Below are some pictures of Live lions, that FAIRGAME sent me last year. He photographed these lions in the Lunga Luswishi GMA - Kafue, but passed on them, and/or was not hunting lion at the time. You can see that these lions are still just a bit young, but I think it shows that Pro-Hunt Zambia is doing a good job of trophy lion management, by not shooting lions that are just too young!! Great looking cats!!!

quote:

Great looking cats!!!

I agree. Great looking cats!!!!

Just curious, I have read several posts on this site from people who have hunted lion (including one from Aaron I believe), talking about never seeing a mature male lion in the daylight. I just got back from a lion hunt and spent 16 days hunting my ass off and although we did see some lionesses on a couple of occasions, we never saw a male at bait or otherwise during daylight hours. My PH stated that was the norm, in fact didn't speak of a single time of ever seeing a mature male during daylight hours. Then I see a post like this from a hunting area where someone (fairgame) has had the opportunity to see and photograph multiple mature male lions this year. Is there just that many lions in this area? Is it a hunting pressure or management issue?

505 - Since 2003 I have spent months in the Lunga Luswishi hunting lion and other things, sometimes right along side of "fairgame". Fact is, I've never seen a good lion (shootable) from the truck, etc. Obviously Andrew spends more time there than I do, but I am sure he will tell you that its not a common thing. In all the places I have hunted lion, I have never seen a big maned lion if he wasn't at a bait, or we tracked him. I have certainly seen them in daylight, but not just by pure happen stance. Richard and I did walk after a calling lion at 8:30am one morning, we walked about 1.5 miles in the direction he was calling, and walked right into him, out in the open. He was a good lion, but he saw us as soon as we saw him. He took off immediately, and I didn't want to shoot at a running away lion at 200 yards.

These lions pictures, I would not call big, but they will be soon.

Now, I know lots of guys have seen big lions by accident, and certainly PH's who spend more time than all of us in the area, likely see it more than we do, but I doubt highly its common in most places.

quote:

These lions pictures, I would not call big, but they will be soon.

My statement of "mature" referenced sexual maturity (which these lions no doubt are) rather than age or size.

505,

I suspect picture 3 and 4 are the same cat. I took pictures 1 and 4.

The Kafue here has a huge cat population and this is due to the high density of PG - up to 500 Puku in a mornings drive, and mostly confined to the river front. This game rich area is purely due to management and strict policies implemented by the Safari company.

Lions are generally nocturnal and can sleep 20 hours a day so you rarely see them unless on bait.

In ten days of hunting I saw 2 mature males and one pride with some young males, and had a young male and female on bait.

They say good areas make good PH's and this is certainly true of the Lunga Luswishi concession in the Kafue.

Aaron has somewhere a picture of the Lion I took last year and the trophy quality is excellent. Although we are now 100% on Lion over the last couple of years I would say the average is probably about 80% which is a very high statistic in Africa today.