On a cloudy summer morning, whilst on game drive, one of our rangers set off on morning drive and soon spotted some tracks of a leopard near one of our dry river beds on the property. After much tracking by the ranger and tracker team, they saw what appeared to be a dead animal in a tree some distance off in the thick riverine vegetation. On closer inspection, it was indeed confirmed that it was a carcass of an antelope that had been placed in a tree, no doubt by the same leopard that we had previously been tracking.

The ranger then drove his guests closer to the site, where a female leopard was found lying at the base of the tree, her stomach full from gorging herself on the kill. As the guests watched her grooming herself, another intruder approached. Now for those of you who are wondering, NO, this time it was not the scruffy spotted hyena, famous for stealing kills from leopards, but rather another female leopard. As the female grooming herself saw the intruder, she went straight into defensive mode and attacked her, both individuals then ran off in a Northerly direction. After searching the area in which the 2 leopards where last seen for some time, neither were found again, and the rangers decided to leave the area and return to the lodge for a sumptuous breakfast and to resume their search later on the afternoon game drive.

That afternoon, we returned to the same area and found the original female back in the same tree devouring the last of her prey. We sat and watched her for sometime, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she stopped feeding and stared intensely in one direction. She then slowly stood up, climbed down the tree and stood right next to our vehicle. She started calling very softly, as if calling for a lost sibling. As the calling continued, we became aware of a rustling of grass directly in front of our vehicle, the sound became louder and louder…. When all of a sudden, a leopard cub appeared from the long grass, an AMAZING sighting to say the least.

The cub is roughly about 4 months old, the same female leopard was spotted a few months previously with two cubs, unfortunately it appears that only the one cub survived

Hope you have all enjoyed reading about our experience and we hope that you might join us here to enjoy your own amazing sightings and stories

Regards from the Lion Sands Field team