In some of our lodges we have the opportunity to work with professional trackers. These brave men have dedicated their lives to the specific skill of following the tracks of the dangerous game of Africa.

One winter afternoon my tracker and I found the spoor of a female leopard, and decided to follow it, so we climbed off the vehicle and told our guests that we would see them in fifteen minutes or so. They agreed to this, hoping for an opportunity to see this elusive spotted cat, and off we went.

The track entered a dry seasonal stream bed, which was sandy and littered with rocks and boulders and my tracker walked on the spoor, scanning ahead for signs of movement while I walked above him on the stream bank. From up here I had a commanding view over the stream bed and my tracker. This way I was better prepared should we be charged at by the leopardess. After following the track for a while, my tracker stopped in the very middle of the sandy and rocky bed. I strained to see what had caused the pause in his confident stride, but I could not see a good reason for him to have stopped. There was a small Waterberry Tree a few feet in front of him and some rocks, but he could have easily bypassed these obstacles. I asked him "what’s up, why have you stopped?" and he did not say a word back to me. After a second or two he slowly lifted one hand and signalled, with one finger for me to climb into the river bed and join him. Now I was curious, and I knew my tracker well enough to realize that something unusual was happening. I did not question further but slowly slid into the riverbed and, step by step, I moved over to where he was standing.

When I arrived next to him he moved me into a position slightly in front of him, and to the side. He raised his hand and pointed at a spot in front of us, about three long steps away at the base of the small Waterberry… and there curled around the base was a beautiful leopard. She was frozen in position, and I assume that she thought she was still unseen. I looked at a point further down stream totally away from her and waited for my tracker to make the first move. He took hold of my shoulder, and slowly, step by step moved me backwards along the stream bed. I wondered why he had wanted me in the river bed at first, but now that he was leading me out I realized that he would have had great difficulty in backing out over the rocky and uneven terrain alone, and may have stumbled or fallen, which would have greatly increased the chance of an attack from the powerful creature just down the stream bed.

We congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and arrived back at the car and waiting guests full of excitement. We negotiated a trail along the stream bank back to the area where the leopard had been, and prepared our guests for the sighting, but when we got there she was gone. My assumption is that she had made a run for it as soon as we were out of sight…