it in spite of her poor choice. After making the kill, dragging it for a 100 meters and then hoisting the impala (which was close to her own in weight) high into the tree Safari was exhausted. And now she still had to secure the carcass that was dangling from her mouth before she dropped it. The hyenas watched eagerly from below, drooling at the sight and smell of the meat.

In the end Safari couldn’t hold onto the impala. She tried one last time to heave it onto the branch she was standing on before finally dropping it. Needless to say in seconds the hyenas were upon it, ripping the carcass to shreds from either end. And all the old leopard could do was watch in vain as the scavengers consumed her hard-earned prize. Given that they’re a lot stronger than her, Safari didn’t think fighting for her kill was worth the risk.

We watched as the hyena finished off the remains before we headed back to camp for dinner.

We hope to see you soon.

Warm regards from the Arathusa Safari Lodge team