18 July 2006, 20:10
jorgeJOHN SHARP'S "MARANDA MARAUDER"
Folks, John just emailed me another leopard adventure to relate. Apparentl, this cat had been displaced by the "Road Warrior" of which I posted a few weeks back.I'll have pictures soon, but here's a brief sinopsis from John: This second Leopard, the Maranda Marauder, was shot as a direct result of the removal of the Road Warrior. We used to bait him regularly along the northern boundary in the Mangwema River until about four years ago when his tracks simply disappeared. I originally thought he had been poisoned in Maranda as he spent most of his time in this tribal area and was not averse to goat meat, but in retrospect I now see that this disappearance coincided with the Road Warrior extending the boundaries of his territory. Within a week of the Road Warrior’s death the Marauder’s tracks were once again spotted in the Mangwema River.
I had pre-baited with a quarter of a Kudu cow which was hit on the 5th day – we only discovered this in the late afternoon so there was no time to build a blind. The next morning we quietly built a blind set well back inside a thorn thicket – it was nasty work but well worth the effort as it was barely visible. I allowed the Leopard to feed again in peace, this time with the blind in place. The third night we entered the blind and sat until after midnight but nothing came except a Brown Hyena. I decided to sit on the fourth night as well just in case the Leopard had voluntarily taken a break from feeding the night before. Bingo! He stormed in at 18:30 and Enrique dropped him in his tracks under the bait with a 7mm Remington Magnum. He had an unknown variable scope, 2.5 – 12 X 55mm. The cat weighed just under 180lbs (but I’d guess that at least 5lbs of that was fresh meat) and his skull measured 17â€. jorge
