Socializing with friends in Central Texas Safari has so greatly enriched our lives.   This summer, a group of us went to Africa and toured the Cape – then hunted together.  We sent an email blast out, inviting anyone and everyone.  A lucky few answered the call.  It was amazing fun, memories for a lifetime.  Travis and Danielle Zibiliski hunted the Northern Cape this summer for the first time, and we were privileged to tag along.   Travis – a mighty hunter indeed; he stacked them up every day in the truck.  Danielle took a wonderful gemsbok.   Leann likewise gunned her gemsbok at 200 yards, alas this humble author, merely wounded his blue wildebeest, which promptly abandoned the field of conflict never to be seen again.  Travis on the other hand gunned down a gold medal waterbuck – an amazing trophy.  Everyone got their animals but me!  Shortly thereafter, we packed our friends off back to the US so they could get down to some serious business, and we traveled north.

I had over the years, thanks to the guidance of a dear friend Irvin Tam of Tam Safaris, started on the arduous task of completing my big five, something I never thought I could do – or would do.   It was here – at the very tippy tips of my fingers.   I was heading north for leopard, and the final completion of my big five – it’s all I thought about.   When we got there, we were on the South side of a rough, but low mountain range paralleling the border of Zimbabwe and the Limpopo River.   The terrain was bizarre for Africa, almost a riverine rain forest.   Thick, lush vegetation full of vines and broad leaf plants – thick, almost impenetrable to the eye.  Tall trees cast most of the area in shades, there were an occasional baobab tree, marking thousand year old elephant trails (they have to be thousands of years old because that’s how long they take to grow).

The jungle game trails had been dragged for leopard.  An unappetizing activity involving dragging the innards of slain several day old animals around miles of trails back to animal corpse hung in trees.    The tremendous effort put in this part of the hunt makes or breaks a successful leopard hunt.  My favorite blind turned out to be my luckiest blind, it was facing a low overhung tree branch, with a mountain stream tumbling down the far side, gurgling and crashing against the rocks.  Actually it was a beautiful little waterfall.   We got a hit – the leopard ate, and left tracks – a big cat.    The excitement ramped up, it was only day two of our hunt.   The blind was set up all afternoon; it was invisible at a distance.  Tree branches were carefully trimmed, all human indication was removed.   We entered the blind at 4:00 prepared for a long night, not ten minutes after sitting, a bush buck barked a predator warning, the cat was behind us directly in our wind.   Was the hunt and a week worth of work blown?   Not another 15 minutes went back before the leopard jumped into the tree.  Huge, magnificent, deadly. –  I now had a do or die shot, if botched, tracking it in the jungle would be a nightmare – all I could think about was messing up that wildebeest shot.   As I leaned into my gun the cat swatted the meat, and then disappeared.  Totally perplexing, it couldn’t hear our sound as the roaring waterfall hid everything, the wind was in our face – it was just an exceptionally wary cat that had been shot at before.

Thirty minutes later he was back, he came up an impossibly tangled branch, I could see his head and a 3 inch by 3 inch patch of body.  An incredibly difficult pin point shot.  No room for error – I lined up, and when the crosshairs touched the shoulder point I fired.  I was using a Dakota 98 in 300 Win Mag with a 3×12 Swarovski scope.   The cat froze, I didn’t know what happened, it just stood there, then slumped.  Dead on its feet, after a few minutes he slipped off the branch falling the ten feet to the ground.   The elation was indescribable.    The experience was all the more rewarding having been enhanced with the excitement and bonding of all my friends in the Central Texas Safari Club.   That night, a Cuban cigar, bottle of 18 year old single malt scotch, and a boma fire….   as good as life gets.