Feature
The Dancing Kudu Bone
By Mike Owens
Sunset on Lake Cahorra Bassa - I never saw or heard
another powerboat on the lake, only the natives in
their dugout canoes.
I
t was an eerie sight watching the kudu femur bone as it hung
in the air. The bone was suspended four feet off the ground
attached to the end of a fishing line nearly invisible to the eye.
The line had been carefully woven through the bush to prevent
animals or birds from fouling it, with the opposite end tied to a
leopard bait hanging from the limb of the tree. A female leopard
had been feeding on the bait for the past several days, but a large
male had hit the bait the previous night. The tracks underneath
the tree indicated the male had taken over the bait. When the
leopard returned to feed, any movement of the bait or the limb
would pull the line taut and the kudu bone would move, thus
alerting my professional hunter, Wayne Grant, to the leopard’s
presence. The bait tree was located on the bank of a dry riverbed,
and Wayne had constructed a shooting blind on the top of a steep
river bluff opposite the bait. A second blind called the sitting
blind was located forty paces behind the shooting blind. We
would wait in the sitting blind for the leopard to arrive. This was
the set-up required to prevent the leopard from detecting us as
he approached the bait. Since we could not see the bait tree from
the sitting blind, Wayne deployed this trick named the “warning
stick” to alert us to the leopard’s presence. He had successfully
used this set-up on prior occasions when the topography was
not conducive to building only one blind. Nicholas Dlamini, a
Matabele tracker from Zimbabwe, found the tracks of the big
male while Wayne and I were exploring a different part of the
Kawanda hunting concession. Blankets had been placed on the
floor of the shooting blind to ward off the night chill and provide
bedding so we could spend the night if needed.
A violent thunderstorm blew into the Kawanda concession
the day we planned to hunt the leopard. The storm built slowly
over the Zambezi Valley until the massive thunder head stretched
from the ground to the heavens. We had ominously watched it
approach as it swept across lake Cahora Bassa. As we drove
to the blind, the furious storm engulfed us. Trees were toppled
exposing their root balls while lightning bolts crashed through
the driving rain. We were concerned about the storm’s effect on
the leopard, but both Wayne and I were committed to the hunt
since the big male had fed the previous night. Despite our rain
gear, we were quickly soaked, as the Toyota Land Cruiser had
no roof. The storm gave us cover on our approach to the blind as
we slipped through the thick forest and scrambled up the slippery
banks of the bluff. The worst of the storm eventually passed
after we entered the blind and the rain became a steady drizzle.
We were left sitting in a blind for which the best preparations
had been made, but now everything was soaked. I found myself
wishing for a dry set of clothes and a coat as nightfall approached
and the temperature began dropping, but figured the wet blankets
would suffice. I could hear a hippo grunting nearby indicating the
blind was not far from the shores of the lake. Wayne was sitting
Sean and Wayne positioning the rifle for a shot on a trophy
croc that later measured over fourteen feet and was sunning
on an island in the bay of the lake nicknamed Croc Bay.
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Page 8
African Hunter Vol. 19 No. 2