The Wildest of Dreams
I never dreamed that too many leopards could be a problem. Yet by my third day with Jamy Traut Safaris in Kaokoland, Namibia we’d had so much action at our bait sites that my Professional Hunter Kabous Grünschloss informed me we’d need to make a side trip to stock up on fresh meat. Not only did we have females and juvenile males feeding, a big male we’d captured on trail cam footage had hammered one of our baits, stripping large chunks from the zebra backstraps we’d hung the day before.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. The country of Namibia contains a population of leopards numbering at least 11,000, with Kaokoland having one of the highest densities of these spotted predators. A major contributing factor for the wealth of leopards across Namibia, and particularly in Kaokoland, is the Conservancy System. These systems, administered by local governments, place value on dangerous and destructive predators, like leopards, through the assigning of quotas for sport hunting. Local citizenry, through their Conservancies, protect these animals because of the monetary gain from hunters’ dollars.
Early the next morning, I loaded into our trail-hardened, tan Land Cruiser with my team – PH Kabous, Tracker Kapetja, and Game Guide Nico – and headed out on the hunt for a Hartmann’s Mountain Zebra, Kabous’ preferred leopard lure due to its naturally high fat content. Aptly named, members of this species occur at elevations as high as 6,000 ft. In less than an hour we had left behind the drought-seared, sandy flats and climbed into boulder-strewn hillsides. The air thinned and became less dust-filled as we bumped our way up the barely visible track.
When we topped out on the rocky plateau, we stepped out of the Land Cruiser and in short order one of my guides spotted a small herd of the beautiful equines at about 500 yards winding their way through the Mopane scrub. I grabbed my MG Arms 7mm Remington Magnum, Kabous grabbed my 4StableSticks rifle rest, and we set off on an angled approach designed to intersect the herd. We lost sight of the zebras when they went over a crest and next spotted them trotting away from us up a far slope. As luck would have it, a gorgeously striped stallion slowed his gait and began biting at another member of the herd. Kabous put up the sticks and stage whispered, “342 yards.” I reflexively adjusted the hold for what I calculated would be a 15-inch drop from point of aim and fired at the off-shoulder of the slightly quartering away animal. The bullet slap reverberated off the rocks, and Kabous exclaimed, “You hit him!” followed a few seconds later by, “He’s down! I can see his hooves in the air!”
Excerpt from “THE WILDEST OF DREAMS – A first-time leopard hunter finds adventure and fulfillment in Namibia’s Kaokoland.” Sports Afield, September/October 2021, pp. 76-82.
The author and his Kaokoland leopard