Leopards lead solitary lives and try to avoid conflict with other cats. When a tom enters an overlapping territory of another male or when he approaches the bait, he often issues a low growl. I’d heard this raspy, saw-cut-like growl many times as the cats came to our baits. I don’t know what effect it had on nearby leopards, but it made my hair stand on end.
A mature tom patrols a territory of about 25 square miles, returning to his starting point every six to eight days unless he finds a female who happens to be in the mood for love. Mature females can breed up to three times a year. Colin estimated that eight to ten females called our hunting block home and that the territories of three or four mature toms overlapped the area. Males live 14 to 16 years. Both of the cats we were targeting were mature and extremely wary.
The territories of the two toms overlapped at our first creek bait. One came from the east and the other from the west. To my surprise, Jerry said they often fed on the bait the same nights. The last time they ate was six days before my hunt began. Jerry expected them back about three days into my hunt. On prior safaris, I’d spent more than half of my time waiting for the first cat to come to bait. This hunt was already building with excitement and anticipation.
After the cat that I called Tom East had outwitted us for the second time, Jerry started calling him The Witch Doctor. In his 20-plus years on the Tuli block, Jerry had come to know these secretive cats – their habits and where most of them denned. He’d occasionally seen a few of these nocturnal killers in the daylight.
The Witch Doctor, Jerry said, lived on a high rock ridge five kilometers to the east. Jerry and the other PHs had hunted the big tom a number of times. Colin and Huntley described him as “a no-neck rugby player” when they first saw him three years ago.
On that hunt, Huntley and his elderly client were checking baits when they saw a huge leopard. Huntley quickly said, “Use my shoulder as a rest and shoot.” As Huntley watched the end of the barrel, it slowly rotated in a small circle, then a larger and larger circle, then suddenly went up and backwards. His hunter had suffered a heart attack. Now Huntley was back to challenge The Witch Doctor one more time.
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